The Kaikoura U.F.O.s

Press, 2 September 1980, Page 25

The Kaikoura U.F.O.s

Early in the morning of December 21, 1978, strange lighted objects began to appear off the Kaikoura Coast. To the aircrews of Safe Air Limited, New Zealand’s freight airline, flying up and down rhe ■ country at night is a routine business and the lights of the cities, boats at sea, lighthouses and the rising and setting of the planets, a familiar sight. But there was no logical explanation for the UFOs witnessed on December 21, -Ten days later a television team got perto re-fly the route to shoot some background film for a programme of interviews about the sightings. Only minutes after their Argosy aircraft left Wellington for Christchurch. the whole performance began again and the strange objects were s imultaneously watched by

five observers on the flight deck, tracked by Wellington radar — and filmed in colour. Squid boats ... or the first genuine and authenticated film of a UFO? “The Kaikoura UFOs” by Captain Bill , Startup, (the pilot of the Argosy on that night of December 31) draws no conclusions

about what those objects were, but presents evidence — in the form of photographs taken of the sightings, plus the full facts, carefully re-con-structed from the accounts of many, witnesses. (“The Kaikoura UFOs" is published by Hodder and Stoughton.)