Aircraft goes in search of a mystery

Press, 3 January 1979, Page 1

Aircraft goes in search of a mystery

PA

Wellington

An Air force plane flew a special sixhour patrol last night in a bid to check the spate of reports of unidentified flying objects off the Kaikoura coast.

The Orion maritime patrol aircraft, equipped with sophisticated electronic equipment for tracking air and sea movements, carried movie and still cameras to photograph any unusual objects. The aircraft was in constant touch with radar observers at Wellington Airport. who tracked “scores” of U.F.O.s over the Clarence River area on Saturday night.

The Orion left its base at Whenuapai about 11 p.m. and arrived in the area of the recent sightings 30 minutes later, a Ministry of Defence spokesman said. It was expected to remain in the air until at least 5 a.m. An Australian te> ision crew aboard an Argosy freighter on a newspaper delivery run filmed U.F.O.s in the area early on Sunday morning. The film has been shown in Britain, the United States, and Australia, and was shown by TVI last evening.

The defence spokesman said that the Orion was used in place of a Skyhawk fighter-bomber from the R.N.Z.A.F. strike command at Ohakea, which was put on standby on Monday to investigate any further positive sightings by Wellington radar.

“The Orion is a much better aircraft for the job,” the spokesman said. “It has long endurance, often flying for 10 to 12 hours

at a stretch, and the Air Force has kept one in the air for 24 hours continuously.” The crew were briefed on their patrol before leaving Auckland, and given details of sightings in the area over the last 10 days.

Wellington radar tracked scores of inexplicable objects in the few hours before the television crew aboard the Argosy filme 1 “a large, white, glowing ball” on Sunday morning. At one time 10 separate objects were on the screen, said Mr Geoff Causer, an.,air traffic controller. The spate of recent sightings began on the night of December 20-21, when two Safe Air Argosy crews, flying in opposite directions between the South Island and the North Island, reported the objects.

The objects were also tracked by Wellington radar and picked up on the radar of both aircraft.

Wellington air traffic controllers . are confident that the “blips” they saw on their radar screens were not aircraft or had any explainable cause, such as clouds or birds. Scores of “miscellaneous returns” were recorded on Saturday night;, Mr Causer was reporting them in a continual stream at one stage to Captain Bill Startup, of Blenheim, the Argosy pilot.

He had 10 on his screen at one t’me and said later: “they would appear, disappear, and then crop up again somewhere else.” He told Captain Startup of one return that was right on the Argosy’s tail. The pilot said later that the large abject filmed by the Television crew had appeared to track him, starting off in front, then going above the Argosy, circling and coming down beneath him.

Additional sightings have not been scarce. U.F.O.s have been seen in Britain, Australia and Italy. Another object has been seen from the ground in the Clarence River area.

Several persons at Goose Bay and Clarence reported a huge bright light off the coast early yesterday morning. In Australia, at least 12 policemen on Queensland’s Gold Coast said that they watched a brilliant light cross the sky for nearly three hours early yesterday. “We’ve got a U.F.O. sighting, and we’re not kidding,” said one. Reports came in of a flood of sightings in Britain and balls of red light and cigar-shaped discs spitting fire over Italy. However, the attention of astronomers, physicists, and weather men ail over the world continues to be centred on the rash of sightings in New Zealand.