What happened
Rev. William Gill, an Australian Anglican priest running the mission at Boianai in what was then the Territory of Papua, had written to a colleague on 26 June 1959 that he was still waiting for scientific proof of flying saucers. That evening he saw a bright light in the northwest descend toward the mission. With about 38 people gathered, he recorded a large, disc-shaped object with legs underneath and a deck on top, where four glowing, human-like figures seemed to be working; they came and went, and a thin blue spotlight shone up into the sky. Smaller lights appeared, and the display lasted about four hours until cloud closed in. Gill's minute-by-minute notes were signed by 25 witnesses. The next evening the large object returned. When Gill waved, a figure on it waved back; Ananias and others waved and signalled with torches, and the figures seemed to answer. Gill went in to dinner, and later the object had gone.
The official explanation
The RAAF interviewed Gill only in late December 1959 and concluded the events could have been natural phenomena coloured by UFO enthusiasm, with some lights being planets seen through fast-moving cloud that made them seem to move and change. Astronomer Donald Menzel argued the main object was Venus seen by a short-sighted, astigmatic observer. J. Allen Hynek and Allan Hendry later accepted that the smaller lights were bright stars and planets.
The anomalous case
This is one of the best-documented entity sightings on record: a self-described doubter, a priest, wrote contemporaneous timed notes, and 25 witnesses signed them. Even the RAAF investigator called Gill a reliable observer. Gill's own letters show him skeptical the day before and convinced the day after. Menzel's Venus theory assumed Gill was not wearing his glasses, but Hynek's colleague Fred Beckman reported that Gill wore correctly prescribed glasses and noted Venus separately. Hynek and CUFOS investigator Allan Hendry, after interviewing Gill and visiting the site, concluded the lesser lights were stars and planets but not the primary object, and Chalker notes its size and lack of movement over three hours ruled out an astronomical explanation. Researcher Bill Chalker, who interviewed Gill twice, judged the RAAF's cloud-and-planets explanation unsatisfactory.
The strongest argument that this was something genuinely unknown or classified, with each claim attributed to the person who made it.
Sources
- Father Gill sighting, Papua New Guinea, 1959 (case file with Gill's letters and Menzel critique) Patrick Gross, UFOs at close sight
- Sub Rosa Down Under, Part Five: The RAAF UAS/UFO Data (Bill Chalker, 1996) Project 1947
Witness reports elsewhere
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