Documents / Hearing transcript
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.
K. Terauchi A no, seven, seven or eight miles. R. Gordon Okay seven or eight miles, that's what they were saying on the radar. K. Terauchi Yeah, this later, so we saw about seven or eight miles ... R. Gordon Okay K. Terauchi And, 60 degrees left .•. R. Gordon Okay K. Terauchi So out in here small ship is disappear. R. Gordon Okay, I understand, now lets (unintelligible) what else, see if I forget anything, visual was a first, what, you showed me exactly what you saw. Visually sighting, you saw it first uh? K. Terauchi First R. Gordon Okay F. Fujii And (unintelligible) probably how long had you contacted the target. R. Gordon No that's what we were saying, five to six minutes before you called ATC. K. Terauchi Ye~h, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. R. Gordon Okay, did the other crew have trouble sighting the object? F. Fujii Did the rest of the crew see the lights? K. Terauchi (More Japanese) So I tried to fix it, but I ah, failed. Laughter K. Terauchi Just, shutter was open, did not close, so ••• F. Fujii Yes every crew has seen it. R. Gordon Okay all the crew members they did see it. Okay. Laughter •.. Yeah that's what I would do (more laughter) F. Fujii What type of onboard radar? R. Gordon Yeah, what type of radar was onboard, that ah ? K. Terauchi It was the kind, ditigal, but I don not know. 6
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.