SUBJECT: NEW ZEALAND SIGHTING REPORT. INTERESTING FILE: UFO1540
This is taken from "The Unexplained" No.5.
"Late in the evening of 30 December 1978, an Argosy freight plane
set off from Wellington, New Zealand. Its skipper was Captain Bill
Startup, who had 23 years' flying experience behind him, and the
co-pilot was Bob Guard. On board were an Australian TV crew from
Channel 0-10 Network; reporter, Quentin Fogarty; [working at the
present on a nightly current affair show...Marty] and cameraman
David Crockett and his wife, sound recordist Ngaire Crockett. Their
purpose was to film UFOs, for there had been reports of 'unknowns'
during the preceding weeks in the region of Cook Straight, which
separates New Zealand's North and South Islands.
They were spectacularly successful in the quest, so successful in
fact that, after the story had appeared in hundreds of newspapers
and clips from the films had been shown repeatedly on television
around the world - the BBC, for instance, gave it pride of place on
the main evening news - critics and droves of debunkers lined up to
try to explain what the television crew had seen, in terms ranging
from the sublimely astronomical to the ridiculously absurd.
The Argosy had crossed Cook Strait and was flying over the
Pacific Ocean off the north-east coast of South Island when the
excitement began. The television crew was down by the loading bay,
filming 'intros' with Quentin Fogarty, when Captain Startup called
over the intercom for them to hurry to the flight deck: the pilots
had seen some strange objects in the sky. According to Ctockett,
they had already checked with Wellington air traffic control for
radar confirmation of their visual sighting.
Fogarty stated that, when he reached the flight deck, he saw a
row of five bright lights. Large and brilliant, although a long way
off, they were seen to pulsate, growing from pinpoint size to that
of a large balloon full of glowing light. The sequence was then
repeated, the objects appearing above the stereet lights of the
town of Kaikoura, but between the aircraft and the ground.
Crockett, who was wearing headphones, received a call from
Wellington control, warning the pilots that an unknown target was
following the Argosy. Captain Startup put his plane into a turn to
look for the unidentified object but the passengers and crew saw
nothing. Control, however, was insistent: 'Sierra Alpha
Eagle....you have a target in formation with you....target has
increased in size.' This time, lights were seen outside the plane;
but because of interference from the navigation lights of the
plane, Crockett was unable to film. So First Officer Bob Guard
switched off the navigation lights, and every-one saw a big, bright
light. The plane was now back on automatic pilot, so Guard gave up
his seat for Crocket, who obtained a clear shot of the object with
his hand-held camera. Crockett has since explained that this
changing of seats with the camera running was responsible for the
violent shake seen at that point in the movie film they made.
After this, Startup decided to put the plane into another
360-degree turn to see if they could spot the obfects again, but
they had now lost sight of the UFOs, although Wellington control
said their echo was still on the radarscope. Although there was no
room for a camera tripod to be mounted on the flight deck, the
unidentified object stayed steady enough for Crockett to be able to
keep it dead centre in his camera viewfinder for more than 30
seconds.
As the plane approached Christchurch, the fuel guage went into a
spin, but the captain said that this occasionally happened and was
not necessarily due to interference by the UFO. At this point, they
were out of touch with Wellington control. Christchurch control,
however, had the object on its radarscope but later, when Captain
Startup and American investigating scientist Dr Bruce Maccabee
asked to se the radar tapes, the Christchurch supervisor replied
that they had been 'wiped' clean as part of routine procedure.
The Argosy landed at Christchurch and journalist Dennis Grant
joined the team in place of Dave Crockett's wife, Ngaire. They left
on the return flight at about 2:15 a.m. on 31 December 1978.
Go to PART 2.
* SLMR 2.1a * If I look confused, it's because I'm thinking.
--- FMail 0.92
* Origin: ** NASA & STS: "It was only ice" ** (1:363/81.1)
* Tossed by SFToss v1.02 on 92/10/21 02:46:38
===========================================================================
BBS: Fortean Research Center
Date: 10-19-92 (00:12) Number: 3093
From: DON ALLEN Refer#: NONE
To: ALL Recvd: NO
Subj: "The dancing lights" 2/2 Conf: (10) FIDO UFO
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* Forwarded from "mufonet"
* Originally by Marty Wade
* Originally to All
* Originally dated 18 Aug 1992, 13:07
PART 2...
Early in this flight, the observers saw two more strange objects.
Through the camera lens, Crockett saw what he described as a
sphere with lateral lines around it. This object focussed itself
as Crockett watched through his camera, without adjusting the
lens. He said the sphere was spinning. Significantly, one of the
objects swayed on the Argosy's weather radar continuously for some
four minutes. Later, they all saw two pulsating lights, one of
which suddenly fell in a blurred streak for about 1,000 feet (300
metres) before pulling up short in a series of jerky movements.
Where the objects true 'flying saucers'? Many alternative
explanations have been put forward. The film perhaps depicted a
"top secret American military remote-control drone vehicle',
plasma or ball lightning, a hoax, meteorites, 'helicopters
operating illegally at night', mutton birds, lights on Japanese
squid boats, or 'reflections from moonlight via cabbage leaves'
(at Kiakoura); while Patrick Moore hedged his bets with a guess of
'a reflection, a balloon or even an unscheduled aircraft'.
One newspaper claimed the film showed the planet Venus,
out-of-focus because it was filmed with a hand-held camera.
Another offered Jupiter as a candidate, stating that an amateur
astronomer had enhanced the light values of the film by putting it
through a line-scan analyser, thereby identifying four small
points of light, possibly Jupiter's four largest moons.
But because the television crew were so vague about the
possibility of the lights relative to the aircraft as they were
filming them, it was impossible to make a positive identification.
One of the most exciting aspects of the incident however, is
that it appears to offer independent instrumental evidence of the
sighting both on film and radar. But even here there are problems.
Although both ground radar and the Argosy's own radar picked up
unidentified traces, the number of UFOs the television crew
claimed to have seen - about eight - conflicts with the 11
reported by ground radar. And the crew actually filmed only one
object. The radar controller at Wellington, Ken Bigham, was
dismissive about the whole affair.
"I managed to plot three of the echoes for 20 minutes or so
before they faded completely. They definitely moved, varying
between 50 and 100 knots (92.5 km/h and 185 km/h). I certainly
couldn't identify them as anything. It's pretty inconclusive. They
were purely the sort of radar echoes that constantly pop up. It
is not unusual to get strange echoes appering on what we call
primary radar. They usually amount to nothing at all."
Nevertheless, the Royal New Zealand Air Force was concerned
enough about the incident to put a Skyhawk jet fighter on full
alert to intercept any other UFOs that mighy appear in the area.
By the end of January, however, the fuss had died down and the New
Zealand Defence Ministry then stated that the unidentified objects
were 'atmospheric phenomena'.
So what is the truth of the New Zealand Affair? The film
appears to be genuine; and computer enhancement has not proved it
to be a fake. However, it seems almost too good to be true that a
television crew that had set out with the deliberate intention of
filming 'flying saucers' should come up with such spectacular
results. Yet it has to be assumed that the objects were real
enough to those who beheld them, and were not mere hallucinations.
The case remains on file, accompanied by a fascinating question
mark.
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* THE U.F.O. BBS -
http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo *
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