The 1986 JAL Cargo Flight 1628 Incident

• ✈️ In November 1986, a three-man crew of Japan Airlines cargo flight 1628 reported seeing strange lights and a "mothership" over Alaska while flying from Paris to Tokyo with a layover in Anchorage.
• 💡 Captain Kenju Terauchi initially observed two objects below and to the left of their Boeing 747 at 35,000 feet, believing them to be military aircraft.
• 🚀 These objects, described as "belts of light," maintained pace with the plane for seven minutes, then performed impossible maneuvers, speeding up, stopping, and changing course rapidly, defying gravity.
• 🔥 The cockpit was illuminated and filled with heat, and Terauchi saw amber-like flames from multiple exhaust ports on the objects.

Radar Anomalies and Mothership Sighting

• 📡 Anchorage Air Traffic Control (ATC) initially saw nothing on radar but later reported intermittently picking up an aircraft nearby, then a "surge primary return" five miles behind JAL 1628.
• 🌌 After the initial two lights disappeared, Terauchi spotted a much larger object trailing them, which he described as a "mothership" twice the size of an aircraft carrier, surrounded by blue light.
• 🖼️ Pilot sketches depicted the smaller objects as cylindrical with exhaust ports and the mothership as a walnut-shaped or disc-like craft with a central band and pale white lights.
• 🚫 Terauchi declined ATC's offer to scramble military jets, recalling the Mantel incident where a pilot died investigating a UFO in 1948.

Investigation and Official Findings

• 🕵️ The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) immediately investigated, interviewing the crew. Flight engineer Tsukuba only reported seeing lights, not objects.
• 📰 Captain Terauchi was demoted to a desk job by Japan Airlines for speaking to the press about the incident, though he was later reinstated.
• 📄 In March 1987, the FAA concluded they had "not enough material to confirm that something was there," despite over 1500 pages of related documents being publicly available via FOIA requests.

Competing Theories and Explanations

• ✈️ One theory suggests the objects were B2 Spirit bombers undergoing secret test flights, given the Cold War era and military bases near the flight path in Alaska.
• 🔭 Skeptic Philip J. Klass proposed an astronomical phenomenon, suggesting the crew saw Jupiter and Mars, with moonlight reflecting on icy clouds, though this doesn't fully explain radar blips or impossible maneuvers.
• 👽 Many consider the JAL 1628 incident one of the most compelling UFO cases, with Terauchi, an experienced pilot, firmly believing he saw an extraterrestrial craft.
• ⚠️ Other theories include radar glitches (a "split radar image") or the possibility of a hoax/exaggeration, as Terauchi was known as a "UFO repeater" and other crew members were less certain about "objects."