Zanthus: the formation beside the Navajo

A flight west across Australia

Captains Gordon Smith and Walter Gardin were returning an empty Piper Navajo, VH-RTO, from Adelaide to Perth on 22 August 1968. According to Smith’s written report, Gardin woke him from the cabin at about 17:40 Western Standard Time and asked him to look out. Smith described a larger central appearance with several smaller forms to its sides, apparently maintaining position relative to the aircraft. His account acknowledged that their actual distance could not be determined because their size was unknown. That caveat limits every later estimate of dimensions and speed.

The report made over the radio

The pilots contacted the Department of Civil Aviation communications centre at Kalgoorlie to ask about known traffic. A later RAAF signal records the centre’s confirmation that the aircraft had reported an unidentified formation and that no known traffic had been reported in that area. This establishes that a report was made during the flight. It is not an independent visual sighting by the ground staff, nor a radar track of the formation. Conflating those kinds of confirmation would turn an important contemporary communication into a measurement that the record does not contain.

Changing shapes and a communications problem

Smith’s account described the central appearance dividing and rejoining while smaller forms seemed to move around it. He also reported a period of unsuccessful radio transmissions and the restoration of communication after the formation departed. Both are witness claims in a written report; the timing alone does not establish that the observed phenomenon caused the communications difficulty. The pilots did not report checking for compass or direction-finder changes during the episode. Their report explicitly leaves those possible instrument effects unknown, an important limit that should survive any retelling of the case.

Why the paperwork arrived late

The RAAF received the written account in November, nearly three months after the flight. A covering letter said that Smith attributed the delay to pressure of work. Subsequent messages sought confirmation from civil aviation staff and questioned how an earlier correspondent had already learned of the sighting in August. The gallery shows these enquiries and the eventual traffic-service response. They document an actual investigation, including missing information and follow-up requests. The delay affects the evidence’s chronology, but it does not erase the separately confirmed fact that the pilots had made a radio report on the day.

Basterfield’s later interview

Keith Basterfield reopened the case in 2011 and interviewed Gardin, then revisited the original documents. The conversation provided more detail about how Gardin interpreted the appearance and its departure. It also took place more than four decades after the flight. Basterfield compared the later recollection with Smith’s account instead of treating every added detail as contemporary evidence. He considered conventional possibilities, including balloons and optical effects, and did not regard them as a satisfactory match. That is an investigator’s assessment of the reports, not a new instrumental test of the 1968 event.

What survives for comparison

The original report is unusually candid that apparent size cannot supply distance without an independent reference. The government correspondence adds a valuable verification of the in-flight report, but does not solve that geometric problem. Together they support a documented, unresolved aircrew observation with a later independent re-examination. They do not establish a measured formation of vehicles or an electromagnetic cause for the radio problem. The local images are government investigation pages; the pilots’ privately authored narrative remains accessible in the linked archive file. Keeping those layers separate makes the case more useful than a single dramatic summary.

Sources & further reading

• A703, 580/1/1, part 10: Zanthus correspondence — Royal Australian Air Force / National Archives of Australia
• The 1968 Zanthus aircraft encounter revisited — Keith Basterfield / Project 1947
• Zanthus, Western Australia — regional coordinate reference — Wikimedia geographical reference