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The Frederick Valentich disappearance has been cited and discussed in multiple places for a long time. This thread is being established to consolidate the relevant postings.
Tasting Menu?
I did not find it particularly mysterious or compelling. Here is the Skeptoid take on it; it does not make Valentich look very reputable.
https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4385
I did not find it particularly mysterious or compelling. Here is the Skeptoid take on it; it does not make Valentich look very reputable.
https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4385
One of the most famous/notorious UFO incidents - the disappearance of Australian pilot Fred Valentich while reporting an unidentified and hard to describe aircraft ( "its not an aircraft!") which was " playing games" with him and moving at speeds he couldn't estimate.
There are many videos ABOUT it on YouTube, but this Italian language clip contains the actual audio of his conversation with air traffic control before he went silent. It starts at 2 minutes in.
Going slightly off thread topic I noticed that Wikipedia's entry on the subject does its usual death by insinuation, by referring to Valentich in its first paragraph as "Described as a "flying saucer enthusiast" " (It doesn't say by whom), and then proceeds at no point in the rest of the article to elaborate on how that's relevant if true. There's an unexpressed invitation to dismiss all that follows by assuming he was faking or imagining the craft he reported (ignoring the fact he did actually vanish and never once used the words ufo or flying saucer on the radio), without actually saying so. And it works. I sent the youtube audio recording to a friend saying you might find this eerie. He responded he'd never heard of it and would look it up. He came back 5 minutes later having clearly read Wikipedia, by saying snarkily "What a coincidence he was a UFO obsessive". Besides the instant promotion from enthusiast to obsessive in that reader's mind, the concrete relevance of his (alleged) interest in ufos remained unexpressed and inexpressible.There have been many attempts at explanations as to what actually happened to him that day, some very convincing, but I guess we'll never know with 100% certainty.
That recording is an absolute gem!The second (one story which I've not heard of until now), almost as intriguing. A story of a South Australian farmer who claims to have seen a Cessna attached to a UFO a day after Valentich vanished. Probably complete rubbish but it all adds to the mystery.
One thing no one seems to be able to agree on is whether it was fully dark or not.
According to Planetcalc, sunset local time at Melbourne (just north of the locus) was 1942 hrs.
Wikipedia gives Valentich’s time of disappearance as 1912 AEST.
maximus otter
When I've been in Melbourne I seem to remember there's not really a lot of 'twilight'. It seems to go from light to dark without much in the way of intervening stages.Sceptical accounts such as those by Nickell and Sheaffer suggest that darkness had just fallen. Richard Haines stated that it was dark to the east but the sky would still have been light to the west. Simpson, as a local, suggests it was still twilight. Other people have asserted the sun hadn't set yet. They can't all be right!
When I've been in Melbourne I seem to remember there's not really a lot of 'twilight'. It seems to go from light to dark without much in the way of intervening stages.
Also, 'twilight' is subjective. What some might call twilight, others might call dark...Simpson asserts just the opposite, funnily enough, that on the south coast they have a "long twilight". I guess he's invested in demonstrating that Valentich couldn't have been disorientated though.
It would be good to get a definitive answer on what the light conditions were.
To tell the truth, Nickell comes out with so much blatant drivel that I don't bother reading anything he writes any more.