04/10/2026
Pilot Valentich: death or abduction.
From the June 1981 Australian Flying Saucer Review.
In June 1981 the Victorian U.F.O. Research Society put Frederick Valentich back on the cover of its revived flying-saucer review. Two and a half years had passed since a 20-year-old Moorabbin pilot and his Cessna 182L, VH-DSJ, vanished over Bass Strait. Frederick’s father’s account and a six-minute radio log was printed in the issue.
Frederick Paul Valentich left Moorabbin at 6:19 pm on 21 October 1978 for King Island. At 7:00 pm he was over the cape at 4,500 feet in clear twilight. Six minutes later he asked Melbourne whether anything was below him.
Over the next six minutes he described four bright lights, a long shape he could not identify, then a shiny object with a green light orbiting above him. His last words were that a strange aircraft was hovering on top of him again, and that it was not an aircraft. Seventeen seconds of metallic noise followed.
An RAAF Orion and four days of search found nothing the society considered significant. Guido Valentich, writing for this issue, says the Department would talk about a pilot in trouble and not about a UFO, then still ran one of the largest private-pilot searches he had seen. He argued the radio was too clear, and the aircraft too high, for the ditching story he was given at Tullamarine. He also records the strange private relief of that Sunday: Frederick believed in UFOs, and a close contact might not have been the worst thing his son could imagine.
Paul Norman, VUFORS vice-president, closes by setting Valentich next to Mantell, Coyne, and a 1967 Cuban claim. The magazine’s verdict is not the same as the government’s. In 1982 the Department of Transport ruled the cause undetermined.
The Australian Annual Flying Saucer Review, June 1981, Victorian U.F.O. Research Society, Moorabbin. Pages 3–8, “Pilot Valentich Death or Abduction,” Guido Valentich and Paul Norman. From the NHI archive.
