733667-002-002-0009

FOIA RELEASE

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veered off to follow the JAL flight path at a lower altitude. Just before the two planes passed one another, the white light disappeared. “It was like a dream. Unbelivable," said Terauchi. Terauchi postulates that whatever he saw was friendly. “I can't understand the technology, but it was not dangerous. It was completely controlled." If he sees the objects again, he's ready to try communicating. Perhaps four blinks of the wing lights, then two more. In Morse Code, he says, that's "HI." CONTROLLER SAYS UNKNOWN IMAGE WAS TRACKED ON RADAR--Three air traffic controllers tracked on radar an image that seemed to be following the November 17th flight of a Japanese Air Lines cargo plane, according to one of the controllers who helped monitor the radar. The captain of the JAL plane reported that an unidentified flying object was tailing his aircraft at the same location as the radar image. All three of us thought there was a track,™ said Sam Rich, a controller who has worked for the Federal Aviation Administration for more than a decade. A track is what air traffic. controllers call the radar image of an aircraft. Rich said he was on duty for the half-hour during which the JAL plane reported spotting the UFO. Rich said the pilot sounded shaken. “He was concerned. There was a quiver in his voice." Rich said the controllers immediately turned down their radar range to small-scale that would better define the air space around the JAL plane. "There did appear to be a track near the plane about where he (the pilot) said there was. So we kept looking.” The track was not real strong, Rich said, but neither he nor any of his colleagues then thought it might be a split image. After spotting the track, Rich said he called the Military Regional Operations Control Center. “They informed me that they had the same track. Another controller told the pilot to make a series of turns and a descent in an effort to shake the UFO. Finally, as the plane headed south from Fairbanks, the controllers lost track of the UFO. The FAA launched a major review of the radar tapes and concluded that the track was a split or double- image of the JAL plane. Rich confirmed that double images often occur on the FAA radar screen, which relies on the computer-generated data. But the plane didn't fly through the areas where the split images normally occur. The JAL pilot isn't the first pilot to report strange things in that northern corridor. During the past decade, there's been about a half dozen reports of unidentified lights from civilian and military pilota. “It's pretty real to them (the pilots),® Rich said. AVIATION WRITER SAYS ALASKA UFO PROBABLY PLANET JUPITER--The three-man crew of the JAL airliner who observed a huge UFO over Alaska on November 17, 1986, probably observed nothing more than the planet Jupiter, according to Phillip Klass, an aviation writer. According to Klass--who was described as an "expert" and "professional investigator"--the very bright planet was only 10 degrees above the horizon making it appear to the pilot to be at roughly his own altitude of 35,000 feet. (EDITORS NOTE: According to the astronomy department at the University of Washington, Seattle, the planet Jupiter was 20-degrees above the southern horizon, not 10-degrees. One would have to be very desperate to explain away this UFO incident with the explanation that the crew observed the planet Jupiter. To the crew, Jupiter would appear as a distant white light, not as a walnut-shaped object the size of two aircraft carriers. ) EX-PROFESSOR THEORIZES ALIEN BEINGS--Aliens from distant worlds may be watching Earth and making unofficial contacts with selected humans, says a recently retired scientist at Oregon State University. His theory is that advanced space beings may have adopted an embargo on official contact with earthlings, wishing to avoid the chaos that could sweep the planet if their presence were suddenly revealed. Instead, they have adopted a "leaky embargo” policy that allows contact only with citizens whose stories are unlikely to be credible to scientists and the government, said the scientist James W. Deardorff, 58, professor emeritus of atmospheric sciences. "They just want to let us know who are prepared to accept it in their minds that there are other beings,” Deardorff said. “They may want to slowly prepare us for the shock that could come later when they reveal themselves." Deardorff who retired in September, 1986, has been described by colleagues as one of the most illustrious members of OSUs atmospheric sciences department. His research on atmospheric turbulence and boundary-layer effects earned him the field's highest honors, including the 1978 Rossby gold medal of the American Meteorological Society. Yet the lure of extraterrestrial mysteries (2)

Metadata

Agency
Classification
UNKNOWN
Department
National Archives and Records Administration
Confidence1
Credibility1

NARA Source

NAID
733667
File
733667-002-002-0009.jpg
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image/jpeg

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