ANCHORAGE, JAN. 1 — A veteran pilot whose UFO sighting was confirmed on radar screens Tuesday said the mysterious object was so enormous that it dwarfed his Japan Airlines cargo plane.
Capt. Kenju Terauchi, the pilot, also said he saw two other small unidentified objects — smaller than his cargo carrier — that did not appear on radar.
Terauchi, his copilot and flight engineer told Federal Aviation Administration investigators that they saw the lights of an unidentified object on the evening of Nov. 17.
“They were flying parallel and then suddenly approached very close,” said Terauchi, 47, who requested and received FAA permission to take whatever action was necessary to avoid the object that appeared for a time on FAA and Air Force radar and on the radar screen in the cockpit of JAL flight 1628.
The FAA confirmed on Tuesday that government radar picked up the object that Terauchi said followed his Boeing 747 cargo jet.
Terauchi, a pilot for 29 years, said he briefly glimpsed the large unknown object in silhouette. “It was a very big one — two times bigger than an aircraft carrier,” he said.
Terauchi made a drawing of how he thought the objects looked. He drew a giant walnut-shaped object, with big bulges above and below a wide flattened brim.
The captain, who is stationed in Anchorage with his family, was flying the jumbo jet from Iceland to Anchorage on a Europe-to-Japan flight when the crew encountered the object in clear weather over Alaska.
Terauchi said the three unidentified objects followed his jet for 400 miles.
“It was unbelievable,” he said, acknowledging that some of his colleagues have doubts about what the crew saw.
FAA investigators who questioned the crew in Anchorage concluded in a report that the crew was “normal, professional, rational, {and had} no drug or alcohol involvement.” The crew’s flying experience totals more than 46 years, the pilot said.
Terauchi said the crew was not frightened but wanted to avoid whatever was lit up in their flight path. “We want to escape from this.”
They followed FAA directives to drop 4,000 feet and make turns — including a 360-degree turn, but Terauchi said, “They were still following us.”
He said the evasive maneuvers were of no avail and the lights stayed close — once appearing in front of the cockpit.
FAA flight control reports indicate the object stayed with JAL Flight 1628 for at least 32 minutes. Terauchi said he thought it was longer. The flight controller directing the JAL plane reported the object on his radar was as close as five miles to the jet.
Terauchi said the objects moved quickly and stopped suddenly. He referred to the objects as “the two small ships and the mother ship.”
Terauchi said jokingly that he thought the UFOs might have followed his chartered cargo plane because “we were carrying Beaujolais, a very famous wine made in France. Maybe they want to drink it.”
