A True Story
On 21 October 1978, pilot Frederick Valentich radioed that an unidentified aircraft was orbiting above him near Cape Otway. Seconds later, he was gone -- and never seen again. Forty-seven years on, this is the investigation the authorities never finished.
The Book
Frederick Valentich's disappearance over Bass Strait remains one of Australia's most enduring aviation mysteries. A 20-year-old pilot, flying a Cessna 182L from Moorabbin to King Island, reported a strange aircraft shadowing him moments before his transmission cut out mid-sentence. No wreckage was ever found. No body was ever recovered. The official investigation closed the file as "presumed fatal, cause undetermined" -- and there it has sat for nearly five decades.
Victor F. Bongiorno, an air charter operator with deep local knowledge of the Bass Strait corridor, was never satisfied with that ending. Double Dark is his ground-level re-investigation: the witness statements that were never followed up, the radar anomalies nobody explained, and the physical evidence that would not surface for another five years.