Episode Details

The Disappearance of Frederick Valentich - The Unanswered - Australian Unsolved Mystery The search covered more than a thousand square miles of Bass Strait. Five days. An RAAF Orion, eight civilian aircraft, ocean-going vessels. The official investigation took nearly four years.

In Part Two of Strewth's investigation into the disappearance of Frederick Valentich, we go looking for answers and we find, instead, a case that resists every explanation applied to it. The spatial disorientation theory that most aviation experts accept, and why the man who was actually there that night doesn't buy it. The ground witnesses, the photographs taken at Cape Otway twenty minutes before Valentich's first radio call, and what analysis has and hasn't been able to confirm. The 315-page investigation file that researchers were told had been destroyed, sitting untouched in the National Archives for thirty-four years.

And one more thing. A story that a researcher carried for more than twenty years before he knew what to do with it about a South Australian farmer, a shadow that fell across him in a paddock the morning after Valentich disappeared, and what he found attached to the outside of the object above him.

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Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay

Sources:

• Aircraft Accident Investigation Summary Report (1982) Department of Transport, Commonwealth of Australia. File reference V116/783/1047, approved for publication April 27, 1982.
• Marine Search and Rescue File (1978) National Archives of Australia, Series A4703, control symbol 1978/1205.
• Radio Transcript of VH-DSJ Final Transmission (1978) Reconstructed for broadcast from the official BASI published transcript.
• Haines, Richard F. (1987) Melbourne Episode: Case Study of a Missing Pilot. LDA Press (LSRG)
• Simpson, George (2022) Nothing on Radar: The Valentich Mystery. Self-published (Amazon).
• Haines, Richard F. & Norman, Paul (2000) "Physical Evidence Related to UFO Reports: The Proceedings of a Workshop." Journal of Scientific Exploration, 14(2).
• Haines, Richard F. (1981) Sound spe