400 School Students Witness Huge UFO, 1970, Napier, New Zealand... But Who Has The Case File?
Some time ago I accepted a request to do a cold case study of a mass
witness UFO sighting that occurred in New Zealand in 1970. It started around 2:15pm on the 7th of May, very near the town of Napier. That should narrow things down a bit if anyone has some memory of it, or, some actual records. Likely, someone must remember something significant. Either way, whatever actually occurred, the case lit up the Napier Daily Telegraph
on the 8th of May – just a day after the impressive event – with this headline: “Mystery sky object seen by
teachers and 400 children”. I’ll let readers appraise the article themselves.
Further, for easy reading, I have transcribed the article below. The catch-line under the heading reads:
“A
huge unidentified flying object which appeared as a “hole in the sky” as it
hovered near Napier was watched for up to 20 minutes by the headmaster,
teachers and more than 400 children at Richmond School, Maraenui, yesterday
afternoon.”
..And then we get into the guts of it:
“Witnesses
to the sighting said there was an “unearthly quiet” as the usually noisy
children stopped their play and watched awed and fascinated by the saucer
shaped object. The headmaster, Mr. W. Billing, said he was watching the
children playing in the school grounds when he noticed the object move in from
the south. “I thought it was an aircraft at first”, he said. “Then I realised
it had stopped moving and it appeared as an extremely brilliant object in the
clear sky.”.”
From there, a mini-sub-heading line keep us engaged with: “GLISTENING
OBJECT”, then the article continues:
“As
he drew his teachers’ attention to it, the children also spotted the object and
stopped their play. “It was like a huge, wingless plane with the sun glistening
on it. But what amazed us was that it was also glistening on the side away from
the sun” he said. The object seemed to be hovering in an area between Westshore
and Tongoio. “We were watching it when a plane came into view and landed. There
was definitely no comparison between the object and the aircraft.” he said.”
The next sub-heading reads, “LIKE ROUND BALL” and keeps the article
going:
“After
hovering for three or four minutes, the object began to move away. “It then
moved at ring-angles, and the next thing we knew it was like a round ball with
the middle a transparent-like sheen.” “It then flattened out again and
continued to move away in a straight lune to become like a bright star.” “All
of a sudden it seems to light up again, like an extremely brilliant planet, and
then fade again before it moved away at speed,” Mr Billing said. The object was
last sighted about 2:23pm.”
Yet another mini-sub-heading reads, “APPEARED SOLID”. The article continues:
“It
wasn’t a weather balloon, which you wouldn’t see change from a round to an oval
shape,” Mr. Billing said. “It was also definitely a solid object, and you
seemed to get the feeling it was metallic.” One of the teachers, Mr. A. Coveny,
said he had read reports of people sighting unidentified objects but he had
always been “rather sceptical”… until yesterday. “We thought half of Napier
would have seen it” he said. “Here at the school, everyone was standing with
their mouths open trying to work out a logical answer to it.” A pupil had come
to him for an answer. “He asked me if it was a flying saucer and I said “yes”
because I couldn’t give any other answer,” Mr. Coveny said.”
The final sub-heading in the article
reads “HOLE IN THE SKY”, and continues with:
“The
sighting had stopped the usual sounds of noisy play.” “The whole area seemed to
be so unnaturally quiet that it was uncanny”, he said. It was not only the
movements of the “flying saucer” which were unearthly, but also the appearance
of the craft when it changed shape. “There was an iridescence from it, and it
looked as though it was an actual hole in the sky – just as if you were looking
through it into another dimension” the teacher said. ”
On the continuing page of the newspaper, there
was even a picture. I would normally be ashamed to publish something so poorly
imaged, and I will be obtaining a better copy, but for now it is all I have.
Luckily the caption is clear, and it
reads:
“THE
HEADMASTER of Richmond School, Mr W. Billing (at right), points today in the
direction in which he saw an object in the sky yesterday. With him is one of
the teachers who saw the object, Mr. A. Coveny. Above: Two sketches, showing the
two different shapes the object conveyed to watchers, which were drawn by Mr.
Billing.”
Other than two similar newspaper articles with similar, but less detailed, accounts of the sighting, this is all I have... All except these two drawings neatly placed on the one page by either the school teachers themselves, or by interested parties thereafter. Bryan Dickenson has kindly supplied me with this image from his files.
For goodness sake, everyone knows that sighting was just Venus flying around New Zealand.
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