Valentich Case Files Finally Released

Originally posted by mirageman

One of the photos shows what looks to be a blemish in the sky and according to the programme this was confirmed by an Australian photographic lab as being "in the picture" and not dust on the lense or a photographic artifact. It was also sent to the US for research and the blot was confirmed as a solid object that appeared to be enveloped in a cloud of exhaust.

Mirageman, good call on that one mate -here's a close up of the object:

The final piece of this puzzle is the photograph taken by Roy Manifold. He had set up a timelapse camera to capture the sunset off the coast, but found something strange when developed. There appeared to be an unexplained object with an “exhaust cloud” in one of his pictures. According to Roy, these were taken just 20 minutes before Valentich’s last transmission. Experts at an Arizona-based UFO organization analyzed the photos and concluded that the object must be moving at 200 mph, or hovering stationary while the clouds zoomed past at that speed (an equally puzzling feat).

link

Originally posted by Kandinsky

ETA - Season 6 Episode 2

@ 4:00 minute mark

Kandinsky, great find mate -I thought they'd removed every 'Unsolved Mysteries' UFO episode on the internet.

Is anyone able to save this one before the ******** take it down?

Cheers.

reply to post by Kandinsky


S & F

I look forward to readingthis blog about my favourite UFO case.

Thanks for your efforts.

Mungo

i read some of the debunker's explanations on this case and cannot help laughing / shaking my head in disbelief because their explanation are more improbable.

Flying upside-down making the engine stall : F.V are not flying in clouds with no sense of attitude, and the effect of flying upside-down are pretty noticable especially in small places.. as it is there are no reported instrument failure and i think the attitude indicator are one of instruments that not affected in encounters unlike compass.

FV himself putting on a show to Hoax everyone : ok this sounds like the debunkers grasping at straw, look for every explanation except the obvious ones..

Personally i think FV crashed in the water either CFT (Controlled Flight into Terrain) caused by the unknown object that terrorize him. The question now is this : what is the object that distract FV ? is it man-made ? Natural ? or Non-Natural ?

i re-read the Sea Fury incident and it seems the military pilot dont panic as much as FV.

regards

Hi

Australian UFO researcher Keith Basterfield has been taking a fresh look at some of the original material on UFO reports from around the time that Valentich disappeared. He has compiled a catalogue of such reports, and started to analyse each individual incident.

The catalogue and analysis may be found at:

www.project1947.com...

There were also quite a few reports from King Island, the destination which Valentich put on his flight plan. Courtesy of Keith Roberts of TUFOIC, Keith Basterfield has prepared a list of these events at:

ufos-scientificresearch.blogspot.com.au...

Finally, Keith has also taken a look at the radio communications between Valentich and Melbourne Flight Control and found an old journal article which many ATS readers probably have never heard of. He reports on this article at

ufos-scientificresearch.blogspot.com.au...

The Valentich case is fascinating case I still remember as a child seeing the headline on a newspaper for his disappearance. Personally I think he got taken by an Alien force. I doubt hes still alive but then who knows for sure.

Yes it was a big deal at the time....What a lot of people forget, was a day or so after this, several film crews from the various current affairs programs had cameras in light planes flying the same route, who Also recorded "Strange UFO like lights" in the night sky around the same area as FV reported them.
A coincidence maybe? Far away landing lights?.....No, Apparently UFOs!!
That story ran for quite a long time. Probably can be found somewhere on the net.

Good to see this case being discussed again. I have heard the recording, and the 'metallic' noise at the end is very strange. IMHO it does not sound like the black box recordings of commercial aircraft that crash. Admittedly, I have only heard these on TV programmes.

I also seem to remember a study by Philip Klass who put forward the idea that FV was either flying upside down or drug running (!), no source for that though but CSICOP does have a link to his work.

Sorry for bumping this old thread, but it happens I am just reading this report by R. Haines and it's just extremely interesting. I didn't hear about this case until rather "recently" (eg. some years or so).

I myself don't know about the UFO explanation since some researchers rightfully pointed out that a lot of strange things can happen even to experienced pilots at night such as disorientation, entering a "death spiral" as they call it without noticing it simply because the mind has no reference points about position, up, down etc.

But WHAT I know is that some of the debunking "attempts" I found online, most importantly on the CSICop site are outright ridiculous. (The guy who wrote an article in the style or "Valentich Case Finally Solved", he just concluded that the light(s) had been a combination of Venus, Mars, Mercury & Antares and the green light was the position light on the plane's wing.)

I found this "explanation" extremely far fetched. I entered data in Stellarium and it's correct that Venus, Mars, Mercury etc. were shining bright that evening to the W but can for the life of it not see how a pilot or anyone else would mistake them for an UFO.

The "researcher" then said that Venus, Mars, Mercury and Antares formed a "diamond shape" and " ... people just have a tendency to connect dots" which is also an extreme stretch and rather poor attempt to explain this case. While it may be true that many might mistake Venus etc. for an UFO...it's still nothing BUT "just another" attempt of explanation and not better than any other theory.

The "researcher" then makes the astonishing statement that the green light was the (right?) position light on the wing.
There is just one problem:

If the green light was one of the plane's lights, it is stationary. It won't move in relation to the pilot, it won't "orbit". It would be there at the same position at the wing ALL THE TIME throughout the flight.

Implying that a pilot, even a relatively inexperienced pilot with only 150 hrs would mistake the lights of his own plane as UFO seems an extreme far stretch.

a reply to: Kandinsky

Sorry im late to the party on this, however the headline of that paper strikes me as strange. If I were the father, I'd rather have some mundane down to earth explanation on my son's "disappearance/death/whatever" than a UFO or Alien Abduction being involved. I'd rather it be something that I could understand at least..............

a reply to: NoRulesAllowed

If we look at the way ufology and skepticism have spoken to each other historically, it's mostly been hostile. It's been competitive and it's frequently been rather nasty too. The early SCICop guys were as quick to dismiss reports as some ufologists were to explain them as 'aliens.' This relationship was established by around 1950 and has continued ever since. As ufology is diminishing and reports are decreasing, so has the need for debunker-style skepticism.

Back in the 50s/60s there was a dedicated skeptic called Dr D H Menzel. He didn't care about how accurate his explanations were as long as they looked sort of plausible. In that way, we might have a report of a red UFO going rapidly above two witnesses' heads after being pursued in a car. Menzel would say they saw Mars and were confused. If you're interested, there's a great correspondence between Menzel and pilot Bill Nash that shows how it worked. Menzel tried to convince Nash that what he *thought* he saw was something else...Nash was intellectually matched and wasn't having it.

My point here is that during the height of the 'war,' it was as if any explanation would be acceptable and a few errors therein didn't matter. Modern researchers like Keith Basterfield are more likely to accept that not all cases can be explained. The absence of an explanation is just that 'unexplained' and not therefore 'aliens.'

a reply to: Bloodydagger

Hello BD, believe it or not, a large number of people held the belief that aliens were friendly and that life in the galaxy was better than here on Earth. They'd arrived at this view through imagination, fiction and the stories of Contactees like George Adamski. Even films like Close Encounters presented aliens as something wonderful and spiritual.

For men like Valentich' father, he'd have lived through the Korean and Vietnam wars and the 70s was quite a high pitch for the Cold War. It was easy to see this world as negative and hostile. A couple of the comments made by Fred Valentich suggest that he felt that way too. What better life than living in peace and visiting other worlds were they weren't slaughtering their neighbours?

If we look at it that way, then his father's hope was a sincere wish that his son was living the dream out in space with friendly aliens. It was a more attractive hope than his son was drowned, crashed or on the run with a stolen aircraft.

a reply to: Kandinsky

Very interesting. I guess I should have thought about that myself.

When did the "Evil Alien" theory first start popping up and becoming common? Was it that Barney and Betty Hill episode?

a reply to: Bloodydagger

I honestly think it coalesced in the late 70s USA with the first abduction claims. From there it was drummed into the population by Doty and the guys. The abduction phenomena came about in the same sort of period too.

However if we mention four big names in that field, they'd be Mack, Sprinkle, Hopkins and Jacobs. Two of them claimed it was evil aliens and two of them claimed it was spiritual aliens.

I don't think the Hills case had enough social impact to make people fear alien abduction. Barney's recollections give me the creeps as his (hypnotised) horror is so genuine. But I reckon most people took away Betty's account of a charming captain with very human looks and characteristics.

a reply to: Kandinsky

Yeah, I read Jacobs book "The Threat" and wow, what a crazy read. Its nothing but the bad side of Alien Abduction. Jacobs fully believes that Aliens are evil and are breeding some form of Alien/Human hybrid as a replacement race for humans. Something straight out of the X-Files (or maybe the other way around since it seems like that belief system was before the X-Files)

True or not, some of those hypnosis transcripts in that book gave me the creeps. Some of them were very vivid and extremely detailed and graphic. One of them explains how the woman was raped. That was actually hard to read.......

a reply to: Bloodydagger

Oh yeah, the Jacobs' perspective is quite horrifying. Being integrated out of existence by a species that seems half-fascist and religious is nightmarish. Although it became clear that he actually led many of those transcripts (cherry-picked etc), there are still elements that remain eerie.

I prefer the peace and love brigade from Sprinkle and Mack. Even with them, they're dealing with assumed entities that have to be trusted on face value and with no clear reasons to do so.

A very grim field imo

Hi, Australian researcher Keith Basterfield
has located two more Valentich related fies
and has asked the National Archives of Australia to examine them for release. This
Is expected to take until about March 2016.
It's anyones guess what these extra files
will contain.

Keith Basterfeld has had the National Archives of Australia digitise the two files (actually part one and two of one file.)

Here is his blog post about the contents of the files, which also tells you how to access personal copies.

ufos-scientificresearch.blogspot.com.au...

Happy reading.

Rich Dolan on the Valentich case: