Episode Details

The Disappearance of Frederick Valentich - The Flight - Australian Unsolved Mystery On the evening of Saturday, October 21, 1978, a twenty-year-old pilot named Frederick Valentich took off from Moorabbin Airport in Melbourne. He crossed the coast at Cape Otway at seven o'clock, right on schedule. Six minutes later, he radioed Melbourne Flight Service to ask if there was any known traffic below five thousand feet.

There wasn't.

What followed was a six-minute radio exchange that has never been satisfactorily explained. Frederick described something above him, a long shape, metallic, shiny, with a green light, hovering, orbiting, moving at speeds he could not identify. His last clear words were: it is hovering and it's not an aircraft.

Then seventeen seconds of metallic sound.

Then silence.

Frederick Valentich and his Cessna were never found.

In Part One of this two-part Strewth investigation, we follow Frederick from the beginning, his obsessive love of flying, the exam failures he hid from everyone, the engagement ring on layaway, the Saturday evening plans he would never keep. We put him in that aircraft. We fly that route with him. And we listen to every word of that radio transmission, in full, exactly as it was recorded.

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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 spectrum analysis of the 17-second metallic transmission. Journal of UFO Studies.
• McGaha, James & Nickell, Joe (2013) "The Valentich Disappearance: Another UFO Cold Case Solved." Skeptical Inquirer, 37(6), November/December