New Zealand X-Files : Official “fib”, superiors “mystified”, + Kaikoura “whitewash”

I've now uploaded searchable PDF files containing over 2,000 pages of documents from the New Zealand government’s files on UFOs to a directory at the link below. Some highlights from that collection are given in the post below, in a similar vein to the on-going series of threads I’ve been posting about searchable archives of FBI files, Australian files, Canadian files and other material.

The New Zealand PDF archive is currently available on the Wetransfer website at this link.

The New Zealand archive will be on the Wetransfer website at this link for two weeks, i.e. until 24 June 2013. Thereafter, the files will continue to be available on the Box.com free file storage website at this link (from which individual files can be downloaded, or you can simply click on the "Download" button at the top right of that webpage to download all of the files with a single click).

If (with the assistance of members of ATS) I manage to obtain any of the further official New Zealand government UFO files available in Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch detailed in Section D below, I’ll add them to the Box.com link above. If you live in, or near, those areas (or know anyone that does live in those areas that owns a digital camera and might be prepared to help out), then it would be great if you could have a look at Section D below and post in this thread.

Once downloaded, the entire directory of New Zealand files at the link above can be read or searched quickly and easily (together with, if you wish, various UFO magazines/journals, other official documents, UFO books, academic dissertations relating to UFOs etc) using a method I’ve previously outlined in another thread: FAST searching of major free online collections of UFO journals (or just browse/download them).

Also, I've made searchable PDFs of various issues of the "Flying Saucers" magazine published in the 1950s by New Zealand’s CSI (“Civilian Saucer Investigation”, an early UFO group). It is not a complete collection but may nonetheless be useful to some of you. (The link below only includes Volume 1 issues 2, 3, 4; Volume 2 issue 1; Volume 3 Issue 3 and Volume 4 Issue 2). By way of some compensation for its incompleteness, I've included a couple of CSI New Zealand's "special bulletins" in this collection at no extra charge:
www.box.com...

The official files currently included in the above directory were released online in 2010 on the Stuff.co.nz website and summarised in an article on that website. “UFOeyes” (a member of ATS at that time, subsequently banned) helpfully converted those documents to PDF (but not searchable) format. UFOeyes posted on his website at the time that:

I found the Flash based interface over at stuff.co.nz unbearable to use, so I thought I’d make everyone’s life a little bit easier by posting direct links to the PDFs.

The PDF files have since appeared on various websites, but none of the ones I’d found were in a format that allowed the content of the UFO files to be searched. The PDF archive that I’ve uploaded is searchable. As I’ve said once or twice before, I think that ufology could benefit considerably from making more underlying documentation easily available in a searchable format…


I posted a thread on ATS about the release of files in New Zealand in 2010, entitled: New Zealand to disclose UFO files - within a week

Other threads on ATS at that time included:
(1) “New Zealand Military to Release Secret UFO Files”
(2) “New Zealand Government releases UFO files”
(3) “New Zealand releases UFO government files”

The coverage in the mainstream media included the Al Jazeera item in the video embedded below, in addition to coverage on the websites of quite a few newspapers. That coverage is summarised in Section C below.

Some of you may enjoy contrasting:

(1) the (generally derisory) contents of those articles in the main stream media which highlighted such material as a letter to the New Zealand authorities from someone claiming to have met aliens with size 440 boots and

(2) the content that could have been highlighted instead, such as the material in Sections E to K – e.g. the documents relating to a government “fib” in Section F.

(The press coverage here in the UK of the files released by the British government has generally been fairly sensible and free of ridicule. The tone of the coverage of files released in New Zealand was notable different. This may simply be because some of the content of the files released in New Zealand contains some, um, high strangeness content – see the Postscript in Section O below).

Much more informative than most of the main stream media coverage in 2010 are the various blog posts by Australian researcher Pauline Wilson, in her following blog posts:
First quick look at New Zealand Government UFO files
More New Zealand UFO files
New Zealand UFO investigating committee
Cold case 13 jan 1965 qantas aircrew
Contactee George Adamski in New Zealand

I wonder how many members of the UFO community are familiar with the content of these documents, including:

(1) While the official New Zealand files released online in 2010 generated quite a bit of media coverage, none of the reports in the main stream media appear to have mentioned that several files were not included in that release of material. Some of the further files are available at archives in New Zealand for anyone that wishes to take photos of them. See Section D below.

(2) A well-reported sighting by the crew and some of the passengers of an aircraft in 1955 could have had more witnesses, but the male pilot and other male witnesses didn’t want to alarm the women on board. See Section E below in relation to the Captain Rainbow sighting.

(3) An investigation of one reported close encounter in 1959 resulted in the investigator concluding that the occupant of a flying saucer may have been shouting in Russian. The report was accordingly classified and media requests for relevant documents were met with a refusal on the basis of an alleged promise to the witness to keep the relevant sighting report confidential. However, the internal documents now available reveal that in fact the officials writing the relevant correspondence were aware that there was not any such promise in relation to that sighting. The recipient of the correspondence has referred to the reply he received as a “fib”. I’d be interested in hearing whether members of ATS consider the word “fib” to be accurate and adequate in the light of the relevant internal documents. See Section F below (particularly at sub-section F3).

(4) One sighting in 1961 left a pilot, and his superiors, “mystified”. See Section G below.

(5) The official files contain a considerable volume of material on the well-known Kaikoura lights documents, including comments from military personnel expressing the view that the official New Zealand investigation into that sighting was a “whitewash”. See Section I below.

(6) The New Zealand authorities had previously refused to release various documents, even when their internal documents stated that “we always knew we were on shaky ground” in doing so. See Section J below.

(7) One intriguing handwritten annotation on a memo written in 1985 in relation to an enquiry from prominent UFO author Timothy Good states “There is also a classified file”. See Section K below.

This post is in several sections, namely:

SECTION A : THIS BRIEF INTRODUCTION
SECTION B : BACKGROUND - UFOS OVER NEW ZEALAND
SECTION C : THE FILES RELEASED IN 2010
SECTION D : THE OTHER OFFICIAL FILES
SECTION E : DON’T ALARM THE WOMEN : CAPTAIN RAINBOW SIGHTING (1955)
SECTION F : THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING! - MORELAND HUMANOID ENCOUNTER “FIB” (1959)
SECTION G : SIGHTING BY TWO AIRCRAFT CREWS (1961) - SUPERIORS MYSTIFIED
SECTION H : UFO INVESTIGATIONS COMMITTEE (1970s)
SECTION I : KAIKOURA LIGHTS “WHITEWASH” (1978)
SECTION J : “WE ALWAYS KNEW WE WERE ON SHAKY GROUND”(1984)
SECTION K : “THERE IS ALSO A CLASSIFIED FILE”(1985)
SECTION L : BRUCE CATHIE
SECTION M : CONCLUSION
SECTION N : REFERENCES
SECTION O : POSTSCRIPT

SECTION B : BACKGROUND - UFOS OVER NEW ZEALAND

A very brief Wikipedia entry on UFOs over New Zealand can be found at the link below:
en.wikipedia.org...

The brevity and limited depth of that entry can be contrasted with, say, the equivalent Wikipedia entry on UFOs over Australia:
en.wikipedia.org...

Much more detail is given in a book by Peter Hassall entitled “The NZ Files: UFOs in New Zealand” (1998), which was written before New Zealand’s official UFO files were available to researchers. Unfortunately, Peter Hassall’s book is now out of print. Second-hand copies are relatively expensive. (I recently paid about US$40 for my copy).



A brief history of UFO groups in New Zealand is given by Bill Chalker in the Proceedings of the Sign Historical Group at pages 97-98. The same publication includes, at page 218, details of the archive of one New Zealand researcher, Murray Bott. (I attempted to contact Murray Bott at several emails address during the couple of months I was researching this thread. I have not yet received any response to those emails).

A summary of quite a few sightings over New Zealand can be found on the website of UFOCUS NZ (i.e. the UFO Focus New Zealand Research Network). UFOCUS is run by Suzy Hansen. Suzy Hansen featured in New Zealand’s TV3 “60 minutes” feature entitled “The Truth is Out There” (most of which, particularly in the first half, relates to sightings in the USA rather than being dedicated to New Zealand sightings), embedded below:



Suzy Hansen can also be heard discussing New Zealand’s UFO sightings in the Rense Radio podcast at the link below:
rense.gsradio.net:8080...

Suzy Hansen also features in the videos below produced by student Jonathan Fox in 2008, which focus on a relatively recent sighting rather than classic cases or those featured in the official documents:







New Zealand author Ray Waru discussed New Zealand’s UFO files (and files on other topics) in an interview by George Knapp in the podcast below:



During the course of writing this item, I contacted several other researchers that have investigated sightings in New Zealand, particularly Bryan Dickeson (after Australian researcher Anthony Clarke of UFO Research NSW kindly put me in touch with him). I refer to Bryan Dickeson below, particularly in Section D on further files that are available in relation to sightings over New Zealand.

SECTION C : THE FILES RELEASED IN 2010

The official UFO files that were made available online in New Zealand in 2010, included in the PDF archive at the links in Section A above, are summarised in the table below. (A copy of this table, with relevant links, is included in the downloadable archive in Section A above).



THESE ARE NOT THE ONLY KNOWN OFFICIAL UFO FILES FROM NEW ZEALAND. THEY ARE THE ONLY ONES CURRENTLY ONLINE. SEE SECTION D FOR A DISCUSSION OF FURTHER KNOWN FILES, WHICH IT WOULD BE GREAT TO ADD TO THE ABOVE COLLECTION OF FILES AVAILABLE ONLINE.

As mentioned above, the release of these files in 2010 was covered by Al Jazeera in the video below:



A selection of the coverage of the release in 2010 on various websites is given below.

www.stuff.co.nz...

Thousands of secret files on New Zealand's UFO reports are set to be made public, nearly 32 years to the day after our most famous sighting.

The files include every witness account of unidentified flying objects reported to authorities since the early 1950s, including the 1978 Kaikoura mystery.

They had been held by Archives New Zealand, which was to make them available in February after requests from the public, but the Defence Force stepped in, saying it needed to remove personal identification to comply with the Privacy Act.

The Defence Force promised to release the files by the end of this year and is due to make them public this week.

More than 2000 pages of files will be issued in 12 volumes. Squadron Leader Kavae Tamariki said the Defence Force would not comment on the files' content.

"We've just been a collection point for the information. We don't investigate or make reports, we haven't substantiated anything in them."

www.news.com.au...

Breaking news NZ releases 55 years of UFO files

The New Zealand military has released hundreds of previously classified reports detailing claims of unidentified flying object (UFO) sightings and alien encounters.

The reports, dating from 1954 to 2009, have been released under freedom of information laws after the New Zealand Defence Force removed names and other identifying material.

In about 2000 pages of documents, members of the public, military personnel and commercial pilots outline close encounters, mostly involving moving lights in the sky.

Some of the accounts include drawings of flying saucers, descriptions of aliens wearing "pharaoh masks" and alleged examples of extraterrestrial writing.

www.stuff.co.nz...

Thousands of secret reports on New Zealand UFO sightings have been released, detailing mysterious unexplained sightings from the public and military personnel.

The files include every witness account of unidentified flying objects reported to authorities since early 1952, including the infamous 1978 Kaikoura mystery.

tvnz.co.nz...

Much of the 12 volumes contains correspondence of a fairly outlandish nature but there is also a 1961 sighting from a respected Air Force officer who insists he saw a mysterious cigar-shaped object, with what appeared to be a cockpit and undercarriage - a sighting that baffled him and his superiors.

Here in Britain, reports on the release include an item on the website of The Telegraph newspaper. That story had the rather light-hearted (ridiculing?) title:
Alien with size 440 shoe among New Zealand UFO sightings

A giant alien with size 440 shoes is among extraterrestrial beings encountered over the past 60 years, according to previously secret documents made public by the New Zealand Defence Force on Wednesday.

The reports, detailing "sightings" of unidentified flying objects and their operators, range from the downright wacky to the intriguing.

Accounts came from people in all walks of life, including air force personnel, commercial airline pilots and passengers on aircraft, and even a New Zealand prime minister took a close interest in one case.

The more than 2,000 pages of documents dating back to the early 1950s had not been due for publication until the year 2050, but were released after requests under freedom of information laws.

Many reports include sketches of flying saucers and aliens, one showing a human-like figure dressed in silvery material with a wide belt, helmet and visor.

The website of the Daily Mail newspaper included the following:

www.dailymail.co.uk...

Those green men aren't so little: New Zealand UFO files describe alien with size 440 shoes

The idea that UFOs contain 'little' green men has been stomped into stardust if the New Zealand Defence Force's files are to be believed because witnesses describe an alien with size 440 feet.

Among the most baffling claims is one from a man who said that in 1995 he met an alien with size 440 shoes, who told him that on death man ascends to space as hydrogen atoms.

It is unclear how the man was able to accurately measure the alien's shoe size, or where the extra-terrestrial bought his outsized footwear, but thankfully the life form did provide some information.

'You will remain in hydrogen form for 150 years. Then it will change to sodium,' the alien reportedly said.

However, the same article does say:

But among the more fanciful entries are some cases which have led to calls for greater scrutiny.

Perhaps the most high-profile of them is a case from December 1978 in which the crew of a cargo plane flying over the South Island reported bright lights above the town of Kaikoura.

The close encounter was backed up by grainy video footage filmed by a news crew for the state-owned broadcaster Television New Zealand.

The Sciblogs website published an article entitled ”The UFO files – journalists try to keep straight faces”, which included the following:

Right now political journalists in Wellington are leafing through documents released by Archives New Zealand and the Defence Force which detail witness accounts of unidentified flying object sightings around New Zealand back to the 1950s.

I’ve spoken to a number of journalists today who sheepishly revealed they’d been roped into the effort to cover the release of the 2000 documents and were looking for scientific angles to the story.

Well, there are lots of those and I’m glad to receive the calls, because the last thing we need is people like Suzanne Hansen hogging this story – as she did today when she was featured in the Dominion Post’s front page lead. Hansen is the director of the “research group” UFOCUS and in the Dominion Post describes how she has been fortunate enough to sight a UFO not once, but numerous times in her life, the first when she was just eight years old.

Now the papers that have been released today detail only witness reports of UFO sightings, not Defence Force analysis of those reports. Indeed, Squadron Leader Kavae Tamariki told the Dominion Post that the Defence Force did not have resources to investigate UFOs so had not been able to substantiate anything outlined in the eyewitness reports.

What we are are likely to see in the documents then is a random collection of anecdotes – many credible-sounding, many incredible, that between them will likely bear all the hallmarks of previous UFO sighting – from saucer-shaped craft to unexplained lights in the night sky moving in formation

I found the above “scientific” comments to be interesting given that they appear to be based on taking the statement of the Defence Force at face value (e.g. as to the lack of any Defence Force analysis of the reports) rather than an examination of the files themselves, which does include analysis of several sightings.

The website of The Telegraph newspaper had a story giving examples of the relevant files which included the following:

www.telegraph.co.uk...

1. A man who in 1995 met the giant alien with size 440 shoes says the being told him that on dying humans ascend as hydrogen atoms. "You will remain in hydrogen form for 150 years. Then it will change to sodium."

2. Sinister forces reported to be criss-crossing the sky over Auckland, the country's largest city, with what looked like aircraft contrails in May 1999. "A vast many people in Auckland will suffer flu-like sickness," the alarmed writer warned.

3. In one of the earliest reports, a UFO enthusiast wrote in to say that a witness had described seeing a "strange bowl-shaped object" fall from a clear sky. "As the object fell it made a hissing sound, hit the wharf pier he was standing on, and then bounced high and landed on a government survey vessel."

4. A writer reproduced what were described as samples of alien writing.

SECTION D : THE OTHER OFFICIAL FILES

Back in December 2010, Australian researcher Keith Basterfield posted a link on ATS to a post by his colleague Pauline Wilson on their joint blog:


"Today's post sees me taking another look at the New Zealand Government's UFO files release. Rather, I am taking a look at what is not yet available. For you see, there are other NZ Government UFO files which are not part of the batch released by the NZ Defence Force (NZDF). … There are five files listed in the Archives which were not released by the NZDF as they are not NZDF files
...
I wonder if anyone in New Zealand has copies of any of these other NZ Government UFO files, they can share with us?"


Pauline Wilson’s post was the only place I’ve seen someone comment in 2010 that the releases released online were not ALL of New Zealand’s UFO files. I don’t recall any of the main stream media coverage at that time referring to this fact.

Unfortunately, no-one appears to have responded to Pauline Wilson’s request for copies of these other official files.

I’ve duplicated Pauline Wilson’s efforts and searched the online database of the Archives New Zealand. I’ve found the following 9 files that appear to relate to UFOs listed in that database that are not included in the files released online in 2010. Some of these files are “open access” (which I understand indicates that paper copies of these files are available for examination and copying at the locations indicated in the table below) while some are “restricted access”. According to a guide on the website of the Archives New Zealand:

Restrictions are placed on records by the agency that created them. The reason is primarily to protect privacy, but can also relate to material deemed to be of a sensitive nature.
Access to restricted records can only be provided with the written permission from the agency responsible for the restriction

The further files that appear to relate to UFOs that I’ve identified so far in the catalogue of the Archives New Zealand are summarised in the table below. (A copy of this table, with relevant links, is included in the downloadable archive in Section A above).

Thus, it seems that files are available to view (and copy) at offices in Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch. The addresses for the relevant offices are given at the links in the version of the above table that is included in the downloadable archive in Section A above, but are given below for ease of reference:

Wellington offices:


Auckland offices:


Christchurch offices:


According to the guide on the website of Archives New Zealand, not only can visitors use a camera to copy archives, the Archives positively “encourage you to bring your own personal camera to our Reading Rooms to make copies of records”:



A more detailed guide to the Archives’ camera policy can be downloaded from this link. That policy includes more details on the general permission to use digital cameras to copy material in the archives:


While permission would be required to place any photographer files online, I have not encountered any difficulties obtaining such permission from the equivalent National Archives in Canada and Australia. I’ve posted those files in other threads in the last couple of years. (If anyone takes images of some or all of any of the above files, I’d be more than happy to handle the relevant requests for permission to make this material available online. Just let me know by posting in this thread, or feel free to contact me by U2U or by email).

As I’ve previously commented, I don’t know whether to find it sad or amusing that many UFO groups clamour for various governments to release their files on UFOs (organising petitions or hearings), but few of those UFO groups can be bothered taking up offers by some governments to make UFO files available if modest copying charges are met (or, as in this case, photographing files themselves under a policy which positively encourages researchers to visit the archives with their own digital cameras). One might be forgiven for suspecting that the people behind some UFO groups don’t really want answers but are instead more attracted by the publicity which they gain from organising petitions, press conferences and hearings. Those of you that know me will probably guess, correctly, that on balance I favour being amused by this…

Collating UFO material from different sources in the last few years has made it increasingly obvious to me that there is a lot of low-hanging fruit ripe for the picking if people could be bothered. With just a bit of effort (I’m talking hours of work, not days or weeks), and a bit of co-ordination, it would be possible for members of ATS to add dramatically to the materi al freely available online in relation to numerous UFO cases within a fairly short span of time. Oh well…

In addition to the official files available at various archives, there is a considerable volume of material relating to sightings over New Zealand held by veteran private researchers in New Zealand and Australia. Some of them (such as Bryan Dickeson, formerly of New Zealand but now based in Australia, in Bullaburra just west of Sydney) are generously attempting, with limited time and resources, to scan their material to make it freely available online. I’ll post separately about such archives and scanning projects, if there is any interest in assisting in such efforts. In short, there are massive amount of materials dating from the 1940s onwards sitting in storage around the world (in garages, archives and libraries), just waiting for people to be prepared to put in some time and effort to scan them. Some of these archives contain rare or unique items which are, with alarming frequency, treated as rubbish when the relevant researcher dies. Given that many UFO cases are like jigsaws that require pieces of the puzzle from various sources in order to solve them, it is disappointing that some of those pieces are simply thrown away. This will be the subject of a thread I’ve been planning for a year or two, about “The Collective” project. This thread, and others that I’ve written in the last year on other PDF archives of official documents, are small precursors for that project.

SECTION E : DON’T ALARM THE WOMEN : CAPTAIN RAINBOW SIGHTING (1955)

On 31st October 1955, Captain W T Rainbow (a pilot with the National Airways Corporation) and several others on an aircraft saw a light which they consider unusual and moving (and thus not a planet). However one of the witnesses on the aircraft, plus the director of the Carter Observatory in Wellington and the New Zealand authorities thought it was Venus.

A summary of this incident appears on the website of UFOCUS NZ (i.e. the UFO Focus New Zealand Research Network), which includes the names of the various witnesses, i.e. Captain W. T. Rainbow , First Officer S. Trounce, Mr R. Tuckett (Senior Air Traffic Controller at the RNZAF Station at Hobsonville), Air Commodore R. J. Cohen (Inspector General RNZAF, Air Dept. Wellington) and Mr Hume (civilian)

This incident generated quite a few press reports in New Zealand in 1955, such as these ones:













I’m including this sighting partly because of the number of press reports generated by the sighting in 1955 and but mainly because I was amused by a cultural point in relation to the sighting. There were additional potential witnesses on the aircraft, but the relevant light was not drawn to their attention because … Captain Rainbow and the other male witnesses didn’t want to alarm the women on board, as indicated by the press reports below.

The official files (particularly File AIR 39-3-3 Volume 1) include statements from three of the witnesses, including Captain Rainbow himself.

Captain Rainbow’s original statement to the New Zealand authorities is at Pages 84 to 86 of 445 in File AIR 39-3-3 Volume 1 (included in the downloadable archive in Section A above):







Following press reports indicating that the New Zealand authorities were considering Venus as a potential explanation for this incident, Captain Rainbow was clearly irritated and wrote a further letter to the authorities on 11th November 1955. That letter appears at pages 81-82 of the same file.






Captain Rainbow’s co-pilot also provided a witness statement (at Pages 34 and 35 of 445 in the same file, i.e. File AIR 39-3-3 Volume 1).






Mr R. Tuckett (an Air Control Officer on board the aircraft) provided a written statement that appears at pages 96 to 97 of 445 of the same file:






Pages 74-75 of 445 in the same file include details of another sighting later the same night. This appears merely to be a coincidence.

A brief report (possibly from a newspaper) at Page 87 of 445 in the same file contains a frustratingly brief and (to me at least) somewhat bemusing statement, apparently in relation to the sighting by Captain Rainbow and Air Commodore Cohen, that “an independent investigating committee” was satisfied that the light was the “Interplanetary Space Ship Venus” which “arrived at Kirkcaldie and Stains” on “the day that the mysterious light was reported”. Despite a limited amount of Google searching, I don’t know what this is all about, e.g. an in-joke, or some sort of promotional airship or something else altogether:

Somewhat easier to understand is the relatively detailed sceptical report on Captain Rainbow’s sighting by the Director of the Carter Observatory. That report concluded that the light reported by the witnesses was Venus (at Pages 99 to 103 of 445 in the same file).

Page 99 of 445:


Pages 100 of 445:


Pages 101 of 445:


Pages 102 of 445:


Pages 103 of 445:


The Venus explanation was rejected by Captain Rainbow (as indicated by his second letter above). It was also rejected in the relatively lengthy editorial in CSI New Zealand’s Flying Saucer magazine at pages 1-6 and 33 embedded below.

CSI New Zealand Editorial, Page 1 of December 1955 issue (i.e. page 3 of 38 in pdf version):


CSI New Zealand Editorial, page 2 of December 1955 issue (i.e. page 4 of 38 in pdf version):


CSI New Zealand Editorial, page 3 of December 1955 issue (i.e. page 5 of 38 in pdf version):


CSI New Zealand Editorial, page 4 of December 1955 issue (i.e. page 6 of 38 in pdf version):


CSI New Zealand Editorial, page 5 of December 1955 issue (i.e. page 7 of 38 in pdf version):


CSI New Zealand Editorial, page 6 of December 1955 issue (i.e. page 8 of 38 in pdf version):


CSI New Zealand Editorial, page 33 of December 1955 issue (i.e. page 9 of 38 in pdf version):


Neither Captain Rainbow nor ufologists appeared to have the Director’s report itself in 1955. Likewise, it seems that the Director only had some of the material available now. Hence, there was limited engagement with specific points on each side. A modern researcher now has the benefit of detailed information and analysis by the various sides of the debate, which were not available to the participants in the debate in 1955. That benefit provides some counter-balance to the obvious difficulties involved in considering such sightings several decades after the events themselves, including the fact that most witnesses to events in the 1950s are now deceased.

SECTION F : MORELAND HUMANOID ENCOUNTER “FIB” (1959)

The official New Zealand files contain a considerable volume of material in relation to this incident, not all of which has been released to the public.

According to the New Zealand files, on 13 July 1959 a woman living near Blenheim [Mrs Eileen Moreland] reported that at between 5-6 a.m. that morning she had seen an oval-shaped object, measuring 20 yards across and 4 or 5 feet through, descend before her. She was caught in a green light produced by two beams shining from beneath the vehicle and was unable to move. The vehicle was manned by two men, wearing silvery suits and helmets, one of whom descended from it and came over to her. He shouted at her in a foreign language. In a fright she hit out with her torch and ran for nearby trees. The man reboarded the vehicle, which was hovering some 10-12 feet from the ground. It then ascended straight up into the sky emitting a high-pitched whistle and leaving a patch of hot air and a smell like that of burnt pepper. Another witness later reported seeing an unidentified light at about the same time. (This summary is taken from page 34 of File Air 224-10-1).

A memo dated 1 March 1979 in page 34 of File Air 224-10-1 states (in para 3) “her initial story was to the effect that she had only seen a craft descend, hover and then ascend. She subsequently told the investigating officer about the landing of the man, whom she described as ‘like any other man’ as far as she could tell, although his left hand was ‘missing below the wrist’”. Refers to a rash “probably allergic in origin” and comments that “the evidence suggests that Mrs Moreland was in an emotionally unstable condition at the time. She was also the subject of considerable publicity much of which was of a derogatory nature, due in part to a press statement which she issued herself”.

In 1998, Mark Cashman (webmaster of “The Temporal Doorway” website) included this incident in a list which he stated was a list of “10 cases I chose as representative of those cases suggestive of the ETH”.

This incident has been the subject of a previous (brief) thread on ATS entitled “The Moreland UFO Sighting 1959” and has been discussed mentioned in several UFO books, including books by Jacques Vallee and members of NICAP. Jacques Vallee’s book “Passport to Magonia” includes the following entry for a sighting by Mrs Eileen Moreland in on 13 July 1959:

Blenheim (New Zealand). Mrs. Moreland saw a disk-shaped object as she was milking cows. It was about 10 m diameter, had two intense, green lights and two rows of jets around the rim, emitting orange flames. Inside a glass dome on top were two men dressed in aluminumlike suits. The craft did not land, but took off at great speed with a high-pitched sound. Heat sensation. (124; Challenge 24)

Notable online discussions of this incident include the following:
(1) Some relevant material is transcribed on a page on the UFOCUS NZ website
(2) Quite a few sources were helpfully collated by Patrick Gross on his Ufologie website.
(3) Mark Cashman also transcribed some material on his Temporal Doorway website (a useful resource that is now defunct, but available via the Wayback Machine’s Internet Archive).
(4) A more recent, and relatively detailed, blog post by Bill Chalker discusses the incident in the light of the documents released in 2010.

In some cases, I find the official reaction to a sighting and the potential release of documents relating to that reaction to be more interesting than the sighting itself. The sighting by Eileen Moreland in 1959 is an example of such a sighting. I found the official documents relating to the reaction to that sighting to be fascinating. In particular, internal documents indicate that an official considered a reply he drafted to be given to the media in relation to this sighting to be, um, less than frank. The reporter that received the relevant reply has (in the light of those internal documents) referred to the reply as a “fib”. I’d be interested to see what members of ATS make of that particular episode in the light of the internal documents which can now be examined.

I’ve split the discussion of this incident into the following sub-sections:

Section F1 : Eileen Moreland’s sightings
Section F2 : Other witnesses?
Section F3 : Government admission of a “fib”?
Section F4 : Government files - “No reference” to any investigation

Section F1 : Eileen Moreland’s sightings

The book “The Challenge of Unidentified Flying Objects” by Charles Maney and Richard Hall (members of NICAP) includes the following (in Part 1 Chapter III, at pages 28-30 of hardback edition, pages 26-27 of PDF version):

THE NEW ZEALAND SIGHTING OF JULY 13, 1959
Another sighting of a fantastic character was witnessed by Mrs. Frederick Moreland of Old Renwick Road, Blenheim, New Zealand, on the early morning of July 13, 1959. Mrs. Moreland lives with her husband, an employee of the Woodbourne station of the Royal New Zealand Air Force, with their five children on a small farm outside of Blenheim, near the northeast tip of South Island.

The story of Mrs. Moreland's unusual experience is related somewhat in detail in the July
22 issue of the Nelson Evening Mail. Mrs. Moreland's account in part as given to the Mail
reporter reads as follows:

"At 5:30 a.m. on Monday, July 13, I went across the paddock to milk the cows. I noticed
a green glow in the clouds. As there was no moon I wondered what it was. When I was half way across the paddock two large green things, like eyes or big lamps, appeared above me and dropped towards the ground.

"I noticed that I was bathed in green light and that all the paddock was green, too. It was
a horrid sort of colour. My first thought was, I shouldn't be here, and I made a dive for the trees (a stand of pines on the other side of the three-acre paddock). I stood and watched.

"A saucer-shaped glow with two indented green lights in the bottom descended. The air became very warm. Two rows of jets around the middle shot out orange-coloured flames. They appeared to revolve in opposite directions. The thing was about 20 to 30 feet in diameter. It hovered at about roof height.

"The jets stopped and a light was switched on in what appeared to be a perspex or glass roof or dome, which glowed. The bottom appeared to be of a greyish colour. There was a faint hum in the air as it hovered.

"There were two men in it, dressed in fairly close-fitting suits of shiny material. The only thing I can think of to describe it is aluminum foil. Opaque helmets rose from their shoulders. I could not see their faces.

"One of the two men stood up and put two hands in front of him as if leaning over to look downwards He then sat down and, after a minute or two, the jets started off again and, tilting slightly at first, the thing shot up vertically at great speed and disappeared into the clouds. When it did this it made a soft but high pitched sound.

"I was so dumbfounded that I stood in the trees for a moment not knowing what to do. There was a smell of something which resembled pepper in the air. At last I decided to continue
getting in and milking the cows. ..."

The Nelson Evening Mail of August 6 told of two other persons in a locality not far from the home of Mrs. Moreland who witnessed unusual aerial phenomena at about the same time. Mr. Roy Holdaway, a farmer at Dillon's Point, rises at 4:30 a. m. every morning. He told of seeing a sky object of "greeny colour --travelling from east to west towards Blenheim." A neighbor's wife reported seeing a "very bright light in the eastern sky travelling in a horizontal position from north to south" early that same morning.

The incident was investigated by a number of authorities including the Blenheim police, the authorities of the New Zealand Air Force, Captain W. T. Rainbow of the National Airways Corporation, and Mr. Harold H. Fulton, Director of Civilian Saucer Investigation of New Zealand. Mr. Fulton comments: "I learned that the police vouched for the witness in whom they had confidence; none of the interviewing officers could detect any sign of fabrication and all were impressed."

It is noted that this New Zealand sighting is not nearly so well substantiated as innumerable other less spectacular reports. If this account is fiction, one must credit Mrs. Moreland either with a most vivid imagination or else a rather exhaustive acquaintance with sightings of UFO's over the past thirteen years. If this particular sighting is real, one must credit Mrs. Moreland with a most alert capacity for noting details. For among the numerous details descriptive of this incident are several that have been noted in connection with other instances of UFO sightings.
…
Upon the basis of the above descriptive details noted by Mrs. Moreland, the evidence appears to be very strong that her experience was real.

Official documents on this incident appear in several files. The main relevant file is File Air 244-10-1 Volume 1, but relevant correspondence also appears in File Air 160-2 Volume 1, File Air 39-3-3 Volume 2 and File Air 39-3-3 Volume 4.

I’ll focus below on the documents in File AIR-244-10-1 (particularly at pages 23-36, 141-152, 168-169, 175 and 179-223). That file (like most of the New Zealand UFO files) is, more or less, in reverse chronological order, i.e. the older material is towards the back of the file with newer material added at the front (with a few pages seemingly filed at random, just to keep researchers on their toes…) – so it is necessary to start at the back of the file to follow the developing story.

Page 221 of 225 in File AIR-244-10-1 includes the brief initial witness account:


Pages 219-220 of 225 in File AIR-244-10-1 include a 2 page witness account, with an associated sketch and map at page 222 (with an improved copy at page 198):




Page 217 of 225 in File AIR-244-10-1 has a handwritten note referring to Mrs Moreland having “developed a few blisters on hands, one on lip, others between shoulders”


Pages 214 of 225 in File AIR-244-10-1 includes a sketch of a being


Page 213 of 225 in File AIR-244-10-1 appears to include a partial photo of some sort of protective suit, possibly taken from an article in the Marlbourough Express of 10th August 1959 with the headline “Two more sightings of object reported”, also referred to on that page. The nature and source of the photo is far from clear to me at present. I haven’t seen any suggestions that Mrs Moreland took any photos so currently presume the photo was merely used to illustrate a newspaper article. I’d be interested in seeing the article in the Marlbourough Express of 10th August 1959 to see if it explains this photo…


Other pages in File AIR-244-10-1 contain reports of other sightings in the area shortly after Mrs Moreland’s first sighting. For example, Page 211 of 225 in includes a sighting report by farmhand of sighting on Friday 7th August 1959. Page 210 of 225 in File AIR-244-10-1 contains a sighting report by LAC Rogers GE on Friday 7th August 1959. Page 209 of 225 contains a sighting report by unnamed female witness on Friday 7th August 1959. Names of some witnesses to this event on 7 August 1959 are given in a press report at page 183. As a document at pages 210-211 indicates, the sighting on 7 August 1959 was possibly just a meteor.