By Dorraine Fisher
Frederick Valentich wasn’t a military man. He was no one special or significant. But in October, 1978, this Australian pilot boarded a Cessna single-engine 182L plane for a routine cargo flight of 235 kilometers (about 146 miles) over Bass Strait, Australia. It was a day that started out like any other day, but as it turned out, he would never make it back.
According to the flight service officer at the time, Steve Robey, Valentich gave a rather routine position report and was flying under 5000 feet. But after that, things got very strange. Less than an hour into the flight, he started reporting that his engine was running rough and a strange aircraft was hovering about 300 meters above him. The following is the actual transcript of the exchange between Robey and Valentich:
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