THE AUSTRALIAN MILITARY & GOVERNMENT ROLE IN THE UFO CONTROVERSY

UFOs
SUB ROSA*
DOWN UNDER
THE AUSTRALIAN MILITARY & GOVERNMENT
ROLE IN THE UFO CONTROVERSY
by Bill Chalker
(Copyright © B. Chalker – 1996)
The author is a leading Australian UFO researcher and a contributing editor to the International UFO Reporter. An industrial chemist with an honors science degree from the University of New England he has worked in quality assurance and laboratory management. His book, The OZ Files – the Australian UFO Story, was published in 1996. He coordinates the NSW based UFO Investigation Center (UFOIC) and can be contacted at:

P.O. Box W42,
West Pennant Hills,
NSW, 2125
Australia
Telephone: (02) 9484 4680
email: bchalker@ozemail.com.au

* Sub Rosa: refers to “under the rose”, meaning “in secret”.

CONTENTS:

ACCESS TO THE OFFICIAL AUSTRALIAN UFO FILES
ACCESS TO THE RAAF UFO FILES
“UNKNOWNS” & “IMPOSSIBILITIES”
THE SOURCE OF THE RAAF “IMPOSSIBILITIES”
STRANGE LIGHTS AND VANISHINGS IN 1920
AUSTRALIA’S FIRST OFFICIAL UFO INVESTIGATION?
MILITARY MATTERS
1950 – THE EARLIEST DAFI FILES
1952 GAF PILOT ENCOUNTER
THE DRURY AFFAIR – “the holy grail of Australian ufology?”
THE 1954 WAVE
THE SECRET TURNER REPORT
THE “SEA FURY” ENCOUNTER
UFOS, DAFI AND JIB
THE CHIEF OF AIR STAFF (RAAF) & THE UFO
CLEAR INTENT AT MARALINGA – 1957
THE BOIANAI VISITANTS OF 1959
THE UFO COVER-UP MILIEU OF 1959
ASIO INFILTRATION
A TURNING POINT
THE CRESSY AFFAIR
A RADAR VISUAL INCIDENT NEAR DARWIN
THE 1965 BALLARAT UFO CONVENTION
THE RAAF AND THE UFO PROBLEM
THE EMERGENCE OF AN “INVISIBLE COLLEGE” DOWN UNDER
A SECRET MILITARY “RAPID INTERVENTION” TEAM
SUB ROSA FALLOUT IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA
UFO IMPACT AND THE JIB
INTRUDER AT WOOMERA
SCIENCE AND THE UFO
RAAF UFO “COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE” IN SA
DR. ALLEN HYNEK’S VISIT TO AUSTRALIA
DEFCON 3 TO TOP SECRET UMBRA – A NATIONAL
SECURITY CRISIS WITH A UFO CONNECTION IN 1973
1978 AND THE RAAF
“NOT SO ‘ALIEN’ HONEYCOMB”
RAAF “OPERATION CLOSE ENCOUNTER”
THE MELTON – ROCKBANK UFO SECURITY BREACH
THE RAAF’S CHANGE IN UFO POLICY
AN INSIDER REVEALS THE RAAF PARANORMAL EXPERIENCE
THE RAAF UFO “SWANSONG”?
THE RAAF UFO DATA
THE CIVILIAN UFO DATA

THE RAAF UAS/UFO DATA:
THE BOIANAI VISITANTS OF 1959

THE CRESSY AFFAIR

THE CLASSIC WILLOW GROVE ENCOUNTER

THE “FIRST” OFFICIAL “UNKNOWN” – THE ELECTROMAGNETIC
LIGHT WHEEL NEAR GROOTE EYLANDT

“THE THING ON THE BEACH”

THE 1966 TULLY SAUCER “NEST”

THE CANTERBURY CLOSE ENCOUNTER

THE BURRENJUCK UFO

THE NEBO ENCOUNTER

FREDERICK VALENTICH AND DELTA SIERRA
JULIET – VANISHED?

ACCESS TO THE OFFICIAL AUSTRALIAN UFO FILES

Prior to 1982 civilian UFO researchers only had a confused and vague picture of clandestine official involvement in Australia. In the face of the lethargy in the RAAFs replies to serious enquiries, I stepped up my efforts at diplomatically trying to get direct access to the RAAF UFO files. It probably surprised me more than anybody else when the RAAF finally agreed to permit me to examine their files.
The extent of access was unprecedented in the history of the Australian UFO controversy. From the first of my visits to the Russell Offices of the Department of Defense, in Canberra, on January 11th, 1982 to my last in June, 1984, I was able to scrutinize the extent of official UFO investigations in Australia. For the first time a detailed “inside” picture was revealed of RAAF investigations.

I was able to undertake the first officially sanctioned direct review of the Australian government’s UFO files. Over two and a half years I was able to:

(1) examine the majority of the extant UFO files held by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) at the Directorate of Air Force Intelligence (DAFI), Department of Defense, Russell Offices, Canberra
(2) examine the entirety of the extant UFO files held by the Department of Aviation at their Bureau of Air Safety Investigation in Melbourne, Victoria.

The review has provided a detailed understanding of official involvement in Australia.

ACCESS TO THE RAAF UFO FILES
On Monday morning, January 11th, 1982, I arrived at the Russell Offices of the Department of Defense, in Canberra, to undertake a review of the RAAF/Department of Defense UFO files. This was the first time that a civilian researcher had been afforded this sort of access. For almost thirty years, the RAAF had been the official body invested with the responsibility of investigating reports of UFOs or unusual aerial sighting (UAS) reports in Australia and its territories. Until then no clear and unambiguous picture had emerged about the role the RAAF played in the UFO controversy in Australia. Two polarized positions had emerged. The RAAF was covering up its high level involvement in an international “cover-up” of UFO facts, perhaps in concert with the US Air Force. Or, the RAAF was bureaucratically locked into a responsibility it had long since decided was a waste of time, but continued as a service to the general public.
The only public record of case investigations by the RAAF had been the “summaries of Unusual Aerial Sightings”. These consisted of date, time, location, very brief details of the event and “possible cause”. Nine of these were produced, covering the years between 1960 and 1977. The 1977 Summary was the last publically available summary. In 1980 the Department of Defense indicated “the practice of compiling annual summaries of UAS reports was discontinued in 1978. This was in line with the Department of Defense policy of the RAAF now investigating reports purely as a ‘service to the general public’…”

After signing in at the police desk, I was escorted to Building C of the Russell Offices Defense complex. I was shown to a desk. During that day and for the next 3, I conducted an exhaustive examination of the RAAF UFO files. I determined that I was looking at about a third of the holdings of RAAF files on UFOs. Subsequent investigation research and pursing the paper trail enabled me to examine a continuity of files that covered the period from 1950 to 1984.

From the RAAF’s point of view, they have been , as Australia’s “official governmental examiner” of UFO reports, locked into a bureaucratically orchestrated responsibility, which for a long time they have seen as a waste of their time. They may have allayed possible fear and alarm by the general public and satisfied the government that there is no apparent defense implication. However the RAAF appear to be as confused and uncertain as many civilian groups, on what to do about provocative UFO sightings. The RAAF largely solved that dilemma by ignoring the implications of their “unknown” cases and providing, what many saw as unlikely explanations for intractable reports.

 

“UNKNOWNS” & “IMPOSSIBILITIES”

The term “unknown”, in RAAF parlance, was a moveable feast. In 1973 I was advised it meant a classification that could arise from three different categories, namely:

a. Insufficient information provided to adequately evaluate the sightings;
b. Late submission of reports thus precluding adequate investigation; and

c. Thorough investigation of a detailed report resulting in no factual determination of the cause.

Approximately 1% of all sighting reports submitted to the R.A.A.F. are nonattributable as per sub para c. above, and in future, cause details in the summaries will be more explicit.”

By 1980 I was being advised:

The term “unknown” is used to denote the small percentage of UAS reports that remain unresolved because of insufficient information being supplied, late receipt of report denying timely investigation, remoteness of sighting location, and insufficient current scientific knowledge being available to provide an explanation…
It was not only the “unknowns” that drew scrutiny and debate. Many reports had attracted unlikely explanations from the RAAF. For example “tornado – like meteorological phenomena” was suggested for some of the most striking cases, such as close encounters at Willow Grove (1963), Vaucluse Beach (1965) and Tully (1966). “Plasma” was a popular explanation around 1967 since it was an explanation being unrealistically pushed in America at the time. It was provided as an explanation in a striking close encounter near Burrenjuck Dam in 1967. It seemed evident on even the most cursory analysis that such weak explanations showed little scientific enquiry, but a lot of political and military myopia.

 

THE SOURCE OF THE RAAF “IMPOSSIBILITIES”

The quality of RAAF investigations into both prosaic and significant “unknown” reports has drawn criticism from many sources, perhaps none more pointed though than that of Dr. Claude Poher, as expressed in 1976 correspondence with the RAAF. Poher led France’s first major official UFO research group GEPAN, part of the French equivalent to NASA. After the Australian Department of Defense sent him some of their Annual Summaries of UFO information, Dr. Poher wrote, “May I suggest, for transmission to personnel responsible for this work, that some of the ‘possible causes’ mentioned in these summaries are not acceptable…” Dr. Poher gave an example of an innocuous observation at Wickham, NSW, on April 4, 1975, of a “silver object about the size of a cricket ball” , which the ‘summary’ lists as Venus for the “possible cause”. Poher concluded:

“…for the 4th April, 75, the planet was under the horizon so the cause Venus is ridiculous.
“There are many other impossibilities like this in the papers you sent me. I think one should avoid publication of these documents without a careful check by specialists of the different scientific disciplines involved, so as not to have, one day a journalist or a scientist holding the Services of the Australian Department of Defense up to ridicule.”

The source of such “impossibilities” is the subject of some speculation. While unconfirmed, I was told the “inside story” by someone working in Defense. His account is controversial and at this stage difficult to substantiate, for obvious reasons. For the record here is his version based on my notes of a interview with him:

“While America had an official attitude — the Condon Report etc. our Air Force simply has no expectations of getting any other verdict. Their attitude is to try to quite everything down. Be bland as possible and hope that everything goes away. At times they were actually rather rude to witnesses, tending to ridicule where possible. Generally speaking the men that are handling it wish they weren’t. But in the Air Force it is essential to look as though you’re good at your job, to get promotion. The attitude is to look as though they are solving all the cases, while looking for an excuse to write it all off.
“The reason why in the 1960s a number of reports got out on sightings and explanations [the “Annual Summaries of Unusual Aerial Sightings (UAS)”, which weren’t quite “annual”, the first being from 1960 to 1965, then eventually one covered 1960 to 1968, which became Summary No.1, Summary No. 2 covered 1969, No.3 covered 1970 and 1971, then Nos. 4 through to No. 9 appeared on an erratic annual basic covering individual years from 1972 to 1977 inclusively – B.C.] was that DAFI were handling it and not telling anybody and Public Relations (DPR) were the ones getting all the queries. DPR wrote to DAFI saying this is getting a bit sick. I don’t know what to say. Give me an answer. DAFI said look we don’t know. We haven’t got any answers. We just can’t tell. DPR said well hand me the files and I’ll get the answers. He got the files and then gave answers according to what the DPR man thought, i.e. ill-thought explanations without any recourse to the honesty of it. I had a look at the Venus group and it just so happened that none of the, say, 15 sightings attributed to Venus, there was not one occasion when Venus was above the horizon at the time. At one time a man in Tasmania saw a bright light in the sky and it was so bright he put on his sun glasses. That was written down as Venus!

“The Air Force published the lists ad nauseam for about ten years [i.e, from 1966 to 1978 covering 1960 through to 1977 inclusively – B.C.] and it was all this PR man who concocted everything and DAFI really had nothing to do with it…. So generally speaking I found the Air Force bordering on a sham really. They were not honest. Their purpose is to allay the fears of the public and to try to get everybody off their back. They don’t want politicians on their backs. They don’t want the public on their backs. They want to be left alone to do their other job.”

Just how accurate is this “insider’s” version of the evolution of the “Annual UAS Summaries”. Part of his account is in accord with the facts as I could determine them with access to the files in 1982 to 1984. However the severity of his claim about the “honesty” of the exercise may possibly be reconciled by the point that if the PR man created the summaries, and we know certainly that DPR created the first one, then he may have done so, with recourse only to limited information from DAFI (i.e. DAFI gave DPR very brief summaries anyway. There is some evidence for this as I saw small sheet summaries of individual sightings that were ostensibly used in the creation of the first summary) or he made only a very cursory reading of the actual files without any attempt at depth of analysis or critical evaluations of the suggested “possible causes”. The RAAF Intelligence officers undertaking the original investigations often gave an “explanation” in Part 2 of the “Report on Unusual Aerial Sighting” pro-forma where it asked “41. The object reported probably was*/may have been *(delete as required)……. ” Often this section was not filled out in reports but would have formed the basis of the DPR summary when the “possible causes” were available.

STRANGE LIGHTS AND VANISHINGS IN 1920

The official files do not confirm military activity before 1950, however research has confirmed involvement by the military, albeit in some cases, cursory in nature, back as far as 1920. The Navy submarine depot ship, the Platypus, was involved in the search for a missing schooner, the Amelia J., in Bass Strait. Mystery lights, thought at the time to be “evidently rockets”, were observed. Two aircraft left the flying training school and aircraft depot at Point Cook to join in the investigation. One was piloted by a Major Anderson and the other by Captain W.J. Stutt – an instructor for the NSW Government Aviation school at Richmond (a forerunner to the Richmond RAAF base, established soon after the birth of the RAAF in 1921). Stutt and his mechanic, Sergeant Dalzell, were last seen by Major Anderson flying into a large cloud. Their plane and the schooner were never found. Fifty eight years later the Bass Strait became the center of another extraordinary plane/pilot disappearance, namely the Valentich affair of 1978.

AUSTRALIA’S FIRST OFFICIAL UFO INVESTIGATION?

In 1930, an Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) officer, Squadron Leader George Jones, was sent to Warrnambool, Victoria, to investigate reports of mystery aircraft flying over the coast. No explanation was found in this first official RAAF UFO investigation. Further “mystery aircraft” reports were made in the near Pacific and Papua New Guinea area in 1930, and in 1931 the RAAF was denying any of her planes were the explanation for “mystery planes “reported widely in Tasmania.” Jones was to become RAAF Chief of the Air Staff during World War Two, and subsequently Air Marshall Sir George Jones. He was himself to become a UFO witness in 1957. He also became a valuable advocate of serious UFO research, being a patron of the short lived national civilian UFO research organization CAPIO – Commonwealth Aerial Phenomena Investigation Organization, and a member of VUFORS – the Victorian UFO Research Society.
MILITARY MATTERS
On October 10th, 1935, an off duty military man took what was possibly Australia’s first UFO photograph at Nobby’s Head near Newcastle, NSW. Although the photos are now apparently unavailable, investigators who saw the photo during 1968-69 reported it showed “a definite circular object with details seen well at enlargement.”
We have already seen that Bass Strait was no stranger to extraordinary UFO mysteries. The crew of a Beaufort bomber flying at 4,500 feet over Bass Strait, during February, 1944, bore witness to what may have been Australia’s earliest “electromagnetic” (EM) case.

At about 2.30 am the plane gained a most unusual companion. A “dark shadow” appeared along side the plane and kept pace with it, at a distance of only some 100 to 150 feet. The Beaufort was traveling at about 235 miles per hour. The object appeared to have a flickering light and flame belching from its rear end. Only about 15 feet of the rear end of the UFO was visible to the bomber crew, apparently due to “reflection of light from the exhaust.” The strange object stayed with the bomber for some 18 to 20 minutes, during which time all radio and direction finding instruments refused to function. It finally accelerated away from the plane at approximately three times the speed of the bomber. Upon landing, the pilot reported the incident to his base superiors, but he claimed he was only laughed at. Such a reaction seems extraordinary in retrospect since it turns out that Beauforts figured heavily in official RAAF list of planes that “went missing without trace” during World War Two in the Bass Strait area – an area that was not linked to any significant enemy activity. I have been told that the Beauforts had a mechanical problem that may have accounted for some of these losses.

1950 – THE EARLIEST DAFI FILES
We have already seen evidence of earlier cursory interest by the military. However, the earliest still extant sighting report in the Directorate of Air Force Intelligence (DAFI) files was a nocturnal light account at Bass Point, NSW, on July 16, 1950. The growing number of reports that involved official agencies and highly regarded sources served to heighten official interest, initially from two quarters, namely the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) and the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA).
1952 GAF PILOT ENCOUNTER
The following report is striking not only because of the contents and the caliber of the witness. Just one day earlier, the Minister for Air, William McMahon (a future Australian Prime Minister) had stated in parliament that the “flying saucer” reports were “probably based on flights of imagination”.
The chief test pilot for the Government Aircraft Factories was not given to “flights of imagination” and yet at approximately 1200 hours on August 14th, 1952, while flying in a Vampire aircraft, between 35,000 and 36,000 feet, near Rockhampton, Queensland, he observed something he could not explain. Looking east, towards the coast, the pilot saw a large circular light at a lower elevation which could not be estimated due to bad ground haze.

The light was the color of an ordinary incandescent light globe.

After approximately one minute a number of small lights (6 to 10) appeared to come from the main light. The smaller lights appeared to surround the bright light for about 2 minutes before disappearing. After a further 2 minutes the big light also disappeared. That report did not become public knowledge. It may have been embarrassing for the Minister if it had. The report remained classified until I found it in DCA UFO files I was permitted to examine at the offices of the Bureau of Air Safety Investigations during November, 1982.

THE DRURY AFFAIR – “the holy grail of Australian ufology?”
While civilian interest was growing, extensive official interest focused on a daylight movie footage of an extraordinary unidentified “missile” over Port Moresby, taken by Tom Drury, the Deputy Director of the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) in Papua New Guinea, then an Australian territory.
On August 23rd, 1953, Tom Drury was taking pictures at about midday. The sky was clear, when a small cloud began to form. After a few minutes a silver object came out of the cloud. Drury had started filming. The object climbed very fast, with a vapor trail behind it clear marking its trajectory. It was gone in a few seconds. A handwritten note in DAFI files specifically states that the object was not a secret missile-firing from Woomera.

The Drury UFO film became a controversial and famous mainstay of the Australian contribution to the UFO “cover-up” argument. It became all the more controversial when it was claimed that the UFO section of the film was missing and the RAAF were denying any knowledge of its whereabouts.

Late in 1982 when I was given permission to examine the Department of Aviation UFO files, I specifically requested to see any holdings on the Drury affair. DoA file 128/1/208 part 2 was created in 1982 to enable me to examine Drury documents extracted from a separate DCA file, 99/1/478 classified SECRET, which apparently held folios about possible enemy activity in the Papua New Guinea territories. These extracts contained some copies of folios from the original DAFI file, 114/1/197 Part 1, opened on 30/10/53 and entitled “Photographs of Unexplained Aerial Object over New Guinea forwarded by T.C. Drury”. It was also originally classified SECRET and was “lost” over the years.

It seems clear that the Australian military were looking at the Drury film in the light of possible prosaic threats to security, i.e. the communist “red” peril. Within a year the high tide of McCarthyism swept over the Australian landscape in the form of the Petrov affair. Soon the hunt was on for “reds” under the bed (communists) and in the skies (the “Martians” of the 1954 UFO wave to come). It should not be underestimated the level of possible manipulation of the UFO controversy by intelligence organizations who feared the hand of more prosaic forces than those sort by the wild eyed “saucer” enthusiasts of the day. Evidence for this will be encountered later.

Tom Drury himself indicated to me he felt that the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) (which is responsible for internal security in Australia, including counter espionage) was involved. I interviewed the two ASIO operatives who were in Papua New Guinea at that time. Predictably neither were terribly informative, with one of them stating only that if they had any involvement it was only as a “courier” for the film’s passage to Melbourne, the then headquarters of the Directorate of Air Force Intelligence (DAFI), RAAF, and for that matter the headquarters for DCA and ASIO. An ASIO document dated January 15th, 1973, states that “copies of the film were passed to the USAF and the RAF. Drury is said to have received back a print of the film but without any UFO shots.” Mr. Drury feels that the processing and analyses required to study his film while it was in the hands of the intelligence community may have destroyed it. It is known that the film did go to the United States for study. There it appeared to have come under CIA scrutiny via Art Lundahl’s photographic analysis group.

A 1955 RAAF UFO file indicates that DAFI had sold prints of the 1953 UFO pictures “at 4/9 a pop” to civilian researchers. Edgar Jarrold and Fred Stone were among those who secured copies of these prints.

Edgar Jarrold’s own publication, the Australian Flying Saucer Magazine, stated in its February, 1955, issue that:

“94 prints examined reveal conclusively the existence of a shiny, disc-like object whose behavior could by no wildest stretching of the imagination be attributed to a bird, balloon, orthodox aircraft, hallucination, piece of windblown paper, natural phenomena, or a meteor. The cloud from which the silvery object … emerged is distinctly visible. On emerging from it at a right angle with no other clouds apparent in a clear sky, still pictures reveal vivid confirmation of Mr. Drury’s report that an object, looking at first like a tiny brilliant sun, dashed rapidly from the cloud, heading north-west. The object flashed brightly in the sun as it made an abrupt right-angle turn soon after emerging from the dark cloud, zooming straight up with no reduction in speed. Upon reaching a greater altitude, it leveled off again, with another abrupt right-angled turn [Jarrold’s emphasis – B.C.], resuming its north-west flight thereafter until out of camera range altogether…. On effecting such turns, a greater expanse of the object’s upper surface becomes visible, causing it to present a featureless, disc-like appearance, which is in sharp contrast to first glimpses showing an object somewhat blurred in focus, and shaped like a theoretically fast moving, very bright star.”
Jarrold wrote years later;

“…I was able to view blown up still pictures made from this film before it left Australia due to the American request and am still, I think, the only civilian ever to have seen them. The pictures show what could only be accepted as an extra-terrestrial object, the flight path and behavior of which, rule out any man made object or meteor. The film was made about midday against a cloudless sky and unfortunately t he object was filmed from a distance, thus providing little real knowledge of the object’s shape and composition, main importance being attached to its most unusual actions and behavior.”.
It should be noted that Drury himself observed no discontinuity in the UFO’s flight path. Whether the claims of 90° turns were legitimately recorded on the film, or were due to camera movement, or were artifacts of processing, analyses or just plain extravagant interpretations based on limited or poor data, we may never know. The references to 90° turns all stem from Jarrold. No one else, who either saw the film or prints, made such claims. The limited prints I have make any analysis impossible. They are very poor in quality.

Documentation I examined in the DCA and DAFI files contradicts Jarrold’s claims to have been the only one to have seen the prints and to have seen them before the original footage was sent to the United States.

A letter to Jarrold from Mr. E.W. Hicks, secretary, the Department of Air, dated December 2nd, 1953, states that “the film has been sent to the United States for technical processing, and it is therefore, not possible to accede to your request [for contact prints – B.C.] until its return, which, it is anticipated, will be early in the New Year…”

The Minister for Air, Mr. McMahon, was quoted in the press during late January, 1954, that he “had the film flown to the U.S to be enlarged.” He further stated that the object “was so small that a detailed study of the film was not possible until technicians had enlarged it.” (McMahon, 1954). The official files also records a letter from DAFI to Mr. Wiggins of the DCA dated 12/7/54 which states, “The ‘Flying Saucer’ film taken by Mr. T.C. Drury, at Port Moresby in 1953 and forwarded by you on 22 Sept. is returned here with. We have subjected the film to detailed study and processing but have been unable to establish anything other than the blur of light appears to move across the film. In spite of this disappointment we would like to thank you for your co-operation in this matter.”

Thus the evidence suggests that Jarrold would have not got his prints until July, 1954. probably during a meeting he had with Air Force intelligence. Fred Stone also received copies of the same prints late in 1954 during a meeting he had with Air Force intelligence.

In a letter Stone wrote to the Director of Air Force Intelligence in 1973 he stated:

“The original film was much clearer to view when shown on a screen and I can only presume that the use of them by the bodies of the US Air Force, then their Navy Dept. plus our own Air Force and Navy caused them to get into the state they were when the blow up copies were made. I might add that I kept my promise to the official at the time when I was interviewed in Melbourne regarding same and they have never been shown publicly and only to executives of UFO Groups and Societies and then on a very select basis…”
The original Drury film, which allegedly held the UFO image, became something of a “holy grail” for Australian ufology. A number of efforts were made over the years to secure the film and further information about the affair. All largely met with failure.

A previously confidential RAAF document handwritten in 1966 and entitled “Summary of the effort made to rediscover present whereabouts of the allegedly ‘excised’ frames of Mr. T. Drury’s Famous 1953 movie film of the Port Moresby ‘UFO sighting'”, concluded: “The upshot is that the ‘excised’ frames either still in DAFI archives, have been destroyed or (perish the thought) have been lost.”

Further civilian enquiries in 1973 prompted yet another file search. This time, as we have already noted, DAFI determined that they had made available prints of the film to civil researchers back in 1954. Through Fred Stone the RAAF managed to gain a copy of the same prints the RAAF had provided him back in 1954. It is these third generation copies of prints from several frames of the Drury film that now reside in the RAAF files. I arranged for the RAAF to send copies of the prints (albeit poor in quality) to Tom Drury. The affair does not speak highly of the much vaunted “cover-up” claims.

THE 1954 WAVE
The 1954 “saucer invasion” of Victoria wasted no time in getting underway with an intriguing sighting of a flying “mushroom” by an experienced ANA (Australian National Airways) pilot, Captain Douglas Barker, on January 1st. He was outside his East Doncaster home at about 10.15 am.

“I sighted it first over the Templestowe brickworks between 2 1/2 and 5 miles away on the approach path to Essendon. It was 4 to 5 times larger than a large passenger aircraft. The object was transparent and a smoky celluloid color, with a bit of a tail and a mushroom shaped head. It oscillated in and out of cloud, and in about 6 miles changed its course to a north-easterly direction. It was traveling faster than any jet plane that I have ever seen.”
Beneath the queer craft hung what looked like a light amber observation car.

“Its main body was elliptical with a long shaft about the same length as its body hanging below it. At the end of this thin, slightly curved shaft, was a sort of control tower.”
The Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) suggested it may have been a Convair aircraft that was in the area. Barker rejected this explanation, “I’ve never seen anything less like a Convair. First of all, it was huge – about 4 times the size of a DC4. It was traveling at about 700 mph, well below the minimum altitude for the safety of normal aircraft. I see Convairs everyday, but this resembled no aircraft I know.” Barker had support from colleagues, “Two or three pilots mentioned similar experiences — not with mushrooms — but flying saucers and things. They said they had been too scared to mention what they had seen for fear of ridicule. All my colleagues have taken the reports seriously.”

The RAAF had received a report of another “flying mushroom”, this time at Mansfield, on January 15th. They did not reveal this information which may have supported Barker’s testimony. At 9.30pm, two witnesses saw it descending in front of them at 300 yards. Green lights appeared along with a whirring noise “like wind in wires.” The object was estimated to be 150 feet wide and 60 feet in height. A 12 foot rim of bright metal was apparent. When it was stationary the green lights went out and the noise grew louder. The duration of the observation was about 20 minutes during which time its speed varied from fast to hovering. As the object ascended, “yellow gaseous light” emanated from the base of a “stem” like protuberance, giving it a “mushroom” shape. The whirring stopped. As it moved forward, yellow gaseous light came from the side of the “stem”. A secret scientific analysis of the Directorate of Air Force Intelligence (DAFI) reports highlighted some interesting attributes of the Mansfield “flying mushroom”, including “Inspection of aircraft — American reports suggest that aircraft provide a center of interest for UFOs”, “Green light from center of rim apparently used for visual inspection”, and the “sudden roar” suggested “rapid jet efflux”.

Numerous reports came in from diverse locations in Victoria, prompting the DCA to make a public request for reports to be sent to them. Within a week they had received 59 reports spanning nearly 30 years. DCA officials indicated that they were checking the reports and may turn them over to the RAAF for more extensive investigation. A spokesman said, “Some highly qualified engineers in our department are convinced that there is something in the saucer mystery. We just can’t ignore reports submitted by reliable witnesses…”

The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) made a series of seemingly open statements about UFOs during January, 1954. By years end they had retreated from their open minded position and closed the door. However in January a RAAF spokesman was quoted as saying, “People are definitely seeing something and we hope to find out what it is. The RAAF has an open mind on saucers. We haven’t rejected them as impossible or accepted them as fact yet. There is a high ranking opinion in the Force that saucers do exist and you can’t shake it. The RAAF has been receiving saucer reports and investigating them since the war.” The statement said the RAAF had received hundreds of reports since 1947 and their data indicated: 10% of the reports indicated the person making it had definitely seen something, details of many of the reports corresponded, 75% of the reports had come from the country districts, the number of reports of sightings from aircraft in flight had increased in recent months, and no sightings had been made from an RAAF machine. The aerial observations had all come from civil aircraft.

A “high ranking RAAF officer” stated:

“The RAAF is keeping an open mind on the objects, but I personally am convinced they have an Interplanetary source. People on this earth should be able to flying into outer space within about 40 years – why shouldn’t people on other planets already have reached this stage?”
East Malvern was the scene for an intriguing report on May 30th. At about 12.25 a.m. “human shaped shadows” were sighted in a “flying football” that passed in a “dive” over 6 awed witnesses. The suggestion of “life” in the “flying football” caused a media sensation. Among the witnesses was a policeman. He said, “Shadows of some people I think could be seen for several seconds”. David Reese said, “When it reached the lowest point, shapes, like human figures, could definitely be seen.” “I could distinctly see inside it, dark shapes like busts”, he added.

The puzzling Malvern event was one of the first sightings investigated by a scientist who authored a secret report to DAFI. His role would become pivotal in the secret government investigations. He had interviewed David Reese and “felt reassured as to the integrity of this witness”.

The Malvern sensation also prompted a further statement from the RAAF. Gone was any suggestion of support for the “interplanetary” theory of origin. Political and intelligence ethics were now clearly muzzling the free wheeling opinions and depth of “facts” that featured in the January statements.

On May 31st, Melbourne RAAF Public Relations Officer, Mr. John Tyrrell said:

“It would be stupid to ignore flying saucers. We believe there’s something flying around which cannot be regarded as a figment of someone’s imagination. We don’t know what it is, we have no concrete evidence of saucers as such, but we simply can’t discount certain reports from sane, seasoned, RAAF and Airline pilots.”
During April, 1954, the Deputy Chief of Air Staff (DCAS) had approved a “statement of RAAF policy” on the “investigation of flying saucers”. References apparently drawn from that statement appeared in the media from June 3rd, 1954. The full draft policy was held in classified RAAF UFO policy files. It states:

INVESTIGATION OF FLYING SAUCERS
STATEMENT OF R.A.A.F. POLICY

1. The R.A.A.F. accepts reports on flying saucers and attempts an allocation of reliability,. Those that fall in the reliable class are then subjected to further investigation as and when the opportunity occurs. As a result of this further investigation, a smaller number of reports are followed up and investigations are made with the Meteorological Services, the Government Astronomer and the Civil Aviation authorities in an attempt to fit the original occurrences in with any normal flying activity or meteorological phenomena.
2. As a result of investigations in the past, there is no doubt that reliable observers have reported sightings which today are inexplicable within the resources available to the R.A.A.F. [my emphasis – B.C.] Reports of this type are continuously filed in an attempt to develop sufficient depth of evidence for an accurate analysis to be made. It may however, be several years before the required depth of evidence is available.

“Depth of evidence” was to some measure invoked by an incident that occurred a few days later. “This particular sighting has an extremely high probability of being a UFO without any provisos”, wrote the author of a classified report to DAFI. He was referring to an extraordinary close encounter event at Dandenong, on June 5th, 1954. Two young girls — Janette Brown (16) and Jeanette Johnston (13) — witnessed the spectacle.

Janette described what she saw:

“I was standing on Princes Highway, opposite the 21 mile post waiting for Jeanette, about 6.20 pm. I heard a loud drumming noise, something like a motor cycle, but there were no cars or cycles around at the time. Then a large dark shape appeared over the partly built H.T. Heinz factory, and whirred towards me when I shone my torch. Just above the house where the caretaker lives it burst into light. It hovered about 20 yards away on top of the factory gate as if it deliberately wanted me to look at it – or it wanted to look at me. It was cylinder shaped, about 30 feet long and 15 feet high, with a canopy and window on top and a window at each end.”
Janette was joined by her friend Jeanette. She described the incident in the following way:

“A silvery colored cylinder rose above the house then swept away in a wide circle to the International Harvester factory a few hundred yards away. It stayed on top of the factory for about one minute, then disappeared behind trees.”
Janette’s wristwatch stopped at 6.23 pm, leading to wild speculation that the saucer’s “cosmic power” had drained her torch battery of power, and magnetized her handbag, belt clasps and iron fencing over which had hovered. Neighbors complained that their radio reception was affected. A government geologist, Peter Kenley, visited the site and declared there was no compelling evidence for significant magnetization. The radio interference was caused by storms, he declared, and he also concurred with the idea that a flock of pigeons caused the sighting!

Both girls seemed genuinely frightened by the experience, with one asking if she could move to another suburb, in case the “saucer” tried to destroy her home and family.

Janette Brown’s integrity and conviction “was impressive”, concluded an “eminent Australian nuclear physicist, who has investigated “saucer” reports since 1948.” The physicist wrote about the Dandenong case in a major article for the Melbourne Argus. Entitled “‘Saucers’ do exist and why!”, it appeared on June 26th, 1954, indicating that the physicists name “must be withheld because of his link with high-level research”. He concluded:

“… the light available and duration of observation were sufficient to discern details of structure that could not possibly be confused with any phenomena other than a machine that is capable of hovering, rotating, and moving in virtual silence without any obvious method of propulsion.”
The physicist prepared his own report on the affair from which I quote:

“In shape, the object appeared to have a circular or elliptical base with a domed canopy on top, in which were square windows symmetrically arranged. Underneath the base were three ellipsoidal “wheels” which appeared to be either swinging or revolving….
“The witness had various impressions:

(a) The object was attracted towards her because she flashed a torch at it when it first appeared.

(b) when it was near the fence, she felt that she was being closely observed.

(c) Her torch felt as though it were charged.

(d) She had a “ghostly feeling” and was afraid. She crouched close to the ground, and was prepared to use the torch as a weapon should something emerge from the object.

The witness had seen in the Australasian Post a copy of a photograph taken by Adamski but was unimpressed. She claims that previously she did not concern herself with stories of ‘flying saucers’.”

The “invasion” centered in Victoria in 1954 was the most significant of the early sighting waves. The Victorian UFO Research Society was not founded until 1957, however in 1978 it produced an excellent study of the flap. The persistent Victorian visitations of 1954 drew this flippant comment in a contemporary newspaper: “…It was becoming increasingly clear that the Martians are people of infinite variety”, and that they probably regarded their “spaceships”, “with the same jealous individuality as terrestrial women have with their hats.” The extensive wave lead to entrenched official interest. A classified DAFI file minute dated 2 Nov 1955, somewhat tellingly revealed: “A ministerial statement in the House [Australian parliament – B.C.] on 19 Nov 53 (indicates) that the RAAF make detailed investigations of every report received, (which in truth we are not yet doing).”

THE SECRET TURNER REPORT
The Drury affair and the 1954 “UFO invasion” of Victoria lead to the Directorate of Air Force Intelligence (DAFI) asking Melbourne University professor, O.H. Turner, to undertake a classified “scientific appreciation” of the official reports held on file. In his detailed report Turner recommended greater official interest and specific interest in radar visual reports. His most profound conclusion was:
“The evidence presented by the reports held by RAAF tend to support the … conclusion … that certain strange aircraft have been observed to behave in a manner suggestive of extra-terrestrial origin. ”
In studying the RAAF/DAFI UFO files Turner also utilized retired Marine Corps Major Donald Keyhoe’s USAF reports, described in his best selling book, Flying Saucers from Outer Space, and suggested the RAAF seek official USAF confirmation of the legitimacy of Keyhoe’s data. Turner said of Keyhoe’s “USAF data”, that “if one assumes these Intelligence Reports are authentic, then the evidence presented is such that it is difficult to assume any interpretation other than that UFOs are being observed.”

The disposition of Harry Turner’s controversial report is a revealing indictment of official handling of the UFO controversy. Faced with his provocative conclusions with Keyhoe’s data as one cornerstone, the Director of Air Force Intelligence (RAAF) did seek out official confirmation from America. The Australian Joint Service Staff (intelligence) in Washington wrote to him saying:

“I have discussed with the USAF the status of Major Keyhoe. I understand that his book is written in such a way as to convey the impression that his statements are based on official documents, and there is some suggestion that he has made improper use of information to which he had access while he was serving with the Marine Corps. He has, however, no official status whatsoever and a dim view is taken officially of both him and his works.”
So when it came to considering Turner’s classified report, the Department of Air concluded: “Professor Turner accepted Keyhoe’s book as being authentic and based on official releases. Because Turner places so much weight on Keyhoe’s work he emphasized the need to check Keyhoe’s reliability. (The Australian Joint Service Staff communication) removes Keyhoe’s works as a prop for Turner’s work so that the value of the latter’s findings and recommendations is very much reduced.” Turner’s findings, including one in which he recommended the setting up of a scientific “investigating panel”, in the light of the “discrediting” of Keyhoe’s data, were found to be impractical and not justified.

The big problem with all this was that it was based on an act of conscious or unconscious misrepresentation on the part of the US Air Force. They were engaged in a misguided campaign to undermine the popularity of Donald Keyhoe’s books. While Keyhoe may have slightly “beat up” his USAF data, the Intelligence reports, quoted by Keyhoe and used by Turner to support his conclusions to DAFI, were authentic! Eventually the USAF themselves also admitted that the material Keyhoe used was indeed from official Air Force reports. Political myopia from both the US and Australian military effectively scuttled Australia’s first serious flirtation with scientific investigation of UFOs. Fortunately Turner’s 1954 report was “located” in classified RAAF UFO policy files I examined in 1982 with Squadron Leader Ian Frame from DAFI.

Harry Turner was advocating attempts to secure more radar cases. Radar at the restricted Woomera rocket range facility in South Australia picked up a UFO on May 5th, 1954. Turner’s report indicates that at about 1630 hours 3 witnesses saw a “misty grey disc” at a 355 degree bearing, at some 35 miles distance and at an altitude of more than 60,000 feet. The object appeared to have an apparent diameter of about 10 feet. The visual observation which lasted 5 minutes was aided by binoculars. The object traveled south then west, with the radar echo confirming a speed of 3,600 mph! Harry Turner told me of the radar case that impressed him the most in his study of the DAFI UFO files that lead to his classified 1954 report. The case, originally classified ‘secret’, describes a UFO event over Woomera that was witnessed by an English Electric scientist and a radar operator. The EE scientist was outside talking to the radar operator when the radar confirmed the presence of a UFO. The scientist watched the object with binoculars. One of his functions at Woomera was to monitor rocket tests. He was experienced in observing movement in the sky. The radar tracked the UFO until it went out of range, however they were able to confirm distance and size. Some tests were being undertaken with a Canberra bomber in flight. The UFO was moving in formation with the Canberra. The Canberra crew could not see the UFO, but both the plane and UFO were confirmed on radar.

THE “SEA FURY” ENCOUNTER

One of the most controversial radar visual reports of the fifties occurred on August 31st, 1954. The story leaked out in December, 1954, and made front page headlines. The official navy file on the event remained classified until the Directorate of Naval Intelligence released a copy upon my request in 1982. During his 1973 visit to Australia, Dr. Hynek was able to interview the pilot involved in this famous incident, which became known as the “Sea Fury” encounter. Dr. Hynek made his notes on this interview available to me during my 1984 visit to the Chicago headquarters of his organization, the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS). I, in turn, provided Dr. Hynek with a copy of the official file on the incident.
Lieutenant J.A. O’Farrell was returning to Royal Australian Navy Air Station Nowra after a night cross country in a Sea Fury aircraft. After contacting Nowra at about 1910 hours, O’Farrell saw a very bright light closing fast at one o’clock. It crossed in front of his aircraft taking up position on his port beam, where it appeared to orbit. A second and similar light was observed at nine o’clock. It passed about a mile in from of the Sea Fury and then turned in the position where the first light was observed. According to O’Farrell, the apparent crossing speeds of the lights were the fastest he had ever encountered. He had been flying at 220 knots. O’Farrell contacted Nowra who in turn confirmed that they had two radar “paints” in company with him. The radar operator, Petty Officer Keith Jessop, confirmed the presence of 2 objects near the Sea Fury on the G.C.I. remote display. The two lights reformed at nine o’clock and then disappeared on a north easterly heading. O’Farrell could only make out “a vague shape with the white light situated centrally on top.” The Directorate of Naval Intelligence at the time wrote that O’Farrell was “an entirely credible witness” and that he “was visibly ‘shaken’ by his experience, but remains adamant that he saw these objects”

In a recent interview, “Shamus” O’Farrell described the incident:

“I said, “Nowra, this is 921. Do you have me on radar.” “And a few seconds later they came back and said, “Affirmative 921. We have you coming in from the west. We have another two contacts as well. Which one are you.”
“I said, “I think I’m the central one.” And so they said, “Do a 180…for identification.” So I did a quick 180 and then continued on around and made it a 360 back to where I was going.

“They said, “Yes, we’ve got you. You’re the center aircraft.” I said that’s correct. They then said to me, “Who are the other two aircraft,” and I said, “I don’t know. I was hoping you would tell me, because I didn’t think there was anyone up here. “They said, “Well there shouldn’t be, and they certainly shouldn’t be that close to you.”

“So the conversation went on like this and I was very pleased to be talking to somebody because it gave me a lot of reassurance. With that these two aircraft came in quite close to me and I could really see the dark mass and that they were quite big, but I couldn’t make out any other lights or any other form of an aircraft. With that they took off and headed off to the north east at great speed.

“I was about to press the button and tell them at Nowra that the two aircraft were departing when Nowra called me up and said, “The other two aircraft appear to be departing at high speed to the north east. Is that correct?” and I said, “Yes!”. And they said, “Roger, we’ll see if we can track them.” They tracked them for a while and then lost them. “I came in and landed at 7.30 (1930) and when I got there were quite a few people waiting for me. I thought it was a bit strange and so they came over, and they said, “You sure you had aircraft out there!”, and I said yes. The Surgeon Commander came over and spoke to me. He said did I feel sick, or was I upset. I said no. He ran his hand over my head to see whether I had any bumps. He had a look at me and decided I was okay. So then he said, “Perhaps you’d like to come to the sick bay after you’ve changed and we’ll do an examination.” So after I was finished I went up to sick bay and he gave me a more thorough medical, and said, no, I appeared to be alright. I found out later, that at the same time, they checked to make sure I hadn’t been drinking before I took off and all that sort of thing.”

During this interview, Dr. Hynek’s involvement came up:

“This man (Hynek) – a professor – had made a study of thousands of sightings all around the world and he had decided my sighting was one of those that he had not been able to explain away by other means. Any way I had a talk with him. He was a very interesting chap and he made the comment that there were about 13 or 15, I don’t remember, sightings that he was aware of over the years that were like mine and could not be explained away. The interesting thing he said was that all of these sightings had been made by professional people in aviation. By that he meant they were military pilots, military air crew, civil aviation operators, air traffic controllers, and the like, or airline pilots. These were the ones he was now (1973) going around meeting the people themselves and investigating. All the others he had written off and had been able to explain down to some other phenomena. It came to the point where he said, “Your sighting cannot be explained away.” And he left it at that. To this day I wouldn’t know where it came from or where it went.”
I have had the opportunity to talk extensively with Shamus O’Farrell. I was particularly interested in how the interview with Dr. Hynek in 1973 came about:

“It was done through Sir Arthur Tange, who was secretary of the Department of Defense at the time. Hynek contacted him direct…. Sir Arthur Tange contacted me and said Hynek was coming out. He had written to him, through the US Embassy, to set up a meeting…. And the next thing I knew I had a telephone call one day from Sir Arthur Tange saying that Hynek was coming and he would like me to met him. I said, well, I haven’t got all the facts, there all a bit hazy. So he sent me the two Defense Department files over to read, to refresh it all.”
Bill Chalker: “That seems to indicate a high level of interest in Hynek’s visit at the time?”

“Yes, well, I don’t think so. All that happened was that it was more of a courtesy because he was a very important guy, Hynek, and they wanted to show him the courtesies etc. As far as Defense was concern it was dead and forgotten but they had not got rid of the files. They kept them. Normally when files like that are written off they are either decided they’ll put them in Archives or dispose of them and destroy them. But they had done neither. They had remained in the JIO. They’d kept them. I don’t know what they had in mind about it, I never questioned it. I just used them as a means to refresh my memory.
“Later the guy who became the chief Defense scientist, John Farrands, was very interested in it too, and he had done a lot of early investigations in most of the reports when he was chief defense scientist and in the period just before he became chief defense scientist. He had a talk with me. I was a friend of his. I use to meet with him at lunch. He went over it in great detail. He knew it all. He agreed it was something that couldn’t be refuted. No matter how hard they tried, and they tried very hard to knock it all back. They checked everything from medical, down to when was the last time I had had a drink…”

Bill Chalker: “That must have been a bit of a concern to you?”
“Well, I wanted to hush it all up. That sort of investigation made me look a bit of a fool. I was worried it wasn’t going to do my career any good. “(Apart from the radar witness) it locked in a sighting over the NDB (non directional beacon) at Narulan, at the same time. There happened to be a guy working on the NDB. It was down at the time. He had gone to repair it. He happened to look up at the time because he saw these lights fly overhead. Also the air traffic control officer in the tower at Mascot saw them approaching him. “It was all investigated by the then RAAF guy who did it and later it was also investigated by the Joint Intelligence Bureau.”
In 1993 I assisted The Extraordinary television program with a recreation of the Sea Fury incident. Shamus O’Farrell, Keith Jessop and I were interviewed on the show. The case stands as one of the best unexplained radar visual UFO cases on record in Australia.

 

UFOS, DAFI AND JIB
It was not long after this that the RAAF asked JIB to take “the UFO problem” over. On April 1st. 1957, Group Captain A.D. Henderson, the Director of Air Force Intelligence, wrote to W.H. King, the Director of the Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB):
Investigations into reports of UFOs
1. This Department frequently receives reports direct from civilians, or passed on by other departments, of unidentified flying objects. We also receive requests for assistance and advice from various “Flying Saucer Research societies”.

2. Many of these reports presumably cover such mundane things as meteorological and astronomical phenomena; others appear to be inexplicable [my emphasis – B.C.]. Most of them are outside the aeronautical field.

3. As your branch has now established a scientific Intelligence Section, it would appear that these reports could best be investigated and evaluated by one of your Scientific Research officers, who will have a broader background of knowledge of this type of phenomena than anyone in this Directorate.

4. If you agree that you can accept this commitment I will be glad to make available all the papers which we have acquired, to date, on this subject.”

While the official files do not reveal a reply from JIB Director Harry King, Harry Turner, who would later become a JIB scientist and their liaison man with DAFI, told me that JIB rejected the RAAF overture. The clandestine side of JIB did not want “a bar of it”, as they considered they would then be caught up in what they regarded as a complex conjectural matter, which might drag them into the limelight – the last thing an intelligence organization would want. Turner would try to set up a “rapid intervention” UFO team during the late 1960s within the Defense Science and Technical Organization (DSTO).

Harry Turner’s JIB superior was R.H. Mathams, the Director of Scientific Intelligence and author of the book Sub Rosa – Memoirs of an Australian Intelligence Analyst (1982). Harry King appointed Bob Mathams as the first Australian scientific intelligence analyst in May, 1955. His initial secondment ended in mid 1957. In October, 1958 he rejoined JIB as the first head of their Scientific Intelligence Branch. Bob Mathams indicated to me that his Directorate of Scientific and Technical Intelligence (DSTI) “had only a marginal interest in UFOs.”

“Our analytical resources were limited and I had to take the position that we could not afford to become too involved in investigation of UFO sightings until we had reasonable grounds for believing that they were of foreign – as opposed to alien – origin. We relied on DAFI to make the initial investigations and, at times, assisted in the interpretation of the resulting data.” He advised me that his “interest ( as DSTI) in UFO sightings was aroused only when there was sufficient evidence to suggest that they may have been connected with or caused by foreign scientific or technological developments. There were only one or two that fitted that category We never really decided who would take responsibility for further investigation if it were shown, convincingly, that a UFO sighting in Australia was of extra-terrestrial origin”.
The Joint Intelligence Organization (the reorganized JIB) maintains a secret BOLIDE file. It still seems to be anchored to the premise that “UFOs” could involve the chance of retrieval of Soviet hardware and therefore contribute some useful intelligence. It appears JIO have a “rapid intervention” capability as they have been able to institute prompt widespread ground searches in suspected “hardware” crashes. They do this through “special access” channels. This operation may be similar to US activity operating under the code name Project Moondust.

 

THE CHIEF OF AIR STAFF (RAAF) & THE UFO
Air Marshal Sir George Jones, who was Chief of Air Staff (RAAF) during World War Two and also undertook what appears to have been the earliest RAAF investigation into UFOs way back in 1930, observed a UFO on October 16th, 1957. He described it as “a brilliant white light at the bottom of a shadowy shape like a transparent balloon”, which traveled very quickly and silently at about 400 mph at some 1,500 feet altitude. Sir George was certain it was not a meteor or reflected light. He described it as traveling in “a purposeful way.” He added, “Nothing could shake me from my belief in what I saw. But I wished I had 4 or 5 witnesses. I have reported it, but have been loath to talk of it publically lest people should think I was either an incompetent witness or getting a little screwy in the head”.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Sir George about his UFO reminiscences in 1988 when he was 92. I found him to be remarkably lucid in his recollections and certainly would not attribute to him any thoughts of being “a little screwy in the head”. One only has to read his autobiography, From Private to Air Marshall, published in 1988, to realize just how remarkable and impressively credentialed a witness he was!

 

CLEAR INTENT AT MARALINGA – 1957
During September and October, 1957, nuclear weapons test series, codenamed ANTLER, were undertaken at Maralinga, South Australia, with kiloton range nuclear explosions being detonated on September 25th and October 9th. The site was subject to intense security. During that period the integrity of the facility was challenged in an extraordinary fashion.

Just before dusk one evening Royal Air Force Corporal Derek Murray and some colleagues were called out of the Maralinga village canteen to witness a UFO hovering apparently silently over the airfield. The UFO was described as a “magnificent sight”, being silver/blue in color, of a metallic luster, with a line of “windows” or “portholes” along its edge. Corporal Murray states that the object could be seen so clearly that they could make out what appeared to be plating on the objects surface. The duty air traffic controller also ostensibly witnessed the spectacle. He allegedly checked Alice Springs and Edinburgh airfields who reported they did not have anything over their areas. No photographs were taken as the top security status of the area required that all cameras be locked away. These had to be signed in and out when used. After about 15 minutes (as dusk began to fall) the aerial object left swiftly and silently. In a statement to UK researcher Jenny Randles, which he also sent to me, Murray stated, “I swear to you as a practicing Christian this was no dream, no illusion, no fairy story but a solid craft of metallic construction”.

 

THE BOIANAI VISITANTS OF 1959
In 1959 Papua New Guinea was still a territory of Australia. June of that year saw the spectacular “entity” sightings of Reverend Gill and members of his Boainai mission.
As indicated by his notes made at the time and in numerous interviews, Rev. Gill saw a bright white light in the north western sky. It appeared to be approaching the mission. The object appeared to be hovering between three and four hundred feet up. Eventually 38 people, including Rev. Gill, Steven Gill Moi (a teacher), Ananias Rarata (a teacher) and Mrs. Nessie Moi, gathered to watch the main UFO, which looked like a large ,disc-shaped object. It was apparently solid and circular with a wide base and narrower upper deck. The object appeared to have 4 “legs” underneath it. There also appeared to be about 4 “panels” or “portholes” on the side of the object, which seemed to glow a little brighter than the rest. At a number of intervals the object produced a shaft of blue light which shone upwards into the sky at an angle of about 45 degrees.

What looked like “men” came out of the object, onto what seemed to be a deck on top of the object. There were 4 men in all, occasionally 2, then one, then 3, then 4. The shaft of blue light and the “men” disappeared. The object then moved through some clouds. There were other UFO sightings during the night.

The major civilian groups of the day, in a spirit of new found cooperation inspired by the significance of the Boianai observations, distributed copies of Reverend Gill’s own sighting report to all members of the House of Representatives of Australia’s federal parliament. A circular letter accompanied the report, signed by the presidents of the participating civilian UFO groups, urging members of parliament to press the Minister for Air for a statement about the attitude Air Force Intelligence had of the New Guinea reports.

On November 24th, 1959, in federal parliament, Mr. E.D. Cash, a Liberal politician from Western Australia asked the Minister for Air, Mr. F.M. Osborne, whether his department (specifically Air Force Intelligence) had investigated “reports of recent sightings of mysterious objects in the skies over Papua and New Guinea.” The Minister’s reply did not address this question, but instead he focused on the general situation indicating that most sightings were explained and “that only a very small percentage — something like 3 percent — of reported sightings of flying objects cannot be explained”.

Peter Norris, VFSRS president, was advised by the Directorate of Air Force Intelligence that the Department was awaiting “depth of evidence” on the New Guinea sightings. However the department hadn’t even interviewed Father Gill. Given the growing political fallout, the Minister for Defense requested a report on “the alleged sightings of UFOs in the Boianai area of NG by Rev. W.B. Gill.” The RAAF finally visited Rev. Gill on December 29th , 1959. Rev. Gill’s recollections of the visit were that the 2 RAAF officers from Canberra talked about stars and planets and then left. He indicates that he heard no more from them. The interviewing officer, Squadron Leader F.A. Lang, AI1 DAFI, concluded after what could have only been best described as a cursory investigation that:

Although the Reverend Gill could be regarded as a reliable observer, it is felt that the June/July incidents could have been nothing more than natural phenomena colored by past events and subconscious influences of UFO enthusiasts. During the period of the report the weather was cloudy and unsettled with light thunder storm. Although it is not possible to draw firm conclusions, an analysis of rough bearings and angles above the horizon does suggest that at least some of the lights observed were the planets Jupiter, Saturn and Mars. Light refraction, the changing position of the planet relative to the observer and cloud movement would give the impression of size and rapid movement. In addition varying cloud densities could account for the human shapes and their sudden appearance and disappearance”.
A close analysis of the reports argues powerfully that the RAAF “explanation” of “either known planets seen through fast moving cloud, or natural phenomena” was unsatisfactory.

The Boianai “visitants” still stand as remarkable evidence for an impressive aerial anomaly and are regarded as some of the best entity reports on record.

 

THE UFO COVER-UP MILIEU OF 1959
The following bizarre story immerses us in the shadowy world of alleged clandestine UFO tales of UFO cover-up. It does not constitute proof of anything, but is an intriguing example of the “rumors” that pervade ufology.
Late in 1959, Fred Stone ran a story in his publication, the Australian Saucer Record, that brought an immediate response from official quarters.

Generally the stories that populated the pages of the civilian UFO publications were largely ignored. This one, however, appeared to have stepped on officialdom’s sensitivities. The story’s headline was less than subtle:

AIR FORCE MEN? Seize Cameras and Films!!!
Fred Stone’s story purported to be based on testimony given to him by one of the men involved. Allegedly during Easter, 1954, near the border of South Australia and West Australia, 3 men in a car were followed by a flying saucer for up to 50 miles. They reported that the saucer was low enough for them to see portholes. At its closest point, about 100 yards, and at some 50 feet altitude, the young men were able to take 92 photos with 5 cameras. Some of the close-ups would show “the undersides with a three ball landing type gear.” The men reported the incident to the police at the next town. The police reportedly rang Air Control at Salisbury. The men were detained and a helicopter allegedly turned up from Edinburgh field. Two Air Force officers disembarked from the helicopter. They interrogated the young men and confiscated the cameras and film. The men were warned not to discuss the matter with anyone. Stone writes that two weeks later their cameras were returned to them via registered post, with letters warning them not to tell anyone of their experience. According to Stone’s account, one of the men was able to secure one of the photos, but it was “the worst of the series taken.”

There were many problems with the article as published which makes one question its legitimacy. However the RAAF contacted Stone and as a result he declined to mention the incident any further. Two estranged Stone coworkers, Colin McCarthy and Peter Thomas, attempted to find out more from Stone without success.

McCarthy and Thomas enlisted a contact with RAAF connections who, on their behalf, interviewed Stone and the alleged helicopter pilot. Stone would not supply any further information, but the pilot, Flt. Lt. Jack Epsy, may have supplied indirect confirmation of the event. He refused to supply any direct confirmation of the event, but showed the contact the flight log of the helicopter. Without comment he revealed that the log pages for the day in question had been removed! The contact took this as being Epsy’s way of confirming the event, without compromising his security oaths. He indicated that he was operating out of Lake Hart near Woomera and that the helicopter was operational at the time. This completely contradicts the statements of the RAAF officer who interviewed Thomas.

Peter Thomas was interviewed by RAAF officers on December 15th, 1959, about his knowledge of the incident. The interview with Flight Lieutenant L. Longland went as follows:

Thomas (T): “Only what I have read in the magazine I have no personal knowledge of it. I’m interested in it, of course, because it looked to me like a first-class hoax. If it’s a hoax, of course, it should be suppressed… but I gather that Fred (Stone) has been allowed to publish it, so I suppose it must be genuine.”

L: “Not necessarily.”

T: “Well, if it weren’t genuine, surely an official denial would have been issued.”

L: “No, it’s not policy to deny these things. It doesn’t say RAAF or RAF…

T: “But still, there’s only one Air Force in Australia.”

L: “Well, I don’t know: there’s RAF, and there are experimental things: it could be American – it could be civilian force ….it doesn’t identify itself.”

T: “I was flabbergasted when I saw it published like that, because I couldn’t understand how he could get away with publishing a thing like that unless it were true, and if it were true, he’s got no proof.”

L: “It couldn’t possibly be true: there are so many inaccuracies in it.”

T: “You mean the story as it is printed couldn’t be true, but it could be founded on fact?”

L: “No….they say here….”inform the police at the next town”….”Immediately rang air control at Salisbury” ….presumably Edinburgh – there’s no such thing as Air Control at Salisbury …. distance approximately 200 miles. 17 miles from the W.A. border is 627 miles from Edinburgh … helicopter couldn’t do it in under a day’s travel no Air Force personnel in their right mind would send a helicopter that far on a mission such as that….the only helicopter in the RAAF at that time was on the ground and in pieces. That wouldn’t be known generally – that’s known to us.”

Upon further discussion Flt.Lt. Longland indicated:

“…You should be very well aware that (“flying saucer sightings”) are not disregarded…. The Government of Australia has set up a perfectly efficient organization for investigating UFOs …. and they have vested the authority in the Department of Civilian Aviation …. “There isn’t any such thing as an official Air Force position; as far as U.F.O.s are concerned we are not interested We don’t refer to flying saucers – there is no such thing as far as we are concerned. They are UFOs … the Department of Civil Aviation has the central authority to analyze them.”
Contrary to Flt. Lt. Longland’s statements the Directorate of Air Force Intelligence, RAAF, was the central authority not the DCA, the RAAF did referred to “flying saucers”, and there was a statement of RAAF policy, originally formulated in 1954 but was reproduced in policy file statements as late as 1959.

Colin McCarthy claimed he was eventually able to track down one of the witnesses. From what he established, a helicopter was dispatched from Woomera, not Edinburgh, to rendezvous with the witnesses near Eucla. According to the alleged witness, several uniformed officers, and a plain clothed person, demanded the cameras and the exposed film, saying that the property would be returned in due course.

Colin McCarthy advised me that, “Some weeks later our witness had a visit from ASIO at his home in Elizabeth. The cameras were returned, minus all the film except for one very blurred shot, which I saw, and need I say, it was next door to useless. The witness said the ASIO agent frightened quote ‘the living shit out of me’ unquote!…. When I first heard his story, I was a little skeptical, however his fear was genuine, and with the one remaining blurred photo, lent some degree of authenticity to the story.”

Both McCarthy and Thomas link the Eucla helicopter saga to a bizarre story carried in a Sydney newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, of August 2nd, 1955. McCarthy feels that this story refers to the Eucla event, even though the basic story accounts in each are different in many respects. McCarthy kept no record of the original interview he secured with one of the alleged witnesses, but he feels he was Peter Johnson, one of the witnesses cited in the story in the Daily Telegraph.

The newspaper account did not talk about photographing a flying saucer, being intercepted by the military, or film being confiscated. Indeed we have a rather queer and absurd story, which has not been substantiated. What we have is a fragmentary story accompanying a rather poor photo that is presented as the “THING FROM OUTER SPACE”. The story was as follows:

Three young men returned to Melbourne with the picture of what they said was a flying saucer pilot. One of them took the photograph about 14 miles from Eucla, on the South Australian border.
This is the story that Max Clow, 23, Alex Rose, 29, and Peter Johnson, 25, told -:

They were driving through flat country covered by scrub and tall trees when they heard what they thought was a blowout and stopped to look at the tires. Then Johnson pointed out a shiny object falling to the ground about three miles away.

After an hour’s search they found jagged pieces of shining metal and then saw a moving figure 50 yards away. They went closer and watched the figure for about 25 minutes.

Clow said: “It was like a frog from the back and a semi-human from the front, with a green cloak hanging to just above its knees. The two curved horns on each side of its head gave it a devilish appearance. Its feet and hands were Armour-plated and, to make it worse, it was wriggling and swaying like a fish out of water.”

Rose then plucked up his courage, moved nearer, and took photographs.

“Then to our amazement, it began to disintegrate before our eyes,” said Clow.

The photo reproduced in the newspaper gives what appears to be an out of focus image of something vaguely “humanoid” is shape. Only the back ground (trees?) is in focus. The foreground and figure (?) are not. In fact one is given the impression of some sort of doll, perhaps on a dashboard, photographed with the camera focused on the background. The photo is far from impressive and certainly does not add to the credibility of a fantastic story. Depending on your objectivity, beliefs and gullibility it is possible to interpreter the photo and story in numerous ways. In the end the Eucla story and photo only serve to confuse an already confused story. We may never known if anything concrete happened to three young men near the South Australian border, ostensibly back during Easter, 1954.

 

ASIO INFILTRATION
The end of the decade also saw the intrusion of the espionage milieu — UFO style.
Stan Seers was President of the Queensland Flying Saucer Research Bureau. In 1959, after a clandestine car park rendezvous, to initiate a covert relationship, the agent, D_____ D_______, got down to the nitty gritty. He wanted Seers to “play ball” with ASIO, on a strictly confidential basis.

The agent stated that in the event of any really “hot” UFO information – landings, contacts, etc., he would if necessary put Seers in direct telephone communication with Prime Minister Bob Menzies.

Stan Seers reflected, “I recall thinking how hilariously stupid the whole affair sounded, and remember having some trouble for a minute or so keeping a straight face?”

When Seers subsequently told D______ that he had discussed the covert “offer” with the rest of the QFSRB committee, the ASIO man was furious. The upshot of this was that it appeared the agent virtually successfully destabilized the group. Within a year Seers resigned, only to be coached back two years later. But still the group “found it impossible to completely shake off the attentions of the man from ASIO.” He remained in close contact with the group for eleven years, until his death in 1970.

The abiding theme was that the ASIO man was only interested in data acquired by covert means. The intelligence ethic demands that quality intelligence is only acquired by clandestine means. Unfortunately this is not always the case and often such information serves the purpose of placing upon previously innocuous events a sinister aura and consequently sometimes leading to an incorrect interpretation by the intelligence analyst. The whole thing snowballs until the clandestine version bares little resemblance to the reality of the original event.

As Seers cogently states in his book:

“The one surprising feature of all this rank stupidity on the part of the powers that be is the proven fact that all research groups have always been more than happy to pass on to them any material, or information, that came their way. On one occasion ASIO requested from the Queensland group the loan of all 37 pages of their copy of the Boianai sighting reports for microfilming. When the loaned material was returned, a free microfilmed copy (still in my possession) came with it”

A TURNING POINT
The civilian groups stood at the end of the fifties in a position of strength, unified, strengthened, and galvanized into action, by the quality of the Gill reports. The extraordinary reports of UFO “visitants” over Boianai, Papua New Guinea, during 1959, were remarkable testimony from “credible observers of relatively incredible things” (as the director of USAF intelligence, Major General John Samford referred to the witnesses of the minority of “unknown” and “unidentified” reports, back in 1952). The Anglican church missionary, Reverend William Gill, provided civilian groups with remarkable testimony of unknown “interlopers”. They were in stark contrast to the hoary silliness that punctuated the flirtation of enthusiasts with the contactee absurdities during much of the fifties. Buoyed by substantial data, the civilian groups were ready to face what would prove to be the turbulent sixties.
In contrast, from 1955 and particularly in the wake of the striking Gill testimony, the RAAF began a retreat from their original open minded position. By then the growing number of sightings had turned into “the UFO problem” — a problem with uncertain and controversial public relation, military and political dimensions. To them the situation was embodied in the determination that they were dealing with “the UFO problem” – a problem with uncertain and controversial public relations and political dimensions. Controversy about possible unknown interlopers in our airspace could not be tolerated, and officialdom was moving towards effectively managing “the problem”. The scientific ethic never really got off the ground. It had been effectively scuttled and was in retreat. The scientific approach had been pushed aside with the rejection of nuclear physicist Harry Turner’s secret study of the Directorate of Air Force Intelligence (DAFI) UFO files. The military and political ethic had begun its long march of dominating the official approach to the UFO controversy. The decades to follow would prove to be controversial and exciting as the Australian UFO controversy continued its evolution.

The 1960s and the 1970s were periods steeped in UFO accounts of high strangeness that emerged in a climate of gradually increasing maturity in the manner in which the phenomenon was investigated. Considerable intrigue and energetic debate marked the search for answers from both the perspective of the civilian researcher and that of the clandestine world of official investigations. Occasionally such activities came together in curious ways but generally official investigations remained the stuff of secrecy, at least to the general public. Civilian researchers themselves were caught up in fundamental and evolutionary steps towards understanding the nature and extent of the UFO phenomenon.

 

THE CRESSY AFFAIR
The Cressy area of Tasmania became the center of a spectacular wave of sightings in October and November, 1960. An entirely credible witness was at the center of the milieu. Once again, an Anglican priest reported that he had seen a UFO. The Reverend Lionel Browning and his wife witnessed a fantastic sight from the dining room of the Cressy Anglican rectory on 4th October, 1960. A detailed account appeared in the Launceston Mercury of October 10th headlined “FLYING SAUCER” SEEN AT CRESSY. Mysterious ships in the sky. A succession of media stories followed elevating the sighting in to national prominence.
Again, because of the undeniable credibility of the witness, the RAAF were in a difficult position in their efforts to contain the rapidly escalating public clamor.

Wing Commander Waller interviewed Rev. Browning and his wife on November 11th, at their Cressy home. Waller concluded that the couple were “stable, responsible and unexcitable individuals who would not perpetrate a hoax”, and were “genuinely and firmly convinced that they saw actual objects.” He confirmed this assessment in a letter to Dr. James McDonald, who undertook a retrospective investigation into the sighting during his 1967 Australian visit.

The RAAF’s attempts to explain the Cressy sighting away were rather hollow, particularly given an intriguing sighting report I found buried in the DAFI UFO files. On November 15, 1960, some 50 kilometers north of Cressy, a United States Air Force JB57 aircraft, operating out of East Sale RAAF base, encountered a UFO.

The Cressy affair even had a sequel in Australia’s federal parliament. Rev. Browning’s federal member, Mr. Duthie, asked the following question on October 20th, 1960:

Mr. Duthie: “Has the Minister for Air read the reports of unidentified flying objects sighted in Australia in the last two years, especially the detailed description of such an object at Cressy in my electorate by the Reverend Lionel Browning and his wife two weeks ago, and twice last weekend? Inc ardently, the reverend gentleman was my Liberal opponent at the 1951 and 1954 elections. Does the Minister accept responsibility for investigating these sightings? Has the Minister any information about them that may be of interest to the people of Australia?”
The Minister for Air, Mr. Osborne, responded with an answer that would form the basis of RAAF policy for more than a decade to come.

Mr. Osborne: “I have read the press reports of these sightings in Tasmania, and in accordance with the usual practice, all the information that is available concerning them has been furnished to my department and is now being examined. The Department of Air does obtain information about all well reported cases of unidentified flying objects. The department not only receives information about them but also exchanges it with the Royal Air Force and the United States Air Force. There is a regular exchange of information on these matters. I can tell the honorable member for Wilmont that although reports of this sort have been investigated very carefully for years, nearly all of them are explainable on a perfectly normal basis. Sometimes they are found to be weather balloons, high-flying aircraft or even stars.
On one occasion, it was established that a reported spaceship was the moon. Of all these reports, only 3 per cent. or 4 per cent. cannot be explained on the basis of some natural phenomenon, and nothing that has arisen from that 3 per cent. or 4 per cent. of unexplained cases gives any firm support for the belief that interlopers from other places in this world, or outside it, have been visiting us.”

The Gill “entity” reports of 1959 and the Browning “mother ship” report at Cressy in 1960, provided substantial dilemmas for official UFO investigations. In both cases Anglican ministers were the primary witnesses and press coverage was extensive and positive. A confidential briefing paper prepared by DAFI to the RAAF Staff Officer to the Minister of Air concluded after cursory investigations:

A preliminary analysis of the available information indicates that (the Cressy) sighting was some form of natural phenomena associated with the unsettled weather condition. You will recall that the sighting by Reverend William Gill in the Boianai area of New Guinea, which also received wide publicity, was very similar and occurred under almost identical weather conditions. On that occasion, after investigation, we concluded that the sightings were either known planets seen through fast moving cloud, or natural phenomena. The notable difference between the reports is that objects observed by the Reverend Browning were dull grey in color, while those seen by the Reverend Gill were brightly lit and, in one case, allegedly contained humanoid beings.
The Brownings in the case of Cressy impressed the investigating RAAF officer as “mentally alert individuals who had no cause or desire to see objects in the sky other than objects of definite form and substance.” In the case of the Gill reports the investigating officers’ opinions on the main witness’s character were also most favorable. Despite the impact of the Boianai and Cressy reports and the apparent incongruity of the official “explanations”, the prevailing controversy failed to shift the official stance on UFOs that “nothing that has arisen from the 3 or 4 per cent of unexplained cases gives any firm support for the belief that interlopers from other places in this world or outside it have been visiting us.” A close analysis of both cases (Boianai and Cressy) argues powerfully that the RAAF “explanations” are unsatisfactory.

 

A RADAR VISUAL INCIDENT NEAR DARWIN
A RAAF radar unit at Lee Point, near Darwin, in the Northern Territory, allegedly monitored a UFO sighting during 1962. At about 8 p.m. one evening, service men observed what appeared, at first, to be “a strange kind of star.” It kept changing color, dropping in altitude and then rising again. The Met office indicated that no planes or balloons were aloft at the time. They estimated the altitude of the object was about 5 to 6,000 feet. Service men watched the UFO’s movement on their own radar. Their sergeant estimated that the UFO was the size of a house. Soon after it started to move slowly in a clockwise arc finally disappearing near dawn!

THE 1965 BALLARAT UFO CONVENTION

A major turning point in civilian UFO research in Australia occurred on February 27th, 1965, at Ballarat, Victoria. What was billed as Australia’s first convention of UFO groups provided a focus for elevating the respectability of the UFO subject. Unfortunately, in hindsight it also started a process that, while initially encouraging, would eventually divide some UFO groups and lay the seeds of group political warfare which would resound for years to come.
The occasion was one of great euphoria for those researchers, investigators and enthusiasts who attended. The conference had been arranged by W.Howard Sloane, of the Ballarat Astronomical Society, with the aim of removing “the stigma of ridicule from research into UFOs.” Not only did representatives of most existing Australian groups attend, but there were also several witnesses to some of Australia’s most famous cases, including the Rev. William Gill and Charles Brew, who spoke about their experiences. Former Air Marshall Sir George Jones attended and was outspoken in his support for serious UFO research. The RAAF was represented by Mr. B. G. Roberts, Senior Research Scientist, of the Operational Research Office, Department of Air, Canberra. The presence of a scientific consultant of the RAAF, along with 2 RAAF officers, manning a hardware display, was an unprecedented step for the Australian government.

The civilian researcher presentations indicated the thrust of group investigations at the time. Leslie Locke, President of the Perth UFO Research Group, spoke on the theme of “Preparing for contact”. Pioneer researcher, Fred Stone, from South Australia, reviewed activity in New Zealand and emphasized the desirability of unity amongst UFO groups. Colin Norris, of the South Australian group, Australian Flying Saucer Research Society, gave a slide presentation on the “History of UFOs”, and also represented the Queensland Flying Saucer Research Bureau, who were unable to send a delegate. A tape of QFSRB member Carl Lehmann on “Origin of UFO” reviewed all the possible planetary origins of “spacecraft coming to earth.” Peter Norris, President of the Victorian Flying Saucer Research Society, gave a detailed presentation on “Occupants of UFOs.” Andrew Tomas, another pioneer researcher, represented the Sydney based UFO Investigation Center (UFOIC), and delivered a lecture on “Purpose of coming to Earth”. His lecture canvassed such ideas as “global exploration” and “the world crisis theories”, highlighting that “a contact between planetary civilizations could become the greatest challenge of all times.” Paul Norman, of VFSRS, lectured on “Electric Effects of UFOs.”

The Department of Air (Air Force) scientific representative, B. G. Roberts gave a presentation which addressed the term UFO and some objections to it, official assessments of aerial sightings, and the identification of sightings. Roberts argued the term “unidentified aerial sightings” (UAS) was a more appropriate one than UFO, the latter term having long since been regarded as just another term for “flying saucers”. He indicated that “the assessment of reports of unidentified aerial sightings in Australia and the territories is the responsibility of the Department of Air at Canberra. There is no hidden implication in this allocation of responsibility. The Department is simply the most appropriate authority for the task, which is performed to determine whether or not a threat to the security of the nation is involved.” Roberts highlighted that 9 out of 10 sightings are explainable.

In terms of “unidentified sightings” Roberts stated,

“the number of sightings which the Department is unable to identify from the information available has remained fairly consistent at around two a year. Indeed, given sufficient time and effort, the number of unidentified sightings probably could be reduced further. One has to assess, however, whether the required additional time and effort is warranted. The Department of Air believes that there is, and always will be, a small number of sightings (due to high altitude phenomena, which are strange to the untrained eye) for which the available information will never be sufficient to enable an identification to be made. In other words it is just not possible to achieve a 100% record of successful identification. The ideal can be approached but not achieved, simply because the inaccuracies inherent in this type of work militate against its achievement.”
Roberts indicated,

“The number of unidentified sightings each year in Australia does not warrant such great effort or expense. Only where there is evidence that a threat to the security of the nation is involved (e.g. the possibility of foreign aircraft infringing our air space) would this attitude be reversed. The Department of Air believes that there always will be aerial sightings of high altitude phenomena which are strange to the untrained eye and that of these some will not be identified.
“Finally, I would like to make it clear that the Department of Air never has denied the possibility that some form of life may exist on other planets in the universe…. However, the Department has, so far, neither received nor discovered in Australia any evidence to support the belief that the earth is being observed, visited or threatened by machines from other planets. Furthermore, there are no documents, files or dossiers held by the Department which prove the existence of ‘flying saucers’.”

The civilian UFO researcher audience, at the Ballarat convention, skeptical of the claimed lack of compelling UFO photos in the RAAF files, were interested in Mr. Roberts knowledge on “the holy grail of Australian ufology”, namely the photographic evidence secured by Papua New Guinea DCA Deputy Director, Tom Drury, back in August, 1953. Peter Norris, President of VFSRS, asked Roberts if he was aware of the film. Roberts said he was not. Fred Stone indicated that 4 stills from the Drury film had been supplied to him by the RAAF in 1954. Roberts clearly was uninformed about this famous case and even remarked, “I feel a bit like Daniel in a lions’ den!” Andrew Tomas indicated he had seen the film in the hands of Edgar Jarrold, the pioneer Australian researcher and director of the Australian Flying Saucer Bureau. There is evidence that Jarrold did eventually receive prints of individual frames, some 94 prints, but not the actual film. Tomas told the convention that the RAAF sent the film to Dayton, Ohio, and then researchers lost track of it.

Former RAAF Air Marshall Sir George Jones also challenged Mr. Roberts. While questioning the value of photographs as evidence of the reality of UFOs, he never-the-less insisted on keeping an open mind towards reports such as those of Charles Brew at Willow Grove, Victoria, and Rev. William Gill and others in Papua New Guinea. Sir George said to Mr. Roberts, “You leave me with an impression that everything can be explained away given sufficient time and effort. I don’t know how they (RAAF) get on with those things (meaning reports like those of Charles Brew and Rev. Gill).”

What seemed to have been a very good idea emerged at the conference. It was suggested apparently by RAAF representatives that the RAAF would deal with civilian UFO organizations only if they were organized on a federal level. It was resolved at the convention to form such a national organization — “a centralized body all the groups in Australia in order to deal with the government and public on top level.” The name of this organization was agreed as C.A.P.I.O. (Commonweath Aerial Phenomena Investigation Organization). Office bearers were elected at the convention. Peter Norris, VFSRS president, was made CAPIO president. Leslie Locke (Western Australia) and Andrew Tomas (NSW) were elected vice presidents. Sylvia Suttton and Judy Magee, both from VFSRS, took the positions of secretary and assistant secretary respectively. The CAPIO organization had begun with great enthusiasm.

THE RAAF AND THE UFO PROBLEM

A Department of Air minute paper, dated February, 1966, revealed that there were “no written responsibilities for (RAAF) Operational Command in the UFO field.” It indicated that the minute writer (Squadron Leader ____ AI-2) had “reviewed the current ‘Ad Hoc’ system in the practice of processing U.F.O reports and with ‘minor criticisms’, found that it appeared “to be working satisfactorily, entailing the minimum of work by this Directorate [i.e. Directorate of Air Force Intelligence – DAFI – B.C.].'” After much discussion a DAFI directive was issued to both Commands (Operational and Support Commands – B.C) in March, 1966. Group Captain I.S. Podger (for the Chief of the Air Staff), wrote in it:
The main purpose of the investigation of any UFO is to establish whether or not the subject of the report poses a threat to the security of Australia. The identification of the cause of the UFO report and its classifications as aircraft, balloon, missile, astronomical body or phenomena etc, is of minor importance and mainly for the benefit of members of the public whose interest may have been aroused by the report.
The directive also specified:

No attempts should be made to answer public enquiries at unit or command level. Requests by members of the public for information on UFOs in Australia and for the RAAF assessment of their origin etc should be referred to the Department of Air where they will be dealt with by the Directorate of Public Relations.
It was not long before a conflict arouse between the Directorates of Air Force Intelligence and Public Relations. It came to a head with the director of the Directorate of Public Relations (DPR) forward a detailed minute paper to DAFI, dated 16th August, 1966. It was entitled UFOs – RAAF HANDLING OF PROBLEM. The conflict was over whether “the distribution to interested members of the public of the `Summary of Unidentified Aerial Sightings Reported to Department of Air from 1960′” was to cease. The Directorate of Air Force Intelligence (DAFI) was “keen to soft-pedal the UFO business” and gave “the reason for this cessation (as) the undesirability of wetting the interest of the public in UFOs.”

DPR’s reaction was terse and to the point:

The `Summary’ grew out of a requirement for certain statistical UFO information to provide material for a ministerial reply to a parliamentary question.”
DPR willingly undertook to draft an answer for the Minister (a task which entailed folio-for-folio research through some four or five parts of the relevant file), because it felt that the otherwise burdensome task had some distinct side-benefit, namely, the collation of an unclassified and innocuous summary of UFO ‘sightings’ in Australia for the past five years.

DPR envisaged the day when it would be able to reply to all public UFO enquiries by the mere dispatch of the ‘summary’ covered, if thought necessary, by a letter in which we explain that we are not prepared to engage in any subsequent disputation (i.e. take our ‘Summary’ or leave; we have told you all we know).

In order to keep this ‘Summary’ current, D/DAFI (Ops) was good enough to agree to provide DPR with the basic information which DPR would expect to have been security cleared for general release before adding the information to the ‘Summary’.

The DPR director made, “a plea to remove the present restriction on the sharing of our unclassified UFO information with the public….”

The DPR director said, “In summary: by continuing with the old policy of playing our UFO cards close to the chest, we only foster the incorrect (but nevertheless widely held) belief that we have much vital information to hide. On the other hand, by maintaining a current `Summary’ (which DPR is prepared to do, with your continued help) we dispose in one blow, of the UFO enthusiasts belief that:

(a) he is not being taken into the RAAF’s confidence; and
(b) the RAAF is desperately determined to suppress UFO
information to prevent national panic…

The Director of Public Relations concluded his Minute Paper to the Director of Air Force Intelligence, by stating, “while security is not DPR’s affair, our relations with the general public (cranks and all) certainly are and I feel strongly, from the PR point of view, that we are handling this whole UFO business in an unnecessarily rigid and unimaginative way.”
This theme was continued in another Department of Air Minute Paper, entitled “Unidentified Flying Object – RAAF policy” and dated 12th October, 1966. It emerged following a request from author, Richard Tambling, who had requested permission to publish B.G. Roberts’ Ballarat UFO conference presentation, in his forthcoming book, as an official view. DAFI were not inclined to do this. The minute paper confirmed that uncertainty and confusion were keynotes in RAAF UFO policy during 1966 – hallmarks that would continue, albeit waxing and waning, right up to today.

It stated:

There appears to be some confusion concerning Departmental policy over UFOs … on file… there is a ministerial statement to the effect:
“Anyone who is interested in sightings of UFOs can apply to the Department of Air for information on the subject and is welcome to a synopsis of UFO sightings which includes a very brief assessment of the probable causes.”

“This statement was made in answer to ministerial representation.

It would appear, however, that the policy represented by this statement may not have reflected the view of DAFI, despite earlier, although inconclusive evidence of his concurrence.

…DAFI has proposed to DGPP who in turn referred to DCAS that our approach to UFO reports be liberalized. It does not appear that either DGPP or DCAS were aware of the Minister’s statement. In my opinion we must either comply with the terms of that statement or inform the minister of our ‘new’ approach, if it is not intended to provide the synopsis of sightings and on this I am not at all together clear from reading the files.
It would, however, seem that agreement has not been reached that DPR is to handle all enquiries for information, however, it does not appear that DPR has been consulted on the extent of the liberalization proposed by DAFI in answer to his (DPR) submission [the August 16, 1966, minute paper – B.C.] and could DPR indicate his views.

It would also appear that there is some need for rationalization of our files on this subject. There are at least 4 different files which contain a confusion of policy, reported sightings and requests for information. Three of these files are classified, two of which are SECRET although there appears to be nothing in the files consistent with this classification. Could DAFI and DPR consider rationalizing these files please…

As it turned out, the `Summary’ did indeed become the public front of the RAAF involvement in the Australian UFO controversy. By the end of the sixties, the `Summary’ crystallized as a largely annual affair. No. 1 covered reports from 1960 to 1968. No. 2 covered 1969 accounts, while 1970 and 1971 reports appeared in `Summary’ No. 3. From 1972 to 1977 inclusive, the summaries appeared somewhat erratically, covering each year with numbers 4 to 9. The RAAF had embarked on a course that locked them into a bureaucratically orchestrated formula for handling the “UFO problem.”

THE EMERGENCE OF AN “INVISIBLE COLLEGE”
DOWN UNDER

The RAAF files also held a copy of a detailed 1967 report written by Dr. Michael J. Duggin, of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) National Standards Laboratory, Division of Physics. It was a report about a striking close encounter in the Sydney suburb of Canterbury. The report was directed by Dr. Duggin to Dr. Allen Hynek. Duggin, an Australian physicist, had recently joined Hynek’s informal international “invisible college” of collaborating scientists. From Dr. Hynek Dr. Duggin had secured a letter of introduction dated 16 November 1966 on Dearborn Observatory, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois stationary. It stated:
Dr.M. Duggin is collecting information on UFOs and is part of an International effort to collate information on this phenomenon from several countries. For many years I have acted as a scientific monitor on this scientifically vexing problem of UFOs, and a number of colleagues and I have agreed to act as a “clearing house” for the investigation of which Dr. Duggin is a part. Any cooperation which may be expended to Dr. Duggin would be greatly appreciated.
Sincerely yours, J. Allen Hynek, Director, Dearborn Observatory.”

Dr. Duggin contacted Squadron Leader Baxter of the RAAF in his initial attempts to get official cooperation. In a 20 December, 1966, letter to Sqd. Ldr. Baxter he wrote,

I would like to add a few details to today’s telephone conversation. Dr. Vallee, an astronomer at the University of Chicago and Professor J. A Hynek, whom I saw in Chicago a few weeks ago, are very interested in the UFO phenomenon from the point of view of a scientific investigation. So am I and so are many other scientists in other countries. These gentlemen have carefully documented files on many (about 6000) sightings in many different countries. Many of these sightings are doubtful but there are a large number which it has not so far been possible to explain in terms of natural phenomena. These are the cases of interest.
Dr. Vallee has at his disposal a computer program for an automatic question-answering system (which was originally developed for stellar astronomy). He has asked Dr. O. Fontes in Brazil, Professor (sic?) Michel in France, myself and several other scientists in different countries to collect data on sightings and where possible interview those who originate the report in order to determine its reliability and so weight it for future statistical analyses. This information will be coded, so that it can be punched onto an IBM card and later fed onto a magnetic library tape for use with the question-answering system.

Present investigations have indicated the existence of certain patterns in this phenomenon but unfortunately much more data is required before great reliance can be placed on the results of such an investigation. Several reports from isolated observers, contiguous in time and consistent in description, would appear to suggest that perhaps some observations are made sequentially along great circle routes. Again more data is needed.

“Landing” reports have been quite frequent in South America and, I believe, in the Southern hemisphere as a whole.

What is needed is information, (1) as soon as it is turned in, so that the case can be correlated with other information, if possible, at Dearborne Observatory, (2) results of the follow-up.

I would like to investigate cases myself where possible and would be very willing to be of any help I can.

Dr. Hynek is the scientific advisor on UFOs to the U.S. Air Force. I am enclosing a letter from him to substantiate my request. I stress that this is a scientific investigation and that although my interest is extracurricular, I feel that it is very necessary to subject those unexplained phenomena to scientific investigation.

The Directorate of Air Force Intelligence (DAFI) reviewed Dr. Duggin’s request. A Department of Air Minute Paper from Wg. Cdr. N.G. Marshall, D/D AFI (Ops) to DAFI addressed the issue:

You will note that one of the scientists involved in this UFO investigation is Dr. Hynek who is stated to be the scientific advisor on UFOs to the United States. Dr. Duggin, however is acting in an extracurricular capacity.
You will note that these scientists are mainly interested in the unexplained UFOs, but as far as I can make out they would like information on all sightings. As you know, we already have an official arrangement with CSIRO whereby we can pass to them any report on which we would like their assistance, so it would really be only a question of stretching this arrangement slightly to pass them a copy of all reports. However, Dr. Duggin’s interest is unofficial as far as CSIRO is concerned and this may cause embarrassment.

These scientists, with all the documents and facilities available to them, are obviously in a position to assist us in this matter, and though I am not keen on releasing the details of the RAAF investigations or anything which may increase the interest of the general public in this field, I think we should give these scientists the information they require. However, although they would like the information as soon as possible, I recommend that we stick to our present system for UFO investigations, i.e. the nearest RAAF Base investigates the report and passes it up through Command Headquarters to Department of Air. If we change the system to allow CSIRO to get a copy of the report before it has completed the RAAF process, we may get two concurrent investigations of the same report.

Annotations to this minute paper indicated, “Seen by DAFI who agrees.” Other file folios indicated that CSIRO were asked if all reports could go to Dr. Duggin and that CSIRO agreed to Dr. Duggin acting in an unofficial capacity.

Thus Dr. Duggin’s report to Dr. Hynek on an impressive close encounter in 1967 was an extension of the process that had been put into play. The RAAF were sanctioning, albeit sometimes in a token fashion, the activities of the “invisible college”.

A SECRET MILITARY “RAPID INTERVENTION” TEAM

By 1968, Harry Turner, who prepared the classified 1954 report on the DAFI UFO reports, was working in the Directorate of Scientific and Technical Intelligence (DSTI) of the Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB). At the end of 1954, Turner, a University of Western Australia trained physicist, went to England, where he worked at Harwell – the British atomic energy research establishment. He returned to Australia in 1956 and until 1964 was stationed at Maralinga. There he was the Australian Health Physics Representative during the controversial atomic bomb trials. When he joined DSTI, Turner functioned as a JIB liaison with DAFI and used the connection to try to once again encourage serious research within the secret world of Defense Science and intelligence.
Harry Turner requested access to DAFI’s UFO reports. This was granted. In May 1969, at Turner’s suggestion a new RAAF UFO report form was devised which was intended to give a more scientific slant to the reports. At this time Turner was working with other scientists to set up a “rapid intervention” team to scientifically investigate cases of UFO physical evidence. A firm proposal was developed with the team to operate within the Defense Science and Technical Organization (DSTO). The team was to consist of 4 or 5 scientists, with its mainstay to be rapid intervention into UFO “landing” events, for which an aircraft was to be on standby. Turner, in a memo dated November 8th, 1969, to the Director of JIB, indicated that he had Dr. Morton from ANU, Dr. John Symonds from the Australian Atomic Energy Commission and Dr. Mike Duggin, then of the National Standards Laboratory. George Barlow, of Defense Science and Technology (DST) had also offered the help of his group. Turner indicated that Arthur Wills, then Chief Defense Scientist “had agreed to this.” The plans for the scientific team had been almost completed and authorization to proceed appeared imminent. However fate had already intervened.

SUB ROSA FALLOUT IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA
In the middle of 1969 a major flap broke out in Western Australia, centered in Perth. One of the reports included an impressive radar visual event at Cloverdale and tracked on Kalamunda radar on May 23rd. The Director of Air Force Intelligence felt that things had gotten out of control and made an appeal for the Defense “intervention” group to assist. Unfortunately the group had not been finalized, and Harry Turner was seconded to help out.
Turner supplied me with a copy of his report. The radar visual incident was described as follows:

On the 23rd May, 1969, (Mrs. C___’ s) 13 year old son, who has an interest in the night sky, noticed from the front door of their house… that to the south and about 10 degrees above the horizon, there was a moving light which he first took to be an airplane. As it approached to the SE of the observer, it became apparent to him that its behavior pattern differed considerably from that of an aircraft. He called his mother who observed….in an easterly direction a steady red light on top of a more diffused blue-white light, and darting haphazardly in a zigzag pattern, but in general traveling towards a northerly direction until it disappeared behind the house. The two witnesses proceeded to the NW side of the house where they observed a luminous object stationary against the clear starry sky, at an elevation between 10 and 15 degrees and at a bearing of 015 degrees.
The light observed was circular – about half the diameter of a fool moon. It was steady in position and intensity for some 15 – 20 minutes. It no longer had a red light on top and had the brightness of a fluorescent streetlight. The edge was not clean cut but was somewhat hazy, even though the night air was perfectly clear. The time at which the object was first sighted was estimated as being 1835 hours…. Shortly before 1900 hours the object moved at extremely high velocity, away from the observers in a general N to NE-ly direction.

Mrs. C____ …telephoned the shift operator on site. (He) was still talking to Mrs. C___ when a request came from the meteorological radar situated near Perth Airport as to whether he could check out an unidentified echo seen on the meteorological radar. [Turner concluded the met returns were possibly prosaic and unrelated to the main incident – B.C.]

The Kalamunda radar operator had not been watching his screen as no aircraft were in the vicinity, but on checking the radar P.P.I. screen, he observed a large echo some 9 miles away at 300 degrees from his position which placed the echo some 21/2 miles north of Mrs. C___ ‘s position. Initial contact was made at 1901 hours and held for only 30 to 40 seconds. The echo which reappeared for short durations on 5 further occasions was twice the size of a large aircraft at that position. The echo has not been seen since it finally disappeared at 1942 hours.

One unusual feature of the Kalamunda report is that the radar is equipped with Moving Target Indicator (MTI) which suppresses all permanent echoes and all targets moving at speeds less than an estimated 6 knots… The night in question was clear and calm and there is no justification for an MTI break-through in the region of the target. Despite the operation of MTI, the unknown target was clearly visible, even though there was no noticeable displacement of its position. The operator had never before met an apparently stationary target that was recorded so clearly despite the operation of MTI. (The operator) paid particular attention to this echo over the whole period of 41 minutes that it occurred, because it was a potential traffic hazard to two aircraft in circuit at about that time, and they had to be warned to avoid the area of the unknown target….The operator is quite sure … that the echo’s appearance never lasted more than a minute at any one time….

….Just before 1900 hours the object moved away from the observer, disappearing from sight in a fraction of a second, and it is possible that it correlates with the stationary echo on radar at 1901 hours. The unusual features of the radar echo are:

(a) size;
(b) the fact that it was seen despite the operation
of MTI; and

(c) the spasmodic appearance.

It is not possible to readily conceive of an explanation for these observations. All observers were obviously sincerely puzzled individuals with an aversion to publicity….”

Harry Turner, a physicist and analyst for the JIB, concluded, “Neither the Kalamunda radar observation nor Mrs. C___’s sighting can be readily explained by conventional objects or phenomena.” His report also in part criticized the DAFI system for handling UFO reports, in particular referring to the lack of assistance given to the Air Force Intelligence officer “on the spot”.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, however at the time the DAFI “empire” was under threat. Some years earlier the RAAF had asked JIB to take “the UFO problem” over, but the clandestine side of JIB did not want “a bar of it”, as they considered they would then be caught up in what they regarded as a complex conjectural matter, which might drag them into the limelight – the last thing an intelligence organization would want. However in 1969/1970 with the DAFI empire under threat, the Air Force did not take kindly to criticism, particularly when it came from what DAFI saw as an “outsider” a JIB scientist. The upshot of this was that Harry Turner’s access to the DAFI UFO files was withdrawn.

UFO IMPACT AND THE JIB

Soon after, the plan for the “rapid intervention” team was dropped.
While this development may not be linked to the intelligence “empire” wars, as it was at this time that the US Air Force sponsored Condon Report on UFOs appeared (which concluded there was nothing of scientific worth involved), it is still obvious that political considerations had again frustrated attempts to undertake official scientific UFO research in Australia. Harry Turner in a JIB report indicated that “the conclusions of the Condon report conflict with its own contents and had been discredited by many reputable scientists including the UFO scientific consultant to the USAF.” For a number of years Turner tried unsuccessfully to encourage JIB or DSTO to undertake a serious scientific interest in UFOs. In January, 1970, he even utilized Dr. Jacque Vallee’s so called Magonia listing of 1000 worldwide UFO landing or near landing reports to highlight to JIB the potential military threats involved:

“The information suggests the existence of 3 “weapon systems” –
(1) a device to interfere with electrical circuits
(2) a device to induce paralysis

(3) a heat ray.

There is circumstantial evidence that these weapons are at times used deliberately, although mostly in a defensive role. A number of reports allege that a lone car at night has been followed, and after being stopped by a beam, some kind of interaction has developed between the car occupants and the landed craft occupants.

Information is included which deals with residual effects on the environment of the landed craft. It is these residual effects which offer the greatest potential reward to scientific investigation at this stage.

Even reports of this nature within JIB that went to the heart of defense issues failed to get Turner’s proposed study off the ground. The status quo had prevailed.

INTRUDER AT WOOMERA

In the wake of Harry Turner’s abortive “sub rosa” efforts, the scientific investigation of UFOs at an official level had all but disappeared, with the primary goal being the resolution of any defense and/or political implications.
The attitude can be seen in the Woomera “intrusions” of late in 1971. In one case just prior to the launch of a Black Arrow rocket (in part a DSTO project) an unidentified “aircraft” was observed by a trained site meteorology observer over Woomera prohibited airspace. Yet another sighting lead to a Department of Supply letter to the Director of Air Force Intelligence, dated January 7th, 1972 which stated that “this sighting appears to be sufficiently authenticated, yet there is no official knowledge of any military or civil aircraft that could have intruded into the Woomera air space. It is therefore now a matter of speculation that some foreign aircraft passed through a Restricted Flying Area on December 20, 1971, without the knowledge of the appropriate authorities and this is cause for concern.”

Rather than accept that maybe the “Russkies” or perhaps something else entirely was the problem, it was more politically expedient for DAFI to suggest an alternative. They suggested that a more plausible explanation was re-entering space debris, even though it was impossible to confirm that possibility.

SCIENCE AND THE UFO

Ironically, in light of this ascendancy of the political and military ethic over scientific enquiry, it perhaps should be observed that exactly 2 days after the first of Woomera “intrusions”, to the south on the campus of the University of Adelaide, the South Australian division of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science (ANZAAS) organized a one day symposium to consider the UFO problem, namely on 30th 0ctober, 1971.
The symposium had about 300 attendees and, because of its prestigious backing, attracted widespread publicity. Dr. Brian Horton’s introduction to the ANZAAS symposium pointed out that while the UFO question was on the fringe of our current knowledge and indeed was often ridiculed, it should still be scientifically investigated. He cautioned against forming opinions with incomplete information.

Local South Australian UFO researcher, Colin Norris presented a history of UFOs, described their apparent characteristics, and showed numerous slides and a film. ANZAAS secretary, Dr. Bill Taylor, delivered a paper by Mr. B. Roberts of the Department of Air. This was simply Robert’s 1965 Ballarat presentation recycled again.

Dr. Duggin’s paper, “The Analysis of UFO Reports”, called for closer cooperation between UFO organizations and scientists. Micheal Duggin was then a senior research scientist at the Mineral Physics section of the CSIRO, Sydney. Because of the lack of concrete action from existing official studies, Dr. Duggin felt it was up to individual scientists to form world-wide panels. He indicated that they could expect to face ridicule from colleagues, but that the UFO phenomenon warranted attention.

Dr. Duggin had been secretly working with JIB scientist Harry Turner, sharing information and data. Indeed Harry Turner attended the symposium despite the frustrations he had experienced over the years in his secret attempts to ensure that scientific investigations were undertaken at an official level in Australia.

Lynn Mitchell, Deputy Regional Director of Meteorology in South Australia, gave a detailed address on meteorological phenomena relevant to the UFO subject, referring to scintillation, green flash, crepuscular rays, mirages, and iridescent, noctilucent and lenticular clouds. He indicated that meteors, ball lightning, Saint Elmo’s fire, stars, planets, balloons and satellites were often the source of sightings. He reported that not one inexplicable sighting had been reported in the last 20 years, attributed to meteorological observers, people trained to observe and record. Mitchell’s research was obviously quite limited. In 1964, the US group, NICAP (National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena) produced a detailed study entitled The UFO Evidence. It listed 4 UFO sightings by scientists from the meteorology field in 1950, 1954 (2), and 1961.

Psychologist, Dr. Peter Delin, addressed “Psychological Aspects of Belief and Disbelief” highlighted that skeptics and believers were “at the two ends of a continuum” Their acrimony “springs from mutual lack of comprehension, but part of it is justified, in that there are nuts on both sides.” He argued that both sides tended to confuse and blend theoretical and observational issues. Through comparisons of UFO and psychical research, evidence supported the view that skeptics and believers showed similar faults of reasoning, biased observation, and “similar evidence of strong internal motivation unrelated to the subject matter under discussion, but predisposing them to the point of view they take up.” Dr. Delin stressed it was important to separate a witness’ report from his interpretation of the report or observation.

Further papers addressed the possibilities of extraterrestrial life and possibility of contact with such life.

Dr. Don Herbison-Evans, Lecturer in the Basser Computer Department, Sydney University, offered a cheap practical approach to obtaining hard scientific evidence for UFOs. His idea involved the use of diffraction gratings and cameras, in order to secure spectra of anomalous light sources. Dr. Herbison-Evans developed a “UFO Investigation Kit”, consisting of 3 slides, a diffraction grating and 2 Polaroid’s. He pointed out, “Scientists are only willing to look at the UFO problem if there is hard evidence, not just witness’ testimony.” He encouraged people to use the diffraction grating and Polaroid’s in conjunction with a camera if they photograph a possible UFO. No one has provided Dr. Herbison-Evans with that hard evidence to date.

The following motion was moved at the ANZAAS symposium: “The Symposium as a group feels very strongly that some action on the problem of UFO reports be taken…. (and) that the possibility of setting up a subcommittee for the study of UFO reports be considered by the Executive Committee of ANZAAS (S.A. Division).” This motion was favored by the Divisional committee of ANZAAS in November, 1971. They felt that there was sufficient evidence to demonstrate that there were sightings and evidence for phenomena that had not been adequately explained. The committee concluded there was a need to investigate unexplained sightings and they constituted “an unsolved scientific problem as there were no answers under current hypotheses.”

RAAF UFO “COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE” IN SA

In the ferment of unidentified intrusions during sensitive Woomera rocket launches and attempts by ANZAAS and “invisible college” scientists at engaging a puzzling, but frustrating phenomenon, the RAAF in South Australia were busy trying to assert their official responsibility to investigate UFOs. In my examinations of the RAAF UFO files I came across 2 documents prepared by RAAF Edinburgh Base South Australia personnel that address their frustration with “the UFO problem”. Their documents carried the extraordinary title of “COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE – UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS”.
Neither document indicated specific classic “counter-intelligence” activities and the choice of title therefore is either unfortunate, inappropriate or sinister. Extracts give an insight into the UFO milieu:

6/32/ Air (10)
Headquarters
RAAF
Edinburgh SA 5111
29th May 1972

Department of Air (Attention: D/DAFI IR)
For Information:
Headquarters Operational Command

COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE – UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS

1. Enclosed is an UFO report forwarded to this Headquarters by “The Australian Flying Saucer Research Society – (Adelaide)”, together with an accompanying letter from Mr John Burford which, inter alia, outlines recent moves to amalgamate the various UFO “research” societies in South Australia…
2. As on many occasions in the past, the report arrived at this Headquarters too late to make an investigation possible without considerable embarrassment and possible adverse publicity. The various UFO societies in this State, while aware of the RAAF’s responsibility to investigate UFO sightings in an official capacity, are nonetheless reluctant to pass on information on UFO sightings to the RAAF until they have “picked the bones clean”.

3. Every attempt has been made by this Headquarters to elicit the co-operation of local UFO organizations, and in particular the AFSRS, in an endeavor to gain some first-hand information on UFO sightings….

4. Also enclosed for your information is a list of alleged sightings investigated by the AFSRS alone in 1971. It is significant that of the 112 sights, not one was reported to this Headquarters in the first instance. Indeed, it was only at the personal whim of Mr. Norris that the RAAF received copies of investigations (without “findings”) in the long term. It would appear that, in spite of sparse and rather patronizing publicity by the mass media to the effect that the RAAF is the responsible UFO-reporting organization, and arrangements with the police to have any individual sighting a UFO contact this Headquarters, the public at large in this State remains either ignorant of the correct procedure, or chooses to contact the more glamorous – and credulous – “flying saucer” society. Furthermore, we are not aware of any effort on a national scale by higher authority to inform the public of the RAAF position in this matter, which is very active in South Australia.

5. From the foregoing, it can be seen that, if the proposed amalgamation of UFO groups in this State comes to pass, and timely reports of UFO sightings are passed to this Headquarters as indicated by Mr. Burford’s remarks, the volume of work involved in investigating and processing such sightings will increase considerably. In fact, it is doubtful whether the Officer-in-Charge UFO’s at this Headquarters (a secondary appointment) would be able to cope with such an increase, without significant and non-acceptable inroads being made into his primary role.

(E.T. PICKERD)
Air Commodore,
Officer Commanding

The second document also to Headquarters Operational Command was dated 20th June, 1972:

COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE – UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS
Reference: ….
1. … peculiar ground markings discovered on a farming property at Tooligie Hill, Eyre Peninsula, in late December 1971.

2. The matter first came to the notice of this Headquarters through the “Day by Day” column of The Advertiser on 27th January 1972 (which mentioned the markings) “… sighted by Eyre Peninsula farmer Robert Habner in the middle of a wheat paddock. “Farmer Habner found it while he was reaping. No tracks led to or from it. Peter is investigating”…

3. This Headquarters’ OIC UFOs … contacted the Peter Powell referred to in the clipping and … received assurances of co-operation. Mr.Powell stated that considerable interest in the Tooligie Hill “phenomenon” was being evinced by local UFO groups and added that a meeting of several of the groups, including the Australian Flying Saucer Research Society (of Colin Norris notoriety), was to be held that Sunday (30th January 1972)… At this juncture it became apparent that a belated RAAF investigation of the “phenomenon” would attract unwanted publicity, and would in any case probably be paralleled by simultaneous investigations by civilian groups. The question of “co-operation” between the RAAF and local UFO groups would then be a matter for speculation and individual interpretation by the media. This Headquarters therefore deemed it prudent not to initiate an on-site investigation into the incident at the time.

4. … (Newspaper accounts referred to) a projected “safari” to Eyre Peninsula to investigate the “phenomenon”….[Flt. Lt. King (O i/c UFOI) minted the following:

This morning I received a phone call from Mrs Habner of Tooligie Hill. She said that Messers Ianson and Mackereth (of AFSRS) had arrived and were investigating the “phenomenon” on the Habner property. As might be expected, Mr. Norris had arranged the usual publicity and the ABC, 5KA and the Advertiser, according to Mrs Habner, were on the scene or on tap. She said that she had not expected so much publicity and in any case it was Peter Powell who was supposed to be doing the investigating. His “safari” is due to arrive on Saturday and she had tried to contact him without success to tell him that he had been pre-empted. I informed Mrs Habner that there was nothing the RAAF could do about the situation and offered my condolences.

Mrs. Habner seemed surprised that this HQ had not been informed officially of the “phenomenon” in the first instance as she had reported it to the police in the area.

ORWO this morning noticed a leave application submitted by Cpl. A_____ of Catering Section. The address given on the application for the week’s leave was c/- the Habner property. I interviewed Cpl A_____ who said he had answered an advertisement inserted in the local newspapers by Peter Powell for people to accompany him to Eyre Peninsula to investigate the finding. I briefed him on the “no-publicity” requirement and asked him to keep me informed of events.”

The airman referred to (above) was also mentioned in our (message) to your department. On his return from leave he was again interviewed by OIC UFOs. The “safari” had taken soil samples and photographed the markings, and also interviewed a number of people in the district, but after a week on the site had not made any findings. Present on the Habner property at the same time were two members of the Australian Flying Saucer Research Society, who also fossicked without discovering the origin of the markings.

5. … (Mrs. Habner wrote to Flt. Lt. King):

I am sending you, as promised, some slides and information on the mark we found in our paddock on December 28th 1971. This mark was made in the middle of a wheat crop, with no tracks or marks leading in or out. The diameter of the rim-shape which is spun into the clay soil is approximately 7 feet. 2 feet from the outer edge of the mark the crop was laid flat in an anti-clockwise spinning motion, and in the center, which measures 45 inches across, the crop was cut to a height of 9 inches.

The crop was also laid flat (anti-clockwise again) in a small crescent which joins onto one side of the mark. About 12 feet away from the main mark is the same shaped marking spun into the wheat straw, but not with as much force as the main mark. This mark was just on the top of the straw and not cut into the ground. We can only think that whatever tried to land here was put off because of a small mêlée stump, and, wanting a smoother place to land, rose up and hovered over to finally land on the main “site”.

One family in our district say they saw a strange light which would have been in that position. They saw this on Christmas Eve. We were away from home all that evening.

We have had approximately 200 visitors from surrounding districts to see it and they all wonder what could have made this mark.

The cut out circle is still there and will be until we plough it up for seeding. There are still markings of the spun down straw etc too, although they are not as clearly defined as they were when fresh….

6. (Attached) is a letter from this Headquarters to the Commissioner of Police, dealing with the incident,

[Dear Commissioner,

….. A telephone conversation between my Officer-in-Charge of UFOs and Mrs. Habner reveals that police authorities in the area were informed of the incident and indeed visited the Habner property prior to the “phenomenon” becoming public knowledge….

I am sure you will agree that, as this Headquarters was not informed of the incident in the first instance, any post-event official RAAF investigation of the incident, with attendant publicity, would prove not only unfeasible but also embarrassing to some extent.

In view of the above, I would appreciate your once again bringing to the notice of your staff the necessity of referring all UFO reports to this Headquarters with the minimum of delay.

Yours faithfully,
(E.T. Pickerd)
Air Commodore]

and (also enclosed) is the Commissioner’s reply;

[Dear Air Commodore Pickerd,

… I enclose copy of a report furnished by Inspector R.A. Schlein of Port Lincoln.

It appears that there was no actual sighting of a U.F.O. at Tooligie Hills in December last, and although the Inspector was aware of strange markings in a field, he did not consider there was sufficient evidence at that time to connect them with a U.F.O. Moreover, as there was already growth from the dislodged wheat heads, it seemed that some time must have elapsed since the disturbance.

… we are sorry that you have been hindered or embarrassed by the lack of an earlier report.

Although members generally are already aware of the necessity to report such matters for your information, a further instruction will be issued by a notice in the Police Gazette.

Yours sincerely,
(J.G. McKinna)
Commissioner of Police.”]

and a copy of a report by Inspector Adolf Schlein of Port Lincoln Police.

7. For your information.

(B.G. KING)
Flight Lieutenant
For
Officer Commanding

 

For something generally dismissed by the RAAF all this seems to be a great amount of effort and activity, either in the name of bureaucracy or “counter-intelligence”. Think about it. The 2 documents were classified RESTRICTED.

DR. ALLEN HYNEK’S VISIT TO AUSTRALIA

Dr. Allen Hynek, who had acted as astronomy consultant to the United States Air Force UFO study since 1948, came to Australia during 1973, to lecture on astronomy and UFOs and to promote his ground breaking book, “The UFO Experience – A scientific Inquiry”, published in the US in 1972. His visit was a watershed for both Australia and himself. Dr. Hynek was in the best position to determine the scientific merits of the UFO phenomenon. He had consulted for more than 20 years with the US Air Force and had moved from a skeptic to a scientist who was willing to actively promote the validity of the phenomenon. He championed the need for serious research. His 1972 book was his case for the scientific merit of the UFO phenomenon. It caused a lot of scientists to rethink their position on the subject. By 1973, Dr. Hynek lacked an appropriate vehicle for his ongoing research. For years he had quietly encouraged and actively participated in the “invisible college”. Following his visit and the massive resurgence of UFO activity in America during that year he brought the “invisible college” into the open and formed the Center for UFO Studies. It continues as an ongoing focus for serious research into the UFO phenomenon. During his stay he researched many of the classic cases. As indicated earlier in this history he met with Shamus O’Farrell and discussed his famous 1954 Sea Fury incident. Dr. Hynek was also able to meet with Rev. William Gill and also journeyed to Papua, enabling him to undertake a detailed on site investigation into this famous case. He came away still convinced of the bonafide nature of the Boianai “visitants”. While in Australia he had discussions with researchers to try to set up a local focal point of case material which could then be forwarded to his group in Chicago. Out of those discussions, ACOS – the Australian Co-Ordination Center for the Center for UFO Studies was formed by Harry Griesberg and David Sergeant.
Hynek met privately with Harry Turner and Michael Duggin, and had an informal meeting with Group Captain K.R. Janson, Director of Air Force Intelligence. He described their meeting in the following terms:

“Opportunely, an informal meeting was held at the Department of Air between Professor Hynek and myself on 24th August when the Professor was visiting Canberra on other matters. During the meeting, discussions covered a wide range of matters relating to investigation procedures of unusual phenomena in both the USAF and RAAF. The Professor’s wide experience in this field was very evident, and the discussion will undoubtedly be of benefit to my officers and myself in the conduct of future investigations.”

DEFCON 3 TO TOP SECRET UMBRA – A NATIONAL
SECURITY CRISIS WITH A UFO CONNECTION IN 1973

On a narrow west coast peninsula, over one thousand kilometers to the north of the main centers of population in Western Australia, stands an enigmatic monument to the military ethic. It is a remote spot even for a country as vast and thinly populated as Australia.
A vast array of antennas and towers stand out in stark contrast to the harsh natural beauty of the surrounding terrain. The facility is divided into 3 principal sites – Areas A, B and C. Area A lies on the northernmost tip of the peninsula. Rising to a dizzying height of 387 meters is Tower Zero — the central structure of a vast array. Another 12 towers stand in two concentric rings around it. The towers support “large spider webs of wire” — the Very Low Frequency (VLF) antenna array covering one thousand acres — the largest in the world.

A few kilometers to the south is Area B. It consists of the installation’s headquarters and the High Frequency transmitter site. Area C – the main receiver site of this secretive facility – is located 60 km further to the south.

Collectively the 3 sites function as a window into an extraordinary world that few of us are privy to. I refer to the vast and often mind boggling world of military intelligence. The site is officially called US Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt. It is more popularly known as North West Cape.

In the vast scheme of facilities that make up the worldwide US intelligence gathering network, North West Cape, until recently, played an important and acutely sensitive role. It was never very far from the drama and controversy that pivoted around the fears of possible nuclear war between the superpowers.

In his 1980 book, A Suitable Piece of Real Estate, Dr. Desmond Ball, senior research fellow in the Strategic and Defense Studies Center at the Australian National University, wrote, “NW Cape….is presently one of the most important links in the US global defense network.” Its main function was “to provide communication for the US Navy’s most powerful deterrent force – the nuclear powered ballistic missile submarine.”

Dr. Ball further stated, “The National Security Agency (NSA) is the principal US intelligence agency operating in Australia;…Compared to the CIA in Australia, the NSA has a much larger presence, is more important, more secret, and closer to Australia’s own intelligence organizations.” It is responsible for all “the various activities associated with Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) – electronic intelligence, communications intelligence, radar intelligence, electronic counter intelligence and signal security.”

The National Security Agency is one of the biggest and most secretive organizations in today’s mind boggling world of intelligence.

The NSA operates at the NW Cape base, through its Naval Security Group component. The base acted as a ground station for the Big Bird “spy in the sky” satellites.

The North West Cape base, along with other US bases around Australia (such as Pine Gap and Nurrungar), have long been a matter of acute political sensitivity, specifically related to the assertion that such sites would be prime nuclear targets during a major outbreak of hostiles between the superpowers.

While that threat appears to have diminished in recent years, due to the collapse of the old Soviet empire, back during October, 1973, we staggered towards the edge of nuclear brinkmanship. NW Cape dragged Australia into the global arena as a naive and compromised sidelines player. Perhaps never were we so close to the brink than during those harrowing days of the Yom Kippur Middle East war.

Richard Nixon, a US president besieged by the domestic specter of Watergate, plunged into the Middle East crisis. It had the bonus of temporarily deflecting attention away from his domestic excesses. The threat of nuclear annihilation is always a handy little diversion from the domestic triviality of “dirty tricks.”

On October 11, 1973, five days after the Middle East War broke out, North West Cape along with other US bases in Australia were put on full alert.

According to Richard Hall, in his book The Secret State (1978), this alert status was to escalate dramatically due to “an NSA misreading of Arabic in a Syrian message to the USSR which led Kissinger and Nixon to believe that Soviet troops might be sent to the Middle East.”

This fiasco climaxed early on the morning of 25 October, 1973, in Washington. A full nuclear alert went out to all US forces. North West Cape was used to communicate the alert to both conventional and nuclear forces in this region. The acute security alert status “Def Con 3” was reached. Local time at North West Cape was around early evening.

Something else intruded into the crisis charged atmosphere over North West Cape that evening.

At about 1915 hours, on that fateful Thursday, October 25th, 1973, Lt. Commander M_____ (USN) observed “a large black, airborne object” at a distance of approximately 8 kilometers to the west at an altitude estimated at 600 meters. Lt. Cmdr. M_____ was driving south from the naval communication station towards the support township of Exmouth, along Murat Road. The officer indicated in a written statement that, “After about 20-25 seconds the craft accelerated at unbelievable speed and disappeared to the north.”

The officer’s account further states:

7. Hovering at first, then accelerating beyond belief.
9. No noise or exhaust.

11. Have never experienced anything like it.

At the base, Fire Captain (USN) Bill L____ also saw the extraordinary craft. He provided the following statement:

At 1920 hrs, I was called by the POW to close the Officers club. I proceeded towards the club in the Fire Dept. pick-up 488, when my attention was drawn to a large black object, which at first I took to be a small cloud formation, due west of Area ‘B’ [in the vicinity of Mount Athol – B.C.]. Whilst traveling towards the Officers club I couldn’t help but be attracted by this object’s appearance. On alighting from pick-up 488, I stood for several minutes and watched this black sphere hovering.
The sky was clear & pale green-blue. No clouds were about whatsoever.

The object was completely stationary except for a halo around the center, which appeared to be either revolving or pulsating. After watching it for approx. 4 minutes, it suddenly took off at tremendous speed & disappeared in a northerly direction, in a few seconds. I consider this object to have been approx. 10 meters in diameter, hovering at 300 meters over the hills due west of the base. It was black, maybe due to looking in the direction of the setting sun. No lights appeared on it at any time.

This is an extraordinary incident. When I first saw the report on it back in 1975 I was surprised, due to its contents, that, firstly, it had been entered onto standard RAAF Department of Defense UAS sighting report forms, and, secondly, that it had been made available to a researcher who had requested copies of some reports for statistical analyses being undertaken for my research group.

With the hindsight of the knowledge of its broader implications, which I am about to reveal, it leaves me just short of incredulous that people outside the world of military intelligence were made privy to it.

I have already noted in passing the part the National Security Agency (NSA) plays in the shadowy world of intelligence and its significant presence at North West Cape. It occupies a position of extraordinary significance. Therefore it was fascinating to observe the bizarre sideshow played out when a civilian UFO group tried to determine if the NSA had any files on UFOs.

UFO researcher, Robert Todd, received a blunt response in 1976, namely that “the NSA does not have any interest in UFOs in any manner”. The civilian group Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS) persisted in its enquiries under the Freedom of Information Act. During 1978, in litigation against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) it was determined that they had 18 documents on UFOs that originated from the NSA! Access to these documents was denied on the basis that they were exempt from disclosure on the grounds of national security.

CAUS took the NSA to court determining along the way that it held a further 79 UFO related documents, which were similarly prevented from release on national security grounds!

Two documents were eventually released in January, 1980, namely “UFO’s _______________ [balance of title deleted – B.C.]” and “UFO Hypothesis and Survival Questions.” It was subsequently determined that both documents were written by the same NSA analyst. They remain our first and only insight into NSA thinking about UFOs. For their part, the NSA stressed that neither document represented official policy and were unpublished draft documents retained only for “historical reference purposes.” Both documents are especially relevant in our contemplation of the possible significance of the North West Cape UFO incident.

The first NSA document was undated and heavily censored, however we find references to “Dr. Jacques Vallee famed communications science expert” and the intriguing term “surprise material”.

Vallee was described as having studied “thousands of cases where human beings have observed unusual phenomena. He has found that the human response to such observation is predictable and graphically despicable. Whether the person’s psychological structure is being assaulted by the unusual and shocking brutality of a murder or the strangeness of a UFO sighting, the effect is the same…. The degree of strangeness of the phenomena dictates how many people the mind is willing and able to tell the event to. A mildly unusual or shocking event will be told to many people. A very shocking event of high strangeness will be told to few people or practically none at all. Occasionally the event is so shockingly unusual that it isn’t even reported to the person’s conscious mind but is buried in the unconscious of the person where it is only accessible to hypnosis…” Jacques Vallee is of course well known as a UFO researcher and the concepts described in the classified NSA document are detailed in his 1975 book The Invisible College.

The heavily censored NSA document also introduces us to the concept of “surprise material”. UFOs, a phenomenon publically ridiculed and rejected by science, had been placed by the NSA analyst in the same category as major historical threatening events. The appendix section of this extraordinary document includes two pages of historical examples of “Blindness to Surprise Material Causing Defect” (eg. Pearl Harbor, the Maginot Line, and the Normandy Invasion). It is important to note that UFOs, in this classified NSA document, are being treated as similar to major threatening events, and not as a trivial aberration!

The second NSA document, written in 1968, bears the provocative title “UFO Hypothesis and Survival Questions” and contained the following intriguing points:

It is the purpose of this monograph to consider briefly some of the human survival implications suggested by the various principal hypotheses concerning the nature of the phenomena loosely categorized as UFO.
1. All UFOs Are Hoaxes… If UFOs, contrary to all indications and expectations, are indeed hoaxes – hoaxes of a world-wide dimension – hoaxes of increasing frequency, then a human mental aberration of alarming proportions would appear to be developing. Such an aberration would seem to have serious implications for nations equipped with nuclear toys – and should require immediate and careful study by scientists.

2. All UFOs are Hallucinations… In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, if UFOs did turn out to be largely illusionary the psychological implications for man would certainly bring into strong question his ability to distinguish reality from fantasy. The negative effect on man’s ability to survive in an increasingly complex world would be considerable – making it imperative that such a growing impairment of the human capacity for rational judgment be subject immediate and thorough scientific study so that the illness could be controlled before it reaches epidemic proportions…

3. All UFOs Are Natural Phenomena. If this hypothesis is correct, the capacity of air warning systems to correctly diagnose an attack situation is open to serious question…

4. Some UFOs Are Secret Earth Projects … Undoubtedly all UFOs should be carefully scrutinized to ferret out such enemy (or “friendly”) projects. Otherwise a nation faces the very strong possibility of being intimidated by a new secret “doomsday” weapon.

5. UFOs Are Related to Intra-terrestrial Intelligence. According to some eminent scientists closely associated with the study of this phenomenon, this hypothesis cannot be disregarded. (The well documented sightings over Washington DC in 1952 strongly support this view.) This hypothesis has a number of far-reaching human survival implications:

If they discover you, it is an old but hardly invalid rule of thumb, they are your technological superiors…The “inferior” is usually subject to physical conquest…”

6. Comment: Although this paper has hardly exhausted the possible hypotheses related to the UFO phenomena, those mentioned above are the principal ones presently put forward. All of them have serious survival implications. The final answer to this mystery will probably include more than one of the above hypotheses…

It would seem a little more of this survival attitude is called for in dealing with the UFO problem…

Perhaps the UFO question might even make man undertake studies which could enable him to construct a society which is more conducive to developing a completely human being, healthy in all respects of mind and body and, most important, able to recognize and adapt to real environmental situations.”

We are told that these 2 NSA documents, written by the same NSA analyst
were;

draft documents (which) were never published, formally issued, acted upon. or responded to by any government official or agency. Moreover, they are not NSA/CSS [Central Security Service – B.C.] reports and in no way reflect an official NSA/CSS position concerning UFOs. They are subject to the provisions of the FOIA only because they have been retained by this agency for historical reference purposes.
It puzzled me that despite the apparent fact that the NSA shreds something of the order of 40 tons of documents per day, why had not these 2 documents and all the other NSA documents found the same fate? Although they were apparently retained for “historical reference purposes” only, one is tempted to argue they were preserved because of their significance.

Howard Blum, a former award winning journalist for The New York Times, identifies the author of the “surprise material” and “UFO Hypothesis and Survival Questions” documents as Lambros D. Callimahos. Callimahos was an= almost legendary figure within the National Security Agency and the field of cryptology. He founded the Dundee Society – a secret society within the NSA, which proselytized from within that UFOs had probably already visited Earth. According to Blum, the NSA has since 1972 been “secretly monitoring and often assessing worldwide allegations of UFO activity.” The 1973 DEFCON 3 SIGINT episode in Australia was an extraordinary example.

During 1982, a US District Court ruled that the NSA did not have to accede to a Freedom of Information Act request to supply a civilian group – Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS) – with hundreds of UFO documents in its possession. The ruling stated that the release of the documents “could seriously jeopardize the work of the agency and the security of the United States.” With regard to the balance between public interest about UFOs and the NSA’s need for secrecy, the court further ruled that “public interest in disclosure is far outweighed by the sensitive nature of the materials and the obvious effect on national security their release may well entail.” The court judge only had access to a 21 page in-camera affidavit presented by NSA’s Office of Policy chief. He was never made privy to the original document covered by the affidavit, which itself was classified “TOP SECRET ______” – “TOP SECRET UMBRA”, I assume – meaning that the information was of the highest SIGINT sensitivity. UFO researchers were only allowed to see a heavily censored version of the affidavit, indeed out of the 582 lines present, 412 were either totally or partially blacked out.

The classified NSA affidavit did state that the UFO material was related to intercepted communications of foreign governments or SIGINT operations and therefore were properly classified. A date appears in the heavily censored report:

NSA – originated reports –
Thirty-eight documents are the direct product of NSA SIGINT operations and one document describes classified SIGINT activities. These documents can be further described as follows:

“________________________________________________________

“b. One record is a 1973 report which _________________________

_________________________________________________________”

The rest of the 5 line paragraph is censored. Given the SIGINT based coincidence with the UFO presence over North West Cape during a nuclear alert on October 25th, 1973, it seems reasonable to suspect that the censored paragraph refers to this event. The final telling point was that the Australian= Whitlam Labor government was not even promptly informed of the DEFCON 3 nuclear status, emanating from Australian soil. This led Whitlam to say the US bases in Australia were no longer sacrosanct, a position that had him completely at odds with the US intelligence community. All this and a provocative UFO report in the middle of it!

1978 AND THE RAAF

The RAAF were not prepared for 1978. When the year had ended some 30 incidences remained classed as “unknowns” giving a % unknowns of 25.4%. The year before although lower in actual numbers of as reports also yielded a similar figure, namely 24.0%. Previous years had been as low as 3.0% and had been at 2.1% and in 1972 up till then had been at an all time high of 12.6%. It is therefore not surprising that the Department of Defense ceased publishing the annual Summaries with the appearance of Summary No.9 for the year 1977.
The disappearance of Frederick Valentich while flying a Cessna across Bass Strait on October 21st,1978, dominated the year. 1978 was still an extraordinary year based on the holdings in the official RAAF files. Some of the highlights were an extraordinary phenomenon seen in a cane field east of Mandurana, Queensland, for 3 hours on December 6th; a UFO sighting by crew on HMAS Adroit on April 11th; an apparent “electromagnetic” case north of Goulburn, NSW, on October 22nd, which left the car speed indicator broken; a “daylight disc” seen near Laverton Air Force base on December 27th; a very close encounter between a “mini-bus” like UFO and a taxi driver in Wavell Heights, Aspley, Queensland, on October 10th, 1978 ; and a large disc shaped UFO with “portholes”, one of which allegedly had a shadow or silhouette behind it, at Heathcoate Road, near Menai, NSW, on October 29th.

By way of example, on April 11th, 1978, crew of HMAS Adroit operating out of Darwin, observed at 1123171K in position 1205 south 12954 East, a UFO bearing 285 degrees and appearing to “rise and hover and sink to the horizon several times before finally disappearing beyond the horizon. This object appeared very large and bathed with bright red lights and at one stage appeared to close (on) the ship… The light also appeared at one stage to flicker on and off. This phenomenon lasted several minutes…” The Royal Australian Naval officer reporting the sighting stated, “There is no possibility that (this) sighting was the moon setting and I believe (it) to have (been) caused by a UFO.” The event is officially listed as “unknown”.

It was the extraordinary disappearance of pilot Frederick Valentich over Bass Strait on October 21st, 1978, that thrust the subject of UFOs into the news headlines around the world. The Valentich mystery has endured as an insoluble enigma. The crux of the mystery is just what happened to the young pilot and his 182 Cessna light aircraft – VH – DSJ (Delta Sierra Juliet) – during that October evening. The circumstances behind the total disappearance of both pilot and plane have since been elevated into one of the premier mysteries of aviation and for many one of the most intriguing elements of the UFO phenomenon.

The fact that the mystery has lasted so long is a direct result of the incredible aspects at the heart of the affair. Twenty year-old Frederick Valentich, 47 minutes into what should have been a routine 69 minute flight from Moorabin, Victoria, to King Island, reported in a radio conversation with Melbourne Flight Service Unit controller, Steve Robey, of seeing an unidentified “aircraft” near him.

Apart from a very early attempt to suggest that Frederick Valentich may have been flying upside down, totally disorientated, with lighthouse lights producing his perception of an “unidentified aircraft”, the Australian Department of Aviation has never officially addressed the question of what Valentich may have been observing prior to his disappearance.

I tried to extract from the Department their opinion.

At first the then Assistant Secretary (Air Safety Investigation), Mr. G.V. Hughes, advised me that he was not clear as to what was meant by my expression, “…the stimulus of Valentich’s apparent UFO observation…”

“However, a great deal of consideration has been given to what Mr. Valentich might have been looking at when he described his observations. A considerable number of suggestions have been put forward by persons inside and outside this Department. All have been examined. The Department is not aware of any other official body having undertaken such an investigation into this occurrence,” Mr. Hughes wrote.

However, when it came to an official investigation of a possible UFO connection, a veritable bureaucratic “Catch-22” loomed large. Mr. Hughes advised me, “As you correctly state …, the RAAF is responsible for the investigation of reports concerning ‘UFO’ sightings, and liaison was established with the RAAF on these aspects of the investigation. The decision as to whether or not the ‘UFO’ report is to be investigated rests with the RAAF and not with this Department.”

At the time I was fortunately in a position to get a clearer picture of the RAAF role in the Valentich case. I had been given unprecedented direct access to the RAAF files. During my detailed explorations of the files in a number of visits to the Department of Defense in Canberra, I did not come across any documentation on the Valentich affair. The RAAF Intelligence Liaison Officer – DAFI told me that the RAAF did not investigate the affair because they were not asked to by the Department of Aviation! The RAAF saw it as more appropriately in the domain of an “air accident/air safety” enquiry. The Intelligence officer also volunteered that his personal opinion was that pilot disorientation was involved.

In November, 1982, I was finally given official permission to examine the Department of Aviation UFO files, but was specifically denied access to the Valentich files on the grounds that they were Air Accident Investigation files and not UFO files. Mr. Hughes of Air Safety elaborated:

“the file concerning this occurrence is no more or less restricted than any other accident investigation file. As a signatory to the International Convention on Civil Aviation, we subscribe to the Standards and Recommended Practices contained in Annex 13 to the Convention, in respect of aircraft accident investigation, specifically, when it is considered that the disclosure of records, for the purposes other than accident prevention, might have an adverse effect on the availability of information in that or any future investigation, such records are considered privileged.”
While in Melbourne examining the Aviation Department’s UFO files, I was able to have a lengthy discussion on the Valentich affair with Mr. A. Woodward, the signatory on the official Aircraft Accident Investigation Summary Report, dated May 27th, 1982. He largely reiterated the official department line, emphasizing that they were treating the matter as only an “air accident” investigation. He dwelt on a long list of prosaic explanations ranging from disorientation, suicide, to the unlikely prospect of the plane being struck by a meteorite, but conceded that the affair was still unresolved.

It appears that the RAAF’s enthusiasm for the UFO controversy diminished sharply after 1977 and 1978. The whole problem was getting unwieldy and unmanageable. Controversy rather than resolution was at every turn. At this time getting any sort of information out of the RAAF was difficult. Letters were either not answered or replies skirted the substance of enquiries.

A letter I wrote in April, 1980, drew the following internal exchanges:

“11/4 A/ADRR –
Re reply, I believe there is a policy of not providing information on UFOs – Is this true?”
“A/ADPR (Press) :
Could you please get a policy sorted out with DAFI in [sic? – B.C.] whether we should continue to answer such enquiries? I think we are obliged to, particularly when FoI comes in [a reference to the Australian Freedom of Information Act- B.C.], but I think you were going to discuss the matter with [unclear-B.C.] at one stage.”

“DAFI :
I still presume we are still in the UFO business. If so, could I have a suitable reply to pass on to Mr. Chalker, please (14.4.80).”

As it turned out a reply was not forthcoming for a further 5 months.

“NOT SO ‘ALIEN’ HONEYCOMB”

Alien Honeycomb – the first solid evidence for UFOs” by John Pinkney and Leonard Ryzman was published during 1980. It professed to tell the story of a UFO explosion near Greenbank, Queensland, which led the authors to recovering some of the debris. They claimed it contained “unknown elements and configurations”. The book reveal no details about chemical analyses and the authors resisted any attempt at confirmatory, independent analysis.
They were only prepared to have their material examined by the United Nations. The story that allegedly connects the debris to a UFO is fragmentary and dubious. In fact not enough information was given to verify a clear correlation. Subsequent investigation indicated the original discovery of the material by locals was covered by the Brisbane Telegraph on November 13th, 1970. The authors tried to link the debris with a sighting of a “flare” like “UFO” back in about 1966.

Pinkney and Ryzman indicated that most of the material was retrieved by RAAF officers, and then clandestinely dispatched to Pentagon testing laboratories. They presented absolutely no evidence to back that statement up. The only reference to “Alien Honeycomb” I found in the RAAF files were internal memoranda from 1980. DEFAIR CANBERRA wrote to HQOC – SOINT on August 1st, 1980, regarding “Confirmation of Data in Book ‘Alien Honeycomb'”:

The text of the book is sufficiently vague to make tracing information from service records a very tiring and difficult task. A check of files held at Air Force Office has proven negative.
Unfortunately, a ‘no comment’ or ‘no information’ response from the RAAF is only going to encourage this type of journalism. Accordingly, it is requested that HQOC initiate a check of records (including those of HQ AMB) [Amberley – B.C.] for data which could relate to this matter.

A telex dated September 5, 1980, and categorized as “unclassified/routine”, from HQOC to DEFAIR Canberra, stated:

Further to ref A the following is retrans of info received from HQ AMB. Quote:
1. Summaries of unidentified aerial sightings prepared by Dept of Air between mid 1968 and mid 1969 have been checked for mention of the case. No mention of that particular sighting appears in the summaries.

2. This is unusual because it is our understanding that the summaries were comprehensive and not edited lists of reported sightings.

3. Unless requested by command the HQ does not propose to take this matter further.

I didn’t see any evidence of a dark, pervasive cover-up there. Other RAAF files refer to retrieval of mundane debris, but none refer to the Greenbank “alien honeycomb”. More likely the key to this affair is languishing, not in a UFO or UAS file, but in aircraft accident files.

As an industrial chemist and someone who was promoting serious research into possible physical evidence for UFOs, I was interested in finding out more when the book first appeared. The authors did not assist independent research into their material. Based on visual assessments I had concluded the material was AEROWEB high strength honeycomb, some of which is made from fiberglass – a clearly human-sourced material. Soon other researchers, such as Paul Hebron, of UFO Research (Queensland), had acquired samples of the material from the site in question. A researcher working for skeptic Dick Smith received some of the “alien honeycomb” from the same person who provided the authors with their material. A clear relationship was established between this material and the material held by Pinkney and Ryzman. Dick Smith financed an analysis through Unisearch laboratories, and not surprisingly confirmed that the “alien honeycomb” was not so alien – it was fiberglass! So much for “the first solid evidence of UFOs.” More compelling examples of unusual debris or material related to UFO events have been documented. However in this case it was clear that the material had nothing to do with UFOs.

RAAF “OPERATION CLOSE ENCOUNTER”

The next major wave of sightings occurred in the middle of 1983. There was a spate of essentially nocturnal lights, supported in some cases by photos, around Bendigo and Ballarat, Victoria, during May. A spate of activity including some apparent close encounters, occurred in NSW, during June and early July, against a back drop of probably spurious radar returns at Sydney airport. The RAAF initiated, with perhaps tongue in cheek, what their UFO files called “Operation Close Encounter”, which lead to RAAF aircraft being on standby, to pursue any verified correlated returns. They finally concluded the returns were probably spurious. The lack of a coherent threat solidified the official position that much of their involvement in the UFO controversy fell well outside the RAAF’s military/security domain.
The UFO wave of 1983 saw the RAAF being remarkably public in their role of examining UFO sightings, indeed at a level virtually unprecedented in the history of the Australian controversy. An uncharitable interpretation of these developments is that the RAAF wanted to be seen to be doing it’s “job”.

During June and July, 1983, there was a rash of puzzling radar “paints” from Sydney Airport (Mascot). More than 30 unidentified radar returns were recorded. None were correlated with any visual sightings. When word leaked out, widespread media attention occurred.

THE MELTON – ROCKBANK UFO SECURITY BREACH

A bizarre night time game of “tag” and “pursuit” lasting several hours, and involving police, occurred at Melton, Victoria, on July 22nd, 1983.
This event caused great consternation in official circles, principally because during the evening’s events the Army signal unit was alerted that their security had been breached. Constable Raymond Ellens was in a police divisional van with Constable Peter Ferguson, involved in the on and off pursuit of the strange intruders. Constable Ellens stated in his official report:

At about 5.00 am we again sighted the object to the east of our position. Sunshine 311 were still in attendance. We observed the object traveling directly towards our position. Between the object and our position was the Australian Army Rockbank Receiving Station. The object appeared to be traveling slowly directly towards the antenna array. At this time the object appeared to be below the height of the antenna and if it continued on its path a collision would have occurred. The object then turned about and started to arc again to the north. After a few minutes we again lost sight of the object over the far horizon.
Sergeant Barry Harman of Melton police station witnessed the strange craft in close proximity to the station:

“Both Inspector Hickman and myself then ran onto the roadway of Palmerston street in front of the Melton Police Station, and immediately I looked into the direction of the Regional shopping center and observed the object.
“My immediate observation was that of two large round lights, very similar to the lights of a motor car, approximately 40 cm in diameter and approx. 3 – 5 meters apart, approaching the police station at a very low altitude of approx. 100 to 150 meters. This object appeared to be maintaining an even altitude and speed and direction towards the police station…. As the object passed by, I gain the impression of the shape of the object to be similar to an inflatable life raft approximately 12 meters in length, with rounded sides, and a shallow body of approximately 2 meters in depth. A red flashing light, not rotating, was situated in about the center of the undercarriage. There was no visible wings or tail similar to an aircraft, nor was there any sound similar to an aircraft or helicopter. The only sound audible was that of a very quiet wind noise….”

Constable Ferguson gave this description:

“The object then proceeded from over Melton in an easterly direction directly towards our position. As the object got closer and eventually passed directly over head we shinned the spotlight onto its underside and observed it to be of gun metal grey in color and to have the appearance of a very large rubber raft with two lights inset in the front and two white lights on the rear and a red flashing light in the center. The underside appeared to be slightly curved and the side .. panels (were slightly) curved also. The object was approximately 30 feet in length and was approximately 20 wide. The object made a low pitched humming sound and appeared to be traveling at about 70 to 80 kph. The object was approximately 200 feet above us and was illuminated by the spotlight.”
The evenings events were well witnessed. Earlier the object had briefly appeared on Tullamarine radar. The officers had also sighted the object on the ground near a paddock at the rear of the Toolern Vale Stud. Constables Ellens and Ferguson inspected the paddocks in the area but could find nothing.

Here we have a complex multiple witnessed affair involving possibly two separate objects, one of a structured lattice appearance and the other, the “inflatable” craft described above. I spoke with some of the officers soon after the incident and was impressed with the seemingly bizarre nature of the affair. John Auchettl, then with VUFORS, went out to Melton the next day. There was extensive interest and presence from army, transport and police officials. John undertook a detailed investigation. He still regards it as a very unusual and strange event, particularly because of the apparent “backing up” of the UFO when a collision seemed imminent with the Rockbank aerial array, the slow speed involved while it seemed to be chasing the police at times and the curious aspect of the UFO seeming to “crash land” at one point and seemingly disappear into the ground. John indicated that this was not (in army parlance) a “dead ground” effect, it was as if the object had been “absorbed” into the ground. And yet we have clear and unambiguous evidence of real object, tracked briefly on radar.

The intelligence world was in an uproar because the Rockbank site was an Australian Signal Intelligence facility, where Defense Signals Directorate (DSD) monitoring occurs as part of our UKUSA SIGINT intelligence alliance. The site is linked with the nearby Watsonia facility which has direct satellite communications with the NSA and CIA. In this light, one can understand the acute sensitivities with the security “breach” that occurred that night. In intelligence parlance, one could suggest that the Melton UFO showed “clear intent” in its intrusion at the DSD Rockbank aerial array. We probably don’t know the full story of that nights events.

THE RAAF’S CHANGE IN UFO POLICY

The RAAF used the lack of a coherent threat in their 1983 “Operation Close Encounter” to finally resolve their ongoing dilemma – that much of their public involvement in the UFO controversy fell well outside the RAAF’s military/security domain. What of the “breaches” at North West Cape in 1973 and at Rockbank in 1983? Both incidents had clear links to the clandestine world of military intelligence. Predictably it was not long before the RAAF changed their UFO policy.
The Defense News Release of May 2nd, 1984 carried the details:

WEDNESDAY. MAY 2 1984 NO 80/84
UNUSUAL AERIAL SIGHTINGS – RAAF CHANGE IN POLICY

The RAAF in future will investigate fully only those Unusual Aerial Sightings (UAS) which suggest a defense or national security implication.

The Minister for Defense, Mr Gordon Scholes, said today that while the RAAF would continue to be the first point of contact, UAS reports not considered to have a defense or security implication would not be further investigated. Instead they would be recorded and the UAS observer would be given the address of civilian UAS research organizations if the observer wished to pursue the matter further.

Mr Scholes said that in the past the RAAF’s investigation of all UAS reports had often proved time consuming, unproductive and had led to many man-hours of follow-up action by the RAAF and other agencies such as the Department of Aviation and the Bureau of Meteorology.

He said that procedures for investigating UAS reports had remained unchanged for many years. The vast majority of reports submitted by the public had proven not to have a national security significance.

This sparked an inevitable response from the nations media, with headlines like:

Gordon’s blow: No UFOs
(Daily Telegraph, Sydney)
No go for the average UFO
(Courier-Mail, Brisbane)

RAAF resets UFO targets
(Canberra Times)

RAAF gives up chase for UFOs
(West Australian, Perth)

UFO reports now have low rating
(Hobart Mercury)

RAAF turns back on UFO Investigations
(The Australian)

I responded to the RAAF’s policy change with a letter to the editor of one of Australia’s leading newspapers of record:

 

The Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday, May 19, 1984

RAAF now has correct UFO policy

SIR: The Defense Ministers recent announcement of the RAAF’s “new” policy on UFOs (or UASs) (Stay in Touch, May 3) is a logical and inevitable expression of the RAAF’s 34 year involvement in the UFO controversy.
As the first civilian to have been permitted direct access to the entirety of the RAAF’s UFO files, I can confirm that the whole history of the RAAF’s activity in this area has been based on two criteria logically, national security and, predictably, political expediency.

In the main, the RAAF UFO investigations have served there publicly stated purposes. That is, they may have allayed possible fear and alarm by the general public and satisfied the Government that there is no apparent defense implications.

The RAAF has stated “nothing that has arisen for the 3 or 4 per cent of unexplained cases gives any firm support for the belief that interlopers from other places in this world or outside it have been visiting us”. It is my contention, having examined many of those unexplained cases, that surprisingly many of them contain extraordinary details which do not lend themselves to easy explanation. These deserve to be the stuff of scientific scrutiny.

In the great majority of cases that make up this unexplained residue, national security implications were not clearly apparent. However in a few, violations are apparent. For example, on October 25, 1973, a UFO hovered near the sensitive North West Cape US Naval Communications base. It was observed by a US Lt-Commander and a base fire captain, before it “accelerated at unbelievable speed and disappeared to the north”. The US experience is similar. For example an alleged UFO ostensibly showed “clear intent” (according to previously classified documents) when observed hovering near a weapons storage facilities at Loring Air Force Base late in 1975.

Therefore, I believe the recent change in policy is an appropriate one for the RAAF to adopt. It will allow the RAAF to weed out those rare occasions in which national security violations are suggested and also allow civilian groups to attempt scientific investigations of the infrequent “close encounters” that the RAAF prefers to ignore.

Bill Chalker,
May 9, 1984
The end of September, 1984, saw an embarrassing incident for the government’s “new” UFO policy. Having “down-graded” their interest, due to an alleged lack of “national security” impact, a delta winged aircraft, which startled golfers and trail bike riders at Cunnamulla, in south-west Queensland, put the RAAF into a flap. The UFO was described as having no tail, no windows and no apparent sound. One witness reported it had “beautiful rainbow colors” and “seemed to zig zag like it was out of control” for a short time before disappearing. The object ostensibly remained unidentified.

The RAAF denied ownership. The matter was raised in the Senate of Australia’s parliament, leading the Senator representing the Defense Minister in the Senate, to confirm that the RAAF advised there had been no “known” delta-winged aircraft operating in the area at that time. “Beryl flying off course” was supplied as the only suggestion — a flippant reference to the Queensland premier’s pilot, Beryl Young.

Since then the RAAF have taken a relatively low profile in the UFO controversy but civilian researchers have benefited in that reports coming to the RAAF have been passed onto them. Even an abduction case, located near Jindabyne, NSW, was referred to my group by the RAAF. I have even had RAAF officers contacting me reporting their own UFO sightings.

AN INSIDER REVEALS THE RAAF
PARANORMAL EXPERIENCE

It came as a great surprise to many when the RAAF Senior Public Relations Officer in Canberra, Ken Llewelyn, wrote a book about “Incredible true stories of airmen on the earth plane and beyond” – Flight into the Ages.
The book, released in February, 1992, carried the disclaimer that it did not represent the official view of the RAAF on paranormal activities. It described ghost encounters, past lives, psychic experiences, and most interestingly of all, as far as this history is concerned, accounts of UFO experiences. Ken Llewelyn covered the Valentich disappearance and the apparent UFO connections. He also described Shamus O’Farrell’s classic radar visual encounter and detailed a number of other less well known accounts.

One of Ken Llewelyn’s sources was former RAAF pilot, Dave Barnes. He gave details of an extraordinary event that took place at Amberley RAAF Base, in the late 1970s. More than 20 airmen saw “a large UFO hovering above the runway”, at about 5.00 am. The object was described as being an inverted cone shape. Barnes also indicated he had spoken to Aboriginal elders near the Maralinga atomic bomb test site, about their dreamtime and min min lights. The aboriginals had often seen high speed lights north of Maralinga.

Another of Ken Llewelyn’s prominent sources was Group Captain Tom Dalton-Morgan. He had been part of a combined Royal Air Force and United States Air Force committee in the late 1940s investigating UFO sightings. It had concluded that most reports could be explained except for three per cent which remained unexplained. Dalton-Morgan was the Officer in Charge of Range Operations at Woomera between 1959 and 1963. In about the late 1950s, shortly before the test firing of a Black Knight rocket, he received a radio call from Percy Hawkins, the Recovery Officer, reporting an exceptional bright light at about 5000 feet traveling at high speed directly towards the test site. Dalton-Morgan and his team, who were 80 to 90 miles SE of Hawkins position, were able to view the incoming light from their elevated control building position. They watched it fly in from the NW, then orbit around the range buildings some 5 miles to the south. When the UFO was east of the control building, it seemed to accelerate and climb very steeply away to the NE. Dalton-Morgan concluded,

“I am unable to conceive of any object, plane or missile during my posting to Woomera that was able to perform the maneuvers seen by my team. Observers at the control tower and the launch site all agreed on the brilliant white-greenish light; the high degree of maneuverability, including rate and angle of climb; complete lack of sound; the lack of positive identification of the vehicle fuselage because it was a dark moonless night; and the exceptionally high speed of which it was capable.”
Ken Llewelyn told me that his book was like “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” in official circles — an underground popular book even at high levels. Beyond his controversial, but fascinating book, I questioned him on a number of matters. In response to the perennial charges of cover-ups, he said he had such regular and sufficient contact at high levels in the RAAF to be certain that there was no evidence of hidden cells of high power involvement in the UFO mystery. He appreciated that many people, particularly a lot of UFO researchers and enthusiasts, did not believe this position. He indicated that as of 1992, the current intelligence head was emphatic that there was nil real interest since 1984 and even prior to that. It was felt there was just not enough man power and resources, and no really compelling material to sustain high level interest.

Despite the O’Farrell encounter, the numerous reports of military personnel, such as the 1978 HMAS Adroit report, sightings from witnesses of the caliber of Dalton-Morgan and others, and the high level “sub rosa” interest of scientists like Harry Turner (JIB), Dr. John Farrands and George Barlow (DSTO), and Dr. Michael Duggin (CSIRO), the military ethic was entrenched and the inevitable decline was well underway. The RAAF’s exorcism of “the UFO problem” was reaching its denouement.

THE RAAF UFO “SWANSONG”?

During December, 1993, the RAAF formerly concluded its long love-hate relationship with UFOs, or “Unusual Aerial Sightings” (UAS) as they preferred to call them. The Department of Defense “swansong” was dryly expressed in Enclosure 1 to Air Force file AF 84 3508 Pt 1 folio 18 – RAAF POLICY: UNUSUAL AERIAL SIGHTINGS. In correspondence dated January 4, 1994, civilian UFO groups around Australia were informed by-now Wing Commander Brett Biddington (of the 1983 “Operation Close Encounter” caper fame), on behalf of the Chief of Air Staff, that “The number of reports made to the RAAF in the past decade had declined significantly, which may indicate that organizations such as yours are better known and are meeting the community’s requirements.”
The “new” policy, which was an inevitable outgrowth of the downgrading of the RAAF’s role back in 1984, stated:

For many years the RAAF has been formally responsible for handling Unusual Aerial Sightings (UAS) at the official level. Consideration of the scientific record suggests that, whilst not all UAS have a ready explanation, there is no compelling reason for the RAAF to continue to devote resources to recording, investigating and attempting to explain UAS.
The RAAF no longer accepts reports on UAS and no longer attempts assignment of cause or allocation of reliability. Members of the community who seek to report a UAS to RAAF personnel will be referred to a civil UFO research organization in the first instance…

Some UAS may relate to events that could have a defense, security, or public safety implication, such as man-made debris falling from space or a burning aircraft. Where members of the community may have witnessed an event of this type they are encouraged to contact the police or civil aviation authorities.

Given the rich history of political and military machinations that quite often effectively prevented opportunities for real science, the policy statement alluding to “the scientific record” is particularly perplexing. As a scientist who has examined in detail the RAAF “record” I can state with some certainty that their record was not particularly scientific and was largely defined by two criteria — national security and political expediency. You have seen evidence in the history I have written where science rarely got a look in, despite courageous and persistent “sub rosa” efforts by scientists like Harry Turner and Michael Duggin. In examining the official record I share with these scientists the sense of lost opportunities.

If the Department of Defense had a sense of an efficient “burial” of “the UFO problem” someone had forgotten to inform the alleged corpse. The UFO phenomenon has never really passed away, but you would be forgiven for believing it has had many resurrections. Remarkable events continue to occur, providing a challenging testament to the legitimacy of the UFO phenomenon.

THE RAAF UFO DATA

Over 1,612 reports have been received by the RAAF from between 1950 and until June, 1984. The actual figure is somewhat greater due to incomplete records and scattered omissions from the Summary reports periodically produced by the RAAF between 1965 and 1980. Accurate figures for the period 1950 and 1954 are not possible, due to the loss of the original files.
It is possible to give a rough statistical breakdown of the RAAF’s “total” investigations from 1950 to June, 1984. This needs to be broken up into 4 periods, due to different sources of information and lack of official “unknown” percentages outside the period from 1960 to 1980 inclusive.

 

THE RAAF UFO DATA 

Over 1,612 reports have been received by the RAAF from between 1950 and until June, 1984. The actual figure is somewhat greater due to incomplete records and scattered omissions from the Summary reports periodically produced by the RAAF between 1965 and 1980. Accurate figures for the period 1950 and 1954 are not possible, due to the loss of the original files.It is possible to give a rough statistical breakdown of the RAAF’s “total” investigations from 1950 to June, 1984. This needs to be broken up into 4 periods, due to different sources of information and lack of official “unknown” percentages outside the period from 1960 to 1980 inclusive.

 

PERIOD 1 (1950 – 1954): 

 

YEAR	No.	No. “unknown”	% “unknown”
1950	3	0	0
1951	4	2	50%
1952	5	0	0
1953	13	2	15.4%
1954	38	8	20.0%

Records for this period are incomplete with the only surviving records being the previously secret “1954 Report on “Flying Saucers”” prepared for the Directorate of Air Force Intelligence (DAFI) at their request by nuclear physicist, Harry Turner, as a “scientific appreciation” of their reports. Some of reports from this period survive in the old Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) UFO files which were examined by me during November, 1982, at the Melbourne offices of the Bureau of Air Safety Investigation. The total for 1954 is made up 35 from the “1954 Report” plus 3 additional reports, namely 2 from the Ballarat School of Radio and the classic radar visual event over Goulburn, NSW, involving a Naval Sea Fury aircraft. Only the latter is included as an “unknown” in addition to those cited in the “1954 Report”.

 

PERIOD 2 (1955 – 1959): 

 

YEAR	No.	No. “unknown”	% “unknown”
1955	3	0	0
1956	9	1	11.1%
1957	14	2	14.2%
1958	7	1	14.3%
1959	24	2	8.3%

 

Records for only the latter part of 1955 are present in the extant DAFI files I examined. Reports for 1956 to 1959 appear to be somewhat incomplete. The “unknown” figures are my own estimates and therefore should not be regarded as official figures.

 

PERIOD 3 (1960 – 1980)This is the only period in which official “unknown” figures can be supplied, as based on the Unusual Aerial Sighting Summaries, nos. 1 to 12. Summaries nos. 10, 11 and 12 were not generally released but were supplied to me, during my file review in 1982, by the RAAF.

 

BREAKDOWN OF RAAF UFO INVESTIGATIONS

YEAR	Total No. of reports	No. “Unknowns:	% “Unknowns”	Source of Information
1960	20	0	0.0	Summary No. 1
1961	14	0	0.0	Summary No. 1
1962	25	0	0.0	Summary No. 1
1963	17	0	0.0	Summary No. 1
1964	17	1	5.9	Summary No. 1
1965	52	2	3.9	Summary No. 1
1966	74	1	1.4	Summary No. 1
1967	95	0	0.0	Summary No. 1
1968	101	0	0.0	Summary No. 1
1969	94	2	2.1	Summary No. 2
1970	37	4	10.8	Summary No. 3
1971	52	6	11.5	Summary No. 3
1972	87	11	12.6	Summary No. 4
1973	193	4	2.1	Summary No. 5
1974	67	2	3.0	Summary No. 6
1975	39	4	10.2	Summary No. 7
1976	39	4	10.2	Summary No. 8
1977	25	6	24.0	Summary No. 9
1978	118	30	25.4	Summary No. 10
1979	45	15	33.3	Summary No. 11
1980	47	10	21.3	Summary No. 12
TOTAL	1258	102	8.1%     (average)

 

Some “unknowns” are not included due to low weight status, i.e. insufficient information or possible explanation provided was probable.

 

PERIOD 4 (1981-1984)Only actual numbers of reports on file with the RAAF can be supplied based on personal file inspections and DAFI advice:

 

 

		YEAR		Total No. of reports
		1981		44
		1982		56
		1983		117
		1984*		15	( *up till June 1984)

 

 

---

 

THE CIVILIAN UFO DATA

To properly put the RAAF data into perspective, consider the following. From 1950 to 1984, the RAAF dealt with more than 1,612 reports, and 1,258 from 1960 to 1980.One of the best civilian groups in Australia, the Tasmanian UFO Investigation Center (TUFOIC), has been keeping valuable statistics on their investigations for years. For one small Australian state alone, they have dealt with 2,131 reports up to and including 1980. The period 1960 to 1980 has been chosen as it is the only period for which the RAAF have published data. The following table compares the data.

 

 

Organization	Total No. of reports.	Total No. of “unknowns”	% “unknowns”
RAAF	1,258	102	8.1%
TUFOIC	1,681	390	23.2%

It is quite apparent that compared to civilian UFO research groups the RAAF has far less claim to having legitimately and comprehensively examined the UFO problem.

THE RAAF UAS*/UFO DATA* The RAAF prefers the more neutral term “UAS” or “Unusual Aerial Sighting”.

 

---

 

• THE BOIANAI VISITANTS OF 1959

 

• THE CRESSY AFFAIR

 

• THE CLASSIC WILLOW GROVE ENCOUNTER

 

• THE “FIRST” OFFICIAL “UNKNOWN” – THE ELECTROMAGNETIC
  LIGHT WHEEL NEAR GROOTE EYLANDT

 

• “THE THING ON THE BEACH”

 

• THE 1966 TULLY SAUCER “NEST”

 

• THE CANTERBURY CLOSE ENCOUNTER

 

• THE BURRENJUCK UFO

 

• THE NEBO ENCOUNTER

 

• FREDERICK VALENTICH AND DELTA SIERRA
  JULIET – VANISHED?

---

 

 

THE BOIANAI VISITANTS OF 1959

 

In 1959 Papua New Guinea was still a territory of Australia. June of that year saw the spectacular “entity” sightings of Reverend Gill and members of his Boainai mission.Reverend Gill made notes about the experience and sent a copy of his own report – 8 closely typed foolscap pages – to Rev. Crutwell at Menapi Mission, who in turn sent a copy to Mr. D. H. Judge, a Brisbane member of the Queensland Flying Saucer Research Bureau. The report was released to the media and accounts appeared in the media during mid August, 1959, causing a sensation.

I was privileged to have had two extended opportunities to interview Reverend Gill and discuss the events at Boianai. I was impressed with his quiet and certain manner in relating the events.

To maintain the integrity of the original events I have quoted from the Reverend William Gills own account. Only the day before he had composed a letter to the Reverend David Durie, Acting Principal of St. Aidan’s College, Dogura, to accompany a report and statement regarding a UFO sighting made by Stephen Moi, an assistant teacher at the mission on June 21st, 1959:

Dear David,
Have a look at this extraordinary data. I am almost convinced about the “visitation” theory. There have been quite a number of reports over the months, from reliable witnesses. The peculiar thing about these most recent reports is that the UFO’s seem to be stationary at Boianai or to travel from Boianai. The Mt. Pudi vicinity seems to be the hovering area. I myself saw a stationary white light twice on the same night on April 9th, but in a different place each time. I believe your students have also sighted one over Boianai. The A.D.O., Bob Smith and Mr. Glover have all seen it, or similar ones on different occasions – again, over Boianai, although I think the Baniara people said they watched it travel across the sky from our direction. I should think that this is the first time that the “saucer” has been identified as such.I do not doubt the existence of these “things” (indeed I cannot now that I have seen one for myself) but my simple mind still requires scientific evidence before I can accept the from-outer-space theory. I am inclined to believe that probably many UFO’s are more likely some for of electric phenomena – or perhaps something brought about by the atom bomb explosions, etc. That Stephen should actually make out a saucer could be the work of the unconscious mind as it is very likely that at some time he has seen illustrations of some kind in a magazine, or it is very possible that saucers do exist, but it is only a 50/50 chance that they are not earth made, still less that they should carry men (more likely radio controlled), and it is still unproven that they are solids.

It is all too difficult to understand for me; I prefer to wait for some bright boy to catch one to be exhibited in Martin Square.

Please return this report as I have no copy and I want Nor. [Rev. Norman Crutwell – B.C.] to have it.

Yours,
Doubting William

---

 

Anglican Mission
Boianai
27/6/59

Dear David,
Life is strange, isn’t it? Yesterday I wrote you a letter, (which I still intend sending you) expressing opinions re the UFO’s – Now, less than 24 hours later I have changed my views somewhat. Last night we at Boianai experienced about 4 hours of UFO activity, and there is no doubt whatsoever that they are handled by beings of some kind. At times it was absolutely breathtaking. Here is the report. Please pass it round, but great care must be taken as I have no other, and this, like the one I made out re Stephen, will be sent to Nor. I would appreciate it if you could send the lot back as soon as poss.

Cheers,
Convinced Bill

P.S. Do you think P. Moresby should know about this? (N. Cruttwell is at present in the Daga country and will not be returning home until 16th July at earliest.) If people think it worth while, I will stand the cost of a radio conversation if you care to make out a comprehensive report from the material on my behalf!! It’s interesting Territory news if nothing else.

 

W.B.G. 

---

 

26/6/59	U.F.O.	Boianai
	DATA (1)

 

 

Sky		Time (p. m.)
Patches of low cloud; clear over Dogura and Menapi		6.45		Sighted bright white light from front direction N.W.
		6.50		Call Stephen and Eric – Langford
		6.52		Stephen arrives. Confirms not star like other night. Coming closer, not so bright. Coming down 500 ft?, orange?, deep yellow?
		6.55		Send Eric to call people. One object on top, move – man? Now three men – moving, glowing, doing something on deck. Gone.
		7.00		Men 1 & 2 again.
		7.04		Gone again.
Cloud ceiling covered sky c. 2000′		7.10		Man 1, 3, 4, 2 (appeared in that order.) Thin elct. blue spot light. Men gone, spot light still there.
		7.12		Men 1 & 2 appeared – blue light.
		7.20		Spot light off, men go.
		7.20		UFO goes through cloud.
Clear sky here, heavy cloud over Dogura		8.28		UFO seen by me overhead. Call station people. Appeared to descend, get bigger. Not so big, but seemed nearer than before.
		8.29		Second seen over sea – hovering at times.
Clouds forming again		8.35		Another over Wadobuna village.
		?		Another to the east.
		8.50		Big one stationary and larger – the original (?) Others coming and going through clouds. As they descend through cloud, light reflected like large halo onto cloud – no more than 2000′, probably less. All UFO’s very clear – satellites? “Mother” ship still large, clear, stationary.
		9.05		Nos. 2, 3, 4 gone
		9.10		“Mother” ship gone – giving red light. No. 1 gone (overhead) into cloud.
		9.20		“Mother” back.
		9.30		“Mother” gone across sea towards Giwa – white, red, blue, gone.
		9.46		Overhead U.F.O. re-appears, is hovering.
		10.00		Still there, stationary
		10.10		Hovering, gone behind cloud.
		10.30		Very high, hovering in clear patch of sky between clouds.
		10.50		Very overcast, no sign of U.F.O.
		11. 4		Heavy rain
				1 Q A. !!!
				Data sheet of observation of U.F.O.’s 6.45 – 11.4 p.m.
				26/6/59
				(Sgd.) William B. Gill

 

---

As indicated by his notes made at the time and in numerous interviews, Rev. Gill saw a bright white light in the north western sky. It appeared to be approaching the mission. The object appeared to be hovering between three and four hundred feet up. Eventually 38 people, including Rev. Gill, Steven Gill Moi (a teacher), Ananias Rarata (a teacher) and Mrs. Nessie Moi, gathered to watch the main UFO, which looked like a large, disc-shaped object. It was apparently solid and circular with a wide base and narrower upper deck. The object appeared to have 4 “legs” underneath it. There also appeared to be about 4 “panels” or “portholes” on the side of the object, which seemed to glow a little brighter than the rest. At a number of intervals the object produced a shaft of blue light which shone upwards into the sky at an angle of about 45 degrees.

What looked like “men” came out of the object, onto what seemed to be a deck on top of the object. There were 4 men in all, occasionally 2, then one, then 3, then 4. The shaft of blue light and the “men” disappeared. The object then moved through some clouds. There were other UFO sightings during the night.

Rev. Gill described the weather at variable sky – scattered clouds to clear at first, becoming overcast after 10.10 pm. He estimated the height of the clouds at about 2,000 feet. The first sighting over the sea, according to Rev. Gill, seemed no more than 500 feet above the water at times. When the main UFO was at its closest point, Rev. Gill determined that the relative size at arms length was a full hand span or about 8 inches. He modified that estimate to 5 inches. It was clearly visible and seemed mostly stationary during 25 minutes of observation.

Astonishingly the aerial visitor put in a repeat performance the following night, June 27th. Rev. Gill prepared a statement:

Saturday, 27/6/59

Large U.F.O. first sighted by Annie Laurie at 6 p.m. in apparently same position as last night (26/6/59) only seemed a little smaller, when W.B.G. saw it at 6.02 p.m. I called Ananias and several others and we stood in the open to watch it. Although the sun had set it was still quite light for the following 15 minutes. We watched figures appear on top – four of them – no doubt that they are human. Possibly the same object that I took to be the “Mother” ship last night. Two smaller U.F.O’s were seen at the same time, stationary. One above the hills west, another overhead. On the large one two of the figures seemed to be doing something near the center of the deck – were occasionally bending over and raising their arms as though adjusting or “setting up” something (not visible). One figure seemed to be standing looking down at us (a group of about a dozen). I stretched my arm above my head and waved. To our surprise the figure did the same. Ananias waved both arms over his head then the two outside figures did the same. Ananias and self began waving our arms and all four now seemed to wave back. There seemed to be no doubt that our movements were answered. All mission boys made audible gasps (of either joy or surprise, perhaps both).

As dark was beginning to close in, I sent Eric Kodawara for a torch and directed a series of long dashes towards the U.F.O. After a minute or two of this, the U.F.O. apparently acknowledged by making several wavering motions back and forth. Waving by us was repeated and this followed by more flashes of torch, then the U.F.O. began slowly to become bigger, apparently coming in our direction. It ceased after perhaps half a minute and came no further. After a further two or three minutes the figures apparently lost interest in us for they disappeared “below” deck. At 6.25 p.m. two figures re-appeared to carry on with whatever they were doing before the interruption (?). The blue spot light came on for a few seconds twice in succession.”

 

Reverend Gill has described how he and the mission people called out to the men, even shouting at them, and beckoned them to descend, but there was no response beyond what has already been noted. Two smaller “UFOs” higher up remained stationary. By 6.30 p.m. the scene had remained largely unchanged. Rev. Gill records that he went to dinner. At 7.00 pm, the “No.1 UFO” was still present “but appeared somewhat smaller”. The group of observers went to Church for Evensong. After Evensong (about 7.45 pm) visibility was very limited with the sky covered in cloud. Nothing else was seen that evening. At 10.40 pm, a very penetrating “earsplitting” terrific explosion woke up people on the station. It sounded like it had come from just outside the window of the mission house. Rev. Gill felt it did not sound like a thunderclap. Nothing had been seen, but the whole sky was overcast. Other less compelling activity occurred the following night. Then it seemed the Boianai visitants had gone. The controversy had just begun.

Reverend Gill was at the time of his sightings already scheduled to return to Australia. This presented civilian groups with an excellent opportunity to assess the bonafides of the reports. All investigators found Gill to be very impressive. His credibility was enormous. This lead one of the leading civilian groups, the Victorian Flying Saucer Research Society, to view the Gill reports as constituting the most remarkable testimony of intensive UFO activity ever reported to civilian investigators in the entire history of UFO research. VFSRS indicated that they were unique because for the first time, credible witnesses had reported the presence of humanoid beings associated with UFOs. The VFSRS report concluded that the Boianai UFOs were advanced craft, manned by humanoid beings, capable of a fantastic aerodynamic performance. VFSRS now felt that UFO researchers no longer needed to enquire as to the nature of UFOs, now only their origin was to be determined.

The major civilian groups of the day, in a spirit of new found cooperation inspired by the significance of the Boianai observations, distributed copies of Reverend Gill’s own sighting report to all members of the House of Representatives of Australia’s federal parliament. A circular letter accompanied the report, signed by the presidents of the participating civilian UFO groups, urging members of parliament to press the Minister for Air for a statement about the attitude Air Force Intelligence had of the New Guinea reports.

On November 24th, 1959, in federal parliament, Mr. E.D. Cash, a Liberal politician from Western Australia asked the Minister for Air, Mr. F.M. Osborne, whether his department (specifically Air Force Intelligence) had investigated “reports of recent sightings of mysterious objects in the skies over Papua and New Guinea.” The Minister’s reply did not address this question, but instead he focused on the general situation indicating that most sightings were explained and “that only a very small percentage — something like 3 percent — of reported sightings of flying objects cannot be explained”.

Peter Norris, VFSRS president, was advised by the Directorate of Air Force Intelligence that the Department was awaiting “depth of evidence” on the New Guinea sightings. However the department hadn’t even interviewed Father Gill. Given the growing political fallout, the Minister for Defence requested a report on “the alleged sightings of UFOs in the Boianai area of NG by Rev. W.B. Gill.” The RAAF finally visited Rev. Gill on December 29th, 1959. Rev. Gill’s recollections of the visit were that the 2 RAAF officers from Canberra talked about stars and planets and then left. He indicates that he heard no more from them. The interviewing officer, Squadron Leader F.A. Lang, AI1 DAFI, concluded after what could have only been best described as a cursory investigation that:

“Although the Reverend Gill could be regarded as a reliable observer, it is felt that the June/July incidents could have been nothing more than natural phenomena coloured by past events and subconscious influences of UFO enthusiasts. During the period of the report the weather was cloudy and unsettled with light thunder storm. Although it is not possible to draw firm conclusions, an analysis of rough bearings and angles above the horizon does suggest that at least some of the lights observed were the planets Jupiter, Saturn and Mars. Light refraction, the changing position of the planets relative to the observer and cloud movement would give the impression of size and rapid movement. In addition varying cloud densities could account for the human shapes and their sudden appearance and disappearance”.

A close analysis of the reports argues powerfully that the RAAF “explanation” of “either known planets seen through fast moving cloud, or natural phenomena” was unsatisfactory.

Over the years there have been a number of attempts to explain the Boianai sightings, including astronomical misidentifications, hoax, cargo cult effects, and that Rev. Gill had myopia and astigmatism (Rev. Gill was wearing correctly prescribed glasses). None of these explanations have satisfactorily addressed the evidence. Astronomer and former US Air Force consultant, Dr. Allen Hynek, and his Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), went to great lengths to investigate and research the affair. Dr. Hynek and Allen Hendry, the then chief CUFOS investigator, concluded the “lesser UFOs’ are attributable to bright stars and planets, but not the primary object.” Its size and absence of movement over three hours ruled out an astronomical explanation. My own discussions with Rev. Gill led me to the same conclusion. Most recently there was an attempt at explaining the whole affair away as Rev. Gill and the other witnesses being confused by a false horizon, and that all they had been watching was a brightly lit squid-boat and crew too busy to do more than just wave at the people on shore. This idea is not tenable when one realises that Rev. Gill was certain that the object he saw was at a 30° elevation in the sky. Only a massive tidal wave might have elevated the horizon ocean line to have a boat high enough to fit that viewing perspective. I suspect Rev. Gill and the Papuans may have noticed that! A mirage is also not tenable given the circumstances of the event.

The Boianai visitations are even enshrined in a classic piece of Australian fiction. Award winning Australian novelist Randolph Stow’s 1979 book Visitants, which has the Boianai visitations as a backdrop to a striking story of confrontation and disintegration, emerged from Stow’s experience as a cadet patrol-officer in Papua-New Guinea. He was an assistant to the Government Anthropologist. His novel opens with this sentence: “On 26 June 1959, at Boianai in Papua, visitants appeared to the Reverend William Booth Gill, himself a visitant of thirteen years standing, and to thirty-seven witnesses of another color.”

The Boianai “visitants” still stand as remarkable evidence for an impressive aerial anomaly and are regarded as some of the best entity reports on record. At the time of writing I spoke again with Rev. Gill. He still remains puzzled by what he saw and was pleased that an authority like Dr. Hynek had independently interviewed him and some of the other witnesses and traveled to the site. While he accepts that the sightings remain unexplained, Rev. Gill questioned my characterization of some attempts to explain them as “silly”. He felt that these “explanations” were serious attempts to bring understanding to the events. I think that attitude encapsulates the integrity of Rev. Gill and the reality of the affair.

 

---

THE CRESSY AFFAIR 

The Cressy area of Tasmania became the center of a spectacular wave of sightings in October and November, 1960. An entirely credible witness was at the center of the milieu. Once again, an Anglican priest reported that he had seen a UFO. The Reverend Lionel Browning and his wife witnessed a fantastic sight from the dining room of the Cressy Anglican rectory on 4th October, 1960. A detailed account appeared in the Launceston Mercury of October 10th headlined “‘FLYING SAUCER’ SEEN AT CRESSY. Mysterious ships in the sky”. A succession of media stories followed elevating the sighting in to national prominence.Again, because of the undeniable credibility of the witness, the RAAF were in a difficult position in their efforts to contain the rapidly escalating public clamor.

Wing Commander Waller interviewed Rev. Browning and his wife on November 11th, at their Cressy home. Waller concluded that the couple were “stable, responsible and unexcitable individuals who would not perpetrate a hoax”, and were “genuinely and firmly convinced that they saw actual objects.” He confirmed this assessment in a letter to Dr. James McDonald, who undertook a retrospective investigation into the sighting during his 1967 Australian visit.

Wing Commander Waller’s report provided a statement based on the Reverend Browning written statement:

“He and his wife were standing in the dining room … looking out through the window at a rainbow over some low hills approximately 8 miles to the east. The hills, the highest of which are approximately 800 feet, were partly obscured by low cloud and rain. …(His) wife drew his attention to a long cigar shaped object which was emerging from a rain squall.”The object was a dull greyish color, had 4 or 5 vertical dark bands around its circumference … and had what looked like a short aerial array which projected outwards and upward from the northern facing end of the object. The object seemed to be slightly longer than Viscount aircraft which Mr. Browning frequently sees flying in that area and he therefore estimated the objects length as about one hundred feet. The outline of the object was well defined and was even more so a little later when it had as a backdrop the tree covered slopes of a rain free area of the hills…

“The object after emerging from the rain squall moved on an even keel in a northerly direction at an estimated speed of sixty to seventy MPH and at a constant height of approximately four hundred feet….(It) moved approximately one and a half miles north … and then abruptly stopped. Within seconds it was joined by five or six small saucer like objects which had emerged at high speed from the low cloud above and behind … (They) stationed themselves at positions around the cigar shaped object at a radius of one half of a mile and then, after an interval of several seconds the cigar shaped object accompanied by the smaller objects, abruptly reversed back towards and then into the rain squall from which it had emerged … In all, the cigar shaped object had been visible for approximately one minute…”

The Brownings watched the area for several more minutes but the objects did not reappear. Another person, a Mrs. D. Bransden, also witnessed the spectacle, describing it as like “a lot of little ships flocking around a bigger one”.

In a minute dated November 14th, 1960, the Director of DAFI (operations) reported to the Staff officer to the Australian government Minister of Air that “a preliminary analysis of the available information indicates that this sighting was some form of natural phenomena associated with the unsettled weather conditions.”

Wing Commander Waller, in a letter to Dr. James McDonald, indicated that the couple “impressed me as being mature, stable, and mentally alert individuals, who had no cause or desire to see objects in the sky other than objects of definite form and substance.” Such comments by the RAAF investigative officer are difficult to reconcile with the Air Force Intelligence statement released a few days after Wing Commander Waller’s interviews. It dismissed the observation as “a phenomena (caused by) a moon rise associated with meteorological conditions at the time.”   The intelligence report further stated,   “The presence of ‘scud’ type clouds, moving in varying directions due to turbulence in and around a rain squall near where the objects were sighted, and the position of the moon or its reflections, produced the impression of flying objects.”

Reverend Browning indicated that at no time during the 90 minute Air Force intelligence interview was he asked about clouds. He added, “At no time was there cloud or scud when I saw the objects. The mountain was not the backdrop to what I saw. The rain cleared in front of us although it was still raining near the mountains. I saw the objects in the sky where there was no rain and the rain near the mountains provided the backdrop…”

Dr. McDonald, an acknowledged international expert in meteorology and atmospheric physics concluded “the official suggestion …. seems entirely out of the question.”

The RAAF’s attempts to explain the Cressy sighting away were rather hollow, particularly given an intriguing sighting report I found buried in the DAFI UFO files. On November 15, 1960, some 50 kilometers north of Cressy, a United States Air Force JB-57 aircraft, operating out of East Sale RAAF base, encountered a UFO. The USAF pilot’s report in the RAAF UFO files stated:

“Approximately 1040 LCL while flying on a mission track 15 miles north of Launceston. My navigator ______ called out an aircraft approaching to our left and slightly lower.”Our altitude at the time was 40,000 feet, TAS of 350 knots, heading of 340 degrees.

“I spotted the object and immediately commented to __ (the navigator) that it was not an aircraft, but looked more like a balloon. We judged its altitude to be approximately 35,000 feet, heading 140 degrees and its speed extremely high.

“From a previous experience I would say its closing rate would have been in excess of 800 knots. We observed this object this object for five or seven seconds before it disappeared under the left wing.

“Since it was unusual in appearance, I immediately banked to the left for another look, but neither of us could locate it.

“The color of the object was nearly translucent somewhat like that of a ‘poached egg’. There were no sharp edges but rather fuzzy and undefined. The size was approximately 70 feet in diameter and it did not appear to have any depth.”

 

---

THE CLASSIC WILLOW GROVE ENCOUNTER 

At 7 am, February 15th, 1963, Charles Brew bore witness to a classic close encounter. With his 20 year old son, Trevor, Brew was at work in the milking shed on their farm, “Willow Grove”, near Moe, Victoria. It was light, but rain clouds lay overhead. Charles Brew was standing in an open area, with a full view of the eastern sky. It was from that direction that he saw a strange object appear and descend very slowly towards the milk shed. The objects approach was coincident with the cattle and a pony reacting violently. The 2 farm dogs fled. A local newspaper even reported that the cows turned somersaults, a suggestion the Brews denied.The UFO descended to an apparent height of between 75 and 100 feet, hovering over a large Stringy-Bark tree. It was about 25 feet in diameter and 9 to 10 feet high. The top section appeared to be a transparent dome of a glass-like material, from which protruded a 5 to 6 foot high mast or aerial. The “aerial” appeared to be as thick as a broom and resembled bright chrome. The top portion of the disc itself was battle-ship grey in color and appeared to be of a metallic luster. The base or underside section glowed with a pale blue color and had “scoop-like protuberances about 12 to 18 inches apart around the outside edge.” This section rotated slowly at about one revolution per second. This spinning motion apparently caused the protuberances to generate a swishing noise, somewhat like a turbine noise, that was clearly audible not only to Brew but also to his son Trevor, who was located inside the shed near the operating diesel powered milking machine units.

Charles Brew described how he felt his eyes were drawn towards the object “as though beams of magnetic current” were between it and him. He also experienced a peculiar headache which came on with the approach of the object. Even though Brew normally did not suffer migraine, the use of tablets did not subdue the headache.

After hovering for a few seconds the object began to climb at roughly a 45 degree angle, continuing on its westward course and passing up into the cloud deck again. Trevor did not see the UFO, but confirmed the unusual sound, like a “diggerydoo” or “bullroarer” – aboriginal artifacts which can produce a pulsating wind rushing noise.

Flt. Lt. N. Hudson and Sqd. Ldr. A.F. Javes of the RAAF interviewed Charles Brew on site on March 4th, 1963. While impressed with his credibility, the weather at the time of the sighting – heavy continuous rain with very low cloud and poor visibility, and with a fresh wind in an easterly direction, caused them to focus on weather related explanations. Their report describes the basis of their somewhat extraordinary “explanation” for the incident:

“On 6th March, Dr. Berson and Mr. Clark (of the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organization) Meteorological Physics division) were interviewed to see if clouds give this type of phenomenon. They agreed that a tornado condition could give this effect. The direction of rotation of Brew’s report of the object was consistent with known facts for the Southern Hemisphere. The blue-ish coloring has been reported previously and is probably due to electric discharge and there would be a smell of ozone. The only difference in Brew’s report was that the object moved from East to West because all previous reports to the CSIRO Met section of this nature have been from West to East. Mr. Brew stated that the wind was fresh from an easterly direction. However, (a) meteorological report states that wind was westerly at 8 knots.”

The report notes that the met report was from a Yallourn observer, which is about 20 kilometers away, therefore local variations in the weather would not have been unusual.

Despite this lack of rigor in determining how relevant their hypothesis was, the RAAF officer’ report concluded, “There is little doubt that Brew did witness something, and it is most likely that it was a natural phenomenon. The phenomenon was probably a tornado. There was no reported damage along its path, therefore one could assume that it was weak in nature.”

The Department of Air responded to a civilian UFO group enquiry about the incident with the following statement, “Our investigation and enquiries reveal that there are scientific records of certain tornado-like meteorological manifestations which have a similar appearance in many ways to whatever was seen by Mr. Brew. The information available is such however, that while we accept this is a possibility, we are unable to come to any firm conclusion as to the nature of the object or manifestation reported.” The official sighting summaries removed any such doubt. By then the “possible cause” was listed as a “tornado like meteorological manifestation.” In correspondence with the Victorian Flying Saucer Research Society, the CSIRO’s Dr.Berson indicated, “we are unable to come to any firm conclusion as to the nature of the object or manifestation reported.” It seems clear that the RAAF were largely parroting the CSIRO’s conclusions and taking things a little further without any realistic justification. Their musings pre-empted Terence Meaden’s “vortex” hypothesis by some 2 decades.

Dr. Berson and an associate visited Charles Brew at the Willow Grove property. According to Brew, Dr. Berson was interested in the headache that he had, and indicated that Berson had said that it tied in with their theory of a possible electromagnetic nature of the incident. The CSIRO’s field investigation had in fact preceded that the RAAF by about a week. There was evidently extensive interest from the military and government scientists. Brew indicated that the RAAF officers told him that the object he saw was similar to those seen overseas and that it was the best sighting they had looked at.

What the Department of Air referred to as a “tornado-like meteorological manifestation” elicited the following emotive description from Charles Brew. It mirrors the striking nature of his encounter with the “unknown”. He said, “I wished it would come again. It was beautiful. I could feel the life pulsating from it.”

Dr. James McDonald visited Charles Brew during his 1967 Australian trip interviewing him at the site of the 1963 incident. McDonald concluded, “like that of many other UFO witnesses, it is extremely difficult to explain in present-day scientific or technological terms.”

Despite the extraordinary nature of the Willow Grove incident and the high level of official interest in it, the sighting was listed in a subsequently released “Summary of Unidentified Aerial Sightings reported to Department of Air, Canberra, ACT, from 1960” as having a possible cause of “tornado like meteorological manifestation.”

 

---

THE “FIRST” OFFICIAL “UNKNOWN” – THE ELECTROMAGNETIC
LIGHT WHEEL NEAR GROOTE EYLANDT 

According to the summary we have to wait until January 23rd, 1964, for the first official “unknown” in the RAAF Directorate of Air Force Intelligence (DAFI) files. For a list of “Aerial sightings” it is unusual for it was reported as located in water. The summary describes the report as follows:

“Seen at sea by crew of a vessel NE Point of Groote Eylandt, WA. Large lights in water, made compass go ‘Haywire’. Shadow in centre of lights rotated clockwise, causing lights to pulsate.”

Biologist, Ivan T. Sanderson, lists it in his book Invisible Residents – A Disquisition upon Certain Matters Maritime, and the Possibility of Intelligent Life under the Waters of This Earth in a listing of submarine “Lightwheels”. Sanderson sourced his brief listing from a newspaper article.

The Air Force Intelligence files hold a report of the unusual sighting made by the crew of the landing craft Loellen M. The incident was located between Cape Grey and the north east point of Groote Eylandt, a large island on the western side of the Gulf of Carpentaria, Northern Territory. The official summary incorrectly lists the incident as occurring in ‘WA” (Western Australia). The report mentions that the vessel encountered a number of submarine “light patches”:

“C. W__ turned on the compass light and found the vessel approx 60° off course. The compass went ‘Haywire’.As soon as he had corrected the vessel as best he could, he switched off the compass light and found the un-natural light was about 6ft. on the Starboard side. The light was in the water. It was described as a ghostly white light, in the center was a shadow which rotated in a clockwise direction causing the light to pulsate. The light appeared to draw away to the stern. It is estimated that it was miles across and a few hundred yards through…

“The light on the water passed about 100 yds to port. As the barge began to return to course, another light was seen coming at the barge at an angle of about 45° which [sic? – with?] the Bow. It came to within inches of the starboard side and appeared to rebound at 45° with the stern and moved away. It disappeared in a few seconds….

“All lights were the same color, with this strange rotating shadow, causing the lights to pulsate. The pulsations timed at 12 for 9 seconds, then completely irregular, then settled down to 12 for 9 seconds.

“The compass swung out of control, but became worse as the light approached…

 

This is a fascinating report but its origins may lie in some form of extraordinary bioluminescence.

 

---

“THE THING ON THE BEACH” 

Another striking case occurred near Vaucluse Beach, one of Sydney’s beach suburbs, at about 5.30 pm, on July 19th, 1965. Between showers and high winds, Dennis Crowe, a former technical artist with English aircraft companies, was walking along the beach, near his home. He became aware of a glow coming from what appeared to be a huge disc shaped object resting on leg-like structures. The object’s diameter was estimated at some 20 feet. It had a glowing, greenish blue rim, while the top and bottom halves were dull silver grey in appearance. Crowe thought a hollow in the top could have been a glass dome. He could not make out any sign of movement in the object. When he approached the object to within 50 to 60 feet, it suddenly lifted off the ground. A noise, like air being forcibly released from a balloon, was noticed. The UFO climbed rapidly and within 10 seconds had disappeared into clouds. There were no other witnesses to the encounter save a dozen or so dogs. While the object was stationary they were all barking loudly at it. After it took off they were all strangely silent. A geologist made independent calculations at the landing site which confirmed definite traces of an unusual object having rested there. He stated that the vegetation there was dying and would remain dead for a number of years. The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) put forward a possible explanation for this extraordinary incident. They suggested it was a “tornado”!The Vaucluse “tornado” was another remarkable example of an unlikely explanation put forward by the RAAF, that perhaps anticipated meteorologist Terence Meaden’s “plasma vortex” hypothesis and his extreme applications of it to English “crop circles” of the 80s and 90s, and significant UFO physical trace events.

 

---

THE 1966 TULLY SAUCER “NEST” 

1966 was again a major year for UFO activity in Australia. The classic UFO landing at Horseshoe Lagoon near Tully, far north Queensland, and witnessed by farmer George Pedley, entered the term UFO “nest” into popular UFO parlance. The locality was the center of an extended UFO milieu that continued for many years, particularly in 1969, 1972 and 1975. The area was also the site of controversial and fascinating experiments in UFO detection through remote sensing and filming.Farmer, George Pedley’s sighting at Horseshoe Lagoon and the physical evidence found there caused a media sensation. The Tully “UFO nest” affair of 1966 is one of the best known accounts of an apparent UFO landing report. It has been mentioned extensively in the UFO literature over the years, and yet surprisingly many inaccuracies and misconceptions have developed. These problems became more critical when the famous Tully incident of January 19, 1966, once again became the focus of attention, this time due to the English “crop circle” controversy. The prominent schools of thought on the crop circle formations adopted the 1966 Tully incident as a classic example of their perceived explanations for the circle complexes. Their claims about the relevance of the Tully incident as an example of the currently perceived crop circle phenomenon were flawed and generally unfounded.

The RAAF files describe the famous Tully incident in the following manner:

At about 9.00 a.m. on 19th January, 1966, Mr. G.A. Pedley, a banana grower of Tully, Qld, observed a light grey non reflecting dull object, reported to be about 25 feet long and 8 feet deep, rise vertically then climb on an angle of 450 from a height of about 30 feet above marshland which was situated about 25 yards away from his position. There was an associated hissing noise which decreased as the ‘object’ rose. The apparent shape was described as ‘two saucers, face to face’, but no structural detail was observed. The duration of the observation was approximately 15 seconds and it disappeared in mid-air whilst receding into the distance (not assessed).A clearly defined near circular depression remained in evidence in swamp grass at the point from which the object was seen rising, and measured about 32 feet long by 25 feet wide. The grass was flattened in clockwise curves to water level within the circle and the reeds had been uprooted from the mud. There was no scorching of grass or surrounding trees and the observer stated that there was no smell of combustion…”

My research of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) files uncovered the original police report on the incident. As these are the earliest documented sources extracts of it are included here of details not included in the above statement made in 1973 in response to an enquiry from the “Australian” newspaper.

George Pedley reported his experience to Tully Police at 7.30 pm, on January 19th. At 7 am, January 20th George Pedley and Sgt. A.V. Moylan went to the site of the incident. Sgt. Moylan, then contacted Townsville RAAF Base by telephone, on the morning of January 20th. Flt. Lt. Wallace advised Sgt. Moylan that he would forward a Performa questionnaire for completion by George Pedley. On Friday, January 21st, Flt. Lt. Wallace confirmed dispatch of two copies of the sighting Performa by mail that same day and also requested Sgt. Moylan obtain “a sample of the grass from the scorched area.” At 3.30 pm, on the same day, Moylan returned to the site and took a sample “of the grass from the depression in the swamp grass at the site. The Performa was filled out by Moylan based on his interviews with George Pedley and was dated 26/1/66. Sgt. Moylan dispatched the report and the sample on 26/1/66.

The following details are extracted from the RAAF “REPORT ON AERIAL OBJECT OBSERVED” Moylan filled out with George Pedley. Because so many conflicting claims have been made about what George Pedley said at the time, it is worthwhile to go back to the documentation filled out then:

Name of Observer: George Alfred PEDLEY aged 28 years.Manner of observation:
traveling on a tractor about 1/2 mile from farm house of Albert PENNISI, Rockingham Road, Euramo. Attention attracted by hissing noise, clearly heard over noise of tractor-similar to air escaping from tire; checked tires and was looking about for source of noise when he saw object about 25 yards ahead. No optical instruments used in sighting.

Height or angle of elevation:
First seen at treetop height 30′. Rose vertically to about twice that height, then departed, climbing at about 45 degrees.

Speed, or angular velocity:
Extremely fast; No estimate of speed, but much faster than an air plane.

It was near treetops and these gave observer a good basis for estimating height.

Direction of flight with reference to landmarks or points of the compass:
Rose vertically to about 60 feet and departed south west climbing at about 45 degrees; appeared to be rotating for full time observed. (object appeared to remain on) straight climbing path.

Existence of any physical evidence:
Clearly defined near circular depression in swamp grass at point from which object seen rising, about 32′ long and 25′ wide. Grass flattened to surface of 4′ of water lying in xxxx-clockwise curves.

[Sgt. Moylan, in his report, had typed in anti-clockwise initially and then corrected it to clockwise, by overtyping ‘anti’ with ‘xxxx‘. The direction of the swirl at the site of the 19 January 1966 incident was to become a matter of ongoing confusion. The clockwise direction was the correction direction – B.C.]

Weather conditions experienced at time of observation:
Clear sky; Hot sunshine.Location of any air traffic in the vicinity at the time of sighting: Unknown but checked by RAAF Garbut.

[Flt. Lt. Wallace of Townsville RAAF base in a covering minute paper confirmed that “there were no service or Civil aircraft operating in the area.. at the time of the sighting..” – B.C.]

Any additional information: (Sgt. Moylan wrote)Observer reported this matter to Tully Police at 7.30pm on 19/1/66 and at 7am, 20/1/66 went with me to the site of the depression in the swamp. His version then included the information that the object rose vertically, appeared to dip slightly and then went off in straight climbing path. He then said…further that there was no smell of combustion and no scorching of grass or trees visible; that the the flattened grass or rushes was quite green when he first saw the depression; on his return that afternoon the grass had turned brown.

(Sgt. Moylan further added:)

In this matter I formed the opinion that the depressed area in the swamp grass had been caused by a small helicopter and that the observer, in the early morning bright sunlight shining on the rotor may have mistaken the shape. His description of the takeoff lent some strength to my opinion. However there was cleared land to the east for about 200 yards where such an aircraft could have more safely landed instead of the position indicated by the observer, close to trees. Later I was informed by Wallace Evans of …Tully, an electrician that he has seen similar markings in a swamp at Kurrumine Beach and is quite certain that it was caused by a whirlwind, sucking up water into a waterspout, uprooting the grass and laying it out in a similar pattern. At 3.30pm, 21/1/66 I took a sample of the grass at the site and have forwarded it under separate cover on even date.

Flt. Lt. T.D. Wright, for Air Officer Commanding, Headquarters Operational Command, RAAF, Penrith, New South Wales (NSW), on-forwarded police Sgt. Moylan’s report on George Pedley’s UFO sighting and Flt. Lt. Wallace’s covering minute paper, to the Department of Air, Russell Offices, Canberra. His communication classified RESTRICTED, which was channeled to the Directorate of Air Force Intelligence (DAFI), also indicated, “This headquarters believes that the depressions of the swamp grass were caused by small isolated waterspouts.”In response to an enquiry, dated 2nd February, 1966, from the Commonwealth Aerial Phenomena Investigation Organization (CAPIO), the Secretary, Department of Air, Mr. A.B. McFarlane, wrote on 11th February, 1966:

“Investigations of the area surrounding the reported “Nests”, testing of samples taken from around them and interrogation of persons involved in the report failed to reveal anything of significance.”However, during enquiries a number of local residents stated that the reported “nests” are fairly common during the onset of the “wet”. Furthermore, the University of Queensland stated that there was nothing unnatural in the samples submitted and assessed that the “nests” could have been the result of severe turbulence, which normally accompany line squalls and thunderstorms prevalent in NORTH QUEENSLAND at the time of the year.

“There is no explanation for the visible phenomena reported but it could have been associated with or the result of “down draughts”, “willy willies” or “water spouts” that are known to occur in the area.

“.. for information ….in January of this year from an airfield in the tropics (a number of photographs taken give) a fine example of the type and growth of a cloud formation occurring with a severe “down draught”

This whirling mass of tropical air associated with thunderstorm activity, on reaching the earth’s surface may dissipate and subside or persist giving rise to dust eddies, water spouts, etc, and leaving a telltale circular pattern on the ground.

Should it occur over a swampy reed bed the effect would be to flatten the reeds with a circular pattern. resultant photographs and investigations of the “nests” seem to fit in with this theory and is accepted as a possible cause of the phenomena.”

It is fascinating to note how Secretary McFarlane’s cursory explanatory exposition, no doubt inspired by “the tornado-like meteorological phenomena” infested skies over Willow Grove, Victoria and Vaucluse Beach, NSW, anticipated by almost 2 decades Dr. Terence Meaden’s early theoretical attempts to explain the English “crop circles” of the 1980s. Dr. Meaden would mistakenly assume that George Pedley saw his “vortex” at 9 pm, not 9 am, which is a fatal flaw in the mechanism he put forth to explain the report.

The only other significant official statement on the Tully sighting I found in the RAAF files was included in a letter by Mr. G.J. Odgers, Director of Public Relations, Department of Defense (Air Office), dated 17th December, 1973, directed to Charles Wright, a journalist working on a article for the national newspaper, The Australian.

George Odgers’ Air Office public relations department had clearly gleaned from the 1966 DAFI files details of an explanation of what George Pedley seen that the original RAAF officers and Department officers back in 1966 had not determined:

“Although a conclusive determination could not be made, the most probable explanation was that the sighting was of a ‘willy willy’ or circular wind phenomenon which flattened the reeds and sucked up debris to a height of about 30 feet, thus forming what appeared to be a ‘flying saucer’, before moving off and dissipating. Hissing noises are known to be associated with ‘willy willies’ and the theory is also substantiated by the clockwise configuration of the depression.

Mr. Odgers further added, more generally,

“All to often unusual occurrences are reported in sensational terms with little or no attempt made at rational assessment. The general subject is ‘newsworthy’ and lends itself to sensationalism and guesswork, but in most cases logical explanations follow from careful investigation. You will appreciate that there is nothing to be gained from reopening old cases.” [a sentiment I would not agree with – B.C.]

THE CANTERBURY CLOSE ENCOUNTER

The incident in Canterbury, a Sydney suburb, which Dr. Duggin looked into, received press coverage. “Sisters hysterical at sighting. WEIRD “SAUCER” OVER CANTERBURY” the Sydney Sun-Herald of March 8th, 1967 reported:

“Two sisters described this week how they stood on a veranda together and watched a flying saucer hover over a Canterbury bowling green. They said the saucer was a “strange round thing” and it made a “weird humming sound.””It came down to tree-top level and was less than 100 feet from where they stood. The woman who first made the sighting is Mrs. D. Manhood, of Wairoa Street, Canterbury. Her sister, Mrs. R. Coleman, joined her on the veranda seconds later and they watched the saucer’s flight for 10 minutes.”

Dr. Duggin’s report included the following details:

“8 March 1967.”At approximately 10.10 am Mrs. D. Manhood went outside to fetch her small daughter from the vicinity of the bowling green adjoining their residence, as it was raining. At this time Mrs. Manhood observed the described object which came from the left and appeared to pass over the bowling green.

“There were no significant markings and the object appeared to change gradually from circular to elliptical: It was dark grey – black in color. It was thought to be the size of a small car at tree-top height. If the estimate of size and distance was correct then its speed was less than 30 mph. Mrs. Manhood’s initial supposition was that it may have been preparing to land on the bowling green.

“It emitted a noise similar to that given off by a child’s humming top. At the time when Mrs. Manhood left the house to enter the verandah, her sister, Mrs. Coleman, was telephoning Mrs. Manhood’s mother. She joined Mrs. Manhood to tell her that the telephone had gone dead and witnessed the sighting. However (This) could perhaps have been due to a technical fault (as) the PMG [phone company] were working nearby at the time.

“After approximately 5 minutes, the object, traveling on a level and straight course, passed just over the railway embankment, just above the power lines (it appeared). Three witnesses saw the object pass over the embankment – Mrs. Manhood, Mrs. Coleman and Mrs. Clavis. After about 1.5 minutes, the object again appeared over the embankment and climbed at an angle of about 70 degrees to the horizontal at a fairly good speed. It was observed by the above persons plus Mr. Manhood at this stage. It appeared to become smaller and smaller as it climbed towards a break in the clouds and was finally lost to view after approximately five minutes.”

Dr. Duggin checked with the Weather Bureau, Mascot airfield and Mascot radar. No confirmatory details were found, but a balloon was ruled out.

Dr. Duggin concluded, “It is highly improbable that any balloon could (1)  change its aspect from circular to oval or elliptical, (2)  travel at a low altitude and suddenly climb again, and (3)  It is virtually certain that no balloons were in the vicinity of Canterbury at the time of the reported sighting.”

 

---

THE BURRENJUCK UFO

The RAAF files revealed a striking close encounter near Burrenjuck Dam, near Yass, in New South Wales (NSW), at about 12.40 am, on June 17th, 1967. Local police investigated the report and passed their reports onto the RAAF. A local couple were the witnesses. The report of the husband is quoted in part here:

“My attention was drawn to an object in the sky about a half a mile ahead…about 200 feet up in the air over an open grassed paddock and within about 200 feet of the roadway. The object I saw was a red glowing object, the color was an orange red, the whole thing seemed to be a red glow, then I saw a blast of greyish white light in a V shape come from this object towards the ground. It was only of short duration…. I then stopped my car and got out onto the roadway… I saw that the object was a fair size… I saw that the shape was similar to an old style beer barrel which was lying on its side.”I saw that the object was then moving towards Burrenjuck and parallel with the road. It was only moving slowly. I got back into my car and followed the object. I was traveling at about 45 m.p.h and was catching up to the object. I followed it for a measured 1 and 9/10 miles to a place where there is a rise in the road, and at this time I was then only about 200 yards distance off the object.

“I then saw what appeared to be red lights flicking all around the object. The flicking was much quicker than that used on aircraft. I had again got out of my car on the roadway, and as I observed the object I could distinctly hear a clicking noise coming from the object. It was a noise similar to an amplified noise of car blinker lights…

“As I stopped my car I saw the object make a left hand turn, and it headed off towards some hills in a direction generally between the towns of Bowning and Yass. The object was still only traveling at a slow speed. It did not appear to gain or loose any height. I did notice as the object traveled away from me, it appeared to have a bouncy action from one side to the other. It was only a slight movement from side to side…I would say that I had the object under my observations for approximately 15 minutes…”

“I have never seen an object in the sky like this one before. It was some foreign object. I would say that it was not any form of aircraft that I know about, and I have had five years experience with aircraft in the RAAF.”

Sergeant A.B. Vale, of Yass police made a close survey of the grassed paddock on the property involved, “where the unidentified object was first seen and alleged to have omitted a blast of greyish light towards the ground. Nothing was seen to indicate that the object had been on the ground or had caused any scorching of the grass or earth with the blast.”

He added, “I am of the opinion that the two persons alleging the sighting of the UFO, have given a reliable statement of what they saw, they are both matured persons, and highly respected citizens of Burrenjuck, and their report in this instance would be a genuine one. There is no suggestion that either of the two persons were under the influence of liquor at the time, and it would appear that they did both see something unusual in the sky early that morning…”

The RAAF “Summary of UAS” lists this case as “Incomplete data” in terms of “Possible cause”. In fact, beyond the detailed police reports, there was no real attempt to investigate it. There was a notation indicating that “CNCO has stated that it is unlikely that the sighting was either a star or a plane.” The officer at RAAF Headquarters Operational Command, prefaced the report with the annotation, “The observers description of the object – “like an old type beer barrel” may give us a clue. But perhaps we should put it down as “unexplained”. In fact the RAAF treatment gives us more of a clue to the lack of seriousness and rigor in their follow up of this case and many other striking ones like it. There was a further unqualified annotation, “Plasma?”

 

---

THE NEBO ENCOUNTER

Near Nebo, Queensland, during March, 1975, the RAAF investigated physical traces in a roadside gravel storage area, found at the site of a frightening encounter experienced by 5 people. The party of 2 young men and 3 girls were returning from a droving trip on the night of March 22nd along the new Mount Flora to Dingo beach road. At about 10.30 pm, at a point some 90 km from Nebo, the group noticed a strange light amongst the timber ahead on the left-hand-side of the road. As they drew closer, the group made out a rather curious object in a gravel storage area just off the road.The object appeared to consist of a row of flashing dull white-to-yellow lights, apparently attached to a large “box-like” mass about 1 meter above ground level, with a circular mass situated directly above. This sphere, apparently some 3 meters wide, consisted of several concentric rings of non-flashing bluesy-green lights, with a central black disc. Some of the witnesses noticed what appeared to be a “pole” connecting these 2 masses and 4 legs faintly discernible at the base of the complex. The whole object seemed to be about 2.5 meters high and some 3 meters wide.

As they drew level with the strange object and were bringing the car to a stop, a tremendously loud bang seemed to emanate from the thing. The noise was likened to the sound heard when in close proximity to a shot gun being fired. The vehicle seemed to shake in response for a moment. The suddenness of sound frightened the group. After the fightening bang , the group drove further down the road. Some of the witnesses saw that the upper circular mass “seemed to be watching us”, as if “they were keeping us under observation.” The driver turned the vehicle around and then, once they were level with the object again, stopped. This time there was no loud noise. The two men wanted to get out, but all three girls in the back seat were terrified. They locked the car doors and pummeled the driver with their fists, imploring him to drive away.

The group drove 15 km and stopped at a roads camp. There they found road construction workers, and proceeded to describe the frightening spectacle. The two men convinced one of the construction workers to accompany them back to the area. The girls were too frightened and waited at the camp. The trio found that the object was no longer at the storage area, but confirmed the presence of unusual indentations at the spot. The shaken party then made their way home.

Next day they reported the event to the Nebo police. One of the officers accompanied them back to the site. A quote from his report addresses the impact of the experience:

“Whilst at the scene I mentioned to Caroline, aged 12 years, that if we waited for a bit, the UFO might return. The child became quite upset and was obviously frightened. She continued to be disturbed whilst at the location and constantly looked all around as if she expected something to return.”

Caroline’s written statement concludes with the following: “I never want to see one of them again.”

On March 25th, an investigating officer from Townsville RAAF base, and an RAAF photographer, examined the site of the unusual incident. Quoting from the RAAF officer’s report:

“The unusual marks on the ground consist of: three oval shaped areas; one roughly circular area; and a rectangular area… The impact(ed) (areas) appeared to be very recent with no weathering of the particular areas in question. Some gravel in the areas… was freshly fragmented… This was quite obvious to the eye as the bright colors of the unweathered exposed centers of the gravel stood out among the surrounding weathered stones in the immediate vicinity…”

Samples were taken and a number of Townsville RAAF officers were asked to view the samples, “and without exception all agreed that the stones appeared to be freshly broken when compared with the weathered sample from the surrounding areas. No test for residual radiation was conducted at the site.” The investigating officer indicated that the impacting had been produced by a heavy weight or pressure. He wrote that he was “unable to explain the nature of the alleged object, or the cause of the unusual ground markings …”

 

---

FREDERICK VALENTICH AND DELTA SIERRA
JULIET – VANISHED?

It was the extraordinary disappearance of pilot Frederick Valentich (left) over Bass Strait on October 21st, 1978, that thrust the subject of UFOs into the news headlines around the world. The Valentich mystery has endured as an insoluble enigma. The crux of the mystery is just what happened to the young pilot and his 182 Cessna light aircraft – VH – DSJ (Delta Sierra Juliet) – during that October evening. The circumstances behind the total disappearance of both pilot and plane have since been elevated into one of the premier mysteries of aviation and for many one of the most intriguing elements of the UFO phenomenon.The fact that the mystery has lasted so long is a direct result of the incredible aspects at the heart of the affair. Twenty year-old Frederick Valentich, 47 minutes into what should have been a rountine 69 minute flight from Moorabin, Victoria, to King Island, reported in a radio conversation with Melbourne Flight Service Unit controller, Steve Robey, of seeing an unidentified “aircraft” near him.

The only official report to emerge on the affair was an Aircraft Accident Investigation Summary Report, reference No. V116/783/1047. The basic relevant events and transcript of the conversation between Valentich and Robey – a “radio encounter of a weird kind” – included in the report are given here:

The pilot obtained a class Four instrument rating on 11 May 1978 and he was therefore authorized to operate at night in visual meteorological conditions (VMC). On the afternoon of 21 October 1978 he attended the Moorabbin Briefing Office, obtained a meteorological briefing and, at 1723 hours, submitted a flight plan for a night VMC flight from Moorabbin to King Island and return. The cruising altitude nominated in the flight plan was below 5000 feet, with estimated time intervals of 41 minutes to Cape Otway and 28 minutes from Cape Otway to King Island. The total fuel endurance was shown at 300 minutes. The pilot made no arrangements for aerodrome lighting to be illuminated for his arrival at King Island. He advised the briefing officer and the operator’s representative that he was uplifting friends at King Island and took four life jackets in the aircraft with him.The aircraft was refueled to capacity at 1810 hours and departed Moorabbin at 1819 hours. After departure the pilot established two-way radio communication with Melbourne Flight Service Unit (FSU).

The pilot reported Cape Otway at 1900 hours and the next transmission received from the aircraft was at 1906:14 hours. The following communications between the aircraft and Melbourne FSU were recorded from this time:

(Note: The word/words in brackets ‘[ ]’ are open to other interpretations.)[Note: DELTA SIERRA JULIET in the conversation has been abbreviated in this transcript to DSJ for brevity – B.C.]

TIME		FROM		TEXT
1906:14		VH-DSJ		MELBOURNE this is DSJ is there any known traffic below five thousand
:23		FSU		DSJ no known traffic
:26		VH-DSJ		DSJ I am seems [to] be a large aircraft below five thousand
:46		FSU		DSJ what type of aircraft is it
:50		VH-DSJ		DSJ I cannot affirm. It is four bright it seems to me like landing lights
1907:04		FSU		DSJ
:32		VH-DSJ		MELBOURNE this [is] DSJ. The aircraft has just passed over me at least a thousand feet above
:43		FSU		DSJ roger and it is a large aircraft, confirm
:47		VH-DSJ		Er unknown due to speed it’s traveling. Is there any air force aircraft in the vicinity.
:57		FSU		DSJ no known aircraft in the vicinity.
1908:18		VH-DSJ		MELBOURNE it’s approaching now from due east towards me.
:28		FSU		DSJ.
:42				(open microphone for 2 seconds)
:49		VH-DSJ		DSJ it seems to me that he’s playing some sort of game. He’s flying over me two three times at speeds I could not identify.
1909:02		FSU		DSJ roger. What is your actual level?
:06		VH-DSJ		My level is four and a half thousand, four five zero zero.
:11		FSU		DSJ and confirm you cannot identify the aircraft.
:14		VH-DSJ		Affirmative.
:18		FSU		DSJ roger standby.
:28		VH-DSJ		MELBOURNE DSJ it’s not an aircraft. It is (open microphone for two seconds)
:46		FSU		DSJ MELBOURNE can you describe the, er, aircraft?
1909:52		VH-DSJ		DSJ as it’s flying past it’s a long shape. (open microphone for three seconds) [cannot] identify more than [that it has such speed] (open microphone for three seconds) before me right now Melbourne.
1910:07		FSU		DSJ roger and how large would the, er, object be?
:20		VH-DSJ		DSJ MELBOURNE it seems like it’s stationary. What I’m doing right now is orbiting and the thing is just orbiting on top of me also. It’s got a green light and sort of metallic [like] it’s all shiny [on] the outside.
:43		FSU		DSJ.
:48		VH-DSJ		DSJ (open microphone for 5 seconds) it’s just vanished.
:57		FSU		DSJ.
1911:03		VH-DSJ		MELBOURNE would you know what kind of aircraft I’ve got, is it [a type] military aircraft?
:08		FSU		DSJ confirm the, er, aircraft just vanished.
:14		VH-DSJ		Say again.
:17		FSU		DSJ is the aircraft still with you?
:23		VH-DSJ		DSJ [it’s ah nor] (open microphone 2 seconds) [now] approaching from the southwest.
:37		FSU		DSJ.
:52		VH-DSJ		DSJ the engine is rough idling. I’ve got it set at twenty three twenty four and the thing is [coughing].
1912:04		FSU		DSJ roger what are your intentions?
:09		VH-DSJ		My intentions are, ah, to go to King Island, ah, Melbourne that strange aircraft is hovering on top of me again (two seconds open microphone) it is hovering and it’s not an aircraft
:22		FSU		DSJ.
:28		VH-DSJ		DSJ MELBOURNE (17 seconds open microphone)
:49		FSU		DSJ MELBOURNE

There is no record of any further transmissions from the aircraft.

The weather in the Cape Otway area was clear with a trace of stratocumulus cloud at 5000 to 7000 feet, scattered cirrus cloud at 30000 feet, excellent visibility and light winds. The end of daylight at Cape Otway was at 1918 hours.

The Alert Phase of SAR procedures was declared at 1912 hours and, at 1933 hours when the aircraft did not arrive at King Island, the Distress Phase was declared and search action was commenced. An intensive air, sea and land search was continued until 25 October 1978, but no trace of the aircraft was found.

The official report also refers to the following points:

Location of occurrence:   Not knownTime:   Not known

Degree of injury:   presumed fatal

Opinion as to cause (of “Aircraft Accident”):   The reason for the disappearance of the aircraft has not been determined

Steve Robey, the FSU or Flight Service Unit radio controller, who spoke with Valentich during those 6 minutes leading up to his disappearance, said in a Melbourne Herald interview:

“I think at first he was a little concerned about this other aircraft flying around him, and of course I had to assume that it was another aircraft until it developed and became a little mysterious. Towards the end I think he was definitely concerned for his safety; I considered that he would have had to have been a good actor to have put it all together the way he did.”

Robey did not believe he had talked to a disorientated pilot,

“It was as though he was looking around for this thing as he was speaking on the radio … a young fellow with little experience; it was getting dark, and visual reference to the ground is fading. In a situation like this, if this is what happened, it is understandable he is getting a little bit uptight.”It was a kind of rushed communication … it was as if he was startled… he was definitely concerned … it sounded as though it was rattling him.”

Apart from a very early attempt to suggest that Frederick Valentich may have been flying upside down, totally disorientated, with lighthouse lights producing his perception of an “unidentified aircraft”, the Australian Department of Aviation has never officially addressed the question of what Valentich may have been observing prior to his disappearance.

I tried to extract from the Department their opinion.

At first the then Assistant Secretary (Air Safety Investigation), Mr. G.V. Hughes, advised me that he was not clear as to what was meant by my expression, “…the stimulus of Valentich’s apparent UFO observation…”

“However, a great deal of consideration has been given to what Mr. Valentich might have been looking at when he described his observations. A considerable number of suggestions have been put forward by persons inside and outside this Department. All have been examined. The Department is not aware of any other official body having undertaken such an investigation into this occurrence,” Mr. Hughes wrote.

However, when it came to an official investigation of a possible UFO connection, a veritable bureaucratic “Catch-22” loomed large. Mr. Hughes advised me, “As you correctly state …, the RAAF is responsible for the investigation of reports concerning ‘UFO’ sightings, and liaison was established with the RAAF on these aspects of the investigation. The decision as to whether or not the ‘UFO’ report is to be investigated rests with the RAAF and not with this Department.”

At the time I was fortunately in a position to get a clearer picture of the RAAF role in the Valentich case. I had been given unprecedented direct access to the RAAF files. During my detailed explorations of the files in a number of visits to the Department of Defence in Canberra, I did not come across any documentation on the Valentich affair. The RAAF Intelligence Liaison Officer – DAFI told me that the RAAF did not investigate the affair because they were not asked to by the Department of Aviation! The RAAF saw it as more appropriately in the domain of an “air accident/air safety” enquiry. The Intelligence officer also volunteered that his personal opinion was that pilot disorientation was involved.

In November, 1982, I was finally given official permission to examine the Department of Aviation UFO files, but was specifically denied access to the Valentich files on the grounds that they were Air Accident Investigation files and not UFO files. Mr. Hughes of Air Safety elaborated,

“The file concerning this occurrence is no more or less restricted than any other accident investigation file. As a signatory to the International Convention on Civil Aviation, we subscribe to the Standards and Recommended Practices contained in Annex 13 to the Convention, in respect of aircraft accident investigation, specifically, when it is considered that the disclosure of records, for the purposes other than accident prevention, might have an adverse effect on the availability of information in that or any future investigation, such records are considered privileged.”

While in Melbourne examining the Aviation Department’s UFO files, I was able to have a lengthy discussion on the Valentich affair with Mr. A. Woodward, the signatory on the official Aircraft Accident Investigation Summary Report, dated May 27th, 1982. He largely reiterated the official department line, emphasizing that they were treating the matter as only an “air accident” investigation. He dwelt on a long list of prosaic explanations ranging from disorientation, suicide, to the unlikely prospect of the plane being struck by a meteorite, but conceded that the affair was still unresolved.

Dr. Richard Haines, was a research scientist with NASA and an aircraft accident investigator, as well as an active UFO researcher, particularly in cases involving pilot witnesses. He took a particular interest in the Valentich incident. He was given access to the tape of the incident and undertook studies of it. He was not able to definitively identify the unusual sounds that appeared in the final 17 seconds of open microphone communications with Valentich. A metallic-like sound is noticeable. Dr. Haines found they were similar to the sound produced by the rapid keying of the microphone, but control testing did not confirm this absolutely. He published a book based on his study of the affair, MELBOURNE EPISODE – Case study of a missing pilot. He included 4 hypothetical accounts of what might have happened, namely “pilot disorientation/crash/death”, “deliberate pilot hoax”, “actual UFO in-flight abduction”, and “military weapons test”. While Dr. Haines seems to have favoured the final “hypothesis”, in reality the evidence for it is slight and speculative.

Many people reported seeing UFOs on the same day and during the night of Valentich’s disappearance. A number of these reports are difficult to reconcile with the hysteria and publicity that escalated rapidly over the affair, elevating it to an international sensation. Some 15 or more distinct sightings survived the gauntlet of civilian group investigations. They all occurred between midday and 9 pm, on October 21st. Six occurred in Victoria, one on King Island, and the rest in New South Wales, Tasmania and South Australia. These reports seemed to confirm that something quite unusual was abroad that extraordinary day.

A strange series of photos taken out over Bass Strait, by Roy Manifold, a plumber on holidays at Crayfish Bay, near Apollo Bay, only some 20 minutes before Valentich began describing his encounter, revealed something unusual. He had taken 6 photos of the setting sun. He saw nothing untoward, with the camera set to automatically take the photo series, but upon development the fourth and sixth photos revealed apparent anomalies. The fourth photo showed what looked like a dense “black lump” in the water, giving the impression of something rising from the water. The fifth photo appeared normal. The sixth shows a strange mass situated in the sky directly over the position of the anomaly in the fourth photo, which looked like an object caught in flight with a possible exhaust or trail of material. Film faults and processing defects were ruled out. The RAAF suggested a cumulus cloud breaking up, but the timing of the exposures would have required the “cloud” to have moved into view at a speed of up to 200 mph. Now that’s some cloud for what was a calm day!

The areas that feature prominently in the Valentich incident – Cape Otway (his last land call), Bass Strait (the apparent location of his disappearance) and King Island (his apparent destination), all have extensive precedents for UFO activity. During a two month period centered around January, 1978, holiday makers, fishermen, school teachers, local police and lighthouse keepers in the Cape Otway area reported seeing UFOs. During July, 1977, local residents and the lighthouse keeper at Cape Otway, saw an inexplicable brilliant light source, that hovered out to sea for half an hour. We have seen in our history that Bass Strait figured in UFO mysteries particularly in 1920 and 1944. The Melbourne Argus newspaper even described many people seeing “cigar-shaped” objects flying over Bass Strait as far back as 1896. King Island’s 425 square miles played host to a wave of unidentified nocturnal aerial lights for at least three months prior to Frederick Valentich’s disappearance. Oval shaped lights followed cars and mystified local residents. Strange lights or flares appeared off the north of the island. One of the most spectacular close encounters with a UFO in the area, occurred at a wild and uninhabited part of the King Island coast, near Whistler Point, just before dawn, on April 10th, 1976. “A beam of light” emanating from “a cross-shaped object” approached a duck-shooter’s car, in a direct line. The light display eventually receded directly along its line of approach, ending a silent inspection, when it disappeared over the distant skyline.

There is much that suggests a UFO connection but unfortunately a final answer eludes us, preventing the comfort of certainty. Despite the provocative nature of the taped conversation Valentich had with Melbourne Flight Control prior to his disappearance that refers to a possible UFO presence, the affair still remains a mystery.

The Valentich mystery is punctuated with haunting, or rather more appropriately, taunting clues, that sets one off in all sorts of conflicting directions. Many have come up with all sorts of final solutions, that vary from the bizarre to the sublime. Did a UFO abduct Valentich? Did Valentich contrive the whole affair? Did he, as many think, crash into Bass Strait, leaving no trace? Or are other prosaic explanations involved? A multitude of various lines of enquiry radiate out in all sorts of directions. Most take us away from the facts of the matter, namely that no trace of pilot or plane have yet been found. The mystery resonates in the Australian consciousness in a place reserved for more mythic episodes like the haunting fiction of “Picnic at Hanging Rock”. It has inspired dramatic works like the profound and confronting play “Sky” and the bizarre and striking TV mini-series, “Locusts and Wild Honey”. We must remind ourselves that a family waits for an answer that so far has never come. I hope that some day they will find that answer.