The Kaikoura UFOs - 1978

0:25 for centuries mankind has pondered the question are we the only intelligent beings in the universe among the billions of stars out there might there be other forms of life perhaps far more advanced than us this question remains a mystery but regular reports of UFOs and identified flying objects which appear from time to time and places all over the world add fuel to the debate one of the most famous UFO incidents of all time took place in the skies above Marlborough and this Argus II aircraft played a central role in the dramatic events for take over UFOs as they became known created a worldwide media frenzy they also sparked formal government inquiries and intensive scientific investigation in New Zealand and the United States but

1:26 they remain a mystery to this day so join us now aboard the Argosy as we return to the skies above kaikoura and hear what really happened on that dramatic night from the people who were it all started on a warm clear marva evening just before Christmas 1978 and at Air Force Base Woodburn e'en F and L was doing his routine evening patrol well I was warned officer in the errands that AF base that would been and the night in question I was in the orderly officer for the base and about half past eleven I went out to diesel up my last rounds something I was always meticulous and doing and as I got down to the corner of the tarmac here I saw what I

2:28 thought was a Bristol freighter coming in to land direct from the beacon that Cape Campbell and I stopped to watch that come in and it never came and I was so after a few minutes they decided to go up to the control tower and talk to the Duty controller we went up there and he got the binoculars out and had a look and he said oh I think it might be a dc-8 join into wellington he said you can see its landing light beam and he gave me the binoculars and and I said to him well if that's a dc-8 I said it's just under split our Stern and its own length which as the landing likes now pointing in the other direction and he said to me we said perhaps we're getting a visit from the little green men and we both had a bit of a laugh about that then he said I'll I think I'll I'll ring the chaps and Wellington radar and see if they've got anything we saw targets on the radar which we could correlate with lights in the sky

3:28 but what they were I had no idea I wish I did the radar matched the visual sighting in that case perfectly there was three lights a big one in the middle and a small one on either side and they were equidistant from the big one they came up and then they did a an act a perfect tack of a circle to 90 degrees and they moved off to the in a westerly direction and they moved back towards the the big in an easterly direction slowly periodically sending out these these beams of light and I couldn't help thinking that this was some somebody or something searching for something on the ground or or out at sea or wherever they we'd had phone calls mind you of people who'd seen strange lights in the Hutt Valley Blenheim were reporting that people had seen strange lights off in them we had someone else ring us up and ask us if there was a an aircraft flying over here because they could hear this

4:29 funny whistling noise and then we were seeing these things on the radar so there was an awful lot of it of this is something different this is unusual you know it was a this is this is hey what is this in the area at the time were two Argosy aircraft on their normal night freight runs the puzzled radar operators called them up and asked them to keep a lookout for any unusual lights over the next two hours both agassi's flew along the kaikoura coast and both crews were astounded by what they saw and then the radar voice came on them and said look we've got something out here on our screens that we haven't identified and then he said well we've got a large

5:30 object on your port wing direction can you see that well in the Argosy you can't see out the militia leaned forward so we'll in Ford both Ian and I did and we saw this large object we popped out of this cloud and here here was this light but so close that it was almost frightening you know what the hang is there I think at the time I described it as being the size of a house beating in the sky and that's sexy what it looked like like a house fire that sort of intensity of color that middle of the pear-shaped about 10,000 feet here 2,000 feet above them yeah we can see it too

6:31 on radar the big target that we had after the southeast came across again turned with the Argosy and tracked and paced him for a good 10 minutes or 20 miles I'm not sure what Yaga sees cruising speed was but it was certainly keeping pace level omni agra sees winter i must admit the béchamel recommend a bit funny but they all here in the back of an acre wait a bit I don't know what happened early any mob he wouldn't he wouldn't tell me if I asked him so I didn't ask him yeah it was a bit of a concern I mean it was an enormous thing to look at and and obviously very hot and appearing to be on fire the last thing you'd want to do is get too close to her the atmosphere was so so electric that night he really was as well we thought met balloons we thought whether but there was no weather - did gin-clear night radar malfunction no we didn't think so everything else was was prot was good though the alga seas were where they said they were so he was seem to be functioning normally we just had these strange returns on the right now there

7:33 were all sorts of theories came up but most people were sort of genuinely interested in what we had seen what happened that night it was very exciting they were looking for something that's the only explanation for these beams of light that kept coming down and I know that the next day in the newspaper here there were reports from people living down the case who said that there were these lights that came down out of the sky lighting up the ground in the sea next day the word spread that something very strange was happening in the skies above kaikoura newspapers TV and radio reported the story and it caught the attention of another journalist Leonard Lee at channel Oh in Melbourne Australia I heard a newscast the 11 o'clock news and I heard something that actually caught my attention quite profoundly and it was the story of an encounter here between two freight airline pilots and

8:34 some unidentified flying objects in the kaikoura skies that had been confirmed by government radar as it turned out we had another new zealand reporter in our newsroom his name is Quinton Fogarty I contacted Quinton and said Quinton are you aware that there's been a big UFO encounter over there and Quentin said to me on the phone yes he said I am aware of it and I said I've got permission for you to go and hire a freelance film crew if you'll break your holidays for a couple of days and go and do what we call a recap so Quentin said yeah I'll see what I can do he rang me a couple of three four days later and said look I've got it organized I've got the same plane the same route but different pilots and he said we're going to fly on December the 30th so I said fantastic us and you know just let me know the freight number of the film and the sound tapes and send them back with a script you know record a voiceover and I'll put it together back

9:34 here and that'll be fine thanks very much I thought the job would be interesting it was a good story we were following up a strong UFO sighting I had an interest in that but I didn't for one second even begin to imagine that we would get involved in something ourselves I guess I was quite skeptical about the whole thing but then I got the call from Quentin Fogerty to say can I go and do a job you'd like to go up on the Agassi the following weekend do the same route that van Powell had done and so am i interested and I said oh yeah oh they're so Quinton and the film crew prepared to fly a routine Odyssey Freight trip from Wellington to Christchurch there would be five people on board that night pilots will start up and Bob garde reporter Quentin cameraman David Crockett and David's wife Nyree the sound recordist I was you know when

10:35 I first put on it was nothing like I'd ever seen before and it was absolutely chocolate full of newspapers we had to sort of climb over the newspapers to get to the rear seats to strap in it just felt like that at any minute it was going to swing away and you'd be gone because they didn't seem they were no like inside walls or it was just like a big shell mazing and was actually just doing a stand-up to camera and only got into the first part of stand up to camera and Captain Bill start up yelled down you better get up here because the same things happening again the river the morning of the we've just completed the first take and I think it was Bill who put his head down the hatch and said you guys better get up here quickly so I wanted to get up the stairs but David wants to take

11:36 two and if the cameraman wants to take two then we do take two so we did take two and then went up the stairs it's a beautiful night out and Natalie will be looking out for anything well David started off on the seat here and printin was to the left of him at that stage and I was just crouched down on the floor behind the seat we sort of moved around the whole time as David was filming out of different windows to catch the lights rena leaned over the copilot to try and see this object that the radio station from wellington was telling us was behind us and then coming up alongside us and so just press the button of the camera and let it run the very first thing we saw was these sort of falls of light that would just appear in the sky and I mean it was really just looking through small windows at a very

12:36 very black sky and seeing pulsating lights that started usually is a very very small pinprick of light and then would grow into a like a great globe of it was alright at the beginning it was quite exciting that suddenly that there were lights but I had never seen anything as bright as there and they were like bright lights and then they would just dip away and then like then come back somewhere else over a little bit further but they definitely did not look like a reflection of a light they were - it was like they were too solid or - and they were in the same shape

13:39 they weren't the same size you know there was like one big light and there was like you know a couple of smaller lights 14,000 feet we were up beautiful clear night no turbulence whatsoever zoomed in and out of this object and I I thought it was fairly close to the Argosy because it seemed to be so bright but when dr. Bruce Maccabee the optical physicist from the United States came down and he did all the analysis of everything went over the full film footage and looked at everything he said did you know that that object was five miles from you and probably as big as a two-story building the flight continued down the coast camera land David doing his best to film the lights from the cramped flight deck and Nyree recording Quentin's commentary one to the right of us is stool reasonably priced

14:41 it's just about impossible to film them it's his focus people have commented on my commentary a few times and said that I sounded you know very calm collected and everything but people who know me and I myself know that there was quite a degree of strain and that commentary to people who don't know me it may have sounded calm and collected but to me and to my friends and family I sounded like I was under some Jewess the atmosphere on board was electric and becoming increasingly tense especially when Wellington radar reported that one of the objects was now following immediately behind captain

15:47 start up turned the Argosy around in two complete circles trying to see what was going on a week or two prior to this flight we had heard about the the lentes incident in Australia where volantis was flying from the mainland to Baz mania and radioed back that he was being snapped by bright lights and everything and then the audio went dead they've never found him they've never found any records they never found anything and I think when Captain Bill start up got the OK to fly off course towards this object I think the feeling was amongst all of us are we going to get zapped you know is something going to happen when we got to be taken away so there was some anxiety there what really got me unnerved because it

16:50 was something on our tail who had picked up something on our tail that he wanted to do a turn so he could see what was behind him and when you crouch down in a plane taking sound and this monstrous bird you're in the tunes you know right around and they seem like a whole globe in the plane and I just did not want to touch the sides of the pain it just seemed as if it would be hot and I don't SPECT I've ever told anybody this before but there was a whole glowing but we could see our way from the upstairs right down to the rear as clear as if it was a daylight Quinton was already in the seat but um I got there and he just grabbed hold of my hands and you know he was not very happy about you know the

17:52 home feeling it was a really scary feeling at that stage the mysterious lights continued to follow the plane almost all the way to Christchurch everyone was relieved when the Argosy finally landed in the early hours of the morning well I'd always said there's no way I'm doing would go back on that now but at that stage that was supposed to be in the job anyway so I was quite happy that we were down on the ground oh yeah I couldn't wait to get out when we climbed off the Argosy and I mentioned it to build startup I put my hands down alongside the aircraft to get down and there seemed to be some sort of electricity on the outside it was like a magnetism do you know how you pick up you can open a wrapping of cellophane or something and it'll stick to your finger it was the same feeling

18:53 like that on the outside of the Argosy and I mentioned it to one or two thieves well I think nari also picked that up she said I was something like magnetic I wasn't relieved to get on the ground I was excited to get on the ground you know we wanted to talk to the air traffic controllers and Christchurch you know to find out what they'd seen you know we felt we were caught up in something pretty extraordinary we're now on the radar rim at Christchurch Airport it's about quarter to two and in about another 20 minutes where we intend to take off again the Argosy and retrace the route we took only a few moments earlier we've just heard from wayne's and radar that there are still targets in the kaikoura area so this time we're hoping to get better film than we did last time and all i can say as we'll see what happens when the opportunity came along to go back on the flight I mean I thought about it I mean my wife was at the airport at

19:54 this point and in some ways I wanted that sort of reassurance and affection and love and not to go back on this silly plane back into that dark sky but at the same time I thought well you know you never know there might be some more up there so we went back so the Argosy without an Irie took off from Christchurch and headed back along the coast toward Blenheim it didn't take long before they were right in the thick of it again they were brilliant white silvery white star this was unusual that they were going vertically up and down probably sag maybe an 8,000 feet at a rate that in my view precluded them from being anything that I've known about like Le Coq was already now looking over towards the right of the aircraft and we have an object ready to radar screen following us and quite a while it's about four miles away and it looks like the very faint star but then it's a very bright white green

20:57 this is just a little the objects we throw on the way down were quite amazing because they were the ones that had the most sort of hypnotic quality they were were big they pulsated they were sort of yellow red and orange and and there they formed sort of perfect spheres so that pretty spectacular on the way back that wasn't as brilliant in terms of the colors it was more a steady sort of yellow orange light the whole time but when we lost that object on the way back and before we landed at Blenheim we got the same sort of display again that we had seen on the way down which was quite spectacular it was an object I've always described like a squashed orange and was the color of to me this was the most visual interesting very very small

22:30 once again the objects were tracked by Wellington radar and also showed up on the Argosy zone radar system they fell from view as the aircraft swung around Cape Campbell and turned west for its landing at Blenheim it was just after 3:00 a.m. and by that stage even the pilots had had enough to write there was and I decided home we go I'm not going anymore yes it was but fact that frightening the finish I don't know Bob won't be the same I don't you ask him I don't know but I know I was concerned down we go thank you very much next day the story was big news and it's just kept getting bigger I don't think any of us realized what the outcome was going to be at this of what the publicity was going to be all hell broke loose you know I had

23:33 phone calls the next day come in from Walter Cronkite and in the u.s. one in is to go up and do some interviews up there I got a phone call from the chief of staff at channel o Neill was babbling on the phone this is about 8:00 in the morning or something he said Leonard he said you know that Quinton Fogerty was going up last night on that flight he said he went up on the flight and he said you will not believe this but he said it happened again and they filmed it I know he fell off the telephone as the news spread Argosy captain bill start-up and first officer bob guard were flown to wellington for TV interviews theorized what it was I can't it just appeared to be a life it was a no identified as far as I'm concerned little startup was doing his professional best to explain could that have been the planet Venus we saw as we

24:33 came out of Christ you know I no way and planet Venus doesn't sort of pass beneath aircraft you headed on your own it on your own aircraft radar as well did you not that's great yes the range from 15 to 12 miles times can you personally think of any rational logical logical explanation so what you saw last night no I can't that's sort but I don't know what it is if or Skyhawks were put on alert and an Orion surveillance aircraft was dispatched to search the area meanwhile Quintin Fogarty headed back to Melbourne with the precious film in his briefcase somebody picked Quentin up from the airport and and brought him back to the channel and I remember him emerging from the darkness with a can of film and he said as he handed it to me it's my story isn't it and I said of course it's your story Quentin I was very proud of what he had done

25:35 the film initially was extraordinarily disappointing when we watched it I mean it only got exciting and we only started to yell a little bit when we slowed it down and put it in extreme slow motion because there was camera movement and when we slowed it down it was exciting we looked at that very closely and it was just rising excitement and I will never forget the words of Quentin Fogerty after we had seen a little bit he was beside himself we all we all were you know but Quentin suddenly yelled out Geronimo we got the bastards so we then knew that we had something so we put the thing together and we managed to get Quentin cogent enough to sit in the studio and present the piece and we put it out to where that night good evening I'm Quentin Fogerty the film you've just seen was shot from the cabin of an aircraft early Sunday morning local time the phones kept going mad

26:36 just about blew our switchboard apart we rate it like we're never rated before people were absolutely fascinated by what you have just seen that we believe is the best documented evidence ever of an unidentified flying object the encounter is unique because it was seen by five people in the cabin of that plane it was visible on radar and both Wilmington and Christchurch was also visible on the aircraft's own radar system perhaps more importantly it was finally recorded on television film it fulfilled all the requirements the world had been told about the story all of a sudden the insults the doubters the skeptics started servicing and it wasn't long before we started hearing art must have been too fat and must have been Venus might have been a meteor or Note could have been a hoax a hoax I couldn't believe it I was convinced that what we saw on television was Venus the morning sky Venus is very bright it

27:38 is frequently mistaken for UFO and the color could be accounted for by the fact that it was so low in the sky just as the Sun in the moon become orange in Kwame alone Venus has never appeared on a air traffic on an air traffic control radar to the best of my knowledge Venus hadn't even risen in the morning sky that they might at that time you know captain bill starred I've got the permission to go towards this object we went off course and went towards that I was filming and it just disappeared and as soon as it disappeared captain startup says oh it's gone off their screen and the radar station said well it's gone off as to Venus must move very quickly in my opinion the UFO seen on that night which is basically a tornado which can burn a gaseous fuel and give the impression of being a

28:38 fireball the ball of flame can move up and down or side to side and shift around quite dynamically but it's seeing that at night would present quite a spectacle the lights on a squid boat very large electric lights it's a very very bright light one of the conclusions was that it may have been due to the presence of squid dates the reason we don't think they were squid boats is because they were moved the targets were moving at aircraft speeds they were following the Argosy matching its speed squid boat don't go there no boat commercial boat goes there squid boats go what 380 miles an hour was it that the Agassi flew oh gosh so wonderful though they keep up with her now I could see this going that's for us and and we I wasn't pointing down to the ocean I was pointing the camera level at 14,000 feet that the subject was following us I

29:39 think in many ways the straight reporting of the story initially was fine it was just after that when you start then bringing in so-called experts and things and then you bring in people got airplay who suggested we had hoaxed it you know that when it started to get to that very personal stage where people started to really question your integrity that hurt what it was years ago we didn't know and I wish I knew well people can think of that they were not on me dr. Bruce Maccabee did a very good report on it he studied it for a long long time and I think the report was very good there was some question about the loop that this object did whether it was camera shutter problem I checked the camera again after that and it didn't seem to do that so maybe the object did do that it was so quick that

30:41 I wouldn't have noticed it the only time I would have picked it up was watching the film you know I mean I did the interview for TV 3 and New Zealand just recently and you know TV 3 the producer called me said I'm getting these calls from people who say that you know this never happened that it was a squid fishing boat and I'm thinking didn't we put that to bed 30 years ago there had been a sighting by a gentleman down at wake hour a couple of nights before and an object rose up from down in the Marlborough Sounds and wobbled its way over what among a bay and over port Underwood and disappeared and I believe that that was a UFO and that it crashed and what we saw was the search-and-rescue team looking for it as I said in the start I was a skeptic to all this but I'm not now there's something going on out there and it was captured on film it's seen by all the

31:42 people in the aircraft it was seen by people on the ground it was captured on two radar stations both in Wellington Christchurch so have we been watched like we're watching sending probes to and beyond right out of our galaxy perhaps somebody's doing the same to us they were the brightest lights I had ever seen I have no idea what they were but they were definitely well that was unidentified they were flying because they were moving so quickly and it obviously was an object because it was showing up on both radars so if that is what are you if I was that's what it was that night and I'm identified for like not you and there were several of them and it was

32:51 at some time in the future we may find out exactly what those objects were that flew with the Argosy in the skies above kaikoura more likely it will remain a mystery forever and for the people involved it will always be a unique and life-changing experience but they will never forget I'm glad I wasn't on that aeroplane because I don't think I would have survived it psychologically now Quintin Fogarty was on that airplane he's a very good journalist I saw Quentin collapse on my floor in my office some four days later from the pressure that this thing had created the the impact it's almost like being you know zapped with a stun gun I saw him actually fall off his chair and fall on the floor and curl into a fetal position I mean the only real effect on me real effect was the fact that I got what's described as a nervous exhaustion and in hospital right so I was for a couple of

33:52 weeks I was just out of it because I hadn't slept and there was all the pressure there was all the stuff going on so it had a dramatic effect on me and a physical and a mental sense but just in the aftermath of what happened after that no it had all sorts of effects on everybody I just couldn't sleep for many nights you know it was because it started to be such a big story and I decided that I would make a documentary about it and so that's what I did and that documentary really took me around part of the world doing lectures and things like that it was a big change in my life and the life of my family you know everything sort of went wrong for us David went on overseas trip to sell the documentary he went to Australia and we and then he went to America where he

34:53 was invited to a big UFO conference here and then he went on to England and he never came home so the UFOs did a lot you know didn't do me any favors I never do it again everybody thinks that we we've made a lot of money out of this year if anything the only people who've made any money are the big networks it was sold to CBS or something I think was that the one that crumb cake crumb cake belong to we sold to them for I don't know how much money but probably two or three hundred thousand dollars or more you know I didn't see any of that and nobody there aircrafts agassiz that was consumer there probably made any money out of this so I want everybody to know we didn't make any money I have very strong

35:54 spiritual beliefs you know I believe in God and all of that sort of stuff and to me this this could have been quite possible you know that they came from another dimension they may have been coming here to take the take over the year you know and and in that case then we should align our service with a force that could resist that a force for good if you would like to know more about the takeout a UFO mystery captain startups fascinating book that Cocola UFOs is available in the terminal for the full say fair and Agassiz story the award-winning television documentary the final flight is also available on DVD