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Even though Freddie Valentich has been missing for close to 20 years, his father has not given up hope.

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He believes that one day the extraterrestrials who took his son away may decide to bring him back to Earth.

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He was a 20-year-old pilot with the Australian Air Training Corps who took off on October 21, 1978 and was never seen again.

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Freddie Valentich took off from a raven airport in Victoria, bound for Cape Otway on King Island.

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45 minutes into the flight, the control tower in Cape Otway received an alarming SOS.

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Valentich was on a collision course with a strange craft he could not identify.

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According to the tower, the radar screen was clean.

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For six minutes, Valentich continued to insist that a UFO was approaching him at a high rate of speed.

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Then his radio went dead.

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Is there traffic below 5,000?

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No traffic.

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Traffic above me at 5,000?

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None. And none, up to none, near your position and altitude.

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Tower, you must reach check.

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Above it, not below me, at terrible brightness.

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Nothing. Nothing.

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And then he was gone.

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Freddie Valentich and his airplane disappeared without a trace.

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He is considered legally dead by everyone but his father.

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17 years after Fred's disappearance, Guido Valentich still makes an annual pilgrimage to Cape Otway,

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where he believes he lost his eldest son to a UFO.

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That particular day I was supposed to be with my son on the airplanes.

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And I feel a little bit sorry that I didn't go.

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Because in my mind I felt that if I would have been with him, perhaps one would say

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the situation could turn out slightly different.

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Why would a father return here every year on the anniversary of his son's disappearance

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and reflect on the possibility that his child had a close encounter with a UFO?

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Because Guido Valentich says knowing Freddie, it's the only explanation that makes sense.

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He was hardworking and honest, a straight shooter who knew how to fly.

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His future was to be a commercial pilot.

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He had about close to 200 hours flying.

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The last time I spoke to him was that morning, the 21st of October, at the breakfast table.

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And as he went there, I remember Dick was saying to me, you know, the last word he said,

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oh, it's gotta be a beautiful day to fly today.

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Freddie's flight plan that warm, cloudless evening took him over the infamous Bass Strait,

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an area known as the Australian Bermuda Triangle.

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There had been other disappearances, reports of mechanical failures and magnetic anomalies.

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But Valentich was the first pilot to ever report into the control tower

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that he was in the presence of a threatening UFO.

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His voice told the controller to take this SOS seriously.

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Tower is not an aircraft. Repeat, not an aircraft known to us.

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An identified vehicle is a green light at terminus of upper cylinder.

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Now the projection appears to be aluminium or some other light metal.

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Windows are unmistakable.

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Now see four other lights from the interior.

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No, no windows. Some other observation area.

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Tower, he's playing a game.

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The actual tapes of Freddie's communication with the tower were considered top secret

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and Guido Valentich was allowed to listen to his son's last words only one time.

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Soon after, the tapes were erased.

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A version of the tape transcript was leaked to the media by anonymous airport personnel.

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Valentich gave a complete description of the type of the craft, the shape, the portholes,

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what it was doing, how it was buzzing him, circling him,

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going off at great speeds, disappearing, coming back.

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And he was in constant contact with the tower over this period of time until 714.

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When all of a sudden he said this was approaching him and bathed him in a green light,

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the plane and everything.

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And then there was a metal scraping sound and he just disappeared off the place of the earth, the plane and everything.

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You believe me, Log?

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Sure do. We know it's Valentich.

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Thank you, Tower. In proceeding at a speed of 110 at the same course moving up to 4000.

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Wait, wait, ancient faltering.

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We've got rough idling, she may call.

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She's caught up for real, it's horrendous burst.

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His green light is all over his, he...

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It's not an aircraft.

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Count up to 5000, 6000, long wingless metallic tubes spouting flame, I feel scorched, I feel.

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229, 229, we hear something tearing.

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229, 229, please reply.

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When the tower lost radio contact, a search plane was sent to the point of last contact, 12 miles off the coast of Melbourne.

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There was no sign of Valentich.

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They searched by air, by land and by sea.

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But after three weeks, searchers had found nothing and the operation was suspended.

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21st of the tower because it's one die which I can never forget.

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I'd like to go down to respect and study some of the area when this phenomenon occurred

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and to be able to see some strange thing perhaps on that particular die.

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Officially, there were no eyewitnesses to Freddie Valentich's disappearance nearly 20 years ago.

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But a small group of UFO researchers claim there were eyewitnesses working here, working for the United States government.

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This is the Pine Gap Research Facility, a tracking station located in the Australian outback.

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And according to researcher Robert Dean, Pine Gap knows more than it's willing to tell about Fred Valentich.

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They can track anything from a basketball-sized meteor.

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There's no question in my mind that the Pine Gap facility tracked that object.

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They were tracking Fred, they were tracking that object.

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God knows when the truth will come out.

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But I think Fred was grabbed and I know Pine Gap must have monitored the whole damn thing because we monitor everything.

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According to Dean and others, the Pine Gap tracking station did much more than simply track the last moments of Fred Valentich's life.

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Did officials there have a hand in the death of an innocent man?

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More on this story when sightings returns.

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Next, the Pine Gap connection to the disappearance of Freddie Valentich.

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The real secret behind it involves the alien...

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No wings, no observable propulsion system, soaring above Australia at unbelievable speed.

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It was the last thing Pilot Fred Valentich saw before he disappeared off the face of the earth.

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That was 17 years ago and from that day to this, his father and a handful of dedicated researchers

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have searched for information about who or what was controlling that UFO.

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229, are you on a collision course? Over.

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No, it's still at my side. It can hang motionless.

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Or it over and under me.

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Proceed to 29.

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Wingless tubes, yes.

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Maybe 100 feet long with a green blast, sometimes green paper.

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These were Freddie Valentich's exact words to an air traffic controller when he encountered an unknown object over Australia's bass straight.

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He disappeared minutes later.

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Now, a small but convincing group of researchers believe that Valentich's encounter must have been observed

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and was then covered up by a super secret government tracking facility at Pine Gap, Australia.

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Anything that comes in from out there in space on the planet is immediately picked up,

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whether it's a meteor or whatever.

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If it's one of our own satellites, if it's something we don't know, immediately they pick it up.

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They monitor it, they photograph it, they track it.

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That's what Pine Gap does.

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Robert Dean is a retired United States Army Command Sergeant Major.

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In his 27-year military career, Dean claims that he was involved in several top secret military operations concerning UFOs.

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Your program has got a hold of a tiger by the tail here when you start looking into Pine Gap.

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And I must be honest with you that the Pine Gap facility and all that it's involved with is probably one of the most secret installations in the world.

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The NSA is involved, the CIA is involved and the National Reconnaissance Office is part of that.

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They call it a joint space defense facility, but it's a hell of a lot more than that.

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But other experts insist the location is simply an advanced satellite communications facility.

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Most governments don't even publicly admit that they are involved in satellite intelligence operations.

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That's probably about as close as any government is ever going to go to saying that they're involved in signals intelligence collection functions.

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Well, I can tell you that as a result of 30 years of my personal research, the fact that I am ex-military,

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the fact that I still have a bunch of old cronies in sensitive places,

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the real secret behind it, the real undercover, unannounced, unpublished operation,

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involves the alien reality and UFOs.

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The Pine Gap research facility has never commented publicly on a possible link between their operations and Freddie Valentich's disappearance.

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But this photograph suggests there is a link.

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It was taken in the same area at nearly the same time Valentich disappeared.

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If the eyes and ears of Pine Gap are as powerful as Robert Dean suggests,

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they must know something about the UFO snapped by amateur photographer Roy Manifold.

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It was quite a clear night. It was cool. We had the fire going in the front room and everything seemed normal that night.

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I'd taken the photographs and I'd taken the six consecutive ones.

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And I'd walked inside and I'd just come inside.

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I was only been there about maybe five minutes and I heard an airplane pass overhead.

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The airplane was Freddie's Cessna just moments before Valentich's fateful UFO encounter.

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And later, when Roy had his film developed, along with the beautiful sunset,

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there was this important clue to Freddie's mysterious disappearance.

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He got this object here on his sixth frame.

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And it was quite strange that he thought that one incident was something wrong with the camera.

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But then when he took back to the laboratory, they assured that that object there is nothing wrong with it.

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He's definitely got an object on it.

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Computer analysis and enhancement of the UFO in Manifold's photograph

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reveals that the object was a solid metallic reflective sphere approximately 70 feet in diameter.

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The fact that this picture was taken just minutes before Manifold heard Valentich's airplane

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suggests this may be the craft Freddie saw moments before he vanished without a trace.

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Air Corps officials, however, vehemently disagree.

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Some of the experts said that he got disorientated and that he was flying upside down.

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But the Cessna 182 has got the petrol or gas, aviation gas, is in the wings and is gravity fed to the motor.

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So 49 seconds of flying upside down, the motor would have cut out.

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He was talking for six and a half minutes.

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So that tells you he wasn't flying upside down, he wasn't disorientated.

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Now we all clear 229 and there's no strange craft, right?

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Could be a miscalculation. Did you hear a vibratory?

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Tower, heard nothing but my own sound.

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Electrical phenomena 229, perhaps more lightning can do strange things.

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Mirage is not uncommon with storm flare.

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Storm flare far off to East Tower. Not vapor to here either.

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Holy, here he comes from the south west. All shiny and metallic.

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My God, he's talking to me!

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Now in Frederick he wouldn't deviate rules and regulations.

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I'm quite certain that he would not go on that ride here and inquire about to the air traffic controller what he's got around him.

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Unless it was something really worthwhile to ask because to him it wasn't like convention or a craft before something else.

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It could have been extra terrestrial but the time will tell.

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For 17 years a family has searched for answers and now they hope that Pine Gap will share its information concerning Freddie,

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the UFO in this photograph and one of the most puzzling encounters in UFO history.

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Only two pilots are believed to have disappeared as a result of their aerial contact with the UFO.

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Fred Valentich and Thomas Mantell, a military pilot from Louisville, Kentucky.

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The consensus among ufologists is that these incidents occurred not because the UFOs were aggressive,

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but because pilots have never been taught what to do in the event of a UFO encounter.