Dave van Rhyn's schoolboy sighting with Hunter jets

What was reported

Dave van Rhyn, later a South African correspondent, recalled that as a senior schoolboy in Rhodesia in 1956, around 11 o'clock one morning, some 700 pupils and their teachers watched a group of objects in the sky. Some flew in a zig-zag formation while others stayed still; all were on the same plane and moved around one another for the best part of an hour. The school telephoned the local newspaper and the Air Force sent up two Hunter jets whose vapour trails were visible beside objects far larger than the aircraft. One pilot afterwards told the boys the objects were big enough to fly inside and turn sharply. Nothing appeared in the press and no one followed it up; the objects eventually disappeared.

What Hind made of it

Notes that nothing was reported in the press and no one followed through.

In their words

• they could have gone in and made a sharp turn, the objects were so large

• None of this was subsequently reported in the press and no one followed through with the report.

Cross references

• Case No 17
• Case No 18 (b) and (c)

Source

Cynthia Hind, UFO Afrinews No 3 (May 1990), spread 13