Frederick Valentich UFO
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Is there any known traffic below 5,000 feet? No known traffic. Seems to be a large aircraft below 5,000 feet. Seems to be playing some sort of game. It's flying over me. Can you describe the aircraft? As it's flying past, it's a long shape. What it's doing right now is orbiting. The thing is just orbiting on top of me. It's also got a green light and a sort of metallic like... It's shiny on the outside. It's just vanished.

Welcome to Theories of the Third Kind. My name is Aaron and I am your host today. You're probably wondering where Daniel's son is at. Well, he had some stuff to take care of.

So sadly, he will not be joining us for today's episode. I want to apologize ahead of time. This is going to be a fairly short episode. I kind of debated if I was even going to put out this week's episode. I had a family member who passed away, but I decided to go ahead and at least put something out for you guys this week.

But this is a action-packed, there's just so much stuff going on with this UFO encounter that we're going to discuss. We have actual audio from the UFO encounter. So it is going to be a great episode. Make sure you stick around and give it a listen. So before we start, like always, let me do a quick announcement. We don't run any ads on this show and we don't take any money from any corporations.

So if you would like to help us out, a written review on iTunes would help the show tremendously. If you don't want to leave one, though, that's fine. We just want you guys, girls, aliens, reptilians, Bigfoots, Sasquatches, Chupacabras, ghosts, Illuminati members, underground lizard people, whoever or whatever you are, to enjoy the show.

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So with that being said, let me go over how today's episode will work. We'll start off with talking a little bit about who Frederick Valentich was. Then we'll talk a little bit about the UFO encounter, the search and the investigation, the strange facts and findings. And then, of course, we'll wrap it all up with my thoughts and theories on the whole entire case. So let's go ahead and discuss a little bit about Frederick Valentich.

He was born on June 9th, 1958 in Melbourne, Australia. He attended Keilor Heights High School up until his 10th year when he decided to continue his studies at a private college. So Frederick wanted to have a career in aviation really bad. So he applied to enlist in the Royal Australian Air Force, but...

He was rejected, not once, but twice. A little side note here. The reason he was rejected was because of his inadequate educational qualifications. And there's also some other things that happened during flight school, which we'll discuss later on during the strange facts section.

Anyways, so Frederick was a member of the Air Training Corps, and on February 24, 1977, at the age of 19, he received his student pilot license. Then, in September of 1978, at the age of 20, he received his private pilot license.

So that's just a little bit of a backstory of Frederick. And it's not much, but it kind of sums it up to where we can get into the event and what happens. On October 21st, 1978, Frederick filed a flight plan at Moorabbin Airport in Melbourne, Australia.

Now, real quick, if you don't know what a flight plan is, it's basically like a document that is filed by a pilot with a local air navigation service provider. This is done prior to the departure. It pretty much just maps out the flight path destination and the reason why.

And they can do that any time before their flight. So on his flight plan, he stated that he was to fly to Kings Island in the Bass Strait via Cape Otway to pick up passengers and then return. Now, something to keep in mind while we go over this. The flight to Kings Island was around 125 miles. So it wasn't that long of a flight for him.

So at 6.19 p.m. on October 21st, 1978, Frederick hopped into his Cessna 182 light aircraft and departed Moorabbin Airport. He quickly climbed to a cruising speed of around 160 miles an hour. His visibility was good and winds were light. It was excellent flying weather. So everything seems good so far for him. So now we're going to get into the encounter.

At 7 o'clock p.m., 41 minutes into his flight, Frederick contacted the Melbourne Flight Service to inform them of his presence, that he was in the area, and reported reaching Cape Otway and that he was on his way to King Island. Now, this is all, that's all normal, right? He's just relaying in, hey, I'm on the same route that I'm supposed to be. I'm heading to the same place. Everything's fine.

So then six minutes later, at 7:06 p.m., Frederick radioed into the Melbourne Flight Service. And this is like where the air traffic controllers are at. Air traffic controller Steve Roby picked up the radio. Frederick asked him if there are any other aircraft in his area of 5,000 feet. Traffic controller Steve responded to Frederick and said that there was no known traffic at that level.

Frederick said that he could see a large unknown aircraft, which appeared to be illuminated by four bright landing lights. He was unable to confirm its time, but said it had passed about 1,000 feet overhead and was moving at a high rate of speed. The radio fell silent for a moment, and then Frederick responded. He said that the aircraft was approaching him from the east and said that it was probably another pilot purposely toying with him.

Then, at 7:09 p.m., air traffic controller Steve asked Frederick to confirm his altitude, and if he was able to identify the aircraft, Frederick gave his altitude at 4,500 feet.

After that, Frederick stopped transmitting for about 30 seconds, during which time the traffic controller, Steve, asked for an estimate of the aircraft's size. Frederick said the aircraft was long, but it was traveling too fast for him to describe it in more detail. After that, Frederick stopped transmitting again, this time for 28 seconds.

Then Frederick said the aircraft was orbiting above him and it had a shiny metal surface and a green light on it. Then the radio fell silent for a moment and Frederick reported that the aircraft had vanished. There was a further 25 second break in communications before Frederick reported that the craft had appeared and was now approaching from the southwest.

29 seconds later, at 7:12 p.m., Frederick radioed that he was experiencing engine problems and was going to proceed to Kings Island. There was a brief silence until he said, "It is hovering and it is not an aircraft." This was followed by 17 seconds of unidentified noise described as being metallic scraping sounds. Then all contact was lost.

Now, I tried, I mean, I looked and looked for the audio transcripts of the air traffic controller and Frederick. There's a couple of them on YouTube, but they're all remakes. The official audio from that night was never released. The only thing that was released was

was the sound, the 17 seconds of the unidentified noise, that metallic scraping sound. So I'll play that right now so you guys can have a listen to it. So here we go. So that's the sound. I tried using Adobe Audition.

the audio program to enhance the quality of it and see if there's anything that I can make out in the audio. And I couldn't really make out anything in the audio besides it. It sounded like whatever it was, was underwater, but it's weird that he said, Frederick said it is hovering and it is not an aircraft. And then you heard that sound and then nothing else happened. So, so let's move into the search and investigation part.

At 7.12 p.m., immediately after air traffic controller Steve had lost contact with Frederick, a search and rescue alert was issued. Two RAAFs, P-3 Orion aircrafts, and eight civilian aircrafts searched over a seven-day period. Now, if you don't know how big the RAAF P-3 Orion aircrafts are, they're humongous.

So the search encompassed over 1,000 square miles. During the search, a fuel slick was found roughly near where Frederick had last radioed in at. Now this gets you thinking, oh, fuel slick, this must be him. Eh, not so fast. A sample of the fuel was taken and analyzed. The results came back that it was not aviation fuel. Probably one of the BP oil spills. Anyways.

So vessels and aircrafts continued to search the area and no trace of his wreckage was ever found in that area. So search efforts continued for four days straight until October 25th, 1978. That is when officials stated that Frederick likely crashed and that it was presumed fatal. After that statement, all search efforts ceased.

Now, there are still people out there searching for him that try to find his aircraft and everything. But these are the official, you know, government searches and everything. They presumed him dead, buried him and called it good.

So on the outside, this story is pretty odd. It's one of your typical Bermuda Triangles, airplane goes missing, right? But this has a hint of UFO thrown in it just because of what Frederick had said, that something had approached him, that it was at bright lights on it, it was not an aircraft, and it was traveling at high rates of speeds and that metallic sound.

So there's a lot of strange facts and findings in this story. I mean, a lot. So let's go over those. And we'll start from his childhood and kind of work in a timeline of these strange facts and findings.

So at the time of his disappearance, Frederick lived at home with his parents and three siblings and worked as a shop assistant at an army disposal store. Frederick was studying part-time to become a commercial pilot, but had a poor record, to say the least. This is the best part. He had failed all five commercial license examinations.

Frederick had been involved in a lot of flying incidences. For an example, um, I read that he actually strayed into a controlled zone in Sydney, Australia. Um, and he received a warning for that, but, uh, he, he got in real bad trouble twice because, uh, he deliberately flew into a cloud. I didn't know that, uh,

During flying lessons you aren't supposed to fly into a cloud, but apparently he did it twice deliberately So that's just a one of strange facts. Here's something else that I found which was odd so on October 21st 1978 of course the day that he disappeared

Frederick told his family and his girlfriend and a few friends that he was leaving to go pick up crayfish, which on his flight plan, of course, he wrote down that he was flying to King Island to pick up some individuals and fly back. But he told his family that he was going to go pick up crayfish.

It's kind of odd. So during the accident investigation, it was learned that there was no passengers waiting to be picked up at Kings Island and that he had not ordered any crayfish. So that just adds to the mystery of the story itself. Something else that was odd. Days after Frederick went missing, his father, Guido, he did an interview with the Associated Press report.

In this interview, Guido said, or Guido, I'm sure it's not Guido, I'm sure it's Guido, said, I hoped my son was taken by a UFO and had not crashed. Who would say that? The fact that they found no trace of him presents a possibility that UFOs could have been there. Hmm. I mean, that is strange, right?

Well, it gets a little weirder because Frederick's father then says in another interview, his son used to study UFOs as a hobby using the information he had obtained from the Air Force. Hmm. He also said that he was not the kind of person who would make up stories. Everything had to be very correct and positive for him.

and that Frederick was a firm believer in UFOs, and prior to his disappearance, he had, quote-unquote, worried about attacks from UFOs. Interesting. Now, keep that in mind, that strange fact, because I touch back on that again in my theory section, where I think I solved this case, but we'll save that to the end.

Let's move on to the next one. Now, you guys remember the 17 seconds of unexplained noise, right? Described as being metallic and scraping sounds. So there was a researcher, Paul Norman. He received a copy of this recording from the authorities.

And he had it analyzed by the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. And another was taken to the United States for analysis by Dr. Richard Haynes, who was a former researcher with NASA and an associate professor of psychology at San Jose State University. So he was very accredited. He knew what the hell he was doing.

So after Dr. Haynes analyzed the sounds, he said the sounds were 36 separate bursts of

with fairly constant start and stop pulses bounding each one. He also said that there was no discernible patterns in time or frequency in the noise. So the significance of the sounds, it still remains undetermined and nobody really can say, hey, that's what it sounds like. Me personally, I think it sounds like a microphone going underwater, which if I had an extra microphone laying around, which I do not,

I would stick it underwater and let you guys hear it, which probably wouldn't be that safe. But hey, you got to do stuff for the show. Am I right?

Sitting here talking to myself in the studio. I feel so dumb. Anyways, so on the day of Frederick's disappearance, there was a plumber named Roy Manifold. And this guy just happened to be setting up a time-lapse camera and tripod on the shoreline in order to photograph the sun setting over the water. So Roy took a whole bunch of pictures of the sun, right? Yeah.

And when he got the pictures developed, he noticed that they appeared to show a fast-moving object exiting the water near Cape Otway Lighthouse. So Roy gave the time that the pictures were taken as approximately 6.47 p.m., 20 minutes before Frederick reported having difficulties.

I did get a copy of this photograph. I was able to retrieve it. And I will post this photo on our Instagram under the story highlights. But for the listeners who don't have Instagram are unable to look at the photograph, it is a picture of the sunset. And in the upper right-hand corner, there is what looks like

A bug up close. Now, that's just my personal opinion. It looks like a beetle with wings. It could be something else. It could be something else. So there's a lot of different photographs of this image. But I was able to obtain this one. Now, there was a group, a UFO group called Ground Saucer Watch. And they analyzed all these photographs.

Of this object, whatever it is. And this UFO group argues that the distance that the object moved between frames and relative to the clouds in the background indicate that the speed that the object is moving is 200 miles an hour. So they did some math. They mathed the shit out of it and they said that's what it is.

But it wasn't really sitting well with people. People were like, you think you'd need somebody more credible? Well, do you remember the Dr. Haynes, right? That NASA guy who analyzed the metallic sounds? Well, he got the pictures as well. And he said, based on computerized data of the pictures, the images represent a unknown flying object of moderate dimensions, apparently large.

surrounded by a cloud-like vapor or exhaust residue now when i look at the picture and i only have one it looks like the wings are on the back of it it looks like a bug with wings but if he says it's an exhaust and he has computerized data that analyzes photograph then uh

I could see that being an exhaust. It is an odd-shaped UFO if it is one because it's more so of a square shape rather than the typical round, flat UFO. So let's move on. So another strange thing worth noting is that after news of Frederick's disappearance became public, a number of individuals reported witnessing unusual activity in the area.

Some people claim to have seen, quote-unquote, an erratically moving green light in the sky. And in one instance, witnesses located about two kilometers west of Apollo Bay, Victoria, stated that they saw a green light trailing a plane, which was a Cessna that they said.

and that he was in a steep dive at the time. Hmm. That's eyewitness accounts, but still, that's odd. Now, some more ufologists came forward and said that there was a large amount of reports of UFOs being in that area several years prior. Hmm.

So the last strange fact was that in May of 1983, five years after Frederick disappeared, an engine flap from a Cessna 182 aircraft, which was the same one as Frederick was flying, was found washed ashore on Flinders Island, which was located in the Bass Strait, which is the area near where Frederick was flying.

The flap featured a partial serial number. The range that this partial serial number fell into, well, it was the same range as Frederick's serial number. Something to add to this, though. Steve Robey, that air traffic controller guy, he doesn't believe it is from the same Cessna. He went on record saying,

If it was much closer to the area where he went down, I would consider it. But it's an extremely long way to the point that I discounted it completely. Also, Roby said that there was nothing in what Frederick said over the radio which indicated a hoax or disorientation and loss of bearings. Hmm.

You find a piece of an engine cover with a partial serial match, and it's the same aircraft that Frederick was flying. I would kind of lean more towards that just based on that, but I would like to see more engine parts appear or at least an entire plane found, you know? Anyways, so those are the strange facts and findings. Now, we're going to get into possible theories as to what happened.

And there's quite a bit of different theories, some more popular than others, which we'll still cover those, but we won't touch on as much because they've been hammered on ever since Frederick disappeared. But the first theory we're going to go over is Frederick staged his own disappearance. Now, this isn't an unreasonable suggestion, right?

For an example, during his disappearance, his aircraft still had enough fuel to fly over 400 miles. Also, no time was the aircraft plotted on radar. So this casts doubts as to whether it was even near Cape Otway.

And something worth noting here is that the Melbourne police received reports of a light aircraft making a mysterious landing not far from Cape Otway at the same time as Frederick's disappearance. Now, I don't know anyone who has called in to a police department and said, hey, there is a light aircraft making a mysterious landing here.

Unless the aircraft is landing on the road or where it's not supposed to be, then I could see people calling. But if it's just a landing in a field that's a designated landing spot, then I don't...

I don't see that as an issue, but that's one of the theories. So now this next theory we're going to go over is the most common and talked about one when it comes to Frederick Valentich and his disappearance. This one is titled The Graveyard Spiral.

So an astronomer and retired U.S. Air Force pilot, James McGaha, he proposed this theory. He said the inexperienced Frederick was deceived by the illusion of a tilted horizon for which he attempted to compensate and inadvertently put his plane into a downward so-called graveyard spiral.

So the G-forces of this tightening spiral would decrease fuel flow, resulting in the rough idling reported by Frederick. This downward spiral ended up ultimately sending Frederick into the ocean. But what about the bright lights that Frederick saw above him? Well...

McGaha said that they were likely, I'm not making this up, he did say this, he said that they were likely the planets Venus, Mars, and Mercury. I did see an astronomical map on the day and time of where exactly Frederick was, and they do line up, those planets do line up to where they're close by and they're extremely bright.

in that area and at that time. So him being an astronomer and him being a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, he's got all the credentials to make this theory. So that's what a lot of the news media still to this day go with and say what happened to Frederick. But we'll go to the next theory. This one theory is called abducted. This one, of course, is the theory that Frederick was abducted by a UFO.

The unexplained aircraft with the green light that he reported was a vehicle of some kind, which in turn either abducted him or caused the destruction of his plane in some fashion. I mean, look at the reports of individuals in the area seeing all the same thing around the same time, as well as the strange metallic sound in the photograph that Roy captured. It kind of lines up, right? But why would aliens abduct aliens?

him and an entire plane that would all be completely out of date for them or maybe not maybe I don't know but that's just one of the theories now this next theory is pretty interesting this one is called not the whole story

I found an online rumor from an anonymous source that it claimed to have worked as an air traffic controller at the actual Melbourne airport. And he said, or she said that they were the ones who actually took the call from Frederick, not Roby.

This anonymous source said that they spoke with Frederick for over 30 minutes, that the Australian government did not release the entire transcripts, and that they are not telling anyone the whole story of what truly happened. This source also said that just an example of what was left out of the transcript was that Frederick said he was engulfed in a green light and he felt as if his skin was burning off his bones.

Ooh, that's pretty scary if that was true. All right, so now I guess we're going to go into personal thoughts and theories. I think I solved this case, and I sat there and I thought about it. As I was reading and researching this case, I thought about what could happen, and this theory may be a little bit out there, okay? But I want you to hear me out on this.

All right, so the title of my theory is Government Cover-Up. A secret branch of the Australian government was developing a new high-tech aircraft, one that had capabilities of flying at high speeds and extremely high-tech weaponry on board.

Everything was going good with all of the testing and everything, but they still needed to test their high-tech weaponry on a human subject, but couldn't or wouldn't ask for permission from their overseers. So then here comes along Frederick. Now, the government already had records of him since he had applied multiple times to the Royal Australian Air Force, right? And he was denied. But he was the perfect scapegoat for them to be able to try this new weapon on.

So picture this. Weeks before his flight, Frederick gets contacted by officials from the secret branch of the Australian government. These officials tell Frederick that they are government officials and they are part of a secret program, that they want Frederick to be the pilot for saving the world from UFOs, but to not tell anyone.

Frederick accepts, and these officials tell Frederick to fly to Kings Island on October 21st for his first mission, but to just tell everyone that you're picking up friends or you could tell them that you're buying crayfish or whatever you want.

So weeks prior to his first quote-unquote mission, Frederick starts studying UFO books more. Now this falls in line with what his father said in the interview, how his son used to study UFOs as a hobby using information he obtained from the Air Force. He was not the kind of person who would make up stories. Everything had to be very correct and positive for him. He was a firm believer in UFOs, and prior to his disappearance, he had worried about attacks from UFOs. So that's what his father said, so keep that in mind.

So Frederick goes out on October 21st for his flight to Kings Island for his first mission to, quote, unquote, save the world from UFO attacks. Frederick gets in his plane, starts flying. The secret government officials are not at Kings Island but are monitoring Frederick's plane. They deploy their new high-tech aircraft. Frederick sees it and relays the information to the air traffic controller who has no idea what the hell is going on.

The pilot of new high-tech aircraft isn't used to it, hence why he was all over the place going back and forth, orbiting above, orbiting below. And then he accidentally slams into Frederick's plane, which caused the metal screeching sound. Case solved. I say case solved, but it's just a crazy theory. It's fun to think about. It is fun to think about.

But overall, it was a pretty far out there, far left out there theory. I admit, I kind of reached out for that one, but I wanted a real interesting theory. So I just wanted to say one last thing before we close this up is that there's some things that I do know that the Bass Strait, it's an extremely rough piece of water, one of the roughest in the world.

Actually, there's one that's rougher, and that's the Strait near Hawaii. But the Bass Strait is the second, and the world is the second roughest. But when boats or planes, when they crash in that area, it's not uncommon to never find these things again due to the currents. And the currents are extremely unpredictable in where they take things at.

For an example, I think it was in the year 2000 or 2001. I want to say 2000. Yeah, 2000. The Margaret Jay, she sank on the west side of the Bass Strait. The search was carried out around the west side of it, but their life raft had washed up on a small uninhabitable island in the east side of the Strait. So that's just an example of how unpredictable the waters are.

So overall, while this story is definitely a great mystery, I doubt we will ever get any closer to a formal resolution unless some definite part of Frederick's aircraft is found. So with that being said, that is the end of today's episode. We're going to save reviews, ratings, voicemails, shoutouts, all that great stuff for next week, since I am the only one here today.

And I don't think it would be right reading it alone because there are some reviews and ratings that are about other individuals. So I'd like for them to hear it too. I think it would only be fair. But I want to thank everybody who's left a review, a rating, who's contacted us on Instagram, Facebook. Like I said earlier, we have a lot of stuff going on today.

So, um, that being said, I apologize again for this, for this being so short. Thank you guys for all your love, support. And remember, it's okay to be out of this world with your thoughts because you guys and girls and aliens are not alone.