733667-001-020-0010

ARCTIC CIRCLE rd atte ww Fai 4 WMT. MexIMLEY Talkeetna © Sar j eh. yo” ‘ . ” ler et Pees SSeS ‘ "4 ia } - a * . + ad Bes mite =, ; 7 “oh NE AL RRS Ne date on 2 & ARS ore SEY am wee TS ase ie bs . —_— eS . . & .. 0 Y + OL os ys a ~. ™ yy aoe ° : poe ty Sher ee . Sa ve ° > ake © oki eee “ws ’ ALASKA Fort Yokon > — ¥ ~ a . “Sense g THE ENCOUNTER 1. The sighting began near the border between. Alaska and Canada. Just two lights. 2. Over Fort Yukon, as the JAL crew descended to 31,000 feet, | they reported being followed In formation. 3. They turned in a circle over Fairbanks to shake whatever it was. But the object stayed with them. 4, Finally,. after. 50 minutes, it disap- peared near Talkeetna, head- ing due east toward Canada. ~ MAP BY CHARLES CHAMBERLIN { ~ Vase “ Clee ae ei “Som Hees ae sd NSULA ya J /% at < Pe - pe er * = <a , | . aaa 1 cae me 3 ins x. es nae ey ~~ i exer - a ea. Se Sate fe ew Tee ee sight: 2 GULF “OF ALASK ae represent JAL Flight No.. : 1628 as it appeared on the FAA's radar scope. At: first, the FAA said the . tiny dots next to the slashes represented another object or objects. Then, after reviewing the radar: tapes, the agency sald the images looked like “split beacons” accidental echoes of the jumbo jet itself, familiar radar quirks - that just happened to'coincide with the crew’s visual reports. 2 epee eee te re 2 re te, = + ees ——-— » UFO_ continued from previous 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. Henley: 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 extremely 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! there-was a silhouette of a gigantic space- ship. We must 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 turn nght on a 30-degrees bank. We looked to our right forward but did not see any light. It had disappeared. We were relieved .. . Wé returned to level flight. But when we checked to our rear, the object was still there — in exactly 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. May 24, 1987 Se ee = ‘ = — he system relies on an unquestioned mutual trust between controller and pilot. A controller has feelings about an airplane, even though it’s just a little slash on a scope. When he’s talking to a pilot, he’s inside the cockpit with him. This 747 was 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. , “T 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. Elmendorf radioed 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? Elmendort: 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 craffic. 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. Even 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, Erland 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 Elias — 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 across 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 commerical airliner that the pilot never even knows. And if the Soviet jet shows up on radar, he’ll register, sporadically, of the airliner. Shadowing, it’s called. who called: What did the pilot do, say, There isn’t much room for error, and the ar so 1st? +. only as a little dot — looking just like “a a split beacon,” an accidental split image, Over the phone, Elias grilled the fellow 4