The lead article in the November 1968 issue is a transcript of testimony delivered before the United States House of Representatives. On 29 July 1968, the Committee on Science and Astronautics held a symposium on unidentified flying objects. Among the witnesses was Dr. Stanton T. Friedman, an astronuclear physicist from the Westinghouse Astronuclear Laboratory in Pittsburgh. His opening statement, reprinted in the Australian UFO Bulletin, would become one of the most cited passages in the civilian record.
“I have concluded that the earth is being visited by intelligently controlled vehicles whose origin is extraterrestrial. This doesn’t mean I know where they come from, why they are here, or how they operate.”
Friedman cited eyewitness, photographic, and radar reports “from all over the earth by competent witnesses of definite objects whose characteristics such as maneuverability, high speed, and hovering, along with definite shape, texture, and surface features rule out terrestrial explanations.” He noted that ten to fifteen per cent of photographic plates from the Smithsonian satellite tracking network showed “anomalous light sources which were not a satellite but were not otherwise identified.” Asked whether UFO manoeuvres violated the laws of physics, he was direct: “Not at all. This argument is used when what should really be said is we don’t know how to duplicate these maneuvers.” Piston aircraft could not break the sound barrier and conventional dynamite could not have destroyed Hiroshima, “but surely we don’t say that supersonic flight and atom bombs violate the laws of nature or physics.” He closed: “Look what technological progress we have made in the last 100 years, who can guess what we will accomplish in the next thousand years, or what others have accomplished in the thousand or million or billion year start they may have on us.”
The Canadian section carried what may be the most significant physical-evidence report in the issue. The Canadian Aerial Phenomena Research Organisation had recovered and analysed “angel hair” expelled from three discs during a daylight sighting in Ste. Anne, Manitoba. The substance was cellulose: “actually rayon fibres manufactured in consistent lengths. All of the filament-like hairs were exactly 1/200 m.m. in diameter and coated with a yet undetermined gummy substance.” Samples had been sent to the National Research Council, APRO, and Dr. Hynek. The analysis also covered metal recovered from the site of the Michalak encounter at Falcon Lake: ninety-three to ninety-six per cent silver, with traces of copper, cadmium, and gold. The National Research Council called it “common sterling or sheet silver” but the CAPRO committee found this “totally unacceptable” given the silver concentration and the isolation of the location. Michalak himself was “in the midst of psychological and hypnotic tests.”
On the organisational front, VUFORS had quit CAPIO, the federal Australian UFO body. The trigger was a Banyule High School sighting in Melbourne: Mrs. Sylvia Sutton, CAPIO Secretary, had made unauthorised statements to “The Age” newspaper that caused witnesses to refuse interviews with VUFORS investigators, “consequently seriously prejudicing their investigation of the sighting.” A letter of protest went unanswered; VUFORS resigned. The society maintained its belief in “the concept of a national affiliating body” but would not participate “while the present administration of C.A.P.I.O. remains in control.”
From Sweden, The Times reported that “something ‘incredibly powerful’” had smashed a hole seven hundred square yards in area through lake ice almost three feet thick in central Sweden. The Defence Ministry investigated. Frogmen found nothing on the lake bottom except thick mud. A second hole appeared at Serna, Dalarna. “Police and military experts called in to investigate are at a loss to explain how the holes came about.”
From Chile, Professor Gabriel Alvial Cáceres, director of the Centre for Investigation of Cosmic Radiation at the University of Chile, presented photographs of a lens-shaped object with a convex roof. “They are phenomena which our science cannot explain and which require the co-ordination and methodology of investigation of all scientific centres.” Chilean sightings had occurred fifteen times in a year. Two veteran Aerolineas Argentinas pilots reported a saucer over southern Chile. In the north, four Public Health Service officials said a saucer landed near them. Under hypnosis, one described the occupants as “humanoid beings with very thin legs” who “used gestures to warn the men to keep silent about the landing.”
In Western Australia, two commercial pilots on 22 August flew on a collision course with a UFO for twenty minutes near Zanthus. They watched a large disc-shaped object “divide in two several times and eject smaller cigar-shaped craft.” At Kalgoorlie on 6 November, eighteen people watched three shiny objects spinning and weaving at speed for fifteen minutes before each disappeared. Schoolboys reported similar objects on Channel 9’s “Today” programme.
An expedition into the Chilean Andes seeking a flying saucer base found instead “a fortress of an unknown civilization”: two platforms of 233 blocks of volcanic rock, seven hundred square yards each, opposite an extinct volcano. Italian astronomer Raffaelo Bendandi announced the discovery of a new planet between Mercury and the Sun. A Canadian witness near Beausejour watched an object with seven bands of coloured lights follow his truck for four miles. A tape recording of UFO beepings was made in Midnapore, Alberta.
The December meeting would feature Mr. Geoff Whittle of Monash University on “Computers and Their Use in Space.” The Christmas get-together was scheduled at “The Dogs’ Home” near Eltham Station: discussions on UFOs to suitable background music, dog biscuits and water available, fifty cents for the privilege.
