The JAL 1628 UFO event

My estimated locations based on a map drawn by an FAA investigator at the time is at 5:09, 67:40 (67 deg, 40 minutes) lat and 142:20 (west) longitude; at 5:24, 65:50 by 145:20 and at 5:30, 65:10 by 146:30. I have not tried to be accurate to a minute of arc. These numbers are interpolations between markings on an aero map and should be good enough to look for correlations between clouds and sightings.

Regarding the aurora explanation, the lights in front of the aircraft were distinct lights like distant fires or exhaust pipes in two parallel vertical rows as shown in Terauchi's simple sketch made after the plane landed in Anchorage and again with more detail 2 months later (about) during the FAA interviews. There were two objects, apparently, each with these parallel arrays of lights. The captain estimated that for 2 minutes after their appearance in front of the aircraft they were one above the other. Then they shifted to side by side for about 10 minutes. As they traveled ahead of the airplane they rocked left and right in a correlated manner.

Klass' first explanation, by the was, was "extraterrestrial." In Feb 1987 CSICOP (now CSI) published its extraterrestrial explanation: Mars and Jupiter. It was only after my report was published in the IUR that Klass advanced his second theory.

The first explanation was presented in a ress release by CSICOP in Feb. 1987 if I recall correctly (see my paper). The second explanation was published in the CSICOP journal.

Here is a high resolution thermal infrared satellite image snapped by NOAA-9 approximately 3.5 hours before JAL1628 crossed into Alaskan airspace from Canada on 11-18-1986 (UTC) (http://img66.imageshack.us/img66/693...6282235qk4.jpg).

If you send email address to brumac@compuserve.com I can email you a few scans. However, the raw radar data takes dozens of pages since it gives several readouts per minute. There are numerous other documents. The FAA sold a complete package for over $100 back in March, 1987.

In the subsequent interviews with a translator the colors mentioned were yellow, amber and green.

Each atmospheric gas glows with specific colors. For example, atomic oxygen is responsible for two primary auroral colors: green-yellow (wavelength of 557.7 nanometres (nm)) and red (630.0 nm). The brightest and most common auroral color, a brilliant green-yellow, is produced by those oxygen atoms at roughly 100 km (60 miles) altitude. -- http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weathe...nts/aurora.htm

This satellite image may be the "smoking gun" in this case, literally: http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/2...6280248ke9.jpg...The black color indicates that a large region of Alaska appears to be quite hot to the satellite. I don't know of any other possible explanation for this other than that this represents the afterglow from a solar flare that heated the upper atmosphere there.

The next step is to calculate the lat/lon required for an auroral emission at an altitude of 100km to appear at the same location in Terauchi's windscreen as shown in Dr. Maccabee's Figs. 2 & 3; and see if this falls within the blacked-out region of the satellite photo.

The FAA said this: "a second radar target near the JAL flight at the time of the reported sighting was not another aircraft but rather a split radar return from the JAL Boeing 747." I personally doubt that, but do not feel free to speculate further at this time. Whatever it was, it was not even in the same place and time in the sky as the lights seen by the flight crew of JAL1628.

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.

The repeated questions about the clouds [from 5:22:11 to 5:23:05] caused Terauchi to wonder why the controller was so interested in clouds. He speculated, "Perhaps the controllers were concerned that an increased use of improved lazer (sic) beams using (sic) clouds was creating moving images." (Here Terauchi refers to laser beams illuminating the clouds. Of course, there were no sufficiently powerful visible laser beams in the "wilds" of Alaska at that time...nor are there now.)

...And five years ago, on a cargo flight south of Formosa, "when we start climb we saw lefthand side big mothership." But he said it was too "weird," he wasn't feeling well, and he ignored it.

As for airline personnel being allowed to take photos, it has long been claimed by pilots that to discuss UFOs is to put one's career in jeopardy. Most pilots only speak out after retiring. Note for example that in the case of JAL 1628, the pilot had to sue the airlines in order to get his job back. He did win in court because of the evidence available to support his claim. So in the airline industry especially, there is reason to be concerned about your job if you see a UFO.

It is all part of the lunacy of the stigma attached to such reports.

See one, or report one? Are you assuming this, or do you have statistics on the motives of pilots who choose not to report UFO sightings?

I recently asked a retired air-traffic controller (who is also still-licensed as a commercial pilot, and who has many years of experience handling air traffic at both Andrews Air Force Base and Washington National airport) about "why pilots and air traffic controllers are reluctant to report UFO sightings", and he didn't say anything at all about "the stigma attached to such reports". He said that "the government doesn't want this information given to the public".

My statements are based on many statements made by pilots over the last twenty years. I'm sure that plenty of quotes can be found at links in the Napster. I also cited a specific example of a pilot who lost his job over a UFO report. Obviously the problems only happen if one reports what one sees. Also, pilots and air traffic controllers aren't privy to classified information so I doubt the conspiracy angle. Perhaps in some cases the military asks people to keep quiet, but it is hard to understand how that would happen since the government no longer investigates UFO reports.

A message also went out over the FAA employee's "code-a-phones" at work, warning that reporters would hound them on this story and that FAA policy required them to go through public affairs.

UFO Incident Involving a Japanese B747 in the Alaskan Region John Callahan - Former Division Chief of Accidents and Investigations for the FAA http://www.freedomofinfo.org/science.html

...so what I am going to tell you is about an event that never happened...who are you going to believe, your lying eyes or the government?

...everybody standing there saw the target, they all saw the same target you just saw, they saw the same target that the administrator saw, ok? The military controller saw the target. The FAA has to kill the story, so the FAA says after we analyzed all this data it is our conclusion that it was a split beacon...the pilot's don't see split beacons, the pilots don't see ghost targets.

Since you already have video testimony, the complete report, and multiple sources, including an FAA division chief, all telling approximately the same story, you are free to make up your own mind. Perhaps they only saw Mars and Venus, as the skeptics claim.

If you want more documentation, then I suggest that you contact Dr. Haines or Dr. Maccabee.

When the story about Klass' Jupiter theory came over the wires at the Anchorage Daily News, Hal Bernton called up Terauchi. The pilot was adamant--he had recognized Jupiter during the flight, and whatever had tailed him was no planet.

Klass laughed when told that the pilot had rejected his explanation: "This is par for the course. When a person is a dedicated UFO believer, as the pilot is and was, he'll always deny a prosaic explanation. You know, of course, that he's a UFO repeater.

EXTRATERRESTRIAL OBJECT INVOLVED IN JAPAN AIR LINES PILOT'S UFO SIGHTING, ACCORDING TO LEADING UFO INVESTIGATOR

Buffalo, N.Y. /--/An investigation of the incident in which an Unidentified Flying Object reportedly paced a Japan Air Lines 747 enroute to Anchorage, Alaska, for nearly 40 minutes on Nov. 18, 1986, reveals that at least one extraterrestrial object was involved--the planet Jupiter, and possibly another--Mars.

The investigation was conducted by Philip J.Klass, an internationally recognized skeptical UFOlogist and chairman of CSICOP's UFO Subcommittee. His investigations have yielded prosaic explanations for many famous UFO cases during the past 20 years.

At the time the UFO incident began near Ft. Yukon, the JAL airliner was flying south in twilight conditions so that an extremely bright Jupiter (-2.6 magnitude) would have been visible on the pilot's left-hand side, where he first reported seeing the UFO, according to Klass. Jupiter was only 10 degrees above the horizon, making it appear to the pilot to be at roughly his own 35,000 ft. altitude. Mars, slightly lower on the horizon, was about 20 degrees to the right of Jupiter but not as bright.

Although the very bright Jupiter, and less bright Mars, had to be visible to JAL Capt. Kenjyu Terauchi, the pilot never once reported seeing either--only a UFO that he described as being a "white and yellow" light in his initial radio report to Federal Aviation Administration controllers at Anchorage.

Many of the colorful details of the incident carried by the news media, largely based on the six-week old recollections of the,pilot of JAL Flight 1628, are contradicted by a transcript of radio messages from the pilot to FAA controllers while the incident was in progress.

For example, news media accounts quoting the 747 pilot said that when he executed a 360 deg. turn the UFO had followed him around during the turn. But this claim is contrary to what the pilot told FAA controllers at the time.

During the pilot's media interviews, he "remembered" some colorful details which did not really occur, judging from his earlier radio reports to the FAA, and Terauchi "forgot" several important events that would challenge his claim of being paced by an unknown craft.

For example, that another airliner, United Airlines Flight 69, heading north from Anchorage to Fairbanks, had agreed to deviate slightly from its course to allow FAA radar controllers to vector it to the vicinity of the JAL 747, while maintaining safe altitude and distance separation, to see if the United crew could spot the UFO.

At approximately 4:48 p.m., as the United flight neared JAL, Terauchi reported that the UFO was to his far left an about 10 miles distant--which was in the direction of Jupiter. At roughly 4:50 p.m., the United pilot reported he now could see JAL but a short time later the United pilot said: "I don't see anybody around him."

Shortly afterwards, the JAL pilot reported that the UFO now was "just ahead of United" which is where Jupiter would appear to be from Terauchi's location. The United pilot would not notice Jupiter because it was to his right, while his attention was focused on JAL which was to his far left.

Shortly afterwards, the pilot of a USAF C-130 transport in the area volunteered to be vectored to the vicinity of the JAL airliner to see if he could spot any object near the airliner. The C-130 crew readily spotted the JAL 747, but they too could not see any object in its vicinity.

"This is not the first time that an experienced pilot has mistaken a bright celestial body for a UFO, nor will it be the last," Klass said. In one case, investigated by the late Dr. J. Allen Hynek in the early 1950s, a military pilot chased a "UFO" for more than 30 minutes, which turned out to be the bright star Capella. In this case, as with the recent Alaska incident, a radar operator reported briefly seeing an unknown blip on his radar scope.

During World War II, B-29 pilots flying at night from the Mariana Islands in the Pacific to bomb Japan reported being paced by a mysterious "ball-of-fire" which B-29 gunners tried, unsuccessfully, to shoot down. Some Army Air Corps intelligence officers suspected the object was a long-range Japanese aircraft equipped with a powerful searchlight, to illuminate the B-29s so they could be attacked by fighter aircraft, but such attacks never materialized. Finally, the mysterious glowing object that seemed to pace the B-29s was identified. It was Venus, which was particularly bright at the time.

More than 25% of all UFOs reported during a 15-month period to the Center for UFO Studies (created in 1973 by Hynek) turned out upon investigation to be a bright planet or star. Some eyewitnesses reported that the celestial UFO "darted up and down," or "wiggled from side-to-side," and a variety of shapes were described.

In the Capt. Terauchi's recollected account to the media six weeks after the incident, he described seeing two small UFOs in addition to a large one. But the transcript reveals that the pilot only briefly reported seeing two lights, not three, and thereafter he referred only to one in his radio communications with FAA controllers.

News media accounts of the UFO incident stressed that one unidentified object had been detected by a USAF radar in the vicinity of the 747's "blip", which seemed to confirm the pilot's visual sighting. However, radars operating in mountainous terrain such as that where the UFO incident occurred can receive spurious echoes when radar energy bouncing off an aircraft is reflected a second time from mountains and snow-covered terrain.

When the pilot first reported seeing the UFO, FAA traffic controllers--ever concerned over the risk of a mid-air collision--requested that radar controllers in an Air Force Regional Operations Command Center examine their displays to see if they could spot an unknown intruder. A radar operator there spotted something, but was unsure whether it might be a spurious echo. However, the echo appeared only briefly and was behind the 747 whereas the pilot had reported that the UFO was in front or to the left of his aircraft.

Later, as the JAL 747 came within range of an FAA radar at the Fairbanks International Airport, a radar controller there was asked if he could spot another object in the vicinity of the airliner. Although the JAL pilot still was reporting a UFO, the controller replied that there were no unknown blips in the vicinity of JAL 1628.

On Jan. 11, the Capt. Terauchi again reported seeing a UFO while flying in approximately the same part of Alaska. But after an FAA spokesman in Anchorage suggested that this UFO might only be lights from a distant village bouncing off clouds, the JAL pilot acknowledged that this could explain his second UFO sighting.

The transcript of radio communications during the Nov. 18 incident indicates that there were broken clouds at or below Flight 1628's altitude, which may help explain Capt. Terauchi's mistaking Jupiter for a UFO.

Even a scientifically trained former Navy officer, who would later become President, once mistook a bright planet for a UFO. The "victim" was Jimmy Carter and the incident occurred about 7:15 p.m. on Jan. 6, 1969, following his talk to the Lions Club of Leary, Ga. As Carter later recalled the incident, he spotted the UFO in the west at an elevation he estimated to be about 30 deg. An investigation conducted by Robert Sheaffer, vice-chairman of CSICOP's UFO Subcommittee, was complicated by the fact that Carter had recalled an erroneous date for the incident. Once Sheaffer managed to determine the correct date, he found that a brilliant planet Venus was to the west and about 25 deg. above the horizon, where Carter reported seeing the UFO.

Klass credits astronomers Nick Sanduleak and C.B. Stephenson, of Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland, for their valuable assistance in computing the positions and bearings of bright celestial bodies relative to the 747 airliner at the time of the incident.

"My suspicions that this UFO might be a bright celestial body were prompted by the fact that the pilot reported seeing the object for more than 30 minutes," Klass said. "Past experience has shown that when a UFO remains visible for many minutes, it almost always proves to be a celestial object." Another clue was the fact that when Flight 1628 descended 4,000 ft., the UFO still appeared to be at the airliner's altitude. At Jupiter's great distance, a change of 4,000 ft., the UFO still appeared to be at the airliner's altitude. At Jupiter's great distance, a change of 4,000 ft. in aircraft altitude would produce no noticeable change in the planet's apparent altitude.

Klass, who was a senior editor with Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine for nearly 35 years until his partial-retirement this past June, has been investigating famous UFO cases as a hobby for more than 20 years. His most recent book on the subject is "UFOs: The Public Deceived," published by Prometheus Books, Buffalo, N.Y.

Aether, there is a difference between radio communications and an official UFO report. Obviously they discuss it on the radio if they ask for confirmation of local traffic. Your inability to get this straight makes me take the rest with a grain of salt.

I don't know. What is the IRS form for depletion of property?