Alaska Sightings
March 1949 Alaska
Mr. Mikel Conrad filmed 90ft of motion picture footage of UFOs seen flying about in the clear Alaskan sky. No other details are available. The source clipping was not identified.
1952
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A mysterious unidentified flying object with flashing white and yellow strobe lights followed a Japan Air Lines cargo jet across the Arctic Circle, the crew says.The three-man crew radioed air traffic controllers in Anchorage that a huge UFOwas flying "in formation" with them and the Air Force briefly confirmed andobject near the plane, said Federal Aviation Administration spokesman PaulSteucke.He said the FAA in Anchorage and Fairbanks did not pick up the object. Theincident occurred Nov.17 but was not made public earlier.Flight 1628 had left Reykjavik, Iceland, flying over the North Pole to Tokyowith a stop in Anchorage. When it landed at Anchorage, FAA security manager JimDerry interviewed the pilot, Co-pilot and flight engineer. When the report wasmade to the Air Route Traffic Control Center at 6:19 p.m., Steucke saidcontrollers tried to find the object on radar but "were unable to comfirm asecond target with our equipment."At 6:26 p.m. Steucke said the Air Force told the FAA it "saw a second target(object) 8 miles away (from the JAL jet) but they contacted us a mimute laterand said they were no longer receiving any radar return (of a second object)."Steucke added, "At 6:32 the JAL pilot requested and received permission for adescent from 35,000 feet to 31,000." Air controllers asked if the lights werestill there, and were told, "It is descending in formation." At 6:39 p.m.,20minutes after the lights first reported, the JAL crew said it no longer saw thelights.At 6:45 p.m. Fairbanks controllers authrized a United Airlines northbound jet to make a 10 degree turn to better view the JAL plane and asked the United crew if it saw anything besides the Boeing 747. It did not. Nor did the JAL crew seethe lights again.
FAA says UFO on radar screen was justa double image of jet United Press International ANCHORAGE - Federal investigators saya review of radar tapes failed to show a UFO shadowing a Japan Air Lines cargo jet, contradicting reports made by the crew and the air-traffic controller who handled the plane. The Federal Aviation Administration's examination of the tapes shows what appears to be a second object near JAL Flight 1628 on Nov. 17, but invesitgators now think it is a double image from the Boeing 747, FAA spokes-man Paul Steucke said yesterday. On Dec. 29 the FAA releaed details of the UFO sighting, revealing the flight controller handling the jet saw an object on radar five miles from the plane. The Anchorage Air Route Traffice Control Center directed the crew to take evasive maneuvers, including a 4,000-foot drop and a 360 degree turn. Co-pilot Takanori Tamefuji, 39, said yesterday he did not know why the FAA first confirmed a nearby object and now dismisses it as an image of the 747. In his second interview with the FAA Tuesday, Tamefuji reiterated that he saw lights, and Steucke said, "The co-pilot's testimony supported the pilot's." Although the FAA is satisfied with the double-image explanation, the inquiry is continuing with interviews of the crew and a review of data, Steucke said. Steucke said the pilot, co-pilot and flight engineer have told the same story: Blinking yellow, amber and green lights appeared too close to their plane for comfort. The FAA says the controller apparently misinterpreted what he saw on his screen. But Steucke defended the controller's response, saying, "He had a pilot tell him he was seeing something right there.This is not something where he can take a risk even if it is a double image." The radar image seen in the JAL cockpit and by the controller also appeared intermittently on AirForce radar. Air Force spokesmen dismissed it as "random clutter."
SPECIAL RELEASE: 2nd Alaska UFO Sighting ParaNet ALPHA and CUFON 01/12 Another Japanese Airlines crew has reported seeing an Unidentified Flying Object ( UFO ) over Alaska, according to the FAA. In a recorded announcement, Paul Steucke, Senior Federal Aviation Administrator for the Alaska District, said that on January 11th at approximately 7:35 AM, Capt. Kinju Teryaki, piloting a JAL 747 cargo plane from Europe to Anchorage, reported to the FAA Air Route Traffic Control Certer (ARTCC) that he saw irregular lights that "looked like a spaceship".The lights were, he said, "amber and white, and travelled from in front of him to below him, and disappeared behind him. "The sighting was in two segments, the first for about 20 minutes, and the second occured a little later for approximately 10 minutes. Unlike the November 17th sighting reported by another JAL cargo jet, there was no radar contact by either ground orair-based facilities, "Steucke said". The FAA began interviewing both the captain and co-pilot upon their landing at Anchorage, he said. Steucke made the recording as an alternative to answering an unmanageable volume of phone calls, whichhave been pouring into the Alaska FAA district since the November 17th sighting was made public on January 1st. According to Steucke, the data from that sighting, voice recorder transcripts, radar tapes and interviews, are being sent to the FAA headquarters in Washington DC as are the data from the January 11th sighting. "The Federal Aviation Administration is not in the business of looking for or identifying UFO's", he said. "We are involved in investigating these reports because the lights violated our federal regulations, as humorousas that may sound."
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- The Federal Aviation Administration says it cannot explain strange flashing lights that spooked the crew members of a Japan Air Lines 747 cargo plane as it flew over northern Alaska last month.
"We are not investigating as there is nothing to investigate," Paul Steucke, FAA spokesman in Anchorage, said Tuesday.
He said the military has been unable -- or unwilling -- to provide any information to explain the incident. "They're saying nothing," Steucke said. The incident began at 6:19 p.m. on Nov. 17 as the JAL plane was headed for Anchorage on a flight from Europe, via Iceland, on its way to Tokyo. As the aircraft entered U.S. airspace at the junction of the Canadian border and the Beaufort Sea, the pilot reported seeing unusual white and yellow flashing lights.
The lights were approximately eight miles away, at the same altitude of 35,000 feet and traveling at the same speed and in the same direction as the JAL plane, the pilot reported.
Steucke said the pilot called the air traffic control center, and asked if there was any reported traffic in the vicinity. A controller replied that there was no known traffic in the area, but that he had an unidentified blip on his radar. Steucke said a subsequent review of the radar tapes did not reveal any such object, but that the controller insisted it wasthere.
As the lights kept pace with the 747, the pilot requested permission to change altitude. As he descended to 31,000 feet, the lights followed "in formation," Steucke said.
The pilot then requested permission to make a 360-degree turn to see if the lights would follow. Upon completing the maneuver, the pilot reported losing contact with the lights.
Steucke said radar operators in Fairbanks picked up nothing on their screens in the vicinity of the JAL flight. And he said a United Airlines flight headed toward Fairbanks spotted the JAL plane, but saw nothing else in the sky nearby.
SUBJECT: CONFERENCE ON JAL UFO SIGHTING FILE: UFO794
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (UPI) -- An extensive investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration was "unable to support" the Nov. 17 sighting by Japanese flyers of UFOs near their plane, but no evidence was found to contradict the report.
The final FAA report on the incident also includes transcripts of the pilot's statement about the sighting saying the huge objects with blinking lights vanished into the moonlight when a second plane arrived in the area.
"The FAA does not have enough material to say something was there," FAA spokesman Paul Stucke said. "We are accepting the description of the crew but are unable to support what they saw."
The FAA report, made public Thursday, included radar tapes and transcripts of interviews with the crew of the Japanese commercial jet and air traffic controllers.
No evidence was found to contradict the crew, but the agency did say an unexplained radar image seen by three controllers that seemed to confirm the sighting was actually a split image of the Japan Air Lines cargo plane.
The UFOs were spotted by the JAL crew when they entered Alaskan air space on a flight that began in Iceland. Crew members saw two belts of lights three miles ahead that hovered almost stationary, then shifted from side-to-side and rapidly pulsed across the sky.
"... Most unexpectedly two space ships stopped in front of our face, shooting off lights," said pilot Kenju Terauchi. "The inside cockpit shined brightly and I felt warm in the face."
Later, above Fairbanks, Terauchi saw "a silhouette of a gigantic spaceship" and obtained controllers' permission to make a series of turns to "run away quickly." He said the object stayed with the aircraft.
Controllers directed a United Airlines plane to intersect the aircraft path, but Terauchi said, "When the United plane came by our side, the spaceship disappeared suddenly and there was nothing but the light of the moon."
It was the third UFO sighting of Terauchi's 29-year career as a pilot.
Copilot Takanori Tamefuja and engineer Woshio Tsukupa said the November UFO sighting was their first.
Tsukupa saw white and amber colored lights that glowed with a strange intensity "that I cannot describe ... not even in Japanese."
Tamefuji saw the first series of lights but could not make out the UFO over Fairbanks because it was on the captain's side of the cockpit. However, he said an object showed on the plane's radar.
The FAA also released a report of a UFO sighting Jan. 29 picked up on radar by the crew of an Alaska Airlines passenger plane over McGrath.
The crew, flying at 35,000 feet, reported a radar target moving in front of the plane at 300 miles a minute but quickly lost track of it.
The agency could not confirm that radar sighting because it did not have ground radar in the area.
Alaska National Guard officials in Anchorage Thursday reported that guardmen living in Western Alaska made reports of a half-dozen sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects complete with colored lights and spewing smoke. Most of the sightings were made a few minutes before midnight on Tuesday. Of the six sightings, one was dismessed as a Soviet helicopter operating off Big Diomede Island in the Bering Strait, according to Lt.Mike Haller, information officer for the guard.
One of the other sightings from Gambell on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea - could describe an Air Force AWACS radar surveillance aircraft, Haller said. A guard member, relaying a report from another villager, said an aircraft appeared west of Gambell at about 11:55 p.m. The object had a black, round nose, he said, with an object on top of the fuselage.
An AWACS aircrft carries a disk-shaped radar dome on top of the fuselage. But the Air Force, which operates two AWACS in Alaska, said neither plane was in the air that night. Staff Sgt. Frank Singleton said the planes were flying only day missions. Other descriptions relayed to Guard officials consistently described bright lights and clouds around the object, haller said. From Elim, on Norton sound, a villager desribed an object with "very bright aqua and blue-green lights" about the size of two football fields with egg-shaped clouds aroundit. The night sky was clear throughout the region. The sighting took place at 11:56 p.m. with the object spotted about 5 miles north of Elim. Three separate groups of villagers saw it traveling to the southwest, haller said. In Savoonga, a Guard member received a call from a neighbor at 11:50 p.m. He estimated an object larger then a jet was flying at 30,000 feet with two bright lights and smoke moving from front to rear. In Tununak, about 125 miles west of Bethel on Nelson Island, a Guard member described the object as a bright white light, such as an aircraft landing light as seen through fog. The sky was clear, however . The object was traveling from west to east over the Island and was estimated to be flying at 30,000 to 40,000 feet.
The reports follow two visual sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects by the captain of a Japan Air Lines aircraft flying over Interior Alaska.