The Believer, page 16
What did it mean to be turning twenty in 1978? It meant looking and acting like the man you very much wished to be. Keeping your car just so, your hair just so, having a two-drink maximum, and never after 9:00 PM the night before a flight. It meant keeping your own counsel, being respectful, being the sort of person who would go straight to the police if you knew of anyone who was on drugs. It meant peering with great attentiveness into the flying manuals you wished you could simply absorb osmotically to be worthy of your family’s pride, your father’s financial support for your training, your little brother’s rapt attention when you tell him sagely that pilot error is at fault for most crashes. It also meant loving dirt bikes, disco dancing, the Bee Gees, your nonna, the hamburgers at McDonald’s and UFOs. It meant being meticulous about your ambitions, but not your spelling. It meant having around one hundred and fifty hours of flying time and a class-four instrument rating that allowed you to fly at night but only in clear conditions. It meant receiving not one but two citations for deliberately flying blind into a cloud, the threat of prosecution still hanging over your head.
Fred had been a cadet and then an instructor in the Air Training Corps. Left school at the end of form four, having earned a D in science (“lacks understanding”) and failed math (“difficulty in comprehension”). He applied for a radio tech position in the Royal Australian Air Force but was rejected because of his test scores, which were deemed indicative of “low IQ,” an assessment rendering him “fit for unskilled labor only.” But he was determined to become a pilot, relentless as gravity. Found another way in, the civilian route, obtaining his student pilot’s license in 1977, and then his restricted private pilot’s license. He was studying for the five exams required to obtain his commercial pilot’s license. Had passed his subjects (Aircraft Performance and Operation on the fifth attempt) but failed all five exams twice.
Fred arranged for Sunday tutoring sessions in navigation and aircraft performance with an Air Force reservist. Was getting his flight hours up while tidying up and selling tents at a camping shop in Moonee Ponds. He failed another three of the commercial pilot’s license exams in July 1978, did not sit the remaining two. Told everyone he was going good, going good, only one subject left before he could get his license.
“He wanted to be the youngest commercial pilot,” Rhonda remembers. “He wanted to be there quickly. He had to learn to slow down.”
Fred and Rhonda are introduced by a mutual friend in March. As they part after that brief encounter, each turns to look back at the other. He gets her number. She spends hours in the hallway of her parents’ house on the phone to him. Next month he takes her home, where he’s called Freddy and they speak Italian. He has his father Guido’s face and his mother Alberta’s birthday, which they also share with his four-year-old twin sisters. His brother is twelve that year. Guido regularly corrects Freddy’s spoken Italian, which the son resents, and Freddy does not regularly attend Guido’s Catholic church, which the father resents—love, even at its deepest, rarely taking the form we’d prefer it to.
She is short beside him but strong, fearless; a speed skater and diver as well as a sprinter and thrower who would reliably win every athletics event except for long-distance running. Like Fred, Rhonda wasn’t great at school. Left at fifteen to earn eighty dollars a week at the Night Owl pharmacy, returning home to the whine of the tram, her elderly parents, her distant older brother. The Don Lane Show. A roast, a puddle of peas, potatoes and pumpkin on a plate. Bonnie Tyler on the radio, nothing but a heartache. And this looked to be her life until something different landed in her hands.
Now she thinks to herself each day: How lucky am I? I’ve got a man in uniform going to marry me. Sixteen—the age when one can be only mildly shocked at the thought that dreams really do come true, the feel of it like one of her javelins landing beyond where she expected.
In October, Fred will ascend from the runway and never be seen again. Four decades later—having lived so much more of her life without him than she ever spent with him—Rhonda will still think of him every day.
Fred spends weeknights studying for his exams, has lectures on Saturdays, tutoring sessions on Sundays. But Saturday nights the two of them are dancing at the Chevron nightclub to “Stayin’ Alive” and “Rivers of Babylon” and “You’re the One That I Want.” And whenever their work shifts allow, they go for a fly. He is so confident in everything he does, she always feels safe with him though their feet are on a floor of sky. They talk about the children they will have, a big family, what life will look like when he’s a commercial pilot and she’s a mom.
They take short trips over Melbourne. A relaxed run beneath clouds, roofs tented below like books on their bellies. A line over the bay. And, one time, acrobatic arcs in a little yellow plane. That was her favorite time: the clouds looked like a blanket that day; she wanted to just jump out and walk across them, they looked so solid. She loves sitting beside him in their private world where chemicals combine into flight and they can gaze at the clear logic of life from above, the infinity of their future on the horizon.
Their longest flight together is a visit to Rhonda’s uncle in Newcastle where they lose track of time and have to stay the night. On their way to Bankstown to submit the flight plan for the return trip to Moorabbin, Fred flies into restricted air space, has difficulty landing, makes several attempts while sweating so profusely that she has to mop his brow to prevent it from blurring his vision. Still, he manages.
She goes along to a few of his tutoring sessions. Air Force reservist Captain Edwin Robert Barnes took on the role reluctantly, as a favor for a colleague whom Fred had impressed during his cadetship, but he has come, it seems, to enjoy helping the dogged young man prepare to retake the exams he’s failed. In July, Fred tells Barnes that he thinks he’s passed. Shows up with Rhonda and two bottles of wine to celebrate. Barnes declines the drink saying he’s on reserve but they’ll celebrate when the marks make it official. He returns from holidays in mid-September to a call from Fred, ringing to tell him he’s passed both exams, thanking him for all his help.
1978 means Space Invaders—the first video arcade game, the first female astronauts, the first test-tube baby, the first Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, the unsolved disappearance of Sydney couple Michelle Pope and Stephen Lapthorne in his lime-green van. Fred clips articles of UFO interest from newspapers and magazines. He’s teaching Rhonda to drive. They are learning how to dance: four weeks of lessons to prepare, eventually, for their bridal waltz. They win a disco competition, the bass line to “Night Fever” pulsing around them. He takes her to a restaurant in Moorabbin called Troika where the waiter places the napkin in her lap with a flourish and a violinist bends like a stem by their table. Each month on their anniversary there is a present: two stuffed monkeys embracing, roses, a hairdryer.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind is playing at the cinema. Sitting in his car one day, looking out over the Dandenong Ranges, they chat about spaceships, what would happen if one landed. I’d love to go in and have a look, Fred says, but I wouldn’t go without you.
Rhonda and Guido will both say Fred was no fanatic but Guido will describe him as “a firm believer in UFOs,” an interest that started around fourteen. He will share how, earlier in the year, Fred’s mother called him to come see a light in the sky, ten times larger than a star, stationary for a time before moving off at speed. How Fred said he’d been allowed to see the Air Force’s confidential files on UFOs at East Sale and Laverton, but didn’t discuss the content with his family. And how Fred had once mentioned that he was troubled about the possibility of attack by UFOs. There’s nothing that could be done about it, Guido had replied, so there’s no point in worrying.
One night, Fred returns home earlier than planned from a night flight. When his mother asks him why, he tells her that he had the feeling he was being followed.
On Friday, October 13, 1978—one week before their five-month anniversary—Fred drives Rhonda to their spot in the Dandenongs. He pulls a ring from his pocket, silver with three sapphires in a line, and asks her to marry him. Yes, she replies, yes! Beneath her excitement, though, a quiet drip of misgivings—the inauspicious date, her confusion about why they are suddenly celebrating a week early, the way he slips the silver circle on her ring finger though it is only a placeholder, a friendship ring. The real engagement ring is on lay-by at a jeweler’s in Moonee Ponds, he explains. He will pay it off by Christmas and propose again, in front of the family. Until then, it will be their secret. Then a year-long engagement will follow so she will be eighteen at the wedding. Punctilious.
Fred has told a flying instructor that he intends to fly to King Island on Tuesday, October 17. The instructor will later report that the flight was canceled due to the weather.
Saturday, October 21. Fred wakes up around six on his last morning and eats breakfast with his family: cereal, orange juice, coffee. Showers, shaves, gets dressed. He’s probably wearing his flying clothes. Brown-and-white jumper, brown pants, a short blue raincoat—similar to those worn by Air Force personnel—his good-luck coat. Drives to work and spends the morning at the shop. A colleague notices that he seems preoccupied. Fred explains he’s mentally reviewing his flight plan for his first night flight across deep water that evening.
When his shift ends at midday, he drives down the Nepean Highway to Moorabbin Airport, probably arriving early for his 1:30 pm class. Maybe uses the time to study. Maybe he just stares through the windscreen running through the list of problems without solutions that he keeps tucked in the back of his mind. When his class ends at 4:30 PM, he prepares the plane and lodges his flight plan with the office. And then there is a gap during which the Fred everyone knew would have driven to McDonald’s and taken his order of two Big Macs, two cheeseburgers, a Filet-O-Fish and some chips down the road that leads to the bay to eat slowly by the water, drinking a Coke and practicing his flight in his head like a dance bookended by silence and triumph. Maybe, though, he’s not hungry. Maybe he simply returns to his car, his list, a conversation with himself that feels like a furnace.
He returns to the airport too late for his 5:40 PM scheduled take-off. No change is made to the flight plan. According to that plan, he will be heading towards Cape Otway to fly over Bass Strait for King Island. The plane is fueled at 6:10 PM. He takes off at 6:19 PM. He’s told Rhonda and his family that he’s flying there to bring back crayfish. He’s told flight officials that he’s flying there to pick up passengers, took four life jackets in the plane with him. There are no crayfish, no passengers waiting at King Island Airport. He hasn’t informed King Island Airport of his intention to land, has made no arrangements for lighting on his arrival.
Just before midnight, an eleven-year-old boy staring out a car window will be the only one in his family to see a greenish-white flash moving quickly across the sky as his father drives them near the coast at Barwon Heads. But at 7:00 PM the sky is just darkening over Cape Otway. Calm water, light winds, almost limitless visibility. The end of daylight is eighteen minutes away. Fred’s last transmission is twelve minutes away. If her co-worker at the pharmacy hadn’t called in to say she was running late for her shift, Rhonda would have been in the seat beside him, she says to me forty years later.
It is Fred’s habit to release the seat and push it rearward to accommodate his long legs. Also, to wipe the microphone on his shirt before using it. And he tends to rest it in his lap instead of returning it to the hook. He picks it up at 7:06 PM.
“Melbourne, this is Delta Sierra Juliet,” Fred says, identifying the Cessna’s registration in a businesslike tone. “Is there any known traffic below five thousand?” At that altitude his plane will not show up on Melbourne Air Traffic’s radar. So, while Fred’s location over water or land will never be confirmed, the fact that he is communicating on this frequency is proof that he is in the Cape Otway area.
“Delta Sierra Juliet, no known traffic,” replies air traffic controller Steve Robey, who is working five other frequencies, a normal shift at the Melbourne Flight Service.
“Delta Sierra Juliet, I am—Seems to be a large aircraft below five thousand,” Fred says.
After a pause Steve inquires, “Delta Sierra Juliet, Melbourne. What type of aircraft is it?”
“Delta Sierra Juliet. I cannot affirm. It is . . . four bright, it seems to me, like, landing lights,” Fred says, sounding more alert than alarmed before lapsing into a prolonged pause.
“Delta Sierra Juliet,” Steve says briskly, holding space for the rest of Fred’s reply.
“Melbourne, this is Delta Sierra Juliet. The aircraft has just passed over me at least a thousand feet above . . .” Fred says. His voice is tight.
“Delta Sierra Juliet, roger, and it is a large aircraft? Confirm.”
“Er, unknown due to the speed it’s traveling. Is there any air force aircraft in the vicinity?” Fred asks, the businesslike tone dropping away slightly.
“Delta Sierra Juliet, no known aircraft in the vicinity,” Steve confirms.
“Melbourne, it’s approaching right now from due east towards me . . .” Fred says, before another extended pause.
“Delta Sierra Juliet,” says Steve, waiting.
“Delta Sierra Juliet,” Fred replies, sounding confused. “It seems to me that he’s playing some sort of game? He’s flying over me two, three times at a time at speeds I could not identify.”
“Delta Sierra Juliet, roger. What is your actual level?”
“My level is four and a half thousand. Four five zero zero.”
“Delta Sierra Juliet. And confirm you cannot identify the aircraft?”
“Affirmative.”
“Delta Sierra Juliet, roger. Stand by,” Robey replies, with the composed rapidity of a man whose job it is to receive and respond to distress signals. He has been on the line with pilots shouting mayday, men falling from the sky.
“Melbourne, Delta Sierra Juliet, it’s not an aircraft,” Fred says, his voice rising in pitch and emotion. “It is . . .”
(In the background, another air controller’s voice momentarily rises up as the control room kicks into action. “G’day mate, we got a . . .”)
“Delta Sierra Juliet, Melbourne,” Steve says to Fred. “Can you describe, the, er, aircraft?”
(From the control room: “. . . identified . . . Cape Otway . . .”)
“Delta Sierra Juliet. As it’s flying past, it’s a long shape. [Cannot] identify more than that . . . [It is] before me right now, Melbourne.”
“Delta Sierra Juliet, roger. And how large would the, er, object be?”
(“. . . King Island . . . Four five zero zero . . . nothing at all, no . . .”)
“Delta Sierra Juliet, Melbourne,” Fred says, confusing the call signs. “It seems like it’s stationary. What I’m doing right now is orbiting, and the thing is just orbiting on top of me also. It’s also got a green light aaand sort of metallic light . . . It’s all shiny [on] the outside . . .” He is not audibly panicked.
“Delta Sierra Juliet,” Steve replies.
“It’s just vanished,” Fred reports.
“Delta Sierra Juliet,” Steve says.
“Melbourne, would you know what kind of aircraft I’ve got?” Fred asks, grasping at an answer. “Is it a type of military aircraft?”
“Delta Sierra Juliet, confirm the, er, aircraft just vanished?”
“Say again.”
“Delta Sierra Juliet, is the aircraft still with you?”
“[Now] approaching from the southwest . . .” Fred replies before another long pause.
“Delta Sierra Juliet,” Steve says.
“Delta Sierra Juliet. The engine is, is rough idling. I’ve got it set at twenty-three twenty-four, and the thing is coughing,” Fred says.
“Delta Sierra Juliet, roger. What are your intentions?” Steve asks, with a small but significant amount of solemnity. It is the first time he uses this tone and I understand it to mean: I will not desert you, but there are no answers, you must deal with this now and alone.
“My intentions are, ah, to go to King Island,” Fred says, sounding, now, very young. “Ah, Melbourne, that strange aircraft is hovering on top of me again . . .” And then, at his most confident, “It is hovering, and it’s not an aircraft.”
“Delta Sierra Juliet,” Steve says.
“Delta Sierra Juliet, Melbourne,” Fred says.
[Silence for seventeen seconds, open microphone, with a distinct unidentified noise.]
“Delta Sierra Juliet, Melbourne,” Steve says.
This is where the transmission ends on the copy of the tape that I have heard, and which I believe to be authentic and complete.
“I am very happy to give you a taped copy of your son’s voice to have as a keepsake,” replies the acting director of the Department of Transport to Guido’s request for a copy of Fred’s last radio communication. “I would ask you, however, in view of the department’s firm policy of confidentiality, to confine the hearing of the tape to your family for the specific purpose stated in your letter.”
One of the handwritten transcriptions in the official file describes the distinctive unidentified noise as a long metallic “clanging.” It will be routinely described, in certain stories that become accepted over time, as metal scraping on metal.
Forty years later, Steve Robey will tell me something different but equally unnerving. “To me,” he says, “it sounded like he had his finger on the push to talk [button] but something was impacting the carrier wave.”
28
The Kingdom of Heaven
Sunday Service
They are singing hymns in four-part harmony, down in the basement of a building in the Bronx that used to be a synagogue, a place now called The Light of Truth Mennonite Church. Women and young children on the right, men on the left; occasionally one of the fathers will soothe a baby there as well.
