In December of 1986 one of the most largely unexplained events ever in the history of aviation took place over Alaska. But while the incident was certainly compelling to those involved – including those back on the ground nearby watching the incident unfold on Radar, the strange appearance of the mystery device ultimately claimed more than the career of just Captain Terauchi. And the treatment he received after the incident served as a warning to future pilots who may encounter something unexplained in the skies telling them, “You’d better not talk about the incident.”
Shortly after the incident a group convened at the FAA headquarters and a vice admiral Donald D Engen would be present to review the entirety of the surveillance tape of the incident. Charts were drawn up and a number of people from various agencies weighed in on the matter. Among the participants were members of the CIA, FBI, and members of a Presidential Scientific Study Team dispatched by Ronald Reagan. Despite the seriousness of the event and the overwhelming scrutiny given to it by several officials, Terauchi would be targeted as a man unfit to fly in the area. In the aftermath of the incident there were several potential causes of the UFO, but none of them seemed satisfactory.
For example, the Stealth Bomber, a device that had been only recently developed was secretly being tested – and may have somehow been the cause. Despite this possible explanation, Stealth Bombers are specifically designed to be undetectable by radar, which doesn’t explain how the device was seen by radar both in the plane and on the ground. Additionally, the maneuvers reportedly connected to the object were beyond the lateral flight patterns of the Stealth Bomber. And there was one final detail of this incident that would seem to make no sense at the time, but later would prove to be an ongoing theme in UFO culture.
The object was reportedly one of several, one of which was considerably smaller and flew into a much larger one. One of the stranger elements of the maneuvering displayed by the unidentified craft was its incredible ability to fly with such intense maneuverability. Very quickly both objects moved in formation and appeared stacked in front of the smaller civilian aircraft staying in front of it and mirroring its speed before finally taking off and flying away into what appeared to be a much larger craft which gradually faded from view. In the long history of aircraft in the modern age there has never been a single craft thought to be capable of such maneuvers and at such speeds. And despite the fact that the incident had been witnessed by captain Terauchi, his co-pilot, and a radar station on the ground, Terauchi was soon grounded when he revealed the incident to Kyodo News. Several years later Captain Terauchi was given back his license, and he subsequently retired.