[Snuffleupagus]

Originally Posted by Dion

Pilot Fred Valentich mysteriously disappeared while flying in Australia, even to this day people don't know what happened exactly.

Valentich was a crappy pilot, twice rejected for the air force and twice failing all five commercial licence examination subjects.

It's a nice UFO story only because they never found him or his plane in the ocean.

A more plausible explanation is his lack of skills as a pilot doomed him.

Some thought Valentich might have staged his disappearance, but the evidence does not support that hypothesis (Good 1988, 180). Nevertheless Valentich did
give two contradictory reasons for his flight to King Island: (1) to pick up some friends (as he told flight officials), or (2) to pick up crayfish.
However, these reasons were found to be untrue (Aircraft Accident 1982; “Valentich” 2013). Valentich had not even followed standard procedure to
inform King Island airport of his intent to land there (“Disappearance” 2013).

So what was Valentich really up to—in addition to wanting to log more hours of flying experience? Possibly he had decided to look for UFOs again but,
rather than admit that, offered others more legitimate-sounding reasons for his flight. In short, he may not simply have encountered a UFO but instead went
looking for one. If so, his “encounter” is not surprising. As a “True Believer,” observes Robert Sheaffer (2013, 27), Valentich was “probably inclined to
assume anything is a ‘UFO’ if he could not immediately identify it.”

So what did the young pilot see? Having clear skies, he described four bright lights that he mistakenly (as he later admitted) first thought were an
airplane’s “landing lights” (that is, white points of light). They were above him and—except for his own movements (more on this later)—seemed to be just
“hovering.” Then twice and quite correctly, he realized “it” was definitely “not an aircraft.”

As it happens, a computer search of the sky for the day, time, and place of Valentich’s flight reveals that the four points of bright light he would almost
certainly have seen were the following: Venus (which was at its very brightest), Mars, Mercury, and the bright star Antares. These four lights would have
represented a diamond shape, given the well-known tendency of viewers to “connect the dots,” and so could well have been perceived as an aircraft or UFO.
In fact, the striking conjunction was shaped as a vertically elongated diamond, thus explaining Valentich’s saying of the UFO that “it’s a long shape.”

As to the UFO’s other characteristics, the “metallic” or “shiny” appearance could have been due to the power of suggestion alone. Having connected the
dots, Valentich would likely have gone on to fill in the area as solid, even “metallic.” We must remember that Valentich’s impressions are those of someone
who was confused about what he was seeing.

The “green light” could have been part of this confusion also. Remember, Valentich’s first description of the UFO involved only four bright white lights;
he made no mention at that time of a green one. It could actually have been nothing more than the Cessna’s own navigation light on its right wing tip. That
green light—or its reflection on the windshield—could easily have been superimposed onto the UFO sighting.

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