MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF PILOT FREDERICK VALENTICH

Frederick Valentich, a 20 years old pilot disappeared while on a 235 kilometers (125 mile) training flight in a light aircraft (Cessna 182L) over Bass Strait in Australia on 21 October 1978. 

Valentich communicated to Melbourne Flight Service to report an unidentified aircraft which was following his aircraft at 4,500 feet. He was told by air traffic control that there was no known aircraft flying at that level. Valentich said he could see four bright landing lights but was unable to confirm its type. He reported that it had passed about 1,000 feet overhead and was moving with high speed. He was of the opinion that some other pilot is playing games with him when the unidentified aircraft approached him from the east. Valentich said that aircraft was orbiting above him and that it had a shiny metal surface and a green light on it. Valentich then reported that he was experiencing engine problems. When he was asked to identify the aircraft, Valentich replied, "it is not an aircraft" and after that his transmission was interrupted by unidentified noise described as"metallic, scraping sounds" and then all communications were lost.  

One of the proposed explanation is that Valentich became disoriented and was flying upside down. If this was the case, he would have seen his own aircraft's reflection in the water. He would have then crashed into the water.  

A retired U.S. Air Force pilot James McGaha and author Joe Nickell proposes that Valentich was inexperienced and was deceived by the illusion of a tilled horizon for which he attempted to compensate and inadvertently put his aircraft into a downward position which is called graveyard spiral which he initially mistook for simple orbiting of the aircraft. The G-forces of a tightening spiral would decrease fuel flow, resulting in the "rough idling" and engine problem as reported by the pilot. McGaha and Nickell also proposed that apparently stationary overhead illuminating lights that he pilot reported were probably the planets Mars, Venus and Mercury, along with the bright star Antares, which would have behaved in a similar way as described by the pilot.  

However Ufologists have some extraterrestrials explanations for Valentich's aircraft disappearance. Some individuals reported seeing an erratically moving green light in the sky. On the same day Roy Manifold took pictures of a fast moving object coming out of the water near Cape Otway lighthouse. Though the pictures were not clear enough to identify the object but UFO groups argue that apparently that object was surrounded by a cloud like vapor or exhaust residue.