Episode Details

On the night of October 21, 1978, a 20-year-old pilot named Frederick Valentich radioed Melbourne air traffic control to report an unidentified aircraft pacing him over Bass Strait. He described a long shape with a green light, an engine that didn't sound like a normal aircraft, and then, seventeen seconds of unexplained metallic scraping. Then nothing. No wreckage. No body. No confirmed radar trace.

The Department of Transport's official finding, filed years later, was "reason for disappearance: unknown."

Forty-eight years on, that stretch of water between Victoria and Tasmania has become one of the most argued-over patches of sky in the southern hemisphere. So was this a young, inexperienced pilot who became spatially disoriented and flew upside down into the sea — or did Bass Strait swallow something the official transcript still can't explain?

• The full radio transcript, and the line investigators still can't agree on: was Valentich describing a UFO, or panicking about engine trouble he didn't have the hours to diagnose?
• Why no wreckage from a Cessna 182 has ever washed up, in a strait that has surrendered debris from other crashes within days
• The competing theory that he staged his own disappearance to fly on to a new life, and the family members who have always rejected it
• A 1982 photograph, taken the same night by a witness on the ground, that some analysts say shows an engine intake — and others say shows nothing at all
• Why the Bureau of Air Safety Investigation closed its file without ever determining a cause, an outcome almost unheard of in Australian aviation history

Some of this is documented. Some is genuinely unknown. And almost none of it is as settled as the people who closed the file want you to believe.

Join Rich Baker and Dr Nick Coatsworth as they suss it all out.

Contact the show at conspiracycabal@outlook.com

The Conspiracy Cabal doesn't promote conspiracy theories — we examine them. We search for the kernel of truth in every story, exploring how conspiracies start, why they persist, and what drives people to believe them.

Contact the show at conspiracycabalpod@outlook.com

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