Malmstrom and the Ten Missiles That Went Down
On 24 March 1967 ten Minuteman intercontinental missiles at this Montana base's Echo flight went off alert within minutes of each other, one after another. At the same time the guards on the surface were reporting a glowing object hanging over the gate. For years the case was known only from the account of the duty officer, Robert Salas, who spoke publicly from the 1990s. Declassified documents later confirmed both the mass failure and that its cause was never established; the official reading attributes it to electromagnetic interference from work on the complex. A similar episode was described in the same period at Minot base.
Cape Otway and Valentich's Last Transmission
On 21 October 1978 a twenty-year-old pilot, Frederick Valentich, was flying a Cessna 182 alone over Bass Strait south of this cape and told Melbourne control that a large object with four bright lights was accompanying him. His last words were "it is not an aircraft"; then seventeen seconds of metallic scraping on the air, and silence. Neither aircraft nor body was found. Five years later a cowl flap from that production run was recovered off King Island; it could not be tied to his machine. The official finding is that the cause is unknown. Disorientation and inverted flight, and a staged disappearance, have both been considered; neither has been shown.
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