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e,.fitgge - see ’ idipes -3 i reef j i on radar screens — A vente Pt pisws — (FN en reaee rvess locate the JAL airliner. The United crew, looking ahead and to its left, readily spotted JAL, silhouetted against a still faintly light sky, but could not see any juminous object in its vicinity. Shortly before the two aircraft passed, Terauchi was asked again to give the UFO's posi- tion, and he reported that it was “just ahead of United”—which would place the bright light to the southeast. Despite the fact that the bright light seemed to Terauchi to be directly ahead of the United jetliner, its crew saw nothing. In the southeasterly direction, where Terauchi was then looking, was the very bright (-2.6 magnitude) planet Jupiter, which was low in the sky (about 12 degrees) at an azimuth of about 143 degrees relative to true north. From Terauchi’s vantage point, Jupiter would appear to be just ahead of United #69. But the bright planet would have been ‘ar to the right of United’s flight path, and its crew would have been looking to heir left at JAL #1628. Never once did Terauchi report the “UFO's” position relative to a “‘very bright star,” i.e., Jupiter. Also in the area at the time was a USAF C-130 transport aircraft that was UFO sighting by pilot confirmed by radar — reports strange lights. Airliner Crew oer ary bas oon ew Bt u pan rere é cated a TH. OT pttete As be . 1 a ar iees boas, tm BS | == UFO sighting “| reported by || JAL jet crew westbound for Elmendorf AFB, flying south of JAL #1628. When the C-130 pilot overheard the FAA communications with JAL, he too offered to try to spot the reported UFO when the USAF air- craft passed near the 747. The USAF crew readily spotted the JAL 747 but reported seeing no other object in its vicinity. The C-130 crew would not have noticed Jupiter, which was to their far left, because they were looking at the JAL 747 to their right. While it is commendable that the FAA’s Alaskan Region decided to con- duct tape-recorded interviews with the three JAL crew members in early Janu- ary, following inquiries by Japanese news media in late December, in retrospect it is regrettable that the FAA did not think to tape-record discussions with the crew immediately after flight #1628 landed in Anchorage on November 17, when recol- lections were still fresh. However, when crew members were interviewed separ- ately in January, some significant differ- ences emerged, providing useful insights. For example, it now appears that the November 17 incident involved two dif- ferent “types of UFOs,” or trigger- mechanisms. As described by flight — engineer Yoshio Tsukuba (through an interpreter) during his January 15 inter- view with FAA officials, the initial UFO was observed for about five to ten minutes at roughly an II o'clock position before it disappeared. This is confirmed by the FAA radio communications tran- script, which shows the pilot reported the UFO disappearance at 0223:13 GMT, roughly four minutes after it was first reported. Crew members had been ob- serving it for several minutes prior to the initial report. The second UFO, which Tsukuba characterized as “absolutely different” was visible much further to the left (“nine o'clock") for about 30 or 40 minutes. Tsukuba described the initial UFO as a “cluster of lights .. . undulating,” which were “different from town lights.” Unlike the pilot, Tsukuba said he was unable to describe any particular shape for either UFO. The flight engineer said that, when he was first interviewed by the FAA immediately following the incident, he “was not sure whether the object was a UFO or not. My mind has not changed since then.” During FAA interviews in January, copilot Takanori Tamefuji, who was fly- ing the 747 at the time of the initial sight- ing, confirmed the flight engineer's recol- lections that the UFO first sighted was “completely different” from the one later seen further to the left. Tamefuji described what at first appeared to be “two small aircraft” slightly below his own altitude. When the copilot was asked if he could distinguish these lights “as being different” from a star, he replied: “No.” (The planet Mars would have been visible to the crew about 19 degrees to the right of Jupiter, but it would not have been nearly as bright.) When a sketch made by Captain Terauchi, showing a giant walnut-shaped UFO, was shown to the copilot and he was asked if this was what he had seen, he replied: “I don't see anything like this but... if we can connect these lights it (would) be a big object, but ah..." There are a number of ambiguities in the report that Captain Terauchi sub- mitted to the FAA on January 2, and in his subsequent interview with an FAA representative, despite the presence of an interpreter. Terauchi generally character- ized the initial amber-white lights as re- sembling the exhaust of jet or rocket engines. In his report, written in Japanese and later translated, Terauchi said that a few minutes after first observing the lights ahead and to the left, “most unexpectedly two spaceships stopped in front of our face, shooting off lights. The inside cock- pit shined [sic] brightly and | felt warm in the face.” Neither of the other crew members reported such effects. All three crew members agreed that the 747'’s weather radar displayed an echo at a bearing that roughly corresponded to that of the initial lights at a range of about eight miles. The radar display uses color to show the strength of the echo to alert the crew to the potential intensity of thunderstorm turbulence ahead. A red-colored echo indicates an especially strong radar echo and a green color shows the weakest. All three crew mem- bers agree that the “UFO blip” was green. This is especially curious if the visual UFO was a giant craft only a few miles ahead, which should have produced an extremely strong (red) return. Flight engineer Tsukuba characterized it as “not a dot, but streamlike.” This is confirmed by a sketch drawn by the pilot after land- ing on November 17, It suggests that the green “blip/stream” was an echo from thin clouds of ice crystals—like those that prompted Terauchi to mistake village lights for UFOs on January I1. On the night of November 17, there was a nearly full moon that would have been approximately 12 degrees above the horizon at the time of the initial UFO sighting and almost directly behind the JAL 747’s direction of flight. This raises the possibility that bright moonlight re- flecting off turbulent clouds of ice crystals