Many more say they later saw the perimeter of a perfect circle singed into the grass at the Grange Reserve near Westall State School.
The Age reported the next day that hundreds of children and a number of teachers saw the unidentified flying object, which the paper said might have been a weather balloon.
The article said witnesses had seen a number of small planes circle around the object - however, a check later showed that no commercial, private or RAAF pilots had reported anything unusual in the area.
But despite the many witnesses, exactly what happened at 11am that day in Cold War-era Melbourne suburbia has remained a mystery.
Suzanne Savage, who was in form 2 at Westall High in 1966, recalls principal Frank Samblebe holding a special assembly after she and her science class saw a ''classic saucer-shaped object'' descend into Grange Reserve and then disappear into the sky.
''He said he didn't want to hear any more about this nonsense. We were not to discuss it ever again - and so I didn't,'' Ms Savage told The Saturday Age.
Ian Cochrane, who was in form 3 at Westall High in 1966, also believes the bizarre occurrence was covered up.
Mr Cochrane recalls returning to Grange Reserve the following Saturday to show his mates the perfect circle of flattened grass, only to discover the site had been dug up.
''If you talked about it you'd get nutbags to contend with, or people who couldn't cope, so you just didn't talk about it,'' Mr Cochrane said.
What did the students see? Was it a UFO from outer space, a secret military aircraft, a meteorological oddity or an example of a psychological phenomenon, where people were influenced by each other to believe in something they did not really see?
Forty-five years later Shane Ryan is still searching for answers. The English teacher has spent the past six years investigating the flying saucer enigma, which he believes ranks alongside the daylight school-based UFO sightings in Broad Haven in Wales in 1974 and Ruwa in Zimbabwe in 1994.
''It's obvious to me people saw something very strange and unusual and somebody in the government didn't really want the story to get out,'' he said.
Mr Ryan has interviewed more than 300 people connected to the case, 89 of whom claim they saw a flying saucer and 138 who saw the circle. He said several witnesses told of police and men in military uniforms who cordoned off the landing site and interviewed some students.
However, despite extensive searches, Mr Ryan has been unable to find police or military personnel who attended on the day or locate documents that may be held by state and federal government agencies.
''I'm so frustrated that after all these years I can't get an official answer about why the powers that be were there that day and why they didn't want the students to talk about what they saw,'' he said.
Mr Ryan's search for the truth is the subject of the documentary Westall 66: A Suburban UFO Mystery, directed by Rosie Jones, which will screen at 8.30pm on Tuesday on the Sci Fi Channel on Foxtel and Austar.
The Australian Teachers of Media have also created a study guide around the event, which can be used in the national history curriculum.
The study guide says Westall 66 reflects a fascinating and pivotal period in world history. ''With its undercurrent of Cold War paranoia, secret US airbases and a strong military relationship between Australia and America, this story raises questions about the acceptability of cover-ups and untruths delivered by governments in the interests of national security,'' it says.
Study guide co-writer Lee Burton says these are themes that have repercussions today. ''This is an example of how we can help students understand an historical event within a local community that occurred in living memory,'' she said. ''My guess is it will be very popular.'' - theage
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The Day the Earth Stood Still in Clayton South
The following is in reference to the April 6, 1966 UFO incident at Westall High School, in the Melbourne suburb of Clayton South, in Victoria, Australia...Lonheraldsun - Flying saucers, crop circles, missing film, disappearing files, denials, military cover-ups, threats and shadowy Men in Black.
It couldn't happen here?
Most people would say it couldn't happen anywhere!
But more than 100 witnesses to one of the world's biggest UFO mysteries are adamant that it did, in broad daylight in Clayton South on April 6, 1966.
And 44 years after the event, many are still fuming that the military they say were swarming around the scene for days have offically denied the incident and no record appears to exist.
They say they spent their lives being doubted and want some official acknowledgment that something weird happened above and behind Westall high and primary schools that morning.
London's Telegraph newspaper rates it as the fifth-greatest UFO mystery of all time, but another mystery is how little-known the episode is here.
A documentary - Westall '66: A Suburban UFO Mystery - premieres on Austar and Foxtel's Sci-Fi Channel at 8.30pm tomorrow.
Producers hope it will flush out an official who can say what the military were doing and what they found.
Researcher Shane Ryan has spent five years tracking 110 witnesses, many found through an appeal in the Herald Sun in 2006, but could find no military officials, and no record of a military response.
But locals remember it vividly, saying it lasted days.
The 110 Mr Ryan has found who say they saw saucers include professionals, tradies and a Ministerial Adviser, but not one military official of the time.
He says time is running out for them to come clean.
"Whatever security concerns there were at the time, they are redundant now,'' he says.
A TV crew covered the incident and it screened on the 6pm news, but the film canister from the job was recently found empty in the station archives.
Several witnesses say they were warned off speaking by sharply-dressed men in dark suits, in the principal's office and at home.
Others recall school threats of detention for UFO talk.
But talk there was, and coverage.
The Dandenong Journal reported the incident on its front page for consecutive issues and ran interviews with witnesses.
Many were school pupils who say they saw flying saucers from their school yards. Some ran to Grange Reserve, where the craft appeared to have come down.
Terry Peck, 56, was among them. She says she was playing cricket on the oval, saw the saucer and chased after it to Grange Reserve.
"Two girls were there before me. One was terribly upset and they were pale, really white, ghostly white. They just said they had passed out, fainted. One was taken to hospital in an ambulance,'' she says.
Ms Peck says she saw a silver, classic-shape saucer rise up.
"I was about 6m away from it. It was bigger than a car and circular. I think I saw some lights underneath it.
"We all got called to an assembly ... and they told us all to keep quiet.
"I'd absolutely just like someone to come forward from the services just to say 'yes, it did happen, and it landed and there was a cover-up'.''
Jacqueline Argent, 58, in Form 3 then, says she saw a UFO from the oval and was one of the first three kids over the fence looking for where it came down.
"Originally I thought it must have been an experimental-type aircraft, but nothing has emerged like that after all these years,'' she said.
She says she was called into the headmaster's office and interrogated by three men: "They had good-quality suits and were well spoken. They said, 'I suppose you saw little green men'?
"I spoke to my parents about it at the time and they were pretty outraged.''
Retired engineer Kevin Hurley, a Monash Uni student then, missed the saucers but saw the aftermath.
"There were army or air force people in the area,'' he said.
"I'm pretty sure they were going around the area with geiger counters or metal detectors.
"I'm not a freak that thinks Martian people are coming. I don't think that kind of stuff, but it's bugged me.
"After 44 years, I reckon they need to come clean on this.''
NOTE: you can read more on this incident, including videos and commentary, at The Day the Earth Stood Still in Clayton South...Lon
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