733667-02-001-0043

‘THURSDAY, JANUARY 29, 1987 NEW YORK CITY TRIBUNE 3 SCIENCE J. ANTONIO HUNEEUS The media's recent interest ina UFO incident in Alaska © has shown that “(lying saucers” are still alive and kicking. Despite four decades of official ridicule and academic indifference, it takes just one new good case to bring back again for public appraisal the old UFO question. Captain Kenju Terauchi's Japan Air Lines JAL) Boeing 747 cargo jet, Dying across the Arctic Circle between Reykjavik, Iceland, and Tokyo, provided just that case, The incident occusred on the evening of November 17, 1986, yet it wasn't untit New Year's that the story was leaked to the press. The Federal Aviation Adminis- tration (FAA) and the U.S. Ais Force acknowledged initially that the UFO had been detected by ground radar in Fairbanks, Alaska, QnJanuary 4, FAA spokesman Paul ‘) Steucke admitted the agency was conducting a formal inquiry of the event and had interviewd the JAL crew for a second time. The “official investigation” of the radar tapes later labeled it an “artifact,” which in radar jargon means a “ghost,” in this case the 747's “double image.” Nonethe- less, it was — in the late Dr. J. Allen Hynek’s classifica- tion —a “radar/visual” case. Captain Terauchi insisted he saw “a very big" object, approximately “two times bigger than an aircraft carrier,” as well as two smaller objects which paced his plane for 400 miles during at least haif an hour. The copilot and light engineer also saw the UFO lights. - Evasive Action JAL Flight 1628 was Qying enroute to Japan on a routine cargo haul between Iceland and Anchorage. The 747 was cruising normally at 525 knots at 35,000 feet when around 6 p.m., Terauchi sighted “two columns of light” about a mile ahead and some 30 degrees to his left. The pilot radioed the contro! tower at Anchorage to check if there was any other air traffic. Anchorage "| responded in the negative. “Suddenly the lights came to within 500 to 1,000 feet of the plane,“ said Terauchi, He described the lights as “two dark cylinders with row after row of spinning amber lights” which cast no shadows. “[ was sure it wasn't another plane," he said later in an interview. “It moved so quickly that I realized it was not something human but had to do with very high technology, very high intelligence.” Stranger things con- tinued to happen. A blip was detected on the 747's weather cadar, and the cylinders “few in formation” with the jet. At this point, FAA spokesman Steucke explained " later, “his (Terauchi) main concern was trying to deter- mine whether he was overtaking another aurceaft.” The captain then requested from ground authorities permission to take evasive action, which granted it and proceeded to give him instructions. The Boeing dropped 4,000 feet and made several turns, but the lights “were still following us,” said Terauchi. Near Fairbanks, Terauchi glimpsed a huge round object, about “the size of two aircraft carriers.” He later speculated it was a “mothership” of possible extrater- festrial origin. Copilot ‘Tamefuji and fight engineer Tsukuda, however, did not see the large UFO, although they did see unusual lights pacing the plane. The lights finally vanished at 6:53 p.m., and-fight 1628 landed in Anchorage without further incident. FAA officials interviewed the crew, releasing a statement to the effect that they were “normal, profes- sional, rational, (and had) no drugs or alcohol involvement.” When the story was finally leaked, both the Air Force and the FAA admitted that ground radar blips had been detected around the time of the JAL sighting. The Air Force soon dismissed them as “elec- tronic clutter.” The FAA and the military use the same long-range radar in Fairbanks, but the FAA also uses a sophisticated computer system to remove clutter from radar images. FAA ground records indicated that some- thing stayed close to the JAL 747 for 32 minutes. This radar evidence was also dismissed by the FAA as the plane's “double image.” sve IHINEEUS pes This writer decided to yo behind the headlines and - ) J, Anton Hunceus is a freelance science wriler tehe has _ frequently written for publications in North and South Strange Sighting Over Alaska Revives UFO Debate efor T isd MEF etn, ofe re Pe 74 fi Wark, Collis) dayeasAla 54he (hit Ble ease. ro RYAN be BSS PY ey yee 42 BS 9 14 Teh a3 ul —_——. a * : _ a , . py ta Senge Cony ‘ Lf . ’ . . Oo ’ ra th oon a ae: i, a a. Sed i, ” fo mm 9 + % , { f Bye nS A ; O42" re ees ed Re aette bp AM Battisti baw 2 me x ° RY ocera ger «i ? 7 ee — -* n” ee VaR a ze * f i Fa , x a ae far & ch § ry ag Aa; raw Se atts tot i, 4 HP oa r om 5, t 7 at . € dwarfed his Boeing 747. Foe WALT “Widen Ye om . cA Ga aD) FF DETAILED SKETCHES by JAL pilot Capt. Kenju Terauchi show cylindrical lights and a huge mothership that A Japan Air Lines pilot who claimed to have seen an unidentified fying object alongside his airplane last November was actually seeing an unusually bright image of the planet Jupiter and possibly Mars, an investigator said Tuesday in a dispatch by the Associated Press. Philip J. Klass told AP that astronomical calculations show that on Nov. 17, when the pilot claimed to have seen the UFO, Jupiter was extremely bright and was visible precisely where the pilot reported that he saw the UFO. Mars was just below and te the right of Jupiter, and may explain the pilot’s initial report that he saw two lights, Klass said. Klass, an editor with the magazine Aviation Week and Space Technology and a longtime investigator of claimed UFO sightings, was quoted as saying the pilot's claims that the object folowed him as he made a 360-degree turn are contradicted by what he told flight controllers at the time, John Leyden, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration in Washington, quoted from a summary of conversations between the pilot and ground control- lers in which the pilot reported losing sight of the object after completing his turn. The object reappeared a few moments later, accord- ing to the FAA summary quoted by Leyden. The pilot, Capt. Kenjyu Terauchi, was over Alaska enroute from Europe, via Iceland, to Tokyo when he claims to have sighted the object. Paul Steucke, a spokesman for the FAA in Anchorage, said that Terauchi told FAA officials in an interview that the object stayed with him as he tumed, Steucke said the FAA would be releasing the results of its own investigation in mid-February. According to Klass, who reviewed a:complete copy What Pilot Saw was Really Jupiter, Says Prober ofthe transcript, the pilot never reported seeing Jupiter or Mars, even though they were clearly visible. Klass’ report was issued by the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal in Buffalo, N.¥., an organization of scientists who investi- gate claims of UFO sightings, ESP occurrences and other so-called paranormal phenomena. Klass, who heads the organization's UFO subcommit- tee, is the author of UF Os: The Public Deceived. He has been investigating UFO sightings for more than 20 . years. “Jupiter was only 10 degrees above the horizon, making it appear to the pilot to be roughly at his own 35,000-foot altitude,” said Klass in his report. Mars was visible closer to the horizon and to the right of Jupiter, but is not as bright, the report said. is is not the first time that an experienced pilot has mistaken a bright celestial body for 4 UFO, nor will it be the last,” Klass said. A United Airlines flight and an Air Force C-130 cargo plane that were in Terauchi’s vicinity at the time of the chimed sighting were asked to look for the object, and neither reported seeing it. “I think that the Japanese pilot should have beena little more skeptical when the United airliner and the Air Foree plane reported seeing nothing,” Klass said Tuesday. Aceported radar “blip” near the Japan Air Lines plane Was a Spurious echo from the mountainous terrain under- neath the aircraft, Klass said, ‘Terauchi reported a second UFO sighting in approx- imately the same area on Jan. 11. That sighting was expluined by FDA officials as village fights bouncing off ice crystals in the atmosphere. Terauchi later conceded that that was a reasonable explanation. dmeru'd. .