Documents / Hearing transcript

Terauchi interview transcript, Dick Gordon, 2 Jan 1987

FAA via National Archives / The Black Vault · 20 pages · text from the file's own layer

This FAA record of interview documents a January 2, 1987 session in Anchorage, Alaska, in which Inspector Richard O. Gordon of FSDO-63 questioned JAL Captain Kenju Terauchi about his crew's November 17, 1986 sighting. Terauchi describes two small craft with exhaust-like lights that flew near his aircraft and a much larger mothership, and says the target appeared green on his onboard radar. He also reports VHF interference and says the objects matched his 360-degree turn and his descent.

R. Gordon Yeah, I'm familiar with it, yeah I've been on there.
F. Fujii So he turned the light off on that, because they were trying to
take a photo.
R. Gordon Okay, okay
F. Fujii So the (unintelligible) was dark.
R. Gordon Okay, that's good, I just wanted to make sure that everything in
the cockpit you know, you see something and then you turn the
light cause, me being a pilot, normally when I see something out
there I'll turn the lights off and get everything dark inside.
K. Terauchi Yes that's right.
F. Fujii When you changed you aircraft position, did they make any special
moves?
K. Terauchi No, they didn't. See here, I began to circle 360 degrees, they
stayed at the same position with us.
F. Fujii Uh uh, same position
K. Terauchi Same position, same position, same position all the way
(unintelligible)
R. Gordon Okay following you right around uh?
K. Terauchi Yes
R. Gordon And it was here, and then here, and here, and here, and then you
rolled out and it was right there, okay.
K. Terauchi So ah, ah, I tried next, ah, descent, 3, 5, o, 3, 1 ' o.
R. Gordon Ah ah, okay, 3, 1 ' O, when you descended to 3, 1 ' O, still
uh?
K. Terauchi Yeah, same formation, uh formation descent • • • formation
descent. It was impressive, the same formation, smooth!
R. Gordon Okay
K. Terauchi We, we used autopilot when descending, so (unintelligible).
R. Gordon Okay, yeah, yeah went right down with him, okay uh •••
F. Fujii Can we go to the next one?
R. Gordon Sure, yeah, I was just was ah •••
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there

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Hearing transcript, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 20 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.