Cop Robert, Calling The Late Unstable Klass Biased & Subjective Would Be Blasphemy To CSI(COP) I Guess?

Cop Robert, Calling The Late Unstable Klass Biased & Subjective Would Be Blasphemy To CSI(COP) I Guess?
http://kevinrandle.blogspot.be/2012/12/philip-klass-and-fbi.html
(Philip Klass and the FBI)
JAL 1628: Capt. Terauchi's Marvellous "Spaceship"
(Page numbers given refer to this PDF document.)
The San Francisco Chronicle reported on December 30, 1986, "The crew of a Japan Air Lines cargo jet claimed that a UFO with flashing white and yellow strobe lights followed them across the Arctic Circle in route from Reykjavik, Iceland, to Tokyo" (p.1). On January 1, 1987, that paper reported, "A veteran pilot whose UFO sighting was confirmed on radar screens said the thing was so enormous that his Japan Air Lines cargo jet - a Boeing 747 - was tiny compared with the mysterious object" (p.2). Feeling the heat, the FAA soon re-opened its investigation of the incident. "The reason we're exploring it is that it was a violation of airspace," said FAA spokesman Paul Steucke. "That may sound strange, but that's what it was" (p. 4).
Capt. Terauchi (from People Magazine).
The FAA reviewed its data, and found reasons to doubt its earlier statements.
By Jan 8, the press was reporting,
- At the time the UFO incident began near Ft. Yukon, the JAL airliner was flying south in twilight conditions so that an extremely bright Jupiter (-2.6 magnitude) would have been visible on the pilot's left-hand side, where he first reported seeing the UFO, according to Klass. Jupiter was only 10 degrees above the horizon, making it appear to the pilot to be at roughly his own 35,000 ft. altitude. Mars, slightly lower on the horizon, was about 20 degrees to the right of Jupiter but not as bright....Although the very bright Jupiter, and less bright Mars, had to be visible to JAL Capt. Kenjyu Terauchi, the pilot never once reported seeing either -- only a UFO
Unfortunately, he died of a cardiac arrest a few years after this.
The FAA issued an in-depth report, with primary references and interviews included.
Unfortunately, the FAA charged $194.30 for the complete package, including all written records, photographs, and all tape recordings. It wasn't exactly a best-seller: not too many people were sufficiently interested to send in almost $200 for information about a UFO report. In fact, it sounds very much like the
FAA constructed this expensive package to deter the many persons badgering them for information on the case. But that didn't deter Philip J. Klass.
Klass wrote,
- The FAA data package reveals Terauchi to be a "UFO repeater," with two other UFO sightings prior to November 17, and two more this past January, which normally raises a "caution flag" for experienced UFO investigators. The JAL pilot is convinced that UFOs are extraterrestrial and when describing the light(s) Terauchi often used the term spaceship or mothership.
Bruce Maccabee has written a very long report (as is his habit) on the JAL 1628 UFO. If you want to read every detail of Capt. Terauchi's account, it is here. Maccabee wrote,
- CSICOP was not finished with the case. Evidently even Phil Klass could see that his Jupiter-Mars explanation had failed. In the Summer, 1987 issue of the Skeptical Inquirer he published a new analysis. [Actually, Jupiter was still part of Klass' analysis, but the fainter Mars was not.] This time the lights were explained as reflections of moonlight from the clouds and “turbulent ice crystals.” (Recall that the air crew reported thin clouds below them.)
According to Klass the turbulent ice crystals “could have generated flame-colored lights” and “this would also explain why the undulating lights would periodically and suddenly disappear and then reapper as cloud conditions ahead changed. When the aircraft finally outflew the ice clouds and the initial ‘UFO’ disappeared for good (the Captain) would search the sky for it, spot Jupiter further to the left and conclude it was the initial UFO.” Klass attributed the airplane radar sighting to “an echo from thin clouds of ice crystals.”
Kean is enormously impressed by pilot sightings, which she describes as “a unique window into the unknown.” She writes that pilots
“represent the world’s most experienced and best-trained observers of everything
that flies… these unique circumstances potentially transform any jet aircraft
into a specialized flying laboratory for the study of rare anomalous phenomena.”
Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the late USAF Project Blue Book consultant who Kean repeatedly cites as a respected UFO authority, came to exactly the opposite conclusion. On page 271 of his 1977 book The Hynek UFO Report, he wrote, “Surprisingly, commercial and military pilots appear to make relatively poor witnesses.” Kean actually quotes from other pages of that book, but makes absolutely no mention of Hynek’s low opinion of pilot sightings.
Re-reading Terauchi's own statements about the incident, I don't think that anyone could call him an unbiased or objective observer.




































