On the evening of October 21st, 1978, a 20-year-old pilot named Frederick Valentich left Melbourne in a Cessna 182L bound for King Island, sitting in the middle of the Bass Strait south of Australia. Visibility was fine and the wind was blowing easy.
Image showing the front page of the Roswell Daily Record on the morning of July 8th, 1947. The story covers the Roswell incident.
Shortly after, he contacted Melbourne air traffic control and said that an aircraft was following him about 1000 feet above—it had unusual features and was moving very quickly—and he could not identify it very well. He also said his engine was running rough at times.
Later he said the strange craft was coming at him from another direction. He began to feel the pilot was playing around with him. Melbourne ATC asked him to identify it. His response was that it was travelling too fast but it had a shiny metal surface with a green light on it. Then he said the craft was coming at him from another direction. He reported more engine problems.
Then silence.
Within a few seconds he reported in, “That strange aircraft is hovering on top of me again. It is hovering and it's not an aircraft!” This was followed by strange metallic scraping noises.
Frederick Valentich and his Cessna 182L were never seen again.
Image of a UFO sighting in Auckland, New Zealand in 2010 - showing a triangular object.
Emergency flights combed the area but not one little trace of the plane was ever found. Some said it crashed into the Strait. But that model Cessna was equipped with a beacon that would have clicked on automatically on crashing. Also, it was designed to float on water.
Many possible scenarios surround the Valentich case. Did he stage an elaborate suicide? Was he downed by drug smugglers in the area?
Or was an entire airplane and its pilot abducted by extra-terrestrials?
Pilots are Credible Witnesses
UFO’s have been reported by pilots for years. Many UFOlogists point out that pilots are some of the most credible witnesses supporting the position that UFO’s exist. In the 1979 documentary “UFO’s Are Real” prominent UFO researcher Dr. Richard Haines said that due to the fact that pilots have good eyesight and trained skills of observation, their testimony of repeated sightings over the years cannot be ignored.
“We are not dealing with mental projections or hallucinations on the part of the witness, but with the real physical phenomenon,” he said.
He is not talking about a few random occurrences. The evidence is deep:
- Ray Bowyer, an Aurigny Airlines captain, had a 15 minute encounter while flying a commercial flight. He described two objects following his plane: flattened disk shapes with brilliant yellow light coming from within. He estimated them to be one mile across. Many passengers saw them as well.
- Kenneth Arnold, a private pilot and businessman, was flying over Washington’s Cascade Mountains in 1947 when he spotted nine crescent shaped, silvery objects near Mr. Rainier. They were skimming along, dipping “like a saucer would if you skipped it across water.” Ever since then we’ve called UFOs flying saucers.
- In 1986, a Japan Air Lines flight en route from Iceland to Anchorage, Alaska encountered white and yellow lights darting in and around the airplane. Later the flight crew observed a giant silhouette of what appeared to be a mothership. Before they could get confirmation from nearby airplanes, the ship was gone.
UFOEvidence.org reports that there are more than 3,500 documented sightings of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena by commercial, civilian and military pilots. The sightings date from the very first days of flight right through to today.
Most People Believe in UFO’s
Are they seeing things? Research indicates most people believe we are not alone.
Two UFO sightings in the 1960s. The top image shows a sighting over Sheffield, England on the 4th March 1962 while the bottom image shows a sighting over Minneapolis, Minnesota on the 20th October 1960.
- A 2007 poll by the Exopolitics Institute in Hawaii found that 85% of respondents “believe that extraterrestrial civilizations are visiting the earth.”
- In a 2002 Roper Poll, 56% of Americans agreed that UFO’s are real and 48% believe UFO’s have visited Earth in some form.
- A Canadian poll found 78% of Canadians believe that life exists somewhere else in our universe.
- 48% of the respondents in a 1996 Newsweek poll said they thought that UFO’s were real.
Did you know that every year thousands and thousands of UFO sightings are reported? Studies show that about a third of the populace believes that at least a portion of the sightings can be attributed to extraterrestrial spacecraft.
But are aliens real? Seth Shostack, a senior astronomer at the SETI Inst. is doubtful. He writes in the Huffington Post: “It's hardly likely to amaze you, but I'm skeptical. I don't think the evidence laid on the table as proof of extraterrestrial visitation is compelling, and I certainly don't buy the argument that better evidence (in fact, all the really good evidence) has somehow been collected by the governments of the world and stacked up in secret storage lockers.”
MFO’s: Man-Made Flying Objects
There’s something else. Unidentified Flying Objects are just that: unidentified flying objects—they can be anything. Wired Magazine reported on the dizzying array of stuff the U.S. has in the air that could be mistaken as extraterrestrials checking us out up close and personal.
From the flying saucer looking VZ–9 Avrocar from the 1950’s, to the T-Hawk lightweight drone from Honeywell nick-named the “flying beer can,” to spy blimps the size of football fields, many UFOs might in fact be man-made flying objects.
- The Avrocar was a joint Canadian/American attempt to create the equivalent of an actual flying saucer. After 10 years the project was scrapped.
- The Honeywell T-Hawk “Flying Beer Can” mini-drone hovers in the air performing reconnaissance for the Army.
- The Northrop Grumman SHIELD Helicarrier is a huge floating data center. The length of a football field and seven stories tall, it carries 2500 pounds of data sensors and intelligence gathering equipment.
- The Voltron drone hangs in the air for 5 years! Running on solar power, it is one of several proposals for a future project of DARPA, the Pentagon’s research branch.
- In the 1930’s, the Navy commissioned a prototype airplane nick-named “The Flying Flapjack.” It looked like a flattish flying saucer with two giant propellers. It could climb to 5000 feet and specialized in slow speed flying.
With all that hardware from the U.S. military floating around over the years, it’s easy to see how some of it could be mistaken for a UFO. And that’s just the American stuff. Add in Russian (and now Chinese) flying metal and you have some shiny objects distracting pilots.
Blackhawk Up
It’s hard not to believe a UFO has intelligent life when it almost knocks you out of the sky. That’s what happened to Lt. Colonel Lawrence Coyne and his helicopter crew. They were flying over Mansfield, Ohio in 1973 when they encountered a large red object which moved toward them rapidly. Lt. Coyne said later it looked like a “locked-on missile.”
He cut the power and put the chopper in a steep dive to avoid impact. A green light appeared on the underside of the object. Despite trying to drop, the helicopter was pulled upward around 2000 feet higher than its original position. Eventually, it let go.
“It was almost a mid-air collision with what we consider to be a UFO,” said Dr. Coyne. He said the object had a high degree of technology, was composed of a structure and design that we do not have--it had no stabilizers, no landing gear or any visible source of propulsion.
Lt. Coyne felt so strongly about this experience he joined a delegation to the United Nations to encourage the organization to look further into the topic of UFO’s. However, many pilots are not so open. Many will not even report a sighting.
Image showing a UFO sighting over image Passoria, New Jersey in the early 60s.
Code of Silence
Kenneth Arnold grew weary of the controversy around his sighting. He stated that if he ever saw anything like it again, he wouldn’t say a word. In one 1940’s era survey, an Air Force pilot said that he wouldn’t report a UFO sighting even if it was flying wing-tip to wing-tip with him.
Nick Pope, who used to run the UFO project for Britain, said pilots often won’t report cases because they don’t know how to describe it, or fear it could end their career, he told Coast to Coast radio. He said there are 200-300 UFO reports every year and that 80% could be easily explained, 15% had insufficient data and the rest were “extremely interesting.”
Maybe you loosen up after retirement from the service. That might explain the press conference called in September 2010 by 7 retired Air Force officers. Held at the National Press
Club in Washington, D.C., the officers related that they had seen UFO’s make U.S. nuclear systems “temporarily inoperable” during the cold war.
Robert Hastings, a well-known UFO researcher, put together the event. "The possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons potentially threatens the human race and the integrity of the planetary bargain." said Hastings (Wired 9/10).
Although Hastings did not serve in the military, he enlisted the help of Robert Salas, retired Air Force launch officer. Together they tracked down a cadre of airmen who had very similar stories, taking place from 1963 to 1980: alien ships of various shapes (conical, spherical, disc-shaped) appeared to them at U.S. nuclear missile sites. The common theme? When the aliens got close, all the missiles stopped reacting to directions from the airmen.
Robert Jamison claimed 10 of his missiles “suddenly went off-line” in 1967 at Malmstrom Air Force base in Montana. This took place as stories circulated of aliens visiting the area. A security guard reported that two small red lights in the distance appeared and began to close in on them.
Hastings was philosophical about the news conference. “I don’t think humankind is in jeopardy from whoever they are or whatever they are, except that we will have our minds expanded,” he said. “There will be a paradigm shift. Traditional institutions such as religions, governments, other social institutions may be threatened by what is coming. That is just the logical consequence of what is about to occur.”
Extra-Terrestrials No Threat
Seth Shostack says that he has no problem if you believe in UFO’s and extraterrestrials. In his view, even if they are real we may not be in much danger:
“…I'm not here to argue with you. I'd like to make a different point -- one that somehow seems to have escaped notice in the seemingly endless debate about UFOs. Namely, if the aliens are here, you have to admit something remarkable: They're about as harmless as kittens on Xanax.
Consider: The premise is that Earth is being visited. But are these invaders a mortal threat? You can read occasional claims that aliens are mutilating our cattle (a decidedly unwelcome pastime, if true), but homicide seems to be off limits for ET. They don't kill people. Your chances of being snuffed by a moose are higher.”
It’s food for thought. Aliens have done more damage to the Earth in Hollywood movies than anything in real life. It begs the question. Why? Maybe they are just toying with us. It could be that Earth is simply a backwater to them, a mud puddle in the great neighborhood of the galaxy, a down-and-out block that gives them license to fly in, flash some lights, honk the horn and speed away, like 21st century punks.
One thing is for sure. If a pilot sees a UFO, the chances are good he will not report it.
Except to another pilot.
In an on-line forum recently a government document was discussed—it said that pilots could not share any information regarding UFO’s or face a $10,000 fine. One forum poster confided that he felt around 90% of pilots had some type of experience with UFO’s but chose not to speak about it.
Another poster may have summed it up best: “I think that any person who cannot comprehend that the vastness of space is teeming with different forms of life is truly living with their head in the sand. 200 years ago, we had zero technology, today it's everywhere. To expect that other life in the billions of years past have no technology, or ability to travel, is naive at best.”
So, are UFOs real?
Image shows the USAF Avrocar, or as it's correctly know - the Avro Canada VZ-9AV Avrocar. This was the closest thing to the well known "flying saucer" craft that was ever developed by terrestrial intelligence.
Several studies have concluded that the majority of UFOs are observations of some real but common and normal objects: astronomical objects such as meteors; balloons, aircraft, nacreous clouds or noctilucent clouds. A small fraction of the UFOs sightings have been reported to be hoaxes. Nevertheless, with these incorrect reports excluded, a considerable percentage of the UFO sightings and reports remain unexplained – and these are indeed ‘unidentified’ flying objects in the strict sense of the word.
19 comments... read them below or add one
My theory is the possibility that UFOs are humans from our own future, having learned to travel backwards through time-travel, and merely observing us momentarily, and then moving on backwards or forwards into another time. Perhaps the energy or power within the time-craft itself could affect the controls and the behaviour of the reporting aircraft.
It would be both ignorant and egotistical to think that we as humans are the grand and superior species and that there is nothing of supremely higher intelligence. Of course we are not alone; extraterrestrials have been visiting us for generations. Remember Easter Island, Stonehenge and the Bermuda Triangle? Ask any pilot who has traversed the Triangle and see the fear and respect in their eyes. Truth is stranger than fiction and no matter what your religious belief, we didn't just get here and we didn't get our technologies out of thin air. Information has been gifted to us over time as we were ready; we just have to hope the human race has enough foresight not to destroy our magnificent planet out of greed, stupidity and ego. After all, we don't own it; we are renters if you will and have the responsibility to give it back at least as we received it, if not better.
So, if we are lucky enough to be visited again by beings of superior intelligence, let us hope that they will share their information and technologies with us so we can survive the insane madness of our own creation. Let us welcome them with open arms instead of hostility.
Pretty interesting article but the Northrop Grumman SHIELD Helicarrier and the Voltron drone aren't real yet. The article makes it seem that they are already flying. Thanks -Waner bornwithoutwings.com
What?? That green triangular winged object is a leaf!
The sheer amount of evidence and testimony collected from military, commercial and private pilots alone over the past 70 years (not to mention police officers, lawyers, judges, the list goes on and on) is enough to prove that UFOs are real. The question is, what are they? Personally I believe there's more than one answer. Some are Non-Human Intelligence with technology vastly superior to ours. Some are currently unknown plasma/earth energies, some are highly kept secret military black project craft and some are likely missidentifieds.
I also believe there has been a massive cover up by our government/military since Roswell concerning the truth about the Non-Human Intelligence behind some of these UFO sightings. I am hopeful that I may live to see disclosure in my lifetime.
@leslie wolf, i don't think that's possble, because if humans did actually learn to time travel back in time, it would only be possble for them to travel back to when the time machine was first created and was operational, and not a second before that. i think that aliens visitng this planet just to observe the other species in the universe, is much more of a possiblity than time travelling planes.
Hi all.
I do believe in ufos and as for the explantion they are us from the future I am unsure of that one however I do feel that they are so far advanced as to consider us unworthy of contact because we have not yet learned to live by peaceful means
This was a great article and I believe that the possible life on other worlds is a no brainer! Thanks
Taking into consideration the enormous diversity of life forms, past & present, that have evolved on this small planet it stands to reason that life has evolved elsewhere in our ginormous universe. Whether life forms have and do visit us regularly is debatable. In our meagre short journeys scientifically or physically through our own solar system in search of life it would be contrary to the exploration to find unique diverse life forms then leave without studying them.
The movie planet of the apes with charlton heston is what sums a lot of it up. Consider if you traveled at the speed of light to the nearest star system and back. the crew would experience time much differently then us. A few years for them would be thousands if not millions of years for us on earth. It is very possible that earth has produced civilizations before that may have reached the ability to travel at the speed of light and did leave the planet and are now back. It would explain the lack of aggression by a race that could easily defeat the current planetary defense...
I'm deadly sure that there are aliens here on Earth, collecting information, doing experiments like we do on animals. Most government are aware of the matter, but to avoid any panic, there is the code of silence. All these witnesses are not stupid to recognize something different from an usual aircraft. The aliens have been visiting us for decades. You can hear the same story from different civilization that, one day, god came from heaven and landed. You can also see the different pictures made by the primitives in cavern all around the world. There is no any worse blind man for those who do not want to see
There is an explanation for sightings but as of yet, they're "unidentified," hence the term. I am of the opinion that people can be deceived by images of unknown origin. Pilots are without doubt seeing something but what it is I cannot explain not having had the pleasure or pain of seeing something of unknown or unidentified origin. There is little doubt that something exists which, when "identified" will cause a furore of debate. But certainly at this time I reserve judgement as to what that something might be. Yet, we do know one thing, there is a cover-up of whatever this thing or things are. The governments of the world would not go to these lengths to cover-up a known object or would they? These questions must be answered sooner or later, yet for now, they remain unanswered. The reason they remain unanswered is for the governments of the world to justify.
The fact is that life does exist beyond our sight and imagination. If any one of you has ever read Indian mythological texts which were written a few thousand years ago, there is precise descriptions of the life forms beyond just humans. Also Jainism has a complete section describing the geographical aspects of the universe along with complete distances, the life forms, the appearance of these life forms etc... and to imagine that these texts were written thousands of years ago when we are sure that today's technology did not exist.There is an European author who has translated these texts in to English.
We believe that we have advanced technologically, but to look at it, these technologies and many more existed in the Indian subcontinent hundreds of years ago, but they were slowly put under control and eradicated slowly to stop the misuse and to avert threat to human existence.
Even in Egyptian history, all the gods are said to have come in flying boats. Till now we are still mystified about their ways of life and the culture that they had at that period of time.The construction of the pyramids, the making of paper from papyrus, the agricultural advances etc.. were all ahead of their time considering the state of the civilization at that point of time.
Our history shows many instances, where civilizations have changed and evolved in a very short span on time. This also coincides with the historical notings of gods coming down in flying ships and teaching the art to people.
This topic has no end and the discussions and arguments could go on and on. It is just a matter of how open one is to analyse all the theories without a bias.
IF WE ALL BELIVE THAT THE WORLD WE LIVE IN IS BOUND BY ONLY EARTHLY LAWS OF SCIENCE, then why do scientist tell us and prove to us that we are all shallow minded and should think outside the box? Time and space exist even if the clock and the telescope hadn't been invented, if the Earth didn't exist the universe would! Man was once told that flight was impossible; physics tells us that anything is possible people, so why not little grey men in their flying machines?
its a mindpattern- the best pages -ufoevidence-mufon.ces then - youtube - ufohunter ufos pilots black box.. very good special report from the brasilian airforce called brasilans roswell -operation prato !!!! special report- the coyne helicopter ufo incident - a report from an us army helicopterpilot- with an cigarshaped ufo !!! dr haines r . is collecting hundreds of nar miss ufo reports.. glück ab gut land nice greetings from austria
I'd like to send you document of proof photographs of supernatural existence even photos of aliens.
Didn't Bob Hope do a lot of UFO Shows during WWII?
The AvroCar is simply AMAZING! I saw it in person, decommissioned of course, in Daton, Ohio. It's at the Airforce Museum. Go and check it out! It's worth the trip. They also Have the only XB-70 Valkarie in existance along with so many more amazing planes.
I myself have witnessed a UFO type incident in the California skies in the late 90s and I wasn't alone. Of course I was a skeptic at the time. What struck me with a profound memory is that a day or two after observing it, I approached my Father a very high ranking ,intelligent, sane, individual (I think)who has spent his life serving the Marine corps, and this Country, Pentagon,White house etc.
I very discreetly asked him, because with his level of exposure he would know, "Dad are UFOs real"? He suddenly got this strange look on his face,and there was this odd pause, he then looked me straight in the eyes with all the confidence in the world and said "yes".
Oddly he then just turned back to his paper and never spoke another word of it. Being older I now know that he wasn't necessarily saying little green men are real, but that some stuff in the sky just cant be identified, or was he? This is why I am not a skeptic anymore but more of an aware looker who went into Aerospace.