VALENTICH

Opening

On the evening of 21 October 1978 twenty-year-old Frederick Valentich took off from Moorabbin in Cessna 182L VH-DSJ for King Island across Bass Strait. At 19:06 he called Melbourne Flight Service. Something was above him. The controller told him there was no known traffic at that level. Valentich described lights, a shiny surface, a green lamp, an object orbiting him. His engine ran rough. Asked what it was, he said it was not an aircraft. Then metallic scraping on the tape, and nothing.

A sea and air search followed. Ships, an RAAF Orion, civilian aircraft. No wreckage that the file could keep as VH-DSJ. Cape Otway later got a family plaque. Guido Valentich said he hoped his son had been taken, because no trace was a kind of hope.

The spine of the file is a last radio and an empty strait. Valentich is a Cessna and a sentence that refuses the word aircraft. It is not a recovered tail number on a beach.

Timeline

Valentich was a young pilot building hours, headed for King Island with a simple crossing in ordinary dusk weather. 21 October 1978, late afternoon out of Moorabbin. Cape Otway behind him, water ahead. At 19:06 he reports an unidentified aircraft about a thousand feet above. Melbourne says the board is empty at that height.

He describes four bright lights, a pass overhead at speed, then the thing coming from the east as if toying with him. He is orbiting. It is orbiting on top of him. Green light. Metallic, shiny outside. Engine problems. 19:12 he says his intention is still King Island, then: that strange aircraft is hovering on top of me again. It is hovering and it is not an aircraft. Open microphone. Pulsed noise. Melbourne calling Delta Sierra Juliet. No answer.

Search through the following days. Oil slicks that do not become an aircraft. No life jacket. No seat. The Bureau of Air Safety later files the disappearance. The tape of the last minutes is the object the public still has.

Later photographs of an odd object over the strait that night are argued. They are not the radio. Keep them on the later shelf unless a frame is tied to VH-DSJ by more than a date.

Key figures

Frederick Valentich is the only voice in the cockpit. Twenty years old, talking to a controller who can hear the engine and then the scrape. His last sentence is the exhibit.

Melbourne Flight Service is the ground ear. The controller's empty traffic board is why the object is not just another light aircraft the system already owned.

Guido Valentich is the father who had to live with no wreck. His hope that a craft had taken his son is later speech. It is also the speech of a man who was shown an empty search.

The search crews and the safety bureau own the water and the file. They did not bring the Cessna home.

Physical and documentary trail

On the paper, 21 October 1978 gives you four hard objects and no airframe.

One: the flight plan and takeoff of VH-DSJ from Moorabbin toward King Island.

Two: the Melbourne Flight Service tape, including the description of lights, metal, a green lamp, a rough engine, and the line that it was not an aircraft.

Three: the metallic or pulsed noise on the last open microphone, then silence.

Four: the search that found no wreck the bureau could stamp as that Cessna. Melbourne Flight Service transcript, VH-DSJ, 21 October 1978, is the originating tray.

There is no photograph from the cockpit. There is no radar track everyone accepts as the second object. There is no seat cushion with a 21 October tag.

It is hovering and it's not an aircraft.

Competing explanations

An unknown craft over the strait. This is Valentich's last description. It has a tape and no wreck. A young pilot can misread Venus and still leave a sentence that does not sound like Venus.

Disorientation, a ditching, a wreck the search missed. Possible over Bass Strait. The empty board at his altitude is the part this reading has to carry, and the scrape on the tape.

Suicide or a planned disappearance. Offered. Not shown. The radio does not read like a goodbye. It reads like a man trying to identify traffic.

Hybrid caution. He reported something over him that the system did not own. The Cessna did not arrive. Both sentences are 1978.

Later life of the case

Documentaries, the Cape Otway plaque, disputed stills from that dusk. I keep the later photographs on the later-life shelf. The tape and the empty water stay first.

Finding

Frederick Valentich told Melbourne a shining thing with a green light was orbiting his Cessna over Bass Strait, said it was not an aircraft, and then the tape went to scrape and silence. The search did not bring VH-DSJ home. Believe the radio. A twenty-year-old on a night crossing does not invent traffic for a controller who can hear the engine.

What still will not resolve: a piece of that Cessna with a 21 October chain, or a radar file that shows the second object. Either one would pin the last sentence to a machine instead of to a missed ditching. The proving object is still the thing he said was hovering, held by someone who was not in Delta Sierra Juliet.