Japan Airlines Flight 1628 UFO incident

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Japan Airlines Flight 1628 UFO incident

1986 alleged UFO encounter over Alaska

Template:Infobox aircraft occurrence

The Japan Airlines Flight 1628 UFO incident was an alleged UAP encounter on November 17, 1986, in which the three-man crew of a Japan Airlines Boeing 747 cargo freighter reported being escorted by multiple unidentified craft over Alaska for approximately 50 minutes. Captain Kenju Terauchi reportedly described "two small ships and the mothership" ahead of the cargo jet, and the encounter was allegedly corroborated by primary radar returns from both Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ground controllers and the United States Air Force at Elmendorf Air Force Base, prompting an official FAA investigation. Skeptics including Philip J. Klass, Robert Sheaffer and Brian Dunning have argued the lights were most likely Jupiter and Mars, which were in the relevant sky sector at the time. Former FAA Division Chief John Callahan later alleged that data on the case was confiscated by CIA representatives at a classified briefing, and has cited the encounter as evidence that UFOs are real.

Background

Japan Airlines Flight 1628 (JAL1628) was a cargo run from Paris to Narita, Tokyo, carrying a shipment of Beaujolais wine. The flight crew consisted of captain Kenju Terauchi (also romanized Kenji), copilot Takanori Tamefuji, and flight engineer Yoshio Tsukuba, operating a Boeing 747-246F freighter. After an intermediate stop at Reykjavík, Iceland, the aircraft departed on November 17, flying northward over Greenland and into Alaskan airspace. The aircraft was cruising at 35,000 feet on a heading of approximately 215 degrees at roughly 525 knots when the encounter began over far northeastern Alaska.

The encounter

First objects: two craft at close range

At approximately 17:11 Alaska Standard Time, captain Terauchi noticed lights to the left and below the aircraft, initially assuming them to be US military fighters. After several minutes without a change in their relative position — indicating the lights were matching the aircraft's speed and heading — the two objects allegedly moved abruptly from the left side to directly in front of the 747. Terauchi described the moment: "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." He concluded that "it is impossible for any man made machine to make a sudden appearance in front of a jumbo jet that is flying 910 km/hr and to move along in a formation paralleling our aircraft."

Each craft displayed two rectangular arrays of pulsating amber-yellowish lights that Terauchi compared to rocket exhaust nozzles, with "sparks like a fire when using gasoline or carbon fuel." Copilot Tamefuji described the colors as "Christmas assorted" — red, orange, white, and green — pulsating: "became stronger, became weaker, became stronger, became weaker, different from strobe lights." Flight engineer Tsukuba saw "clusters of lights undulating" in rectangular shapes "like windows of an airplane." The two objects held formation approximately 500 to 1,000 feet ahead, stacked one above the other for several minutes, then rearranged to side-by-side.

During this close-approach phase the aircraft's radio communications reportedly degraded severely. Terauchi described the interference as "some kind of, like, ah, jamming... just a noise, sounded like zaa, zaa," and noted that "communication conditions became good as soon as the ships left us."

At 17:19:36 AST, copilot Tamefuji radioed the FAA Anchorage Air Route Traffic Control Center (AARTCC): "we have in sight, ah, two traffic, ah, in front of us one mile about." AARTCC logged the report at 17:21: "JL1628, HB747, BIKF-ANC reported traffic at his altitude (FL350) one mile with a white and yellow strobe. AAL ROC and EDF ROCC notified. No known traffic identified."

Contemporary news accounts described the objects as, in Terauchi's words, "the two small ships and the mother ship" and as "two small ones and one twice the size of an aircraft carrier."

Radar detection: FAA and Air Force

At approximately 17:23, the two close-range objects reportedly departed abruptly to the left. Terauchi then observed a "pale white flat light" tracking the aircraft — two horizontally oriented white lights with a large dark gap between them — which he characterized as a "mothership" carrying the two smaller craft. Setting the aircraft's weather radar to 20 nautical miles, Terauchi allegedly acquired a return at 7 to 8 miles at the 10–11 o'clock position: "A large green and round object had appeared at 7 or 8 miles away, where the direction of the object was." The echo appeared green rather than red — the expected color for a conventional aircraft return — leading Terauchi to speculate whether "the metal used in the spaceship is different from ours."

At 17:25:02, AARTCC reported to JAL1628 a radar hit "approximately five miles in trail." At 17:25:45, the USAF Elmendorf Regional Operational Control Center (ROCC) confirmed "surge primary return" — a radar echo without a transponder signal, indicating a non-cooperative object — at approximately the position Terauchi had reported: "I've got him about his, ah, oh, it looks like about, ah, 10 o'clock at about that range, yes." AARTCC confirmed to ROCC at approximately 17:27 that "the target in front of the [JAL1628] is unknown to us."

Silhouette of a large craft

As JAL1628 approached Eielson Air Force Base and Fairbanks, city lights illuminated the surrounding darkness. Terauchi reportedly looked toward the pale light that had been trailing the aircraft and saw "a silhouette of a gigantic spaceship": "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!" At 17:30:23 Terauchi radioed AARTCC requesting a course deviation: "Request, ah, deviate, ah, ah, from, ah, object, ah, request heading two four zero." Permission was granted within 15 seconds. AARTCC then directed JAL1628 through a 360-degree turn, altitude change, and descent, but the trailing target reportedly remained with the aircraft through the maneuvers. Terauchi reported that the objects followed the plane for approximately 640 kilometres (400 miles). The encounter continued until approximately 17:51, when a United Airlines aircraft and a United States Air Force C-130 cargo plane, directed by AARTCC to verify the situation, arrived in the area and reported no visual or radar contact with additional traffic.

After JAL1628 landed at Anchorage, the crew were debriefed by FAA investigators who concluded they were "normal, professional, rational, (and had) no drug or alcohol involvement."

FAA investigation and suppression

The incident was not publicly known until early December 1986, when Terauchi contacted Kyodo News through a private meeting in his London hotel room. Kyodo then contacted the FAA's Alaska Region Headquarters on December 24, 1986; coverage spread globally through January 1987.

John Callahan, FAA Division Chief of Accidents, Evaluations and Investigations in Washington D.C., received the data and directed it to the FAA Technical Center in Atlantic City for analysis. Callahan has recounted that his office was telephoned with the news that reporters from Alaska were demanding comment, and that he ordered all FAA and military discs and tapes flown overnight to the Technical Center; the military subsequently reported it had returned its tapes to service only twelve days later. Callahan and his superior Harvey Safeer synchronized the radar data with voice recordings and played them back on a Plan View Display, recording the analysis on video.

They briefed FAA Administrator Vice Admiral Donald D. Engen, who cancelled his schedule to view the full analysis and arranged a second briefing the following day at the FAA Round Room. The second briefing was attended by FAA technical staff alongside three representatives of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), three from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and three scientists from President Ronald Reagan's Scientific Study Team. According to Callahan, a CIA representative declared at the conclusion: "This event never happened. We were never here. We are confiscating all this data, and you are sworn to secrecy." CIA personnel took all gathered data, paperwork, and video. Callahan said he had retained copies and originals of the key evidence in his own office, which he later provided to researchers.

Captain Terauchi was grounded within months of the media coverage despite a senior rank and clean flight record; he was reinstated several years later, primarily through the efforts of researcher Richard Haines who worked to restore his professional reputation.

NORAD also reportedly described the incident: Special Agent James Derry of the FAA contacted a NORAD duty officer immediately after the flight landed, who reported that NORAD had tracked both JAL 1628 and the UFO on radar. Despite this, when FAA spokesman Paul Steucke publicly noted the encounter as "a violation of air space," he simultaneously stated there was "nothing to investigate" and attributed the radar signals to a "split radar return" — an explanation rejected by three AARTCC traffic controllers on duty who explicitly denied it, telling an Anchorage journalist that while the UFO radar signal was not especially strong, "it was not due to a split radar image" and that "everyone in the control room believed it was an actual object."

Release of records and later analysis

In 1987 the FAA released voice tapes, radar printouts, and Air Traffic Controller statements under public pressure following the Kyodo story. Physicist Bruce Maccabee, a retired U.S. Navy researcher associated with NICAP, produced a comprehensive analysis of the released records, published as the sole content of the International UFO Reporter (March/April 1987). Maccabee matched the crew's reported positions against FAA and Air Force radar data and concluded the primary returns corroborated the crew's accounts.

In May 2001, Callahan appeared as a government witness at the Disclosure Project conference organized by CSETI, presenting his retained FAA materials. Callahan subsequently participated in two documentaries and multiple disclosure conferences, and gave extended interviews to researcher Paul Dean and journalist Leslie Kean, whose 2010 book UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record includes a chapter on the case. The original FAA document collection was archived and made publicly accessible via the Internet Archive.

Steven Greer cited the case during his Disclosure Project testimony, noting that the object "would appear at 09:00 and then instantaneously in less than one radar sweep be hundreds of miles away the opposite side," and that he personally holds Callahan's original FAA radar tape: "The CIA felt they took it from his office. He gave them a copy. I have the original."

Physicist Kevin Toth, a former NASA researcher, and Daniel Kobe of the Niels Bohr Institute independently analyzed the military height-finding radar data from the encounter. According to Toth, Kobe's analysis of the radar sweeps found that the large object made several discrete positional jumps, three of which corresponded to accelerations exceeding 9,000 g's — one reaching approximately 11,000 g's — with an estimated top speed of 250,000 miles per hour, sufficient to reach the Moon in 54 minutes. Toth also reported that when Callahan briefed President Reagan's scientific team, their response was: "We've never had 45 minutes of radar data from one of these things before" — a statement Toth interpreted as indicating the team already possessed shorter-duration radar recordings of similar objects.

Documentary filmmaker James Fox recounted the case on The Joe Rogan Experience, emphasizing that Terauchi's description of the large object dwarfed his Boeing 747: "It made his airplane so small and he was in a 747 and 747 has got an elevator in it."

Skeptical counter-analysis

Editor of Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine and UFO investigator Philip J. Klass argued that the planets Jupiter and Mars were in the sky sector in which Terauchi first saw the two lights; although the planets would have been visible, Terauchi did not mention seeing them. Klass wrote that it is not unusual for an experienced pilot to "mistake[n] a bright celestial body for a UFO, nor will it be the last... Jupiter was only 10 degrees above the horizon, making it appear to the pilot to be roughly at his own 35,000-foot altitude." Klass also noted that when the crew was interviewed separately in 1988, their recollections of the event differed significantly. After reviewing the radio transcripts, an FAA spokesperson reported that Terauchi told ground controllers at the time that he had lost "sight of the object after completing his turn," but in a later interview Terauchi said the "object stayed with him as he turned." The FAA data package characterized Terauchi as a "'UFO repeater,' having reported two other UFO sightings prior to November 17th, and two more this past January." In a January 11, 1987 sighting reported by Terauchi in the same general area, he stated he saw "irregular pulsating lights... [and] a large black chunk just in front of us"; FAA radar did not confirm an object, and the event was later attributed to "lights from small villages being diffused by thin clouds of ice crystals." Terauchi also used the words "spaceship" and "mothership" in his reports, claiming that "we humans will meet them in the near future."

Astronomer and UFO investigator Robert Sheaffer wrote that despite Flight 1628 becoming "one of the most celebrated cases in recent UFO literature, it turns out there wasn't much to read," and described Terauchi as not "an unbiased or objective observer." Science writer Brian Dunning characterized the evening as containing "nothing extraordinary or unusual," calling Terauchi "a fine and competent pilot, but... hardly unbiased when it came to alien spaceships" and the case "just another unevidenced aerial anecdote."

See also

Further reading

References