In the 1950s, the biggest headache for the American Air Force was to cover up the presence of the UFO identified by the pilots, both military and civilian. When a civilian reports an UFO sighting his views can be questioned or even discarded based on the fact he does not have the necessary expertise to come to any conclusions about the UFO. But when civilian and military pilots some of whom had won laurels during the Second World War report UFO sightings which is also supported by radar evidence then we have a problem. But the American government was prepared for this.
The US Air force started implementing the policy of silencing its own pilots and Air traffic controllers. A set of instructions known as Communication Instructions for Reporting Vital Intelligence Sighting (CIRVIS) was given to them, on what procedures they must follow in case they encountered a UFO.
On Feb 17, 1954, the top officials of the US Air force had a meeting with the representatives of the country’s major Airlines, prior to this meeting the commercial pilots were reporting around five to ten UFO sightings per night. The pilots were asked to report their UFO encounters directly to the nearest Air force base or the Military Air Transport Service (MATS) intelligence in Washington instead of sending the reports through their companies.
According to one source the pilots were asked not to discuss their sighting publicity or give them to the newspaper. Nearly 500 pilots came together and protested against this, and even sent a petition to the government, but it was of no use. Even today the pilots are discouraged from discussing their UFO encounters with anyone from the press or media.
One of the recent UFO pilot sightings which made international headlines was that of ex-fighter pilot Captain Kenju Terauchi of the Japan Air Lines Flight 1628 on the night of Nov 17, 1986. When his Boeing 747 cargo aircraft was over Alaska on its way from Paris to Tokyo with a cargo of wine, the flight crew saw and tracked three UFOs of which one was initially confirmed by FAA and US military radar.
According to Captain Terauchi and his two crew members the UFOs were in sight for more than half an hour. Terauchi who has 29 years of flying experience stated that the UFO was roughly two times the size of an aircraft carrier. He changed altitude and made turns with FAA permission and the objects continued to follow him.
He said the objects moved quickly and stopped suddenly as if they had no regard for gravity or inertia. At one time, the light from the UFO was so bright that it lit the airplane’s cockpit and Captain Terauchi said he could feel heat from it on his face.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed that several of its radar traffic controllers tracked the 747 and the large object which was also confirmed by US Air Force radar.
The JAL case was analysed by optical physicist Dr Bruce Maccabee who stated that the multiple-witness sighting of the arrays of lights seems inexplicable and the sighting was not a hallucination by the whole crew. He also ruled out the possibility of them being stars or planets concluding that the JAL1628 was accompanied during part of its flight by at least two TRUFOS — True UFOs.
In Dec 1986, Captain Terauchi spoke about this incident to two journalists from Kyodo News for which his license was revoked and he was grounded by JAL and moved to a desk job. Years later he was reinstated as a pilot making his ordeal a warning and message to pilots all over the world. Keep your
mouths shut when you encounter a UFO.
The writer is the Director of INSETS-Indian Society for Extraterrestrial Studies and author of ACCIDENTAL APOCALYPSE.