Japanese Pilot Saw a Giant Mothership UFO and Was Fired After Speaking to the Press
On November 17, 1986, pilot Kenju Terauchi was flying a Japanese cargo Boeing 747 flight 1628 of Japan Air Lines. While flying over Alaska, he saw two glowing UFOs that began to follow his aircraft. These objects were visible both visually and on the onboard radar.
The UFOs, glowing brightly in yellow and white, flew so close to the plane at one point that the cockpit was lit up as if it were daytime. Terauchi contacted local air traffic controllers in Anchorage. By that time, the two glowing objects had moved away, and the pilot noticed another UFO nearby. This one had a greenish hue and was much larger than the Boeing.
The object was almost round and resembled a walnut in shape. Terauchi later drew it from memory several times. It was estimated to be nearly 1 km in length.
“We see flickering lights and a large dark object… directly in front of us, five miles away… It looks like a spaceship,” Terauchi told the controller.
The air traffic controller also detected the unidentified flying object on radar, located about five miles behind the Boeing at the 6 o’clock position. The controller contacted NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) to verify if there were any military aircraft from Canada or the USA in the area. They confirmed there were none.
The controller advised Terauchi to try to move away from the UFO. The pilot descended 1500 meters, and after that, all UFOs mysteriously disappeared. Other pilots passing through the same area later did not see anything unusual.
“Flight JL1628, a cargo Boeing 747, encountered two spaceships and a mothership approximately 50 minutes into the flight over Alaska. There was no danger, but it raised many questions that humanity cannot yet answer,” Terauchi wrote in his report to the FAA.
Terauchi spoke not only to FAA officials but also to two journalists from Kyodo News.
“This thing flew as if gravity didn’t exist. It accelerated, stopped, then flew at our speed in our direction, making it seem like it was standing still,” the pilot told the reporters.
Authorities were not pleased that Terauchi spoke to the press and soon removed him from his pilot duties, reassigning him to an administrative role. Although his story was confirmed by the Anchorage controller, only one FAA official believed Terauchi — John Callahan.
Callahan began collecting all the evidence, including radar recordings, transcripts of conversations with the controller, and written reports by Terauchi and his crew. However, a year later, the investigation was suddenly shut down due to CIA interference.
“When we finished a two-hour briefing, a CIA officer stood up and said: ‘This event never happened, we were never here, you are all sworn to secrecy, and we are confiscating all these materials,’” Callahan recounted in 2007.
Years later, a 1500-page archive on this case was quietly declassified and discovered in the National Archives by John Greenewald. He published it on his website, The Black Vault, a private repository of declassified government documents. This confirmed that the incident wasn’t just tabloid fodder but a real UFO encounter, including a massive mothership.
