The schoolboys four of them 12 years-olds, one of them nine claimed to have seen and heard the "thing" after tests and questioning I put them through, I am convinced the story they told was truthful.

One of them Max Daby (12) rang the Daily News and I went to Greenmount to interview and his school-mates who sighted it Dennis Byrne, Phillip Gibbons, Kevin Carey (all 12) and his brother Norman Carey (9). As soon as I reached the school I sat them apart and asked them to draw for the first time exactly what they had seen.

All of them without being able to see each other's work rapidly produced almost identical drawings.

Now RAAF Pearce has claimed it to be one of theirs.

To convince me they even produced the pilot, Flight Lieutenant R.V. Johnson.

"It sounds like me all right," he said. "I was diving about 530 m.p.h at that time last night. "What the boys could have seen might have been aqua-plasma glowing vapour which forms around the after areas of a high speed aircraft travelling in moist air.