Kaikoura Lights - New Zealand Mystery

December, 1978, senior Wellington air traffic controller John Cordy watched five unidentified radar targets appear over the Kaikoura coast. Solid returns. No flight plans. No radio contact. One of them sat on his screen for three hours. Days later, an Australian television crew who had heard about these strange lights boarded a routine cargo flight along the same stretch of coastline, hoping for background footage to help to tell this fascinating story. What they found in the skies over New Zealand was something else entirely. Objects paced the plane for fifteen minutes, moving at speeds the instruments couldn't account for. They manoeuvred in ways that no atmospheric phenomenon, no fishing vessel, and no known aircraft could explain to the satisfaction of every investigator who later tried. In this, the first ever episode of Strewth Abroad, our new series exploring mysteries from beyond Australian shores. We examine what happened on those fateful nights and explore the theories and stories that surround these events. Subscribe now to Strewth Premium on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/StrewthPodcast Strewth social media links - https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast  Contact us - [email protected]  Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay Sources Maccabee, Bruce S. "Optical power output of an unidentified high altitude light source." Letter to Applied Optics, Vol. 18, No. 15, August 1, 1979. US Naval Surface Weapons Center, Silver Spring, Maryland. Ireland, W.H. and Andrews, M.K. "Comments on 'Optical power output of an unidentified high altitude light source.'" Applied Optics, Vol. 18, No. 24, December 15, 1979. Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, New Zealand. Maccabee, Bruce S. "Reply to Comments on 'Optical power output of an unidentified high altitude light source.'" Applied Optics, Vol. 19, No. 12, June 15, 1980. Fogarty, Quentin. Let's Hope They're Friendly. Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1982.  RNZAF investigation file AIR 1080/6/897. Archives New Zealand. Declassified December 22, 2010. New Zealand Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR). UFO investigation report and briefing to the United Nations. January 1979. New Zealand Defence Force UFO files release, December 22, 2010.