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Case · C-018

Boianai 1959: the lights and figures seen by Father Gill and the mission

Anglican mission at Boianai, Goodenough Bay (Papua, now Papua New Guinea) · Papua New Guinea · Jun 26, 1959 – Jun 27, 1959

In flight Civilian witnesses

Disputed explanation

What happened
On the evening of June 26, 1959, the Anglican priest William Gill and dozens of people at the Boianai mission, including teachers and staff, watched for several hours a large luminous object with, according to Gill, human-looking figures on its upper part, along with smaller lights; the following evening the object reappeared and, according to the witnesses, the figures responded to their gestures of greeting. Gill drew up written accounts and a detailed observation form; the sources indicate between about 25 and 38 witnesses. According to the documents examined by Keith Basterfield, the DAFI appears to have learned of the case only in September through a UFO group, had Gill interviewed in late December and in February 1960 wrote that a definite conclusion was not possible, but that it did not believe they were crewed spacecraft.
Proposed explanation
The report sent by the Department of Air in January 1960, based only on the interview with Gill, considered it probable that the lights were natural phenomena and attributed some lights to planets; the astronomer Donald Menzel proposed Venus, and the scholar David Halperin (2022) describes bright planets and stars seen among the clouds and reworked into a vision. The researcher Bill Chalker judges the investigation cursory and the explanation unsatisfactory; according to Chalker, J. Allen Hynek and CUFOS attributed the minor lights to stars and planets, but not the main object.
Official investigation
Directorate of Air Force Intelligence (DAFI, RAAF), Department of Air and Department of Defence (Australia)

Official documents

  1. Reports on Flying Saucers and other Aerial Objects, 1958-1961 (A703, 580/1/1 Part 2) · Department of Air (Australia) - National Archives of Australia · 1958

Sources

  1. Bill Chalker, Boianai, Papua 1959 (Project 1947) (analysis, pro-disclosure)
  2. Keith Basterfield, UAS files located in the Australian Government's records systems (2011, updated 2016) (analysis)
  3. David J. Halperin, Anatomy of a Vision: A Psychological Approach To The Papua New Guinea UFO Sightings, June 26-27th, 1959 (2022) (analysis, skeptical)

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