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By Root 887 0

interviews, and reports by international colleagues who have worked closely with the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP). According to our statistics, in an average career of commercial flying, a pilot has about the same chance of seeing a UAP as he does of striking a bird in flight or of encountering extreme wind shear. The threat to safety is small but potentially significant, and should be treated like any other infrequent safety hazard. Many flight safety problems go unreported or underreported, but the difference here is that bird strikes and wind shear are currently acceptable events to report and UAP are not.

Three cases over Australia and New Zealand are of great interest, illustrating the effects I’m referring to. On August 22, 1968, at about 5:40 p.m., two pilots were flying from Adelaide to Perth, Australia, at 8,000 feet in a Piper Navajo single-engine airplane when they sighted a very large cigar-shaped object surrounded by five smaller objects. The strange formation maintained a constant angle from their own flight path for over ten minutes, while they flew at 195 knots. One of the pilots said later, “The large one opened up in its center with smaller objects going to and from the larger object.” Ground air traffic control was contacted and replied that there was no known air traffic in the area. At this point their radio failed on all frequencies until the objects flew away, “as if by a single command.”3

Ten years later, a shocking event occurred. A private pilot went missing while en route to King Island, south of Melbourne, Australia, after a very close and frightening encounter with a large unknown object. On October 21, 1978, twenty-year-old Frederick Valentich had rented a Cessna 182L single-engine, propeller-driven airplane for a short night flight. Just after 9:00 p.m., he radioed Tullamarine Airport in Melbourne from an altitude of 4,500 feet while over the waters of Bass Strait. For six and a half minutes, he conversed with flight service specialist Steve Robey at the Melbourne airport about something unidentified orbiting around his airplane, heading straight for him, and chasing him. The tape ended with fourteen seconds of very unusual metallic noises and then went silent.

The voice transcript between Robey at Flight Service in Melbourne and Valentich in his Cessna aircraft—which was registered and referred to as Delta Sierra Juliet—follows. I have carefully studied the audiotape and noted the many times where Valentich’s voice inflections rise at the end of his transmissions, as if he were asking a question. The young pilot was clearly disoriented by 9:10 p.m. at the latest and probably earlier. There are many pauses during his transmissions, which are indicated by three ellipsis points.

9:06:14 Valentich: Melbourne, this is Delta Sierra Juliet. Is there any known traffic below five thousand?

9:06:23 Robey: Delta Sierra Juliet—no known traffic.

9:06:26 V: Delta Sierra Juliet—I am—seems [to] be a large aircraft below five thousand.

9:06:46 R: Delta Sierra Juliet—What type of aircraft is it?

9:06:50 V: Delta Sierra Juliet—I cannot affirm. It is four bright … it seems to me like landing lights.

9:07:04 R: Delta Sierra Juliet.

9:07:32 V: Melbourne, this [is] Delta Sierra Juliet. The aircraft has just passed over me at least a thousand feet above.

9:07:43 R: Delta Sierra Juliet—Roger—and it, it is a large aircraft—confirm?

9:07:47 V: Er, unknown due to the speed it’s travelling … Is there any Air Force aircraft in the vicinity?

9:07:57 R: Delta Sierra Juliet. No known aircraft in the vicinity.

9:08:18 V: Melbourne—it’s approaching now from due east—towards me.

9:08:28 R: Delta Sierra Juliet.

9:08:49 V: Delta Sierra Juliet. It seems to me that he’s playing some sort of game—he’s flying over me two—three times at a time at speeds I could not identify.

9:09:02 R: Delta Sierra Juliet—Roger. What is your actual level?

9:09:06 V: My level is four and a half thousand, four five zero zero.

9:09:11