Incredible Alien Craft Sighting By Japan’s Flight Jal 1628
In November, 1986, a Japanese crew of a jumbo freighter aircraft witnessed three unidentified objects while flying over Alaska, USA. This…
In November, 1986, a Japanese crew of a jumbo freighter aircraft witnessed three unidentified objects while flying over Alaska, USA. This sighting gained international attention when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced that it was going to officially investigate this sighting because the Air Route Traffic Control Center in Anchorage, Alaska, had reported that the UFO had been detected on radar. The UFOs in this case were tracked on both ground and airborne radar, witnessed by experienced airline pilots, and confirmed by a FAA Division Chief. The captain’s initial reaction to the lights was to ignore them as US air fighters, probably military aircraft from one of the nearby Air Force Bases (Eielson or Elmendorf). But the position of the lights “had not changed even after a few minutes and that called our attention.” The lights of these two “aircraft” stayed at the left for a while and then the unbelievable happened. “Traffic In Front Of Us” “It was about seven or so minutes since we began paying attention to the lights (when), most unexpectedly, two spaceships stopped in front of our face, shooting off lights. The inside cockpit shined brightly and I felt warm in the face.” (Note these reported physical effects.) What the captain saw suddenly appear ahead of him and to the left at about the 11:00 o’clock position is hard to describe. It was the captain’s impression that the two “aircrafts” he had seen for the first time to the left only minutes before had suddenly jumped in from of his plane. In his written testimony Terauchi speculated that the “spaceships” fired jets to “kill the inertia (actually momentum!) of their high speed maneuver.” After this maneuver from the left of the plane to the front, “the ships appeared as if they were stopped in one place in front of us.” At this time one “ship” was above the other. “Then three to seven seconds later a fire like from jet engines stopped and became a small circle of lights as they began to fly level flight at the same speed as we were, showing numerous numbers of exhaust pipes. However the center area of the ship(s) where below an engine might be was invisible. [From] the middle of the body of a ship sparked an occasionally stream of lights, like a charcoal fire, from right to left and from left to right. Its shape was square, flying 500 feet to 1,000 feet in front of us, very slightly higher in altitude than us. Its size was about the same size as the body of a DC-8 jet, and with numerous exhaust pipes.”
Flight engineer Tsukuba, who sat behind the copilot, did not have as good a view of the lights. He first saw them “through the L1 window at the 11 o’clock position” and he saw “clusters of lights undulating”. These clusters were “made of two parts…shaped like windows of an airplane”. He emphasized that “the lights in front of us were different from town lights.” He described the colors as white or amber. Tamefuji decided to call Anchorage Air Traffic Control, and for the next thirty minutes the 747 and AARTCC were in constant contact regarding the UFO.
During this time, Captain Terauchi asked Tskububa to hand him a camera so that he could attempt to take a photograph of the lights. However, Terauchi was unfamiliar with the camera and could not get it to operate. Tsukuba also could not get his camera to operate due to problems with the auto-focus and finally gave up trying to take a photo.
At this point they began experiencing some radio interference and were asked by Anchorage to change frequencies. Terauchi later said that Anchorage kept asking him about clouds in the immediate area: They asked us several times if there were clouds near our altitude. We saw thin and spotty clouds near the mountain below us, no clouds in mid-to-upper air, and the air current was steady.
Soon after the exchanges about clouds, the objects flew off to the left. Terauchi said later: There was a pale white flat light in the direction where the ships flew away, moving in a line along with us, in the same direction and same speed and at the same altitude as we were.
Terauchi decided to see whether they could see anything on the 747’s own radar: “I thought it would be impossible to find anything on an aircraft radar if a large ground radar did not show anything, but I judged the distance of the object visually and it was not very far. I set the digital weather radar distance to 20 (nautical) miles, radar angle to horizon (i.e., no depression angle). There it was on the screen. A large green and round object had appeared at 7 or 8 miles (13 km to 15 km) away, where the direction of the object was. We reported to Anchorage center that our radar caught the object within 7 or 8 miles in the 10 o’clock position. We asked them if they could catch it on ground radar but it did not seem they could catch it at all.”
At 5:25:45, after spending two minutes looking, the military radar at Elmendorf Regional Operational Control Center also picked up something. The ROCC radar controller reported back to the AARTCC that he was getting some “surge primary return.” By this he meant an occasional radar echo unaccompanied by a transponder signal.
As the 747 neared Fairbanks:
The lights (of the city) were extremely bright to eyes that were used to the dark. (The cockpit lights had been turned off to eliminate window reflections of internal lights.) We were just above the bright city lights and we checked the pale white light behind us. Alas! There was a silhouette of a gigantic spaceship. We must run away quickly! “Anchorage Center. The JAL1628 is requesting a change of course to right 45 degrees.” It felt like a long time before we received permission
Just after the plane turned to the right, the AARTCC controller called the Fairbanks Approach Radar controller to find out whether or not the short-range radar had a target near the JAL. The approach radar reported no target other than JAL1628.
The plane came out of the turn and flew toward Talkeetna at an altitude of 31,000 ft, with the object still following.
At about 5:40 a United Airlines passenger jet took off from Anchorage and headed north to Fairbanks. The AARTCC controller decided to ask the UA pilot to try to see the object that was following the JAL flight. The UA pilot said he would look when he got closer. The controller asked the JAL flight to stay at 31,000 ft and the UA flight to stay at 29,000 ft. He then directed the UA flight to turn some more so that the planes would pass within five miles of one another.
As the United Airlines jet got closer, the UFO apparently dropped behind, allowing the JAL plane to get far ahead. The United pilot asked the AARTCC to have the JAL pilot flash the headlights on the JAL aircraft so he could locate the plane. At 5:49:45 the JAL pilot did that. At this point the planes were about 25 miles apart.
When the planes were about 12 miles apart, the UA plane reported seeing the JAL plane and nothing else. But by this time the UFO had apparently disappeared, not being seen by JAL1628, either.
At about 5:51, the AARTCC requested that a military TOTEM flight in the area also fly toward the JAL plane for a look. During the next several minutes TOTEM viewed the JAL plane but couldn’t see any other traffic. JAL1628 proceeded to Anchorage and landed at 6:20 PM.
The FAA conducted an investigation of the incident, and did not issue its final report until March 5. CSICOP’s (Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal) Phil Klass issued a premature statement on January 22 claiming that the UFOs were the planets Jupiter and Mars — an impossible solution because the UFO was seen in a part of the sky opposite the position of these planets and because the UFOs moved from positions one above the other to side by side. Phil Klass was obviously a complete moron and clearly a government debunker. The CSICOP later issued a second explanation that the UFO was light reflecting off of clouds of ice crystals — also unlikely because the sky was clear at the reported altitude of the UFO. The FAA attributed the radar images received by ground radar to a “split radar return from the JAL Boeing 747.” NOTE: This sighting is a very historic event.