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The October 1978 disappearance of 20 year-old Australian Fredrick Valentich, flying in an airplane over Bass Strait just off shore near Melbourne, Australia, is said to be a result of a UFO abduction or an attack by a UFO that destroyed Valentich and his airplane.

Wikipedia tells the tale:

Skeptic Robert Sheaffer offers a probable solution to the incident:

The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry goes after Valentich and the purported episode. Click HERE to read.

The National ENQUIRER provided two sensationalist articles, as was its “reportorial methodology”; one offering an eyewitness, Colin Morgan, who said he saw an object at the time young Valentich was reporting his UFO encounter:

And another ENQUIRER story showed an acquired (from Ground Saucer Watch) UFO photo taken by plumber Roy Manifold at the time of the Valentich incident. (Manifold’s photo showed a black cloud surrounding a metallic structure about 20 feet in diameter:

An April 2014 Herald Sun brought the case up to date. Click HERE to read it.

I find the Valentich tale interesting for a few reasons: one, that skeptics are quick to slander/libel the young pilot (because he can’t respond apparently); two, because it remains an open mystery. (Bill Chalker can tell us more); three, it has the hallmarks of the scene in Spielberg’s film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind where the pilots lost in the Bermuda Triangle debark from the alien UFO, along with other missing folks, a sop to the UFO abduction meme.

Valentich reportedly radioed the Melbourne air tower that he was being followed by a strange aircraft, and at one point traffic controllers were said to have heard “a loud, crunching ‘metallic noise’” lasting 17 seconds before dead silence from Valentich’s radio.

 A fascinating UFO story, as I see it…

RR