Francis Chichester's Tasman Airship Sighting
During his attempt at the first solo flight between New Zealand and Australia, British aviator Francis Chichester reported a dull grey-white airship over the Tasman Ocean that vanished and reappeared with a pulsing gleam.
Background
The Flight
In June 1931 the British aviator Francis Chichester — later famous for sailing solo around the world — was attempting the first solo flight between New Zealand and Australia in his Gipsy Moth seaplane Elijah. Far out over the Tasman Ocean, alone above open water, he reported a striking encounter.
The Object
Chichester described a dull grey-white airship-like object that appeared ahead of his aircraft, seemed to vanish, and then reappeared with a dull, pulsing gleam of light. He recorded the sighting in his flight log and in his later writings, treating it as a genuine puzzle rather than an hallucination.
Significance
Chichester's account is cited by Ross Coulthart in In Plain Sight as one of the earliest aviator UFO reports from the Southern Hemisphere and one of the most credible, because Chichester was a seasoned navigator whose testimony on other matters was never doubted.