A young pilot vanishes mid-flight. His last words? “It’s not an aircraft.”
On the 21st of October 1978, Frederick Valentich set off on a routine flight over the Bass Strait, but never arrived. Before he disappeared, he radioed to air traffic control in a panic. Something was following him. Moving too fast. Emitting an eerie green light. Then, came a metallic scraping sound. Silence. Valentich and his plane were gone.
No wreckage. No distress call. Just a chilling transmission and a mystery that’s baffled investigators for decades since. Was it just a tragic accident, a hoax, or did he encounter something beyond our understanding?
This, is the ‘Bizarre But True!’ story of The Pilot Who Vanished…
Frederick Valentich was just 20 years old when he vanished, but his passion for flying had been lifelong. He’d logged around 150 flight hours and held a class four instrument rating, meaning he could fly at night, but only in clear weather conditions. His dream was to join the Royal Australian Air Force, but he’d already been rejected twice due to lack of qualifications. Even so, he was determined to make aviation his career.
Despite his enthusiasm, Frederick’s record wasn’t spotless. He’d failed his commercial pilot exams multiple times and had been reprimanded for previous flying infractions. He’d flown into restricted airspace over Sydney and had even been investigated for deliberately flying into a cloud, a dangerous manoeuvre that nearly got him prosecuted. None of this, however, seemed enough to stop him from getting into the cockpit one more time.
On the evening of the 21st of October, Valentich took off from Moorabbin Airport in Melbourne for what should have been a 90-minute flight to King Island. His flight plan was puzzling from the start. He’d told some people that he was going to pick up friends; others, that he was collecting crayfish. But no one was actually expecting him on the island. Stranger still, he never arranged for the runway lights to be turned on at King Island, a standard procedure for night landings.
At 7:06 p.m., as he flew over the treacherous waters of the Bass Strait, he radioed Melbourne Flight Service, reporting that an unidentified aircraft was following him at 4,500 feet. The flight controller checked radar. There was no other aircraft in his vicinity.
Over the next six minutes, Valentich described the object in increasing detail. He said it had four bright landing lights and a reflective metal surface. It was moving too fast, zipping above him at incredible speeds. Then, suddenly, it reappeared beside him, orbiting his plane. He suspected that whoever was flying it, was toying with him.
Then, his voice became panicked…
He began to report engine trouble. The controller asked him once more to describe the craft.
His final words were chilling: “It’s not an aircraft.”
A metallic scraping sound followed. Then, the radio went silent…
A massive search effort was launched. Aircraft, ships and even a Royal Australian Air Force plane combed over 1,000 square miles of ocean in search of the light aircraft. But no trace of Valentich or his plane was ever found. It was as if they had simply vanished into thin air.
In the years since, many theories emerged. The official explanation suggests that Valentich had become disoriented, possibly flying upside down without realising it. If that was the case, the lights he saw could’ve been reflections of his own plane on the water below. Eventually, he would’ve entered what pilots call a “graveyard spiral,” an uncontrolled descent that ends in a crash.
But that theory has problems. The Cessna 182L that Valentich was flying, had a gravity-fed fuel system, meaning it couldn’t have flown upside down for long without stalling. And if Valentich had crashed, why wasn’t there any debris…?
Another theory suggests that he staged his own disappearance, landing somewhere unnoticed. Melbourne police did receive reports of a small plane landing near Cape Otway, the last location Valentich was known to have flown over. But if he had faked his own disappearance, why? He had no known reason to vanish and his family insisted that he wasn’t the type to run away from his problems anyway.
Some even speculated that Valentich was suicidal. But, again, there was no evidence to support this claim. His family and friends said he’d made future plans and was looking forward to his upcoming flight.
Then there’s the strangest theory of them all… Abduction.
Frederick Valentich was a believer in UFOs. He’d even expressed concerns that he might be attacked by one whilst flying. And he wasn’t the only person to report strange activity in the sky that night. Around the same time as his disappearance, multiple witnesses claimed to see an unusual green light moving erratically above the Bass Strait. Some even reported an object emerging from the water and zipping into the sky. A group called ‘Ground Saucer Watch’ later analysed photographs taken that day, arguing that they showed an unknown flying object shrouded in mist or vapor.
Further fuelling the speculation, Valentich’s father, Guido Valentich, later claimed that he believed his son had been taken by extraterrestrials. He pointed to the fact that Frederick had been fascinated by UFOs in the months leading up to his disappearance and had even researched recent sightings. He insisted that if his son was still alive, he would have contacted his family. To Guido, the only explanation was that something, or someone, had taken him.
The Bass Strait itself has long had a reputation for unexplained vanishings. Sometimes called the “Bass Strait Triangle,” it’s been the site of multiple ship and plane disappearances over the years. Some of the missing vessels were never recovered, fuelling speculation that something unusual and unexplained lurks beneath its waters.
Years later, in 1983, a piece of wreckage was found washed ashore on Flinders Island. It was identified as the cowl flap from a Cessna 182, the same type of plane Valentich had been flying. However, there was no way to confirm if it came from his specific aircraft or from another lost plane.
Adding to the intrigue, some aviation experts have pointed out that if Valentich had indeed crashed, an oil slick or some sort of floating debris should’ve been found within hours. But no such evidence was ever recovered.
The case remains open..
Was it an accident, a hoax, or something stranger? We may never know. But one thing IS certain: on that October evening in 1978, something happened to Frederick Valentich. And to this day, the words of his final transmission still send shivers down the spine of those who hear them:
“It’s not an aircraft.”
