The Valentich Disappearance

"It's hovering, and it's not an aircraft—" The radio cut. Pilot and plane were never found.

October 21, 1978: twenty-year-old pilot Frederick Valentich, flying a Cessna over Bass Strait, radioed Melbourne that an aircraft with four bright lights was orbiting above him — 'it's not an aircraft' — followed by seventeen seconds of metallic scraping, then silence. No wreckage was confirmed for five years (a partial engine cowl washed ashore in 1983). The Australian transcript is public and undisputed; explanations range from disorientation and inverted flight to fuel exhaustion. It anchors the aviation-vanishing file beside Flight 19, with the radio transcript as its permanent exhibit.