The strange story of JAL 1628

reply to post by fleabit

The captain is the only one who said something about feeling the heat as far as I know, and he might have felt it even though it didn't come from the lights but from the excitement. I've felt a flushed hot feeling in my face myself a few times when I've been excited, so I'm not calling him a liar, I believe he felt it and he probably doesn't feel he's exaggerating. Heck, he looks pretty excited just re-telling the story:
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/bc5fd7032359.jpg[/atsimg]
How much more excited would he be during the incident?

Capt Terauchi also believed Capt Mantell died in an encounter with a UFO which apparently he thought was an ET craft, and didn't seem to know it was probably just a balloon Mantell was chasing, so he definitely had some UFO beliefs and some reason to get excited about seeing one himself.

As for the variation in the light intensity, sparks, etc, I looked up the frequency of takeoffs and landings at that airport and I agree with you he saw more than the standard runway lights...he possibly also saw at least one other plane with its landing lights on as it took off and/or landed. I am not certain it's an airport, but it's an excellent match, virtually everything about the description matches. Please keep in mind that an atmospheric reflection isn't necessarily as clear as a reflection in a mirror, there is some distortion in the images, which might make it that much harder to recognize exactly what it is you're looking at, but when I compare the captain's sketches at various times to the views of the airport from various angles, I see nothing which causes me to rule out the airport as the source, and the fact that the direction of the lights changes relative to the JAL flight but it is ALWAYS in the direction of the airport is OVERWHELMING. I just can't ignore that. I went through the transcript and plotted the plane's position at various times, noted the direction of the lights reported by the crew each time, and plotted the results:


It's possible they saw something other than airport lights but if so, it's a huge coincidence that they looked so much like airport lights, and always came from the direction of a nearby airport. And you're right, there was probably other activity at that airport besides just sitting there with the lights on, they did have planes taking off and landing throughout the day and night there., and other activity on the ground, like vehicles driving around to service the plane. What he thought were sparks could have been things like the headlights of a refueling truck driving alongside the runway.

If the runway lights were directional like many airports have, that would do even more to confirm it was the airport, because he could only see the lights when he was roughly lined up with one of the two lit runways, when he wasn't lined up with either one, he didn't see the lights. It really adds up pretty well, except for the exact physics of how the lights appeared in the air, though we know mirages are possible.

And just like all the sightings of lights line up with the airport lights, all the radar reflections line up with the cloud, and the radar signature was the same color on the radar as a cloud would produce:

Early on in the flight it might have appeared the radar return and the lights were in the same general direction, but as the flight progressed, it became quite clear that they weren't in the same direction/location.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
reply to post by fleabit

 

and the radar signature was the same color on the radar as a cloud would produce:

any references please?

reply to post by Arbitrageur

Skeptical minds often engage in what I like to refer to as imaginative reinterpretation of reported facts. This is something skeptics don't like to hear because we prefer to think of ourselves as objective, but in essence when one person calls something a cloud as opposed to the observer who has described it as a flying vehicle is to admit the person saw something but to be incredulous and thus be forced to reimagine it as something else.

There's a sort of delusion in this type of reasoning. That a person who wasn't there can better construct the facts through piecemeal data without even consulting the person who made the report.

I see this as being somewhat similar to the naivete that exists in physics circles where on one hand we all clamor to the idea of Fermi's paradox, "Where are they?!" But on the other hand, when we hear people say, "I saw a flying saucer!" The reaction is, "That's impossible, the distances are too large to get here!" Is this not a contradiction? By what strange twisted logic do we agree but not?

There's a much deeper problem that undergirds this issue that skeptics and believers alike fall prey to. When these two groups come to understand this they'll see themselves and the problem as it actually is.

reply to post by mcrom901

Happy to oblige. The radar return was green like a cloud would be:

brumac.8k.com...

TERAUCHI wrote (2), " I thought it would be impossible to find anything on an aircraft radar if a large ground radar did not show anything, but I judged the distance of the object visually and it was not very far. I set the digital weather radar distance to 20 (nautical) miles, radar angle to horizon (i.e., no depression angle). There it was on the screen. A large green and round object (here he refers to the image or "blip" on the radar screen) had appeared at 7 or 8 miles (13 km to 15 km) away, where the direction of the object was.

FLIGHT engineer Tsukuba recalled seeing on the radar screen at "about 10 miles" a "green dot like, not exactly a dot. It was not a dot but stream like", i.e., elongated. He did "not think it (the radar target) was the same lights as the one (sic) I saw in front of us."

So there the flight engineer pretty much confirms what the flight data and transcript clearly show as the flight progressed, he thought the lights and the radar return were different sources, and the data suggests that he's right in that assessment.

In commenting on the radar image the captain pointed out that "normally it appears in red when an aircraft radar catches another aircraft" whereas green is usually the color of a weak weather target such as a cloud.

If a green color is a weak target such as a cloud, isn't it reasonable to think it could have been a cloud? Especially since we have the satellite image of a cloud at the spot where the radar returns reflected from?

Originally posted by Xtraeme
That a person who wasn't there can better construct the facts through piecemeal data without even consulting the person who made the report.

Actually the source I just quoted was from the person who made the report, the captain who was flying the plane. He's the one who said the radar reflection was green.

Just look at UFO sightings by pilots that turned out to be rocket launches. There's certainly evidence that explanations can be constructed afterward that may not have occurred to the pilots at the time.

Captain Terauchi didn't have the satellite imagery showing there was a cloud where his radar reflection was coming from. And since we have it now, it's certainly possible to use this information that wasn't available to the crew during the flight.

And knowing that some clouds look like this,

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/aacd7cd49322.jpg[/atsimg]
I might say that resembles a giant spaceship too if I saw it backlit in the dark where it might not be obvious it's a cloud.

reply to post by Arbitrageur

I think you misunderstood my comment. I'm not saying it isn't a compound misidentification.

However I think we begin to fool ourselves when we dismiss the fact that the Division Manager of Accidents and Investigations at the FAA at the time stated on the record that the CIA, FBI, and members of Reagan's Scientific Study team seized the data and classified the contents of the meeting. It's one too many degrees of removal to have confirmation by the ARTCC controller, who signed an affidavit, confirming radar returns in the location of the reported observations. A military ROCC controller using a height finding set confirming a primary return on the audio tapes. Then a week or two later where an official from the FAA confirmed that they "got out of it" by handing off the information to the intelligence community. To ignore all that is dangerous. Personally if I was going to trust the weather printout that we're consulting, I'd want to make sure I got the data myself from the NOAA archive not from a random forum goer.

The main point that I was trying to illustrate is basically the same concept that Sagan himself wrestled with in 'Contact.' If you remember at the end of the movie Jodie Foster, as a levelheaded cool thinker, was forced to confront her deepest held beliefs and question "Did I experience this moving profound trip to the heart of the galaxy and make first contact with another race?" She's torn realizing that as a scientist she should dismiss the experience in light of the lack of evidence ‒ but she can't do it. She can't let it go. All she can do is attempt to impart, "this is a gift..." knowing there's something more but having no way to share it with her audience.





Later we learn the recordings supported that she was gone for 18 hours in that there was exactly 18 hours of static. Conclusive? Hardly. The point is we don't have even close to all the data in this case. It's dangerous to engage in a game of trying to make firm conclusions with what little we have to work with.

My points are that either they are exaggerating greatly, and they did indeed, see a cloud and a reflection as you state, or it's not as it seems - it was something else.

First, they were a -long- way away from the airport at the first sighting. Is it even possible for them to have seen the lights in any fashion (directly or reflected) at that distance?

And all three pilots verified the sighting. The cockpit was lit up from outside - obviously reflected airport lights did not do this. They only had instrumentation lighting on. One pilot reported it was like Christmas lights. They reported flames - stopping maneuvers by the craft. Lights rotating in two directions. Not only the pilot reported this. Three people witnessed this. The co-pilot said:

The copilot, Takanori Tamefuji, compared the numerous lights or flames to "Christmas assorted" lights with a "salmon" color. He said, "I remember red or orange, and white landing light, just like a landing light. And weak green, ah, blinking. " The intensity wasn't constant but rather it pulsated: "became stronger, became weaker., became stronger, became weaker, different from strobe lights" (which have very quick flashes). The lights were "swinging" in unison as if there were "very good formation flight...close (formation)" of two aircraft side by side. He had no doubt that he was seeing some sort of aerial object or objects just ahead and to the left of the airplane. He compared the clarity of the lights to seeing "night flight head-on traffic" at which time it is only possible to see the lights on the approaching aircraft and "we can not see the total shape."

Honestly.. you think this is airport lights still 20 + minutes away?

The lights you describe to be airport lights more thoroughly described:

The vertical lines represent boundaries enclosing a dark center of each object. The horizontal lines of circles represent flame colored or yellowish "exhausts" flaring outward, left and right, from the dark center. There are only four "sections" of flames shown here, but the captain's sketch shows several more sections which made up one "craft.". There were two totally separate sets of the "exhaust" flame groups, i.e., two totally separate "crafts." (This illustration is based on the sketch made by the captain about two hours after the event and again a month and a half after the event). It was the captain's impression that the two "aircrafts" he had seen for the first time to the left only minutes before had suddenly jumped in from of his plane. In his written testimony Terauchi speculated that the "spaceships" fired jets to "kill the inertia (actually momentum!) of their high speed maneuver." After this maneuver from the left of the plane to the front, "the ships appeared as if they were stopped in one place in front of us." At this time one "ship" was above the other. "Then three to seven seconds later a fire like from jet engines stopped and became a small circle of lights as they began to fly level flight at the same speed as we were, showing numerous numbers of exhaust pipes. However the center area of the ship(s) where below an engine might be was invisible. (From) the middle of the body of a ship sparked an occasionally (sic) stream of lights, like a charcoal fire, from right to left and from left to right. Its shape was square, flying 500 feet to 1,000 feet in front of us, very slightly higher in altitude than us. Its size was about the same size ad the body of a DC-8 jet, and with numerous exhaust pipes."

So.. again.. either they were exaggerating (i.e. lying) extensively, or these were not runway lights. How anyone could mistake their description as runway lights baffles me. I don't care how excited they were. The pilot had over 10,000 hours of flight experience, and was a fighter pilot too boot. I would find it very difficult to believe that two pilots and a flight engineer would all so horribly misjudge airport lights (which I don't think they could even see from the first sighting), with the combined experience they had.

My bigger suspicion was that the pilot had twice previously reported UFOs, including one "mothership" sighting, which he didn't quite get what it was, so ignored it. However, this was the first sighting with multiple witnesses. I suppose they could have been "in on it," but honestly.. would three professionals risk their professional careers on such a tale?

Finally, I was under the impression from the reports, that the object disappeared from both the radar in the plane, and from the airport. If this was a cloud.. did it honestly disperse that quickly? That also seems unlikely. And although most reports don't mention it, he did say he saw starts, sunset light, city lights, etc. He was aware of the surroundings.. and I would hope someone with 10k flight hours could tell the difference between a reflection, and a flame-belching UFO with exhaust ports, along with his co-pilot and engineer.

Originally posted by Xtraeme
However I think we begin to fool ourselves when we dismiss the fact that the Division Manager of Accidents and Investigations at the FAA at the time stated on the record that the CIA, FBI, and members of Reagan's Scientific Study team seized the data and classified the contents of the meeting. It's one too many degrees of removal to have confirmation by the ARTCC controller, who signed an affidavit, confirming radar returns in the location of the reported observations. A military ROCC controller using a height finding set confirming a primary return on the audio tapes. Then a week or two later where an official from the FAA confirmed that they "got out of it" by handing off the information to the intelligence community. To ignore all that is dangerous. Personally if I was going to trust the weather printout that we're consulting, I'd want to make sure I got the data myself from the NOAA archive not from a random forum goer.

Are you talking about Callahan? I think Callahan and you are victims of a big misunderstanding.

Apparently what happened is Callahan thought Bruce Maccabee was a CIA guy and Maccabee apparently did have some conversation with Callahan about delaying dissemination of information, but Maccabee was only a contractor, not a CIA guy like Callahan thought, and in fact Maccabee published his findings which is the source for my research. Callahan did not respond to an inquiry to confirm that Maccabee was indeed the guy he thought was CIA. If you think there was some kind of cover-up, I'd suggest you e-mail Brice Maccabee and ask him if he was at the meeting that Callahan talked about, and if anything was said about covering things up. I think what you'll find is that Maccabee was at the same meeting, and did discuss delaying the release of information with Callahan, but not a complete coverup.

Not only did Maccabee publish what he found, but the FAA sold document packages that contained most of the stuff he was given by the CIA (interviews of the crew and radar operators, maps, radar data printout, etc.). This is not the profile of something that's being kept secret like people keep claiming.

As for the ground controller, he said they NEVER had a consistent return on the ground radar, EVER. That tells me it wasn't a solid object, since they couldn't track it. He probably would have disregarded his returns had Capt Terauchi not asked if he saw anything.

Not only that, the AARTC return was behind the plane, and both the lights and the planes radar return were in front of the plane:

brumac.8k.com...

5:24:50 AARTCC JAL1628, do you still have, uh, visual contact with the, ah, traffic?
5:24:53 JAL1628 Affirmative. Also, (4) we (have) radar contact, ah...(unintelligible; broken
transmission).
5:25:02 AARTCC JAL1628 heavy, roger, sir. I'm picking up a hit on the radar approximately
five miles in trail of your six o'clock position (i.e., behind the plane). Do you concur?
(Note: this was probably a silly question to ask since the crew could not see behind the plane.
However, it is the first indication that the Elmendorf radar may have detected something other
than the plane.)
5:25:12 JAL1628 Ah, negative, ah, , ah, same level. Over.

The planes return was at 11 o'clock at eight miles versus the AARTCC return at 6 o'clock at five miles?? That's not even remotely close!! And the AARTCC had nothing in the same position as the captain. Do you have a link to his signed affidavit ?

AT 5:51:32, after the planes had passed one another, the UA plane reported being able to see the JAL plane silhouetted against the sky. The UA captain could see the contrail as well as the jet but nothing else. The controller responded, “We got just a few primary hits on the target and then, ah, we really haven’t got a good track on him, ever, “ meaning that the radar never showed a continuous track (a continuous series of “blips”) of primary-only radar targets associated with the unusual “traffic.”...

"we really haven’t got a good track on him, ever“, is that what he says in his affidavit?

I think the ROCC controller had some returns in the same location as the plane's radar return which painted green like a cloud, but again I didn't see any evidence either radar return was from anything other than cloud. Older ATC radars can paint clouds, whereas more modern air traffic control radars are less prone to do so.

Originally posted by fleabit
And all three pilots verified the sighting. The cockpit was lit up from outside - obviously reflected airport lights did not do this. They only had instrumentation lighting on.

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean by this at all. Are you talking about lighting in the cockpit of the 747 or the UFO? And please explain how cockpit lighting is relevant to airport lights.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
reply to post by mcrom901

 

Happy to oblige. The radar return was green like a cloud would be:

brumac.8k.com...

TERAUCHI wrote (2), " I thought it would be impossible to find anything on an aircraft radar if a large ground radar did not show anything, but I judged the distance of the object visually and it was not very far. I set the digital weather radar distance to 20 (nautical) miles, radar angle to horizon (i.e., no depression angle). There it was on the screen. A large green and round object (here he refers to the image or "blip" on the radar screen) had appeared at 7 or 8 miles (13 km to 15 km) away, where the direction of the object was.

FLIGHT engineer Tsukuba recalled seeing on the radar screen at "about 10 miles" a "green dot like, not exactly a dot. It was not a dot but stream like", i.e., elongated. He did "not think it (the radar target) was the same lights as the one (sic) I saw in front of us."

So there the flight engineer pretty much confirms what the flight data and transcript clearly show as the flight progressed, he thought the lights and the radar return were different sources, and the data suggests that he's right in that assessment.

thanks for those details... i was under the assumption that you were referring to the actual 'radar' contact by the atc... in any case, please note that these were separate incidents and that your a/m quote is in regards to the 'digital weather radar system' on board jal....

en.wikipedia.org...

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

In commenting on the radar image the captain pointed out that "normally it appears in red when an aircraft radar catches another aircraft" whereas green is usually the color of a weak weather target such as a cloud.

If a green color is a weak target such as a cloud, isn't it reasonable to think it could have been a cloud? Especially since we have the satellite image of a cloud at the spot where the radar returns reflected from?

it could have been, but in what context? are you ignoring the tracking data by the atc and as to what was reported during the whole duration?

Originally posted by mcrom901
it could have been, but in what context? are you ignoring the tracking data by the atc and as to what was reported during the whole duration?

ATC never got a good track, right?

And I've addressed everything reported during the whole duration, I think, so I certainly haven't ignored any of it.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
Are you talking about Callahan?

The one and only.

And the AARTCC had nothing in the same position as the captain. Do you have a link to his signed affidavit?

www.ufoevidence.org...

The key takeaways obviously being,

ROCC did have primary target in the same position JL1628 reported.

That's using a height finding set. Coupled with the Anchorage ARTCC set,

Several times I had single primary returns where JL1628 reported.

Apparently what happened is Callahan thought Bruce Maccabee was a CIA guy and Maccabee apparently did have some conversation with Callahan about delaying dissemination of information, but Maccabee was only a contractor, not a CIA guy like Callahan thought, and in fact Maccabee published his findings which is the source for my research. Callahan did not respond to an inquiry to confirm that Maccabee was indeed the guy he thought was CIA. If you think there was some kind of cover-up, I'd suggest you e-mail Brice Maccabee and ask him if he was at the meeting that Callahan talked about, and if anything was said about covering things up. I think what you'll find is that Maccabee was at the same meeting, and did discuss delaying the release of information with Callahan, but not a complete coverup.

That's an interesting angle, I've never heard about that. I'll shoot Bruce an email. I'd be curious what he'd have to say. However I have a hard time translating what you're describing here to this (@2:22) ...



There's almost zero parity between what you're describing and the scenario given in this interview.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
Do you have a link to his signed affidavit ?

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

Originally posted by mcrom901
it could have been, but in what context? are you ignoring the tracking data by the atc and as to what was reported during the whole duration?

ATC never got a good track, right?

so you think that gives us the right to dismiss off evidence

reply to post by Xtraeme


wish i knew you were tracking that affidavit down...

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
reply to post by mcrom901

 

If a green color is a weak target such as a cloud, isn't it reasonable to think it could have been a cloud?

check out the following interview, very interesting.... specially re plasma radar tracks...

www.unexplained-mysteries.com...

Originally posted by Xtraeme
That's an interesting angle, I've never heard about that. I'll shoot Bruce an email. I'd be curious what he'd have to say. However I have a hard time translating what you're describing here to this (@2:22) ...

There's almost zero parity between what you're describing and the scenario given in this interview.

There's also zero parity between that interview and the fact that they'd sell the data to anybody with $100, so even without Maccabees confirmation, the interview is not very consistent with selling the data that they were supposedly keeping secret.

Unfortunately I don't think we'll get any clarification from Callahan, but Maccabee was at the same meeting and I think he will be willing to clarify if they were all sworn to secrecy as Callahan claims (meaning I don't think he will confirm that since he published his findings). Maccabbee will definitely verify they were selling the data, so it wasn't secret, though Maccabee may have discussed delaying the release of the data until the investigation was complete or something like that.

And Callahan also confirms in that interview the ground radar returns were all over the place, which he apparently attributes to high velocity. I think there are other more logical interpretations, like various spurious returns in various locations. If they had good solid tracking between the locations I might be inclined to believe his high velocity claim, but lacking that, it's not a particularly well-founded claim.

Originally posted by mcrom901

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
ATC never got a good track, right?

so you think that gives us the right to dismiss off evidence

dismiss? No.

Properly interpret? Yes.

Proper interpretation to me is that if you don't have a good track, it's probably not an aircraft, and definitely not a gigantic one.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

Originally posted by mcrom901

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
ATC never got a good track, right?

so you think that gives us the right to dismiss off evidence

dismiss? No.

Properly interpret? Yes.

Proper interpretation to me is that if you don't have a good track, it's probably not an aircraft, and definitely not a gigantic one.

but that's what the atc had claimed i.e. "another aircraft"....

"The data derived from the JAL-1628 flight is representative of the data from another aircraft in the same general area and is considered normal."

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
There's also zero parity between that interview and the fact that they'd sell the data to anybody with $100, so even without Maccabees confirmation, the interview is not very consistent with selling the data that they were supposedly keeping secret.

Perhaps. Do you have a web address, or perhaps contact information to get a docket of all the information? I'd like to confirm for myself that this is actually the case.

Unfortunately I don't think we'll get any clarification from Callahan, but Maccabee was at the same meeting and I think he will be willing to clarify if they were all sworn to secrecy as Callahan claims (meaning I don't think he will confirm that since he published his findings). Maccabbee will definitely verify they were selling the data, so it wasn't secret, though Maccabee may have discussed delaying the release of the data until the investigation was complete or something like that.

I have a hard time accepting that a person who was in senior role at the FAA would mistake 3 FBI agents, 3 CIA agents, and 3 members of Reagan's scientific study team with a single ufologist. Especially when the meeting was put together at the behest of the FAA administrator Admiral Engen. I suppose it's possible, but it sounds pretty fishy on the face of it.

Originally posted by Xtraeme
Perhaps. Do you have a web address, or perhaps contact information to get a docket of all the information? I'd like to confirm for myself that this is actually the case.

Here's the post from Bruce Maccabee talking about the package, though I need to correct the price: www.physicsforums.com...

I said $100, which is what I remembered, but I just re-read that and actually it says "over $100" I guess I missed the "over" before. that's all the information I have on it, though it does have Maccabee's e-mail so if you plan to contact him you might ask him about that...my guess is if you want any of that now, you'd probably have to work out something with Maccabee who probably still has it, since I doubt they still sell the package, but I haven't really investigated that.

I have a hard time accepting that a person who was in senior role at the FAA would mistake 3 FBI agents, 3 CIA agents, and 3 members of Reagan's scientific study team with a single ufologist.

I didn't say that's the mistake he made, that may very well have been the composition of the meeting so I have no dispute with the claim about who was in attendance at the main meeting.

Originally posted by mcrom901
but that's what the atc had claimed i.e. "another aircraft"....

"The data derived from the JAL-1628 flight is representative of the data from another aircraft in the same general area and is considered normal."

No I think you may be misunderstanding that quote, though I admit the quote could be a lot more clear, as it's not worded very well. Of course there were other aircraft in the same general area, they asked the nearby UA flight to look for the UFO too and the UA flight saw the JAL flight but no sign of any UFO.