Japan Air Lines Flight 1628: The Alaska Mothership

Flight JL1628 was a Boeing 747 freighter. It was flying from Paris to Tokyo by way of Keflavík and Anchorage. In the hold was Beaujolais. In the left seat sat Captain Kenju Terauchi, a former fighter pilot with more than 10,000 flight hours. Beside him were first officer Takanori Tamefuji and flight engineer Yoshio Tsukuba.

November 17, 1986. After dark over interior Alaska. The jet was cruising at 35,000 feet, northeast of Fort Yukon. Terauchi saw "lights that looked like aircraft lights, 30 degrees left front, 2000 feet (600 meters) below us." Then the lights began to move in a manner different from ordinary aircraft. "Like two bear cubs playing with each other."

Two objects stopped in front of the cockpit. "The inside cockpit shined brightly and I felt warm in the face." Each looked like two panels of amber and whitish light, like flames from rows of rocket exhausts. Tamefuji described "Christmas assorted" lights of a "salmon" colour. Terauchi reached for his camera. The lens kept adjusting and never set a focus. No photograph exists.

Near Fairbanks, something else appeared. "A silhouette of a gigantic spaceship." In his sketch it resembled a large shelled walnut with lights around the edge. Terauchi asked to descend to 31,000 feet and reported that the object descended in formation with them. He flew a full 360° turn. "They were still following us," he radioed. "We want to escape from this." Asked if he was nervous, he said: "No, I am the captain. I cannot be nervous."

United Airlines Flight 69 was diverted to look. Its crew saw the 747 and no other object. "When the United plane came by our side, the spaceship disappeared suddenly and there was nothing but the light of the moon."

The 747's weather radar showed a return 7 to 8 miles away. Military controllers at Elmendorf reported intermittent primary returns. Early press reports said the FAA and the Alaska Air Command had radar confirmation. Then, on March 5, 1987, the FAA took it back. The Anchorage target was a split radar image of the 747 itself. The military returns were dismissed as clutter. Spokesman Paul Steucke still said: "As far as we know, the whole crew are people of integrity and did report what they saw accurately." The FAA left the sighting unexplained.

Philip J. Klass argued that Jupiter was where Terauchi had placed the mothership, low above the horizon. Moonlight on ice crystals, he said, could explain the flickering, flame-coloured lights. He called Terauchi a "UFO repeater." On January 11, 1987, the captain reported another sighting in the same area. It was later attributed to village lights diffused by ice crystals. Skeptics noted that Tamefuji called the objects "only lights," and that Terauchi's later written account went beyond his radio calls. Even skeptics accept that he was sincere.

Supporters, among them Bruce Maccabee, pointed to three crew witnesses and three separate radar systems. In 2001, FAA official John Callahan said that at a later briefing a CIA officer declared: "This event never happened; we were never here." None of that has been independently confirmed.

JAL grounded Terauchi and moved him to a desk job. He was later reinstated. In 2001 the FAA said its file had been destroyed. In September 2018, more than 1,500 pages turned up at the National Archives. Transcripts. Radar printouts. The captain's own sketches. The file is public now, and the sighting itself has never been explained.