Documents / Document

News clippings

FAA via National Archives / The Black Vault · 51 pages · text from the file's own layer

This FAA file, released through the National Archives and The Black Vault, collects 1987 newspaper clippings about Japan Air Lines Flight 1628. Capt. Kenju Terauchi reported that lights and a huge walnut-shaped object followed his 747 cargo jet over Alaska on November 17, 1986. The articles quote FAA spokesman Paul Steucke saying the radar returns were a split image and military clutter, and report Philip Klass's explanation that Terauchi saw Jupiter and Mars. Terauchi's second sighting in January was attributed to village lights reflecting off ice crystals.

100 PAGES ANCHORAGE. ALASKA. THURSOAV. JANUARV IS. 1987
Capt, Kenju Terauchi: "It was like a dream. Unbelievable.'
Ancrcrace Daily News/jim Lavrahas
pRCESsceNn
J^pan Air Lines pilot Kenju Terauchl provided to Anchorage Illustrator William Hays of'the laVei^raft
•^hich he^estimated to betwice thesize ofan aircraft carrier and2 to 3 miles away.
A night flight
to remember
Veteran JAL pilot who never
believed In UFOs does now
By HALBERNTON
Daily NewsOusiness reporter
A full moon shone in the arctic sky as Capt.Kenju Terauchi took off from Iceland Nov. 17
in a Japan Air Lines cargo jet loaded with
French Beaujolais wine. He was bound for
Anchorage on a route across Greenland to Elsmere
Island. Canada, over the Beaufort Sea, then into
Alaska air space above Fort Yukon.
For the first two and a half hours, the flight —
crewed by Terauchi, co-pilot Takanori Tamefuji and
engineer Yoshio Tsukuda —was uneventful. The sky
was clear and the winds —except for some light gusts
over Greenlanid — calm. Then TeraucU's jet cruised
into Alaska, and be first saw the two belts of light.
They were an estimated three miles ahead of the
plane, slightly to the left of the pilot's cockpit seat,
and 2,000 feet lower than the plane. They e^tted a
steady amber glow. They hovered almost stationary,
shifted from side to side, then pulsed across the sky in
abrupt bursts of speed.
The objects, Terauchi believes, "were not made by
human kind. They were of a very high technology and
Intelligence."
The events recounted by Terauchi in the 50 minutes
See Back Page, FLIGHT

About this file

Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 51 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.