# The Lights beside the Newspaper Plane [View on uap.fun]() CASE FILE 028 · 1978 Published: September 18, 2026 In December 1978 Wellington radar asked a freight crew hauling newspapers down the Kaikōura coast to identify a strong return off its wing, and the pilots saw a bright orb. Ten days later a television crew rode the same run and filmed a glowing oval while the controller called out targets “in formation with you.” The government put a jet on standby. Scientists answered with squid boats and a torch shone through the cockpit window. ![The preserved red-and-white Safe Air Argosy ZK-SAE Merchant Enterprise on the ground at Blenheim in 2005.]() Authentic photograph of ZK-SAE Merchant Enterprise at Blenheim in July 2005, taken by Wikimedia Commons user Ingolfson and released into the public domain. This is the aircraft used on the filmed December 30–31 flight, photographed twenty-seven years later; it is not an image of the lights or the 1978 flight. ## AT A GLANCE - **DATE:** December 21 and 30–31, 1978 - **LOCATION:** Off the Kaikōura coast, between Blenheim and Christchurch, South Island - **REPORT TYPE:** Aviation encounter - **RESOLUTION:** [Partly explained]() - **RECORD STATUS:** Partly explained; radar-visual reports remain disputed ## The story ### The first lights find the night freight In the early hours of December 21, a Safe Air Argosy carried newspapers south from Blenheim toward Christchurch, following the coast where black water pressed against the snow-backed Kaikōura ranges. An earlier Argosy that night, under Captain J. Randle, had already been asked twice to look for lights near the mouth of the Clarence River. Then, at 3:58 a.m., Wellington radar asked Captain Vern Powell and First Officer Ian Pirie to identify a strong return about twenty-five nautical miles to port. Both men saw a very bright light there—“bright orb/pear shaped, reddish tinge then turned white,” in the interviewing officer’s summary. To the eye it looked stationary; on the scope it seemed to track the aircraft, and it appeared to be less than ten miles away. Two minutes later, fifty miles northeast of Christchurch, five successive returns crossed fifteen miles of the radar scale before vanishing—something like 10,000 miles an hour, the summary noted, with an exclamation mark—while Pirie watched a light like an airliner’s strobe follow the same path. “This episode above all others,” the officer wrote, “caused both aircrew mild consternation to say the least.” Christchurch, meanwhile, told Powell its own radar was “not worth having on.” The Air Staff later noted that Venus had been rising on the bearing of the first light. Sources: [Investigations of Unidentified & Radar Sightings, East Coast South Island — December 1978]() · [UFO: A True Story — Catalogue Record F1910]() ### Targets around Cape Campbell The official file makes clear that December 21 was not a single neat encounter. Aircrews, controllers and people on the ground contributed overlapping episodes around Cape Campbell, Clarence and the coast north of Kaikōura. Radar contacts appeared, vanished and reappeared; estimates of impossible speed came from positions painted on successive sweeps rather than a continuous precision track. A warrant officer at Woodbourne also reported a light from the ground. This untidy cluster—the stronger independent radar-and-visual part of the legend—had no film, and later summaries often blended its details into the better-known flight ten nights later. Sources: [Investigations of Unidentified & Radar Sightings, East Coast South Island — December 1978]() · [UFO: A True Story — Catalogue Record F1910]() · [New Zealand's X-Files Are Out]() ### A camera crew boards the Merchant Enterprise The reports reached Melbourne’s Channel 0, whose reporter Quentin Fogarty happened to be in New Zealand, on holiday at his in-laws’ farm in Martinborough. He had covered the Valentich disappearance over Bass Strait two months before; now the station asked him to prepare a report on Powell’s sighting. He filmed at Wellington radar, arranged to ride the Sunday-paper run, and hired a Wellington stringer crew, cameraman David Crockett and his wife Ngaire as sound recordist. On December 30 he climbed aboard Safe Air’s ZK-SAE, the twin-boom Argosy Merchant Enterprise. Captain Bill Startup and First Officer Bob Guard expected an ordinary Wellington–Christchurch newspaper run. The journalists expected background footage. At 11:46 p.m., with the hold full of the next morning’s papers, the ungainly freighter lifted out of Wellington and entered a story already waiting along its route. Sources: [Investigations of Unidentified & Radar Sightings, East Coast South Island — December 1978]() · [ZK-SAE Merchant Enterprise and the Kaikōura Flight]() · [UFO: A True Story — Catalogue Record F1910]() ### Come to the flight deck—now Around ten minutes after midnight, south of Cape Campbell, Startup and Guard began seeing lights toward Kaikōura. Startup called the television team forward. In the cramped, noisy cockpit, Crockett aimed a 16 mm colour camera through the window while Ngaire’s recorder captured Fogarty’s commentary and fragments of the air-ground conversation. Wellington’s controller, Geoffrey Causer, had been watching “weird” targets off the Clarence and Kaikōura coast for half an hour before the plane said a word. “There are targets in your one o’clock position… at, uh, 13 miles… appearing and disappearing,” he told the crew. Fogarty, without headphones, took his cues from the men who had them and talked to the camera over the engines: “It’s kind of hard to describe my feelings right at the moment, but, uh, we’ve seen probably 6 or 7 or even more bright lights over Kaikoura. A number of these have been picked up by Wellington radar.” Then: “Now we have a couple right in front of us! Very, very bright.” The line the case is remembered by, “Let’s hope they’re friendly,” is not among the official transcript excerpts; by the crew’s later recollection Fogarty said it on the return leg, and it became the title of his book. Sources: [Investigations of Unidentified & Radar Sightings, East Coast South Island — December 1978]() · [UFO: A True Story — Catalogue Record F1910]() · [Photometric Properties of an Unidentified Bright Object Seen off the Coast of New Zealand]() · [Crew remember the day UFO was spotted over Kaikōura 40 years on]() ### Something flying in formation Near the reporting point called Kaikoura East, the aircraft changed to Christchurch frequency. Wellington then relayed that a target had appeared one or two nautical miles behind. It was next reported about four miles astern, another about four miles to the right, and then: “There’s a strong target right in formation with you now. Could be left or right. Your target has doubled in size.” Causer and his technician thought the blip looked like two aircraft flying side by side; a minute later it had shrunk back to normal. Startup switched off the green wingtip light to rule out reflections. “I’m looking over towards the right of the aircraft and we have an object confirmed by Wellington radar,” Fogarty said. “It’s been following us for quite a while. It’s about 4 miles away and it looks like a very faint star but then it emits a very bright white and green light.” Soon there were three targets sitting behind the plane. This sequence is compelling because the tower tape supplies its order and timing. It is not a perfect lock between eye and scope: the radar generated other unexplained returns that night, the crew could not visually confirm every position called from Wellington, and Maccabee, going through the tape later, noted that the controller had never actually said any target was following the plane, and that Fogarty’s “ten minutes” was more like seven. Sources: [Investigations of Unidentified & Radar Sightings, East Coast South Island — December 1978]() · [Photometric Properties of an Unidentified Bright Object Seen off the Coast of New Zealand]() ### Christchurch at 1:01 a.m. The Argosy landed at Christchurch at 1:01 a.m. Newspapers came off while pilots, journalists and a local radar operator compared what they had seen. Ngaire Crockett told her husband and Fogarty that she was upset by what she had seen and would not make the return trip. Dennis Grant, a Christchurch television journalist Fogarty had phoned from the airport, asked the captain whether he could come instead, and took her place. At 2:16 a.m. the aircraft departed north for Blenheim. Barely three minutes later, while climbing through scattered low cloud, the cockpit saw a brilliant yellow-white-orange light appearing and disappearing near the cloud tops to the right. Startup’s first impression was of a full moon with no features on it. Guard called it “a squashed orange.” Grant thought of a ping-pong ball lit by a spotlight in a dark room. The return journey would create the footage that travelled around the world. Sources: [Investigations of Unidentified & Radar Sightings, East Coast South Island — December 1978]() · [UFO: A True Story — Catalogue Record F1910]() ### The orb below the wing Startup switched the Argosy’s weather radar to ground-mapping mode and obtained a strong return roughly 18–20 nautical miles away in the same azimuth as the light. As the aircraft climbed northeast, the indicated range fell to perhaps 10–12 miles before the return moved beyond the scope’s right edge. All aboard placed the light below their horizon. Crockett, shooting through the cockpit window, at first described “a brightly lit bottom and a sort of transparent top”; after he changed to the 240 mm lens the famous frames appeared, and he told Fogarty, “It now appears to be an oval shaped object with rings of light going around.” Focused frames remained tiny—on the order of milliradians—and supplied no resolved hull or surface detail. Sources: [Investigations of Unidentified & Radar Sightings, East Coast South Island — December 1978]() · [Photometric Properties of an Unidentified Bright Object Seen off the Coast of New Zealand]() · [Photometric Properties of an Unidentified Bright Object Seen off the Coast of New Zealand: Comments]() ### Startup turns toward it At about 13,000 feet, Startup banked roughly ninety degrees toward the light—by his own account on his own initiative, by Grant’s with Guard taking the plane off autopilot. It did not settle directly ahead as he expected; during the manoeuvre, its apparent position and brightness changed. “It’s now dropping away right below us…” Fogarty narrated. “It appears, in fact, to be losing its speed… rising, coming back up towards us again… It appears to be coming straight for us… It’s getting a little bit brighter.” Then: “It’s now dropping right away behind us.” The turning aircraft itself was rotating every sightline in the windows. The light ultimately passed far down the right side and was last seen beneath or behind the aircraft. This was the sensory heart of the story: a working cargo plane abandoning its route in darkness, a camera changing lenses, reporters calling motions in real time, and an intense light that seemed to answer the turn without ever becoming a clearly photographed machine. Sources: [Investigations of Unidentified & Radar Sightings, East Coast South Island — December 1978]() · [Photometric Properties of an Unidentified Bright Object Seen off the Coast of New Zealand]() · [UFO: A True Story — Catalogue Record F1910]() ### The beacon at Blenheim Past Kaikōura, with nothing new confirmed on radar, Fogarty allowed himself a wish. “I, for one, am hoping that, uh, we’ve seen enough, and, uh, the rest of our journey back to Blenheim will be uneventful. I’ve had quite enough of UFO’s for one night.” Off Cape Campbell there was one more: Wellington reported a strong target twenty miles ahead, and the cockpit found an orange flashing light Fogarty took for an aircraft beacon that “seems to have just dropped at an incredible speed and it seems to be rolling and turning.” The crew asked for the Blenheim airfield beacon to be switched off, and the light went out. “Well, we can’t be right all the time,” Fogarty said. Startup decided, as far as air traffic control was concerned, to “keep this particular episode to himself.” Minutes later the crew called Wellington about a bright light behind Woodbourne. “Nothing showing over there at all,” came the reply. Sources: [Investigations of Unidentified & Radar Sightings, East Coast South Island — December 1978]() · [Photometric Properties of an Unidentified Bright Object Seen off the Coast of New Zealand]() ### Film cans race to television Merchant Enterprise landed at Woodbourne at 3:15 a.m. Grant filmed a report there later in the morning and interviewed Startup and Guard; Fogarty carried the film to Melbourne, where Channel 0 rushed it onto prime-time news on New Year’s Eve. International networks followed. Unlike a solitary recollection, Kaikōura arrived with colour film, two audio recordings, named professional witnesses and radar operators discussing targets as events unfolded. David Crockett’s 1979 documentary preserved the participants’ early accounts. The original television material remains copyrighted and is not reproduced here; the archival catalogue confirms its production, witnesses and contents. Sources: [UFO: A True Story — Catalogue Record F1910]() · [Investigations of Unidentified & Radar Sightings, East Coast South Island — December 1978]() · [Crew remember the day UFO was spotted over Kaikōura 40 years on]() ### The government sends an Orion Public pressure reached Prime Minister Robert Muldoon, who asked to be informed of Defence’s conclusions. On New Year’s Day the Defence Ministry put a 75 Squadron Skyhawk at Ohakea on standby, to be “scrambled” if Wellington radar picked up anything more that “looked as though they could be interesting.” “We do not consider there is a defence threat,” a spokesman told The Press, “but it is all very interesting.” Causer, the radar controller, was less guarded: “I was a complete sceptic… But obviously there is something there.” In the end an Orion went instead, on the night of January 2–3, because “the Orion is a much better aircraft for the job,” and found nothing. Police, the RNZAF, civil aviation specialists, Carter Observatory and the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research fed material into the inquiry. The eventual Air Staff position was not that one thing had caused every report. It proposed a basket: planets and unusual refraction, boat and land lights, anomalous radar propagation and a Japanese squid fleet. Its formulation—“almost all” sightings explainable by natural but unusual phenomena—left a residue rather than a solved event. Sources: [Investigations of Unidentified & Radar Sightings, East Coast South Island — December 1978]() · [Kaikōura Lights, 31 December 1978]() · [New Zealand's X-Files Are Out]() · [Government Officials Couldn't Explain Kaikōura Lights UFO Sightings, Documents Show]() · [Jet fighter put on stand-by to check U.F.O. sightings]() · [Aircraft goes in search of a mystery]() ### A film becomes an optics argument Channel 0 gave the film to American optical physicist Bruce Maccabee, who visited New Zealand, interviewed witnesses and published a photometric calculation in Applied Optics. Using film density and the aircraft-radar range, he estimated a luminous intensity above 100,000 candela and argued for an unknown phenomenon. DSIR scientists William Ireland and M. K. Andrews attacked the assumptions, especially distance, focal length and the pairing of radar return with photographed light. Their exchange continued in the journal; two decades later Ireland made the ordinary alternative vivid: a small group of intensely lit squid boats about six kilometres away. The window-distortion experiments were the DSIR’s, and Maccabee himself noted how hard the long lens was to focus. Sources: [Photometric Properties of an Unidentified Bright Object Seen off the Coast of New Zealand]() · [Photometric Properties of an Unidentified Bright Object Seen off the Coast of New Zealand: Comments]() · [Ghost Squid Boats in the Sky]() · [Investigations of Unidentified & Radar Sightings, East Coast South Island — December 1978]() ### The file that preserved both sides Kaikōura’s afterlife is unusually tangible. Startup wrote his own book, The Kaikoura UFOs, with Neil Illingworth in 1980; Fogarty’s Let’s Hope They’re Friendly!, with an afterword by Hynek, followed in 1982. ZK-SAE survives at Blenheim under the care of the Marlborough Argosy Trust. The New Zealand Defence Force declassified AIR 1080/6/897 in 2010: crew interviews, radar specifications, DSIR tests, correspondence and Maccabee’s opposing analysis share the same file. A separate government record says DSIR duplicated some of Crockett’s shapes by shining a torch through an Argosy window, yet still called the objects “UFOs until identified” and judged an extraterrestrial result extremely remote. The case endured not because the paperwork hid an answer, but because it exposed how film, radar and perception can look mutually confirming while refusing to become one clean event. Sources: [Investigations of Unidentified & Radar Sightings, East Coast South Island — December 1978]() · [Kaikōura Lights, 31 December 1978]() · [Government Officials Couldn't Explain Kaikōura Lights UFO Sightings, Documents Show]() · [ZK-SAE Merchant Enterprise and the Kaikōura Flight]() ## The evidence ### Two encounters should not be fused The December 21 cluster has the stronger independent structure: more than one aircrew or ground observer and Wellington radar contacts, but no film. The December 30–31 flight has film, contemporaneous audio and five witnesses aboard, but its most famous return-leg radar contact came from an aircraft set in ground-mapping mode and therefore looking below, while nearby Christchurch radar did not establish an airborne companion. Borrowing the radar strength of the first night to certify the film from the second overstates the record. Together they show a real regional flap; separately they pose different evidential problems. Sources: [Investigations of Unidentified & Radar Sightings, East Coast South Island — December 1978]() · [Photometric Properties of an Unidentified Bright Object Seen off the Coast of New Zealand]() · [Ghost Squid Boats in the Sky]() ### What the movie does—and does not—show Crockett’s continuous film stock and cockpit sequences argue against a fabricated reel. They do not supply range. The luminous images have no resolved edges or fixed geometry, and their apparent rings, dome and changing size are highly sensitive to focus, zoom setting, vibration, overexposure and layered cockpit glazing. DSIR reported reproducing distortions with a torch and an Argosy window. Maccabee calibrated the film and treated an aircraft-radar return as the same source; Ireland and Andrews argued that this association and the lens assumptions made his size and brightness circular. The film securely records bright lights. It does not securely record a twenty-metre object. Sources: [Investigations of Unidentified & Radar Sightings, East Coast South Island — December 1978]() · [Photometric Properties of an Unidentified Bright Object Seen off the Coast of New Zealand]() · [Photometric Properties of an Unidentified Bright Object Seen off the Coast of New Zealand: Comments]() · [Government Officials Couldn't Explain Kaikōura Lights UFO Sightings, Documents Show]() ### Planets, boats, refraction and false targets No single conventional proposal covers every report. Venus and Jupiter can explain stationary horizon lights but not radar; radar anomalous propagation can create moving or splitting returns but not a light seen at the same bearing; trains and cars explain some coastal points but not the return leg over Pegasus Bay. Squid boats are the strongest explanation for the famous bright return-leg footage: powerful deck lamps, a source below the aircraft, a ground-mapping return and apparent pacing caused by parallel motion all fit. The weaknesses are disputed fleet records and witness claims of rapid relative movement. The safest conclusion is multiple ordinary sources plus unresolved associations, not one giant object and not one universal debunking. Sources: [Investigations of Unidentified & Radar Sightings, East Coast South Island — December 1978]() · [Ghost Squid Boats in the Sky]() · [Photometric Properties of an Unidentified Bright Object Seen off the Coast of New Zealand: Comments]() · [Government Officials Couldn't Explain Kaikōura Lights UFO Sightings, Documents Show]() · [New Zealand's X-Files Are Out]() ### Classification This archive classifies Kaikōura as an aviation encounter and a disputed radar-visual case. Its status is partly explained: optical distortion and distant maritime lights plausibly account for the iconic footage, while the earlier multi-witness radar-visual cluster remains incompletely reconstructed. No physical trace or resolved craft image exists. Sources: [Investigations of Unidentified & Radar Sightings, East Coast South Island — December 1978]() · [Ghost Squid Boats in the Sky]() · [Government Officials Couldn't Explain Kaikōura Lights UFO Sightings, Documents Show]() · [Argosy Aircraft Blenheim — ZK-SAE Merchant Enterprise]() ## Timeline - **21 DEC 1978 · EARLY HOURS:** Safe Air crews on the Blenheim–Christchurch newspaper route report unusual lights off the northeast South Island. - **SAME NIGHT:** Wellington controllers report unidentified radar targets near the Argosy; separate ground observations enter the later official file. - **LATE DEC 1978:** Channel 0 asks Quentin Fogarty, on holiday in New Zealand, to report on Powell’s sighting; he hires David and Ngaire Crockett and books the newspaper run. - **30 DEC · 11:46 PM:** ZK-SAE Merchant Enterprise leaves Wellington for Christchurch with pilots Bill Startup and Bob Guard, the television team and newspapers aboard. - **31 DEC · ABOUT 12:10 AM:** Lights appear toward Kaikōura; Startup calls the camera crew to the cockpit and Crockett begins filming. - **AFTER KAIKOURA EAST:** Wellington reports targets behind, beside and apparently in formation with the Argosy while the crew sees intermittent lights. - **1:01 AM:** The aircraft lands at Christchurch; newspapers are unloaded and Ngaire Crockett leaves the flight. - **2:16 AM:** The Argosy departs Christchurch for Blenheim with journalist Dennis Grant joining Fogarty and David Crockett. - **ABOUT 2:19–2:33 AM:** A brilliant light below and right is watched, filmed and briefly associated with a strong ground-mapping radar return as Startup turns toward it. - **3:15 AM:** Merchant Enterprise lands at Woodbourne; Grant interviews the pilots later that morning, and Fogarty carries the film to Melbourne. - **31 DEC 1978:** Channel 0 broadcasts the footage; international networks turn the Kaikōura lights into a worldwide story. - **1–3 JAN 1979:** A Skyhawk is put on standby at Ohakea; on the night of January 2–3 an RNZAF Orion searches the area without reproducing the sightings. - **1979–1982:** Official investigators, Bruce Maccabee, William Ireland and M. K. Andrews debate the radar, film and squid-boat hypothesis in Applied Optics; Startup and Fogarty publish their books. - **22 DEC 2010:** The New Zealand Defence Force releases redacted UFO files, including the Kaikōura investigation, under freedom-of-information law. ## Sources & interviews - [Investigations of Unidentified & Radar Sightings, East Coast South Island — December 1978]() — New Zealand Defence Force · AIR 1080/6/897 Volume 1 · 1978–1981 · Declassified December 2010 - [Kaikōura Lights, 31 December 1978]() — Archives New Zealand · New Zealand Permanent Mission to the United Nations record · ABHS 6958 W5579 Box 227 · 1979 - [UFO: A True Story — Catalogue Record F1910]() — Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision · V & F Productions · David Crockett · 1979 · Contemporary documentary catalogue - [Photometric Properties of an Unidentified Bright Object Seen off the Coast of New Zealand]() — Bruce S. Maccabee · Applied Optics 18(15), 2527–2528 · August 1, 1979 - [Photometric Properties of an Unidentified Bright Object Seen off the Coast of New Zealand: Comments]() — W. Ireland and M. K. Andrews · Applied Optics 18(23), 3889–3890 · December 1, 1979 - [Ghost Squid Boats in the Sky]() — William Ireland · New Zealand Skeptic 56 · Spring 2000 · Retrospective optical analysis - [Government Officials Couldn't Explain Kaikōura Lights UFO Sightings, Documents Show]() — Ben Strang · Radio New Zealand · July 31, 2021 · Reporting from declassified Archives New Zealand records - [New Zealand's X-Files Are Out]() — Stacey Wood, Michelle Duff and Kirsty Johnston · The Dominion Post / Stuff · December 23, 2010 - [ZK-SAE Merchant Enterprise and the Kaikōura Flight]() — The Marlborough Argosy Trust · History of the preserved aircraft involved in the December 30–31 flight - [Argosy Aircraft Blenheim — ZK-SAE Merchant Enterprise]() — Ingolfson · Wikimedia Commons · July 2005 · Public-domain photograph - [Jet fighter put on stand-by to check U.F.O. sightings]() — The Press (Christchurch) · January 2, 1979 · Papers Past, National Library of New Zealand - [Aircraft goes in search of a mystery]() — The Press (Christchurch) · January 3, 1979 · Papers Past, National Library of New Zealand - [Crew remember the day UFO was spotted over Kaikōura 40 years on]() — The New Zealand Herald · December 15, 2018 · Fortieth-anniversary recollections Spotted an error, or know a better source? Write to hello@uap.fun. ## Connected files - [The Last Call over Bass Strait]() — The disappearance Fogarty had covered two months earlier, which sent him to New Zealand already primed for lights over water. - [The Lights Beside Flight 1628]() — Another freight crew watched luminous companions while ground radar supplied suggestive but incomplete support. - [The Lakenheath Radar Night]() — A radar-visual aviation classic whose strength changes when its separate episodes are pulled apart. - [The Belgian UFO Wave]() — Multiple nights, radar tracks and bright lights produced another famous case that resists a single explanation. - [The Green Light over Mansfield]() — A professional flight crew’s close-call narrative became durable without a confirming radar tape or photograph. ## A NOTE ON EVIDENCE Unidentified describes a limit of the available information. It doesn’t identify an origin. [NEXT CASE FILE: The Last Call over Bass Strait]()