NEWSLETTER TEN     FEBRUARY 2004

Australian War Memorial files:

Very few pre 1947 Australian UFO reports are on record. Some examples are:

• 25 Jul 1868 Parramatta NSW  CE4
• 1925 Moora WA CE2
• 1930 Mandurah WA  CE3
• 10 Oct 1935 Newcastle NSW  Photo
• 1944  Bass Strait  CE1.

The final item on the above list is one of the few recorded during  World War Two, and is worth describing in a little detail to illustrate a report of that era. The case was recorded in the 1957 UFO magazine, “Australian Saucer Review” 3(1):16 from an original report form.

            “Mr T R H Royal was piloting a Beaufort bomber over Bass Strait when a dark

            “shadow” appeared alongside and kept pace for eighteen to twenty minutes. The

            object seemed to have a flickering light, and belched flames from its rear end. It

            maintained a distance of thirty to fifty metres from the aircraft before accelerating

 away. During the event all radio and direction-finding equipment is said to have

malfunctioned.”

It was therefore with some interest, that a deeper search of NAA electronic records revealed ten files held by the Australian War Memorial which might contain relevant material. The files  cover the period 1942-1944. Two examples of the titles are:

• Unidentified plots East of Kembla
• Sightings unidentified-miscellaneous sighting-seaward 1943.

A Canberra based researcher recently visited the Australian War Memorial on behalf of the Project. We wish to thank that individual for their time and efforts in doing so. After reading through a large number of “Incident Reports” on the files, their report to us reads, in part:

            “File number AWM 54 888/5/1 was interesting reading even though most of the incidents

            could be flare pistol signal lights; signal rockets; weather balloons and meteors…

            AWM 54 810/8/1 was by far the largest file and contained a vast array

of spurious unidentified radar plots but nothing that jumped out at me as anything special. Most were off-shore water level returns. The plots from aircraft were identified as actual aircraft from their engine noise, but the actual type of aircraft could not be determined visually due to weather conditions, or because it was night time and/or search lights were unable to locate them. None  of these radar plots were fast moving. All unidentified aircraft were slow moving, from 20 to 130 mph; one was stationary…Reports of unidentified explosions or loud noises seemed likely to be from off-shore gunnery practice, drifting sea mines bumping into each other or exploding when they drifted ashore; quarry blasting, and one was probably due to illegal fishing using explosives to stun fish. However, many were simply loud bangs and rumblings (that lacked any visual indications) heard over the ocean by coastal based search light and gun emplacements…”

“Ghost planes” over Darwin in 1938:

A number of flaps of “ghost planes;” “strange planes,” “Unidentified aircraft” or “dirigibles” have been documented in the UFO literature. These have occurred in such diverse places as Denmark in 1908; the United Kingdom in 1909; South Africa in 1914 and Scandinavia in the early 1930’s.

A Department of Defence Air Board file, recently uncovered by us, describes “ghosts planes” and “unidentified aircraft” over the Northern Territory in 1938. File A705 control symbol 56/3/2, reveals at least seven instances between 3 Feb and 25 Mar that year. In one instance, on 8 Feb 1938, an aircraft engine noise was heard and the witness saw an orange coloured light in the sky for two minutes.

The official reaction was that no aircraft had made refuelling arrangements in the Territory, which made it “very improbable” that strange aircraft were about.

RAAF FOI request:

The RAAF have responded to our FOI request for RAAF files dealing with the subject of UFOs. They estimate they will be able to provide some 3700 pages to us at a cost of $980. We have submitted a financial deposit as they requested, and await the production of these documents. We are not aware of anyone outside the RAAF who will have seen the totality of these papers, so await their arrival with considerable interest.

Further files uncovered:

In previous Newsletters we have mentioned that some sixty relevant files have been located in the electronic “RecordSearch” of the National Australia Archives. These were retrieved using keywords such as “Flying Saucer” and “UFO”. A more comprehensive search has now been conducted through “RecordSearch” using a much wider range of keywords, and after searching several thousand entries, the following have been uncovered:

• Flights by unidentified aircraft over Papua New Guinea
• Sighting of strange and unidentified vessels in territorial waters
• Search for unidentified craft Melville Island NT
• Air Defence-Visual reporting by a/c captains-intelligence sightings
• Movements of unusual cargoes by air transport
• Exchange of intelligence, secret information between USA & Australia
• Reported sightings-unidentified aircraft over Indonesian territory
• No. 1 Control & Reporting Unit –Air Defence-Unusual Occurrences
• Reports on unidentified aircraft, strange occurrences
• Movement of unidentified aircraft
• Anomalous propagation-reports
• Operation of foreign and/or unidentified aircraft over or in the vicinity of Australia and Territories
• Unidentified aircraft Papua and New Guinea.

No doubt, much of the above material will concern illegal or foreign country aircraft. However, we will inspect these files, in order to conduct a thorough search of Government records. In total, we have now located 109 files which we have, or will, examine.

Perth NAA Office files:

Thank you to a member of UFORUM in Perth, for their assistance in commencing the process of  inspecting a number of files located in that city. These are:

Title	Series number	Control symbol
Fire services-general UFO [WRAAC-14th Women’s Royal Australian Army Corps]	PP580/1	R372/1/2
Observations-general by outside authorities including UFOs (Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology)	PP956/1	45/38
[Western Australian Squadron Air Training Corps] Investigation of unidentified flying objects	PP959/1	5/3/AIR

More RAAF files released by the NAA:

Series A703 control symbol 580/1/1 parts 1-10 have been available for several months now on RecordSearch and we have prepared catalogues and summaries of their contents. We requested that parts 11-20 be examined a while ago, and are waiting their release. Now, parts 21-34 have turned up in the archives and we have requested they be examined and released.

UFO Case archive:

As you are aware, one of our aims is to document “good” Australian UFO cases. The web site already has some sample cases on it. We have decided that we will concentrate on gathering data on one specific case per Newsletter.  This Newsletter, our call for copies of documents/photographs or any sort of material, be it in hard copy or electronically goes to the 19 January 1966 Euramo/Tully case. So, if you have any material, original or second hand on this event we’d appreciate hearing from you. We note that AUFORN recently put out a call for any film/video footage documentary pieces on this case.

Web site:

The Disclosure Australia web site has been amended by the addition of  summaries of RAAF file 580/1/1 parts 5, 6 and 8.

Information distribution:

As you are aware, we have placed page by page summaries of the files we have so far examined on the web site. We have also placed on the web site, catalogues of UFO cases from these same files; and forwarded hard copies to UFO researchers without web access. All this has been to ensure transparency of our research. What we have found, we have shared.

As a next step to this, we shortly hope to be able to forward to all Project Liaison Officers, a two CD-ROM set.  This CD-ROM will contain a full set of all the file summaries and catalogues to date. We are able to do this because the copyright for this work belongs to AURA as the creator of the research summaries and catalogues.

We will also include the National Australia Archive images that these summaries/catalogues are based on for your research use only. Legal advice indicates that as unpublished works, files held by the NAA are still protected under copyright by controlling agencies and individuals. But, for the sake of dissemination of knowledge, and in the interest of the impractical  nature of each researchers or group trying to obtain their own research copies, the works can be passed on by us for research by a minority interest, but without supply to the public at any time. A signed statement of that intent will be required from anyone receiving a research copy from us, in order to protect AURA from misuse of this arrangement.

Contacting the Secretariat:

We welcome information which would assist the Project. Our details are: