JAL 1986

Opening

On 17 November 1986 Japan Air Lines cargo flight 1628, a Boeing 747, was inbound to Anchorage from the polar route. Captain Kenju Terauchi reported two small lighted objects and then a much larger walnut-shaped mass off the left side. Copilot and flight engineer saw lights. Anchorage Center and military radar were asked to look. Some returns appeared. A United jet sent toward the path saw the 747 and nothing else.

The FAA opened a file, recorded the crew, printed radar, and later said it could not confirm an object. Specialists at the Technical Center read a nearby target as a split return from the 747 itself. Terauchi drew a carrier-scale craft and said as much on the record. JAL moved him off the line after he talked to the press.

The spine of the file is a three-man cockpit and a radar argument that never agreed on the second blip. JAL 1628 is a paced cargo ship with paper. It is not a second hull on the ramp at Anchorage.

Timeline

17 November 1986, late afternoon Alaska time. JAL 1628 is east of the city lights, high, cargo of wine for Tokyo via Anchorage. Terauchi sees coloured lights that are not a conventional beacon pattern. Two smaller objects play near the jet, then a pale large mass that he later calls twice an aircraft carrier.

He asks Anchorage for traffic. Controllers look. Elmendorf gets a primary surge in some of the paper. Onboard colour radar, in Terauchi's account, holds a target off the nose-left at miles. He is offered vectors. The United aircraft that looks sees only the 747.

18:20. 1628 lands at Anchorage without damage. FAA security and flight standards take statements that night. Drawings go into the packet. In December and January the region releases transcripts and plots. By March 1987 the public line is: crew descriptions accepted, object not confirmed, split return preferred for the extra target.

Key figures

Kenju Terauchi is the reporting captain and the man who names the walnut. Twenty-nine years flying. His written statement and sketch are the cockpit's main exhibit. The later press interviews cost him the seat. That cost is part of the file.

The copilot and flight engineer confirm lights. They do not all confirm the carrier outline. Three men in one dark window is still one cockpit.

Anchorage controllers and the Elmendorf radar watch are the ground layer. Their words in the transcript are cautious. Paul Steucke at FAA public affairs is the man who has to explain a file that will not confirm.

The United crew sent to look are the negative visual. They matter. A second jet that sees nothing is not nothing. It is a limit on how large and how close the walnut can have been in that minute.

Physical and documentary trail

On the paper, 17 November 1986 gives you four hard objects and no second aircraft on the ramp.

One: the crew statements and Terauchi's drawing of a large walnut-shaped mass, taken the same night at Anchorage.

Two: the ATC voice tape between 1628 and Anchorage, including the request for traffic and the lack of a comfortable identification.

Three: radar plots and the later Technical Center reading that a nearby target was a split return from the 747. Elmendorf's primary surge sits in the same stack as that reading and does not erase it.

Four: the FAA regional release of 1986-87. FAA Alaskan Region packet on Japan Air Lines flight 1628, November 1986-March 1987, is the official tray: transcripts, interviews, plots, and the sentence that the agency could not confirm the event.

There is no photograph from the cockpit window. There is no damage. There is no second crew that saw the walnut.

It was a very big one, two times bigger than an aircraft carrier.

Competing explanations

Unknown large craft pacing a 747. This is Terauchi's reading. Lights, onboard radar, and some ground returns support a presence. The United visual and the split-return study cut against a carrier-scale hull at close range.

Split target and planets or ice-crystal lights. This is the FAA comfort. It can eat the extra blip. It has more trouble with three crewmen watching coloured lights move for tens of minutes.

Secret aircraft. Possible in 1986 airspace. Not shown. A test that paints a cargo jet for half an hour and then leaves no complaint in another log is a large claim.

Hybrid caution. The crew saw lights. Radar may have seen the 747 twice. Those two facts can both be true.

Later life of the case

Terauchi's grounding, John Callahan's later FAA-anecdote circuit, and documentary treatments keep 1628 famous. I keep the later war stories on the later-life shelf. The same-night statements and the 1987 FAA packet stay first.

Finding

Captain Terauchi and his crew watched lighted objects pace a cargo 747 over Alaska, and Terauchi put a walnut the size of a carrier on the left side of the aircraft. They told FAA the same night. A United jet sent to look saw the 747 and nothing else. Believe the cockpit for the lights. Three men in a dark window are not a press stunt.

What still will not resolve: radar that everyone will accept as a second target, or a photograph from the window. The split-return reading can eat a blip. It cannot take the coloured lights out of three crewmen's mouths. One clear cockpit frame would finish the argument the Technical Center left open.