UFO. Australia

The late Sir Francis Chichester was on a flight across the Tasman Sea when a dull grey and white airship approached him. It was pearly, flashed brightly, periodically disappeared, reappeared, accelerated, and finally disappeared altogether.

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Sir Francis Charles Chichester (17 September 1901 - 26 August 1972) was a British businessman, pioneer aviator and navigator.

He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for being the first person to circumnavigate the world on a clipper and the fastest circumnavigator to circumnavigate the world in nine months and one day in 1966-67.

In 1967, Chichester was also honored with the issuance of a 1/9d (one shilling and ninepence) postage stamp, on which he was depicted aboard the Gipsy Moth IV. This contradicted the unwritten tradition of the Main Post Office, since at the time of the stamp's release, Chichester was not a member of the royal family and did not die.

An experienced pilot, sailor and navigator, Sir Francis was familiar with numerous manifestations of atmospheric phenomena. It can be assumed that his description of what looked like a flying saucer was accurate.

Next, I present to you his account of an event that he could not explain until his death.

Sir Francis Chichester in a 1965 interview:

"After the storm, we flew into a calm air area under a weak lazy sun. I took out a sextant and made two counts. It took me thirty minutes to sort them out because the engines kept stalling and my attention was distracted every time it happened...

Suddenly, bright flashes appeared in several places ahead and thirty degrees to the left, similar to the blinding of a heliograph. I saw a dim gray-white airship approaching me. It seemed impossible, but I could have sworn it was an airship approaching me like an oblong pearl. Apart from a cloud or two, there was nothing else in the sky.

I looked around, occasionally catching flashes or reflections, and when I turned back to look at the airship, I found that it had disappeared. I squeezed my eyes shut, unable to believe it, and turned the seaplane this way and that, thinking that the airship must be hidden by a blind spot. The blinding flashes continued in four or five different places, but I could not distinguish any aircraft.

Then, from the clouds to the right ahead, I saw another or the same airship. I watched him closely, determined not to look away for a split second: I would see what happened to this if I had to chase him.

He was steadily approaching, remaining at a distance of about a mile, when suddenly he disappeared. Then he reappeared, not far from where he disappeared: I watched him with intense attention. It was coming closer, and I could see a dim glow of light on its nose and back. It was getting closer, but instead of increasing in size, it was shrinking as it got closer.

When he was very close, he suddenly turned into his own ghost - one second I could see through him, and the next he was gone. I decided that it could only be a small cloud shaped like an airship and then dissolving, but it was strange that after disappearing it again acquired the same shape.

I looked in the direction of the flashes, but they also disappeared.

All this was many years before anyone started talking about flying saucers. Whatever I saw, it was very similar to what people have been calling flying saucers ever since."

The UFO phenomenon in the 1930s was not as well known as it is today. It can be said that a very small number of people then heard words like flying saucer.

Sir Francis Charles Chichester himself only later began to understand what he saw on that fateful night in 1931, when the UFO phenomenon became more famous after the incident in Roswell.