Royal Australian Air Force
OrgMilitary UnitRoyal Australian Air Force
OrgMilitary UnitThe Royal Australian Air Force is Australia's air arm, formed in 1921, whose intelligence staff collected and assessed the nation's UFO reports from the 1950s until 1994.
The Royal Australian Air Force is Australia's air arm, formed in 1921, whose intelligence staff collected and assessed the nation's UFO reports from the 1950s until 1994.
The Royal Australian Air Force is the air arm of the Australian Defence Force. It was formed on 31 March 1921 as the Australian Air Force, gained the "Royal" prefix later that year and descends from the Australian Flying Corps, the army's aviation corps of 1912. Headquartered in Canberra and led by the Chief of Air Force, it has about 16,000 active personnel and has served in the Second World War, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. For four decades it was also the Commonwealth body that received and assessed reports of what officials called unusual aerial sightings.
An Air Board memorandum of 16 January 1951 issued the first report form for "flying saucers," and from about 1953 the Directorate of Air Force Intelligence in the Department of Air led the work, according to the researcher Keith Basterfield's survey of government files. In 1954 the directorate asked the physicist Harry Turner for a scientific appreciation of its cases. Turner concluded that a residue of unexplained reports pointed to extraterrestrial craft and urged at least one full-time investigator, but the Deputy Chief of the Air Staff replied in March 1955 that he was "not prepared to afford a full time investigator." A 1968 policy letter said the main object of investigation was "to determine whether Australian airspace has been violated."
Internal minutes show a directorate that tried to pass the task to the Joint Intelligence Bureau in 1957, the Department of Supply in 1971 and the CSIRO in 1973. In July 1971 its director wrote that he accepted "the US assessments without question." That year Turner, by then at the Joint Intelligence Organisation, criticised the air force's explanations of local cases in the paper now known as the 1971 Harry Turner Memo. In January 1982, after a year of requests, the researcher Bill Chalker spent a week reviewing the files at the Russell Offices.
Policy narrowed in stages. In May 1984 the Defence Minister, Gordon Scholes, announced that the RAAF would fully investigate only sightings suggesting "a defence or national security implication." Files opened in 2012 included reports from 1983 of two RAAF Mirage fighters placed on the second-highest level of alert over unidentified radar contacts in New South Wales. A revised policy in 1994 found "no compelling reason" to keep recording and explaining sightings, stopped accepting reports and referred the public to police or aviation authorities. Brett Biddington, the former RAAF intelligence officer who recommended the change, told ABC News that sightings without evidence of an extraterrestrial threat were "not core business." The files passed to the National Archives of Australia.
They drew renewed attention in 2026, when Turner's criticisms were reissued in an American release of UFO files and researchers circulated the air force's cases online. Advocates for witnesses of the 1966 Westall sighting in Melbourne again asked why no record survives of the response they say the RAAF, the army and civil defence made that day. The surviving files remain the fullest account of how the air force treated UFO reports through the Cold War: as a question of airspace security, handled with limited resources and set aside in 1994.
[Retweeted] In June 1959, Anglican priest Reverend William Gill and numerous other witnesses reported seeing a large disc-shaped object over the Boianai mission station. The extraordinary part? Witnesses described what appeared to be human-like figures standing on top of the object. When people on the ground waved, the figures apparently waved back. The sightings reportedly occurred over consecutive evenings, and Gill compiled written witness accounts. The Royal Australian Air Force subsequen...
[Retweeted] I've found a significant lead in the Valentich files. 🧵 In March 1981, MP Bruce Wright put a list of questions to the government. On 8 April 1981, Minister Newman passed the Valentich ones to the Transport Minister, and that referral was filed in M123/1/30. That's the same file the papers were moved into when they were taken out of Fred's official accident file. These are the questions Transport was asked to answer: A plane carrying nine people vanished over the Solomon Islands o...
[Retweeted] Great post from veteran reporter @ianattheherald about a curious UAP sighting over an @AusAirForce base in the mid-90s. RAAF Williamtown also the scene for very recent unexplained sightings. https://t.co/2w0fNVdwcU
[Retweeted] Great post from veteran reporter @ianattheherald about a curious UAP sighting over an @AusAirForce base in the mid-90s. RAAF Williamtown also the scene for very recent unexplained sightings. https://t.co/2w0fNVdwcU
Great post from veteran reporter @ianattheherald about a curious UAP sighting over an @AusAirForce base in the mid-90s. RAAF Williamtown also the scene for very [Quoted] “FOREIGN” Drone incursion Williamtown RAAF. Fact or fiction? Who knows? Because, Christmas week 94 or .95 @newcastleherald was tipped off anonymously to watch the RAAF base at .5 the next morning. I was editorial Chief of Staff. I got up at 4.30am, and sitting across Stockton Bight from the runway watched a star-like brightne...
Probed ingest of: Joe Rogan Experience #2560 - David Grusch
Found this declassified RAAF file (NAA: A9755, 8) on “Operation Close Encounter” from 1983. Good little UFO debunk story. Background: Late June 1983, Mascot Area Approach Control started reporting unidentified radar contacts moving like aircraft. RAAF Base Williamtown got tasked to investigate on 30 June. By the next morning two Mirage interceptors were on Alert 2 and 3 Control and Reporting Unit (3CRU) started round the clock radar surveillance. Contacts sat 70 to 150nm north of Sydney, spee...
9/ O'Farrell and Jessop signed their statements on September 2nd '54. The event remained out of the newspapers until December, when reporters visiting Nowra learned about the investigation. Navy Minister Josiah Francis then publicly confirmed the central facts. Francis said a Sea Fury pilot had observed two lights with vague shapes beneath them during a night flight over Goulburn. He also confirmed that the report had been passed by Naval Intelligence to RAAF Intelligence. Contemporary newspa...
8/ The Navy began checking whether or not any known aircraft could account for the sighting. The surviving file says that there were no Royal Australian Navy or Royal Australian Air Force aircraft operating in the area at the time. There was, however, a Trans Australia Airlines Convair flying north at 14,000 feet. That airliner has disappeared from some popular versions of the case, but it was there and belongs in any fair account. The Convair establishes that another known aircraft was somew...
Multiple unidentified drones breached restricted airspace over RAAF Base Williamtown, one of Australia’s most sensitive military installations. Australian authorities have not identified the origin, operator, or nature of the mystery drone incursions. https://t.co/PZPZ84mcSv https://t.co/t058Bz8G5v
