Seventeen Seconds of Silence

South of Melbourne, over the restless Bass Strait, a young pilot reports strange lights—and vanishes. This episode drifts with him through his last hour in the air, until the signal fades and the mystery begins.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Approache production. Welcome back to silent Secrets. Tonight, we drift
to the southern edge of Australia, to a strip of
water that looks calm from far away, but up close

(00:29):
it's full of cross currants, sudden weather, and old stories.
The bass strait. Close your eyes, take a slow breath
in and out. We're going back to Saturday, October twenty one,

(00:58):
nineteen seventy eight. A young pilot lifts off into the
evening line for a short trip over the water and
never returns. This is the disappearance of Frederick Valantiche a
voice on the radio, a mystery in the dark, and

(01:21):
a sound that's never fully been explained. Settle in, let
the day fall away. We'll keep our lights low, our
pace gentle, and will follow his flight, minute by minute

(01:42):
until the signal fades. It's late afternoon at Moraban Airport,
southeast of Melbourne. Hayar doors, yawn, open toolboxes roll back

(02:06):
into place. A single engine Cessna one two sits ready, metal,
warm from the sun. Frederick is twenty years old, young,
determined and steady. He loves flying. It makes sense to him.
The numbers, the checklists, the clean lines of the horizon,

(02:31):
he's not a veteran pilot, but he's logged his hours,
practice procedures, and he's prepared for this. He's file the
flight plan, depart Morabin, fly south southwest across the water
to King Island, and then turn around and come home
the same night. He checks the weather. The forecast is

(02:56):
good and clear. It's the kind of evening where the
light lingers just a little too long to call at night,
but the shadows are already in charge. He takes a
quiet moment in the cockpit, in a hale exhale, battery
on fuel, checked instruments, set, radio's tuned. It's a habit,

(03:23):
a ritual. Just after six pm, he taxes to the runway,
calls the tower, and rolls forward into flight. Below Frederick,
Melbourne slips away, grids of streets, tiny toy cars, the

(03:49):
last commuters heading home ahead. The Bass Strait a sheet
of blue that is never exactly still. If you've never
flown that way, picture this. The coast falls back like
a page turning. The land darkens, the water takes over.

(04:13):
Even on a clear night, there's a moment where the
sky and the sea are almost the same color, and
the horizon is more a feeling than a line. The
instruments become your eyes. The hum of the engine is
your anchor. Frederick levels out, steady altitude, heading south. He's

(04:39):
on schedule for the first hour. Everything is ordinary, radio checks,
coarse corrections, the small adjustments you barely notice until you're
looking for them. Routine can be soothing. Routine can be
a lullaby. In two three out two three, Then the

(05:10):
routine changes. Frederick keys the microphone to Melbourne Flight Service.
His voice is calm, clipped professional. He reports an unidentified
aircraft a little above him with bright lights. The controller

(05:32):
listens and asks for more details. Frederick says the object
is moving fast, circling and at times matching his speed.
He estimates it's a few hundred meters above him. He
mentions four bright lights. The controller checks known traffic, nothing

(05:56):
in the area, no scheduled flights, no military activity. Frederick
continues watching the lights. They're not behaving the way standard
aircraft do. They move, pull ahead, and drop behind. At
one point they seem to pass over him and then reappear.

(06:21):
His breathing is a little faster now, not panic, but effort,
the effort of tracking something you don't understand. Is there
any known traffic below five thousand? He asks, no known traffic,
the controller replies. Frederick describes a shiny, metallic surface. He

(06:47):
mentions a green light. He says quietly that it seems
like it's playing some sort of game, and then almost
to himself, it's not an aircraft. The controller notes his words,
keeps him talking and keeps him focused. That's his job.

(07:11):
Keep the pilot flying the plane. There are things pilots
learn early. Trust your instruments, not your eyes, fly the plane,
not the story in your head. If something feels off,
say it out loud. Frederick does all of those things,

(07:35):
But the pattern is strange. The lights seem to approach,
then vanish, then return. If it was another aircraft, it's
breaking the rules, closing in too tight, making unpredictable turns.

(07:56):
If it's not an aircraft, then what is it. The
controller asks him to identify his position. Frederick gives a
rough fix, heading towards King Island. He says, the object
is now above him. He looks up through the window shield,

(08:20):
greenish light metal reflecting the last scraps of twilight. He
can't define a wing shape. He can't define the fuselage
the sea below has turned slate. The sky is deepening
to blue black. A fragile line separates the two. Frederick

(08:48):
reports that he's having engine issues, a roughness like something
is interfering. He checks his systems, tries to stay ahead
of the problem. He keeps talking to the controller, voice steady,
a little tip around the edges. The controller's voice is

(09:09):
a metronome. Confirm position, Confirm heading, any immediate danger. Frederick replies,
the strange aircraft is hovering on top of me. Again.
At seven twelve pm, just over an hour into the flight,

(09:34):
the transmission changes. There's a harsh, metallic pulsing noise on
the frequency. It lasts about seventeen seconds. It doesn't sound
like engine noise. It doesn't sound like static. It's something else.

(09:59):
A grinding, a rasping, a modulation that bites the edge,
and then silence. The controller calls back, no reply again.

(10:26):
Nothing in the tower, and on the tapes, the absence
becomes the story. Silence has a way you can feel
when you're listening for a voice that doesn't return. Within hours,
the search begins. Aircraft sweep the corridors of the sea,

(10:49):
and sky boats fan out along the likely route. At
first light, they expand the grid, eyes scanning for wreckage, oil,
a life jacket, anything. They find nothing. No floating debris,

(11:15):
no emergency beacon, no sign. Here's what we know, slowly, gently,
just the pieces that fit. It's the evening of October
twenty one, nineteen seventy eight, over the bas Strait on

(11:40):
a plan route to king Island. The aircraft's a Cessna
one two, simple, reliable, single engine. The pilot is Frederick,
twenty years old, trained, not highly experienced, but familiar with
procedure and radio discipline. The weather is generally good, not perfect,

(12:08):
but not storm conditions. There were multiple communications between Melbourne
Flight Service describing an unidentified object with bright lights, a
metallic surface and a green light performing unusual maneuvers. The
final audio is a seventeen second metallic sound and then

(12:35):
radio silence. A multi day search finds no trace those
other lines on the page. The rest is conjecture, theory
and human nature. Trying to finish a story with a
missing paragraph. People try to solve mysteries because it makes

(13:04):
us feel safe. We like doors that close, but some
doors don't. There are several series about Frederick's disappearance. The
first is around spatial disorientation and a crash. Pilots can
sometimes become disoriented over water at night. The horizon blurs

(13:30):
your inner ears lie to you. Even good pilots have
been fooled by the dark. Maybe the lights he saw
were misinterpretations of stars, planets, the illusion of movements against
a moving sea. Maybe engine roughness led to a loss

(13:50):
of control, a descent into the black water. This is
a tidy explanation. It's also incomplete. It asks us to
fold those specific details circling the hovering and the metallic
sound into the general noise of a tragic accident. The

(14:15):
second theory is that it was a deliberate disappearance. Some
suggest a plan vanishing landing elsewhere, staging the scenario, But
searches along the route and on King Island didn't turn
up evidence of an unscheduled landing, and there's no clear
motive that ties to that story. Disappearances, by design, tend

(14:40):
to leave footprints, paper money sightings. This one didn't. The
third theory is mechanical failure. Engines can quit, systems can fail.
A single failure over the bastraighte at night is unforgiving.

(15:09):
The question here is the timing, the alleged presence of
another craft, the specific maneuvers described, and the seventeen second
noise immediately before the signal dies. And the final theory

(15:29):
is the unknown when the pilot says it's not an aircraft,
Some here fear, others hear certainty. Reports from that era
include sightings of unusual lights over the strait, not proofs,

(15:49):
just echoes. This theory is a placeholder for the part
of the story we don't have. Between the lines. There
are smaller ideas misidentified lights from the ground, reflections inside
the cockpit, a meteor, an optical effect, radio interference. Each

(16:14):
can explain a piece. Nothing explains all the pieces neatly,
and sometimes that's the point. The human brain wants a
single answer, and the world gives us pieces that refuse
to lock in. The radio exchange survives. If you listen,

(16:41):
the first thing you'll notice is the tone. Frederick sounds
like a pilot talking through a checklist, polite, controlled and focused.
The controller is steady, a calm lighthouse in the fog.
Then you hear it a shift, not panic, but that

(17:04):
leaned forward edge when reality doesn't line up. The metal
sound at the end is the part that stays with people.
Engineers have pulled it apart, filtered it, tried to match
it to known signatures, prop noise, magneto failure, radio feedback,

(17:26):
something external. The answer never lands with both feet. The
tape ends the same way bad dreams do, abruptly, with
you reaching for a conclusion that isn't there. Behind the

(17:47):
headlines and the theories is a family who waited for
footsteps that didn't come, an empty chair at the table,
a room where the air felt heavier because the person
who warmed it was gone. There's a kind of grief
that has no body, no wreckage, no final proof. It's

(18:12):
called ambiguous loss, when the mind knows something that's slightly over,
but the heart keeps leaving a light on The bass
strait for them isn't just water. It's a question that
never answers. Mysteries become folklore because people need a way

(18:33):
to carry them. They tell themselves the story with different endings.
He was taken, he escaped, he lost control. They try
them on like coats, and none of them fit quite right.
But it's better than standing cold with nothing. If you

(19:00):
fly that route now, the air looks the same, The
strait still folds and unfolds under you, moody, muscular, a
living thing. On clear nights, the stars can feel close
enough to touch. On hazy ones, you learn to lean

(19:21):
into your instruments, and your training and your trust. Every
few years someone mentions strange lights over the bastrait. Most
have explanations, a few do not. The sea holds the story.

(19:43):
Sometimes it keeps them forever. We've been flying with Frederick

(20:04):
for the last hour of his life, as far as
we can go, and plan a flight, a report, a
sound that's silence in another world. He makes the hop
to King Island, eats something warm at a cafe, checks

(20:28):
his fuel, turns back and lands up a rabin under
a quilt of city lights. In this world, we have
a gap where the ending should be. Take a slow
breath in an out let's your shoulders drop, that your

(20:53):
jaws soften. Whether the answer is ordinary or tragic, or
extraordinary and impossible, the truth is still out there, somewhere
between the last transmission and the first light of dawn.

(21:14):
Until then, the Bastrait holds its quite vigil, The radio
stay silent, and a young pilot's last words ripple outwards
softly into the dark. This has been silent secrets. Sleep well,

(21:38):
good night, sam IT, good day. Play a using them,