Simulated radar data, colour photos

I ALASKA
•
TIE EllCIUllTElt
1. The wighting began near the
border between.Alaka and
Canada. Just two lights.
z. Over Fort Yukon, as the.JAL
crew descended to 31,000 feet,
they reported being followed In
formation. 3. They turned In a
clrcle over Fairbank• to shake
whatever It was. But the obfect
stllyed with them. 4. Anally,.
after.SO mlnutn, It disap-
peared near Talkeetna, heed-
ing due eat toward CanadL
assm.•11111
The small d~I slashes
rep~ JAL Right No. .
1821 a It appeared on .the
FAA's radar scope. At:
first, the FAA Aid the
. ttny dots next to the
slashes repreeented
another obfect or
ob)9cts. Then, after
reviewing the radar ·
tllpn, the agency llild
the lmaga lookid llke
"spit bHcons" -
ac:c:ldental Khoee of the fumbo"
jet ltMlf, famlllar radar quirks
that )Uat happened to"colnclde
wfth the crew's visual reports.
-con~ued fr.ori\·prevlous page
ROUND RADAR HADN'T
registered anything near
1628, so nothing was likely
to show up on the cockpit's
weaker X-band weather
scope. But the captain set
the distance range to 20
miles - and to his sur-
prise, something popped ·
·up. A large, green, round
object, seven or eight miles
away, in the direction of
the thing outside his window.
Henlef. Japan Air 1628. Do you still
have visual contact with the traffic?
JAL: Affirmative . .. we have radar
contact. . . .
And then, so did Henley - a radar hit
about five to eight miles from 1628.
He radioed Elmendorf Air Force Base,
and the controller there reported picking
up something, too - a weak return about
eight miles ahead of 1628, at 10 o'clock. It
lasted a minute, minute and a half. Radio
interference, and an object seeming to
register on three different radar scopes.
What was this?
JAL: It's, ah, I think, ah, a very quite
big, ah, plane.
Fort Yukon was diagonally below and
to the right of 1628, and the setting sun
painted the sky in a reddish stripe. The
east side, the side where the objects were,
was still pitch dark.
We had no fears so far but began to worry,
since we had no.idea for their purpose. ...
Up ahead they could see lights from
Eielson Air Force Base and Fairbanks.
The lights were e:ctremely bright to eyes
that were used to the dark. How bright it
was! We were just above the bright city
lights, and we checked .. . behind us. Alas!
therewas a silhooette of a gigantic space-
ship. We /TIUBt run away quickly!
JAL: Japan Air 1628. Ah, request de-
scent ... request three one zero.
Henley: Japan . . . 1628 heavy. Descend
at pilot discretion. . .. Do you still have
your traffic?
JAL: Still, ah, coming, ah, ah, right
formation, in, ah, formation.
Henley: Japan Air 1628 heavy . .. devi-
ations approved as necessary for traffic.
When we checked our rear, there was still
the ship following us. .. . We had to get
away from that object. A globular craft
with a lip around the middle, the colossal
size of two aircraft carriers laid end to
end.
What could it possibly want - the
Beaujolais?
Henley: Japan Air 1628 heavy. Sir. I'm
going to request you to make a right turn,
three six zero degrees, three-hundred-
and-sixty-degree turn. And advise me
what your traffic does then.
JAL: Right turn, three sixty.
We . .. set to tum right on a 30-degrees
bank. We looJred to our right forward but dUJ.
rwt see any light.
It had disappeared.
We were relieved . .. we returned to lel)el
flight. &t when we checked to our rear, the
object was still there - in e:cactly the same
place.
On the ground, Carl Henley was glued
to his radar scope. You're not supposed to
have unknowns in air traffic control
M>y~ . 1987
. ... •J
There isn't much room fo'r error, ana the
system relies on an unquestioned mutual
trust between controller and pilot. A
controller baa feelings about an airplane,
even though it's just a little slaah on a
scope. When he's talking to a pilot, he's
inside the cockpit with him. This 747 waa
reporting unidentifiable aircraft, and
Henley's job was to get him safely away.
He and the other controllers assumed
they were tracking a second aircraft. ,
"I never thought of it as a UFO," he
would say later.
VETERAN CONTROLLER SAM RICH
returned from a lunch break and took
over communications with the military so
Henley could devote all his attention to
1628. Elmendorfradioed over that "on
some other equipment here we have con-
firmed there is a flight, size of two,"
around 1628.
Rich: Is he following him?
Elmendorf: It looks like he is, yes.
Oh, God. .. .
Henley radioed the news to JAL and
asked if the crew wanted the military to
scramble on the i.raffic.
JAL: Negative, negative.
Uneasy as he was, the pilot didn't want
to chance someone else getting hurt try-
ing to help him and his crew. Euen the F-
15 with the newest technology had no
guarantee of safety against the creature
with an unknown degree of scientific tech·
nology. We flew toward Talkeetna . . . . The
spaceship was still following us, not leaving
us at all.
The FAA shift supervisor, Er land Ste-
phens, a lean, older fellow with a graying
reddish beard who is given to string ties
and cowboy boots, thought a lost aircraft
might be following 1628's lights into
Anchorage.
"His radio and navigation might have
quit," Stephens figured.
So he followed procedure and alerted
the U.S. Customs office at Anchorage
International, and somebody called Hank
Eliaa - the transplanted Oklahoman
who's in charge of the FAA's air traffic
division in Alaska.
Elias couldn't know whether it was a
system failure or a life-threatening situa-
. tion. And the proximity of the Soviet
Union was always a factor - it could be
an exotic experimental craft, or a defect-
ing jet. The U.S.S.R is so close to the
United States up there that two guys in
eight months had illegally walked acr088
the frozen Bering Strait from the Alaskan
island of Little Diomede to the Soviet
island of Big Diomede. The Soviet Union
likes to send its Bear bombers into Alas-
kan air space, carrying electronic snoop-
ing devices and sometimes missiles, and
the United States likes to send its latest
F-15s to intercept and escort them off.
They listen to each other's radio trans-
missions, obtain radar frequencies, try to
determine the capabilities of each other's
aircraft. Sometimes, a Soviet fighter will
tuck in so tight behind the tail of a
com.merical airliner that the pilot never
even knows. And if the Soviet.jet shows
up on radar,.he'll register, sporadically,
only as a little dot - looking just like "a •
split beacon," an accidental split image, •
of the airliner. Shadowing, it 's called.
Over the phone, Elias grilled the fellow
who called: What did the pilot do, say,
---- ,
J