1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:07,400 Alaska, a vast remote wilderness twice the size of Texas. 2 00:00:07,400 --> 00:00:11,680 There are dangerous, unpredictable forces at work here. 3 00:00:11,680 --> 00:00:14,380 In one of the most mysterious corners of the globe. 4 00:00:14,380 --> 00:00:19,040 A lot of things that kill you out here without even trying. 5 00:00:19,040 --> 00:00:21,920 This is a place hundreds of times more deadly 6 00:00:21,920 --> 00:00:23,920 than the Bermuda Triangle. 7 00:00:23,920 --> 00:00:24,960 Oh my god. 8 00:00:24,960 --> 00:00:27,460 Stories of alien abductions. 9 00:00:27,460 --> 00:00:30,260 I believe it was a UFO. 10 00:00:30,260 --> 00:00:34,260 The paranormal, vanishing airplanes, and strange beasts. 11 00:00:34,260 --> 00:00:37,060 The Alaskan Bigfoot, he can rip you in half. 12 00:00:37,060 --> 00:00:39,700 These accounts are really widespread. 13 00:00:39,700 --> 00:00:41,540 It peaked out of the tree right there. 14 00:00:41,540 --> 00:00:45,740 Have hunted those who dare set foot here. 15 00:00:45,740 --> 00:00:49,140 In the last 30 years, 16,000 people 16 00:00:49,140 --> 00:00:51,540 have disappeared without a trace. 17 00:00:51,540 --> 00:00:54,620 More people have disappeared than the Bermuda Triangle. 18 00:00:54,620 --> 00:00:56,380 Two to three times the amount. 19 00:00:57,380 --> 00:01:00,380 Witnesses tell us their shocking stories. 20 00:01:00,380 --> 00:01:01,740 I was petrified. 21 00:01:01,740 --> 00:01:04,340 And we've gathered some of the world's leading experts 22 00:01:04,340 --> 00:01:05,380 in their field. 23 00:01:05,380 --> 00:01:08,180 I'm always after scientific evidence 24 00:01:08,180 --> 00:01:10,620 that can be independently corroborated. 25 00:01:10,620 --> 00:01:15,460 To try and unlock the mystery of the Alaska Triangle. 26 00:01:15,460 --> 00:01:16,460 Alaska. 27 00:01:23,460 --> 00:01:25,460 Alaska. 28 00:01:25,460 --> 00:01:29,460 Thousands of people have mysteriously vanished here. 29 00:01:31,460 --> 00:01:35,460 Is something otherworldly causing these disappearances? 30 00:01:38,460 --> 00:01:42,460 When we look at the triangle, the presence we find of UFOs 31 00:01:42,460 --> 00:01:46,460 is a sign that something very strange could be happening there. 32 00:01:46,460 --> 00:01:52,460 Could UFOs be the cause of the many unexplained events in Alaska? 33 00:01:56,460 --> 00:01:58,460 In the last 60 years, 34 00:01:58,460 --> 00:02:02,460 over 9,000 planes have mysteriously crashed here. 35 00:02:02,460 --> 00:02:06,460 But one near miss in 1986, 36 00:02:06,460 --> 00:02:09,460 between a 747 and a UFO, 37 00:02:09,460 --> 00:02:13,460 the size of an aircraft carrier made aviation history. 38 00:02:13,460 --> 00:02:17,460 This is one of the most important and well-documented cases 39 00:02:17,460 --> 00:02:19,460 of a UFO sighting in the world. 40 00:02:19,460 --> 00:02:22,460 These people believed what they were seeing. 41 00:02:22,460 --> 00:02:26,460 They saw something that scared them very, very badly. 42 00:02:26,460 --> 00:02:28,460 This happened over Alaska. 43 00:02:28,460 --> 00:02:30,460 But what makes this even more interesting, 44 00:02:30,460 --> 00:02:32,460 it happened over the Alaska Triangle. 45 00:02:32,460 --> 00:02:36,460 The triangle is a hotspot for extraterrestrial activity. 46 00:02:36,460 --> 00:02:39,460 Since the early 1950s, 47 00:02:39,460 --> 00:02:42,460 top secret U.S. government documents 48 00:02:42,460 --> 00:02:45,460 have revealed UFO sightings across Alaska. 49 00:02:47,460 --> 00:02:48,460 In some reports, 50 00:02:48,460 --> 00:02:52,460 the first UFO sightings in Alaska were discovered 51 00:02:52,460 --> 00:02:54,460 by the United States. 52 00:02:54,460 --> 00:02:56,460 The first UFO sightings were discovered 53 00:02:56,460 --> 00:02:58,460 by the United States. 54 00:02:58,460 --> 00:03:01,460 This is the first UFO sightings in Alaska. 55 00:03:01,460 --> 00:03:03,460 In some reports, 56 00:03:03,460 --> 00:03:08,460 military planes have even been stalked by UFOs mid-flight. 57 00:03:08,460 --> 00:03:13,460 Journalist Andrew Goff has been investigating this phenomenon. 58 00:03:13,460 --> 00:03:18,460 There really are few places on Earth as isolated as Alaska. 59 00:03:18,460 --> 00:03:23,460 So one can only infer that if there was extraterrestrial activity, 60 00:03:23,460 --> 00:03:27,460 if there were UFOs, why wouldn't they go there? 61 00:03:28,460 --> 00:03:33,460 As reports of unidentified flying objects continued into the 1980s, 62 00:03:33,460 --> 00:03:39,460 U.S. Air Force bases across Alaska upgraded their radar systems. 63 00:03:39,460 --> 00:03:45,460 America's Cold War enemy, Russia, then called the USSR, 64 00:03:45,460 --> 00:03:49,460 was just 56 miles from its doorstep. 65 00:03:49,460 --> 00:03:52,460 The U.S. government understands the strategic importance 66 00:03:52,460 --> 00:03:54,460 of the location of Alaska, 67 00:03:54,460 --> 00:03:59,460 and as a result, it's beefed up the air force bases in that region. 68 00:03:59,460 --> 00:04:03,460 This area is a highly-surveyed region. 69 00:04:05,460 --> 00:04:09,460 But 1986 would see an invasion of Alaskan airspace 70 00:04:09,460 --> 00:04:12,460 that many believe came from neither Russia 71 00:04:12,460 --> 00:04:15,460 nor any other enemy on this planet. 72 00:04:17,460 --> 00:04:20,460 Japan Airlines Flight 1628 73 00:04:20,460 --> 00:04:23,460 would have a strange encounter with a UFO. 74 00:04:23,460 --> 00:04:27,460 It would trouble the U.S. government for many years to come. 75 00:04:29,460 --> 00:04:35,460 On November 7th, the 747 cargo plane, with no passengers on board, 76 00:04:35,460 --> 00:04:42,460 entered the Alaska Triangle, 90 miles north of Fort Yukon, at 5.05 p.m. 77 00:04:42,460 --> 00:04:46,460 It was en route from Paris to Tokyo. 78 00:04:46,460 --> 00:04:50,460 Veteran U.S. Air Force pilot Dan Hampton 79 00:04:50,460 --> 00:04:56,460 has retraced the jet's fateful encounter with an unidentified flying object. 80 00:04:58,460 --> 00:05:02,460 This is the cargo version of Japan Airlines 747. 81 00:05:02,460 --> 00:05:05,460 Here in the cockpit would have been the first officer, 82 00:05:05,460 --> 00:05:08,460 and here was Captain Kenji Tarochi, 83 00:05:08,460 --> 00:05:13,460 a 10,000 flight-hour veteran of the Air Force, ex-fighter pilot. 84 00:05:14,460 --> 00:05:21,460 Captain Tarochi had 20 years' experience as a commercial airline pilot, 85 00:05:21,460 --> 00:05:25,460 but as Flight 1628 flew deeper into the triangle, 86 00:05:25,460 --> 00:05:29,460 he would witness something never before seen. 87 00:05:29,460 --> 00:05:33,460 At 5.11 p.m., the captain looks off to the left, 88 00:05:33,460 --> 00:05:38,460 and about 2,000 feet below him are what he thinks are military aircraft, 89 00:05:38,460 --> 00:05:41,460 because who else would be up here with him at 35,000 feet? 90 00:05:41,460 --> 00:05:47,460 So Captain Tarochi radioed Anchorage air traffic control at 5.19 p.m. 91 00:05:48,460 --> 00:05:53,460 What follows is the actual recording of communication from the cockpit. 92 00:06:05,460 --> 00:06:09,460 Soon, air traffic control picked up a high-speed object, 93 00:06:09,460 --> 00:06:11,460 tracking the 747. 94 00:06:20,460 --> 00:06:25,460 Jim Derry was an investigator for the Federal Aviation Authority at the time. 95 00:06:25,460 --> 00:06:28,460 At first they weren't too frightened when they saw the lights, 96 00:06:28,460 --> 00:06:30,460 they thought it was another aircraft, 97 00:06:30,460 --> 00:06:35,460 but our air traffic control people contacted the military. 98 00:06:35,460 --> 00:06:42,460 A controller radioed the regional command center at the nearby U.S. Air Force base, Elmendorf, 99 00:06:42,460 --> 00:06:46,460 to see if the mysterious aircraft belonged to them. 100 00:06:56,460 --> 00:06:58,460 The military had nothing in that sector. 101 00:06:58,460 --> 00:07:04,460 Unable to identify these unknown aircraft, the air traffic controllers were troubled. 102 00:07:04,460 --> 00:07:10,460 Could this be an incursion from Cold War foe Russia, or something more sinister? 103 00:07:12,460 --> 00:07:18,460 Our big concern was when you have something at 35,000 feet that's not under air traffic control, 104 00:07:18,460 --> 00:07:20,460 it is a major safety hazard. 105 00:07:20,460 --> 00:07:27,460 But what happened next suggested these certainly weren't Soviet, and they were no ordinary planes. 106 00:07:27,460 --> 00:07:32,460 They were about to perform a gravity-defying maneuver. 107 00:07:32,460 --> 00:07:34,460 Something impossible happens. 108 00:07:38,460 --> 00:07:46,460 These two things instantly jumped from 2,000 feet below to shooting forward to a position in front of the aircraft. 109 00:07:46,460 --> 00:07:52,460 Jets can move quite quickly, of course, but there's nothing that can do that. 110 00:07:53,460 --> 00:08:00,460 The objects exhibited according to Captain Teruci a complete disregard to the limits of gravity. 111 00:08:00,460 --> 00:08:04,460 It would start, it would stop, it would accelerate. 112 00:08:05,460 --> 00:08:07,460 Can you imagine what that must have been like? 113 00:08:07,460 --> 00:08:10,460 You've never seen anything like that in your life. 114 00:08:11,460 --> 00:08:17,460 UFO investigator James Fox believes these were extraterrestrial. 115 00:08:17,460 --> 00:08:24,460 UFOs have the ability to appear in one spot and literally blink out and appear in another location. 116 00:08:24,460 --> 00:08:27,460 Conventional aircraft don't do that. 117 00:08:27,460 --> 00:08:34,460 This was a bona fide UFO encounter that was documented on radar and had visual confirmation. 118 00:08:35,460 --> 00:08:44,460 As the captain of an airliner, I'd be concerned that there's something flying that close to my airplane that nobody told me about. 119 00:08:44,460 --> 00:08:50,460 But I'd also be trying to figure out and correlate it with something maybe I've seen before, another type of aircraft. 120 00:08:50,460 --> 00:08:54,460 And the captain can't do that because he's never seen anything like this before. 121 00:08:54,460 --> 00:09:00,460 So the captain is now very concerned and he's talking to Anchorage Air Traffic Control, 122 00:09:00,460 --> 00:09:05,460 a station on the ground responsible for an entire area of airspace. 123 00:09:05,460 --> 00:09:08,460 Every aircraft on an instrument flight plan has to talk to them. 124 00:09:08,460 --> 00:09:14,460 And they're either identified with radar or with transponder codes that all aircraft generate. 125 00:09:14,460 --> 00:09:20,460 And the captain is saying that these lights that he's seeing are yellow and white 126 00:09:20,460 --> 00:09:24,460 and they are not standard aircraft lights which are always red, blue and green. 127 00:09:24,460 --> 00:09:26,460 So he doesn't really know what they are. 128 00:09:26,460 --> 00:09:29,460 All he knows is that this is an unidentified flying object. 129 00:09:29,460 --> 00:09:33,460 He can't tell what it is and he doesn't know what it is not. 130 00:09:33,460 --> 00:09:41,460 Now, just 500 feet ahead, the unidentified aircraft started closing in on the 747. 131 00:09:41,460 --> 00:09:45,460 Captain Terucci was terrified of a mid-air collision. 132 00:09:45,460 --> 00:09:50,460 The captain is saying these lights are unlike anything he's ever seen before. 133 00:09:50,460 --> 00:09:58,460 No wings or real fuselage in the conventional sense that we would think of and he still can't identify what these things are. 134 00:09:58,460 --> 00:10:03,460 The unidentified flying objects continued to close in. 135 00:10:03,460 --> 00:10:11,460 The lights become so bright, they fill up the cockpit and then the aircraft began to shake. 136 00:10:11,460 --> 00:10:20,460 If this is an otherworldly type of flying object, then these could quite possibly be some types of scan. 137 00:10:20,460 --> 00:10:27,460 Maybe infrared, heat-based initially, and then ultrasonics could account for the aircraft shaking. 138 00:10:27,460 --> 00:10:36,460 But so incredible was this encounter that the captain said he could feel the heat on his face from the craft next to him. 139 00:10:36,460 --> 00:10:45,460 And at that point, of course, he's very, very concerned because what is this thing or things and why are they so close to his aircraft? 140 00:10:45,460 --> 00:10:55,460 The captain later reported that the craft activated sort of a reverse thrust and that its lights became exceedingly bright. 141 00:10:55,460 --> 00:11:02,460 So what Captain Terucci is seeing right now are two like exhaust ports, the flame shooting out of the back. 142 00:11:02,460 --> 00:11:08,460 That's how he described it. And it points as the flames are shooting, the ports are obscured. 143 00:11:08,460 --> 00:11:17,460 So it's almost like these objects, as mysterious objects, are adding power and taking away power to stay in formation with the airliner. 144 00:11:17,460 --> 00:11:24,460 And at that point, of course, he's very, very concerned because what is this thing or things and why are they so close to his aircraft? 145 00:11:24,460 --> 00:11:30,460 So the captain finally gets to the point where he realizes, I've got a camera in my bag. 146 00:11:30,460 --> 00:11:35,460 I'm going to take a picture of what I see because how else, what better way to describe this? 147 00:11:35,460 --> 00:11:43,460 So the bag is behind the first officer's seat. He gets the camera out and he tries to take a picture, but it won't work. 148 00:11:43,460 --> 00:11:50,460 It keeps defocusing. It won't, on automatic, it won't, it won't register and it won't take a picture of what he's seeing. 149 00:11:50,460 --> 00:11:56,460 And by the time he fiddles with it, puts it on manual and tries to take a picture, the objects have disappeared. 150 00:11:56,460 --> 00:12:17,460 With the calm of the Alaskan night skies around him, Captain Terucci and his crew assumed this terrifying UFO encounter was over. 151 00:12:17,460 --> 00:12:22,460 But the triangle had something even more petrifying in store. 152 00:12:27,460 --> 00:12:34,460 The Alaska Triangle, a place that's infamous for the strange and paranormal. 153 00:12:37,460 --> 00:12:43,460 The triangle also has many reports of UFOs stalking the Alaskan skies. 154 00:12:43,460 --> 00:12:45,460 Oh, my God! 155 00:12:47,460 --> 00:12:54,460 We find this incredible amount of UFO sightings, which really makes us ask the question, 156 00:12:54,460 --> 00:13:00,460 is there something going on here which defies conventional explanations? 157 00:13:00,460 --> 00:13:09,460 One of the most well-documented UFO cases in aviation history took place near Ford Yukon in the north of the triangle. 158 00:13:09,460 --> 00:13:18,460 Japan Airlines Flight 1628 was en route to Tokyo when it was stalked by gravity-defying aircraft. 159 00:13:19,460 --> 00:13:26,460 The evidence was seen on radar by Anchorage Air Traffic Control. 160 00:13:26,460 --> 00:13:38,460 So fast they disappear off into the sunset, only when they come back, they are flying in formation alongside of a third object. 161 00:13:38,460 --> 00:13:47,460 Captain Terucci and his crew said they watched in terror as another huge UFO approached their 747. 162 00:13:47,460 --> 00:13:53,460 Its size and scale left the seasoned pilot awestruck. 163 00:13:53,460 --> 00:14:11,460 What came back was the mothership, the size of an aircraft carrier, only walnut shaped and could only have been a UFO. 164 00:14:11,460 --> 00:14:19,460 8 to 10 times as big as his aircraft in height and width, and he is astonished. 165 00:14:20,460 --> 00:14:26,460 Anchorage Air Traffic Control alerted the nearby US Air Force Base, Elmendorf. 166 00:14:26,460 --> 00:14:34,460 Amazingly, they too had picked up the hostile, unidentified aircraft on radar. 167 00:14:34,460 --> 00:14:43,460 It was a large aircraft of some kind. 168 00:14:43,460 --> 00:14:50,460 The radar dots that were picked up had moved very rapidly, and the military people said, 169 00:14:50,460 --> 00:14:58,460 we checked out our primary target with another piece of equipment we have here, and it also detected it. 170 00:14:58,460 --> 00:15:08,460 The fact that it's correlated now between not only a civilian control agency on the ground, but the regional operations center at Elmendorf, 171 00:15:08,460 --> 00:15:12,460 to me means this is something we have to take very seriously. 172 00:15:12,460 --> 00:15:18,460 Air Traffic Control were so concerned, they hatched a plan of emergency. 173 00:15:18,460 --> 00:15:24,460 In a rare move, they advised the 747 to make a drastic maneuver. 174 00:15:28,460 --> 00:15:38,460 Remember, a 747 is not a fighter jet. 175 00:15:38,460 --> 00:15:44,460 It takes about five minutes at that altitude and airspeed to turn a 747 360 degrees, 176 00:15:44,460 --> 00:15:51,460 and you're talking about trying to get away from unidentified objects that have been bouncing back and forth between the horizon and you. 177 00:15:51,460 --> 00:15:57,460 So he really doesn't have any type of evasive or escape maneuver. 178 00:15:57,460 --> 00:16:13,460 With few options left, Flight 1628 descended to 31,000 feet and started its 360 degree turn. 179 00:16:13,460 --> 00:16:23,460 The UFOs continued to stalk the airliner. 180 00:16:23,460 --> 00:16:37,460 Air Traffic Control had one last choice, military action. 181 00:16:37,460 --> 00:16:43,460 The air traffic controller says, would you like our military to send some fighter jets up to have a look? 182 00:16:43,460 --> 00:16:48,460 And he says, negative, negative. Not just once, but twice. He's very emphatic about this. 183 00:16:48,460 --> 00:16:54,460 The captain refused a fighter jet because he feared it could provoke a hostile response, 184 00:16:54,460 --> 00:17:03,460 as it's believed happened in the infamous Mantell incident of 1948. 185 00:17:03,460 --> 00:17:14,460 That year, National Guard pilot Thomas Mantell was sent in hot pursuit of a UFO, seen at 10,000 feet over a Kentucky airbase. 186 00:17:14,460 --> 00:17:25,460 Thomas Mantell was chasing a UFO when his plane just dismantled and fell violently to the earth and to his death. 187 00:17:25,460 --> 00:17:38,460 Conspiracy theorists believe that the evidence points to the nuts and bolts of its plane being undone somehow by the UFO technology alongside it, 188 00:17:38,460 --> 00:17:41,460 and that's why he plummeted to his death. 189 00:17:41,460 --> 00:17:47,460 The captain knew about this incident, so he had to wear with all to say, I'm not going to have that again. 190 00:17:47,460 --> 00:17:50,460 I'm better off just dealing with this by myself. 191 00:17:50,460 --> 00:17:56,460 Whatever these things are, haven't hurt him yet, and he doesn't want to run the risk of that or provoking them. 192 00:17:56,460 --> 00:18:01,460 It must have been a very, very nerve-wracking situation. 193 00:18:02,460 --> 00:18:12,460 When Captain Teruci refused military assistance, air traffic control radioed a civilian jet flying just south of Fairbanks. 194 00:18:12,460 --> 00:18:21,460 They asked United Airlines Flight 69 to approach the Japanese 747 and investigate. 195 00:18:32,460 --> 00:18:47,460 But the UFO disappeared off the radar as the United Airlines pilot closed in. 196 00:18:47,460 --> 00:18:53,460 He gets close enough, he asks the JAL flight to turn on its lights. 197 00:18:53,460 --> 00:18:57,460 The United Captain sees the JAL flight, but nothing else. 198 00:18:57,460 --> 00:19:02,460 So whatever it was that was following the JAL flight has vanished by that point. 199 00:19:02,460 --> 00:19:10,460 After 42 long minutes, Captain Teruci's reported UFO encounter was finally over. 200 00:19:10,460 --> 00:19:18,460 One of the most significant UFO incidents ever in the Alaska Triangle was now on record, 201 00:19:18,460 --> 00:19:26,460 and witnessed by air traffic controllers, military radar, and three professional crew members. 202 00:19:26,460 --> 00:19:30,460 Flight 1628 was requested to land at Anchorage. 203 00:19:30,460 --> 00:19:41,460 There, U.S. government agencies were set to swoop in, and all records of this UFO incident were to mysteriously disappear. 204 00:19:49,460 --> 00:20:04,460 Whatever happened at Japan Airlines 1628, it is now the most documented and thus most famous UFO incident in modern aviation history. 205 00:20:04,460 --> 00:20:12,460 This UFO incident is probably one of the most credible cases in history of ufology. 206 00:20:13,460 --> 00:20:16,460 But there were many outstanding questions. 207 00:20:16,460 --> 00:20:22,460 Why would alien life forms want to target a commercial cargo plane? 208 00:20:22,460 --> 00:20:32,460 Even if it's believed these UFOs were extraterrestrial, they may not have had malevolent intent, according to researcher Johnny Enoch. 209 00:20:32,460 --> 00:20:36,460 There's all kinds of reasons why they could have been there. 210 00:20:36,460 --> 00:20:39,460 The plane itself could have been in danger. 211 00:20:39,460 --> 00:20:42,460 They could have been stopping it from entering a portal. 212 00:20:42,460 --> 00:20:50,460 But my guess is it would have been some sort of scientific work, some sort of scientific analysis they were doing. 213 00:20:50,460 --> 00:21:00,460 Whatever the reason for the encounter, when Flight 1628 landed in Anchorage, investigators were keen to talk to the crew. 214 00:21:00,460 --> 00:21:06,460 Federal Aviation Authority agent Jim Derry was asked to attend. 215 00:21:07,460 --> 00:21:17,460 I got a call from our operation center saying we've had some strange incidents with an aircraft coming in over the poles. 216 00:21:17,460 --> 00:21:20,460 So this made us pretty interested. 217 00:21:22,460 --> 00:21:26,460 My first thought was that we had a Russian intruder. 218 00:21:26,460 --> 00:21:32,460 During that period in the late 80s while the Cold War was still going on, Russians would come over and want to intrude. 219 00:21:32,460 --> 00:21:37,460 But the military usually sensed it right away and responded. 220 00:21:37,460 --> 00:21:44,460 But the military detected no one out in that area, so we were doubly interested. 221 00:21:45,460 --> 00:21:54,460 At Anchorage Airport, Jim Derry met Captain Terucci and his crew within hours of their reported UFO encounter. 222 00:21:55,460 --> 00:22:03,460 I found it interesting when I shook hands and I met them, their palms were very sweaty, people were very dilated. 223 00:22:03,460 --> 00:22:07,460 They saw something that scared them very, very badly. 224 00:22:08,460 --> 00:22:15,460 These people believed what they were saying. They were very sincere and they were very, very believable. 225 00:22:16,460 --> 00:22:24,460 But when Captain Terucci described the mothership and sketched it for investigators, they were shocked by what they saw. 226 00:22:27,460 --> 00:22:31,460 This is the captain's original drawing of the UFO. 227 00:22:32,460 --> 00:22:36,460 What I've got here on the screen are the drawings by the Japan Airlines captain. 228 00:22:36,460 --> 00:22:39,460 And the size of this object flew everybody's mind. 229 00:22:39,460 --> 00:22:48,460 He's putting his aircraft here in proportion to the size of the overall object, which as he said, it looked like a flying aircraft carrier. 230 00:22:50,460 --> 00:22:57,460 This is like comparing a 747 to a 6,000 passenger cruise ship in size, massive. 231 00:22:58,460 --> 00:23:01,460 There's nothing that size that flies that we know of. 232 00:23:02,460 --> 00:23:08,460 The other investigator and I rolled our eyes at the time when we saw the sketches because it seemed really way out. 233 00:23:08,460 --> 00:23:13,460 But after we saw that it showed up on radar, we weren't quite as skeptical about it. 234 00:23:16,460 --> 00:23:19,460 This is the original radar data. 235 00:23:20,460 --> 00:23:24,460 These lines show the flight path of JAL 1628. 236 00:23:25,460 --> 00:23:29,460 Then the UFO appears on screen. 237 00:23:32,460 --> 00:23:43,460 It comes and goes as it tracks the 747 at over 500 miles per hour, before it mysteriously vanishes altogether. 238 00:23:44,460 --> 00:23:47,460 No known aircraft can perform such maneuvers. 239 00:23:49,460 --> 00:23:55,460 Soon, this data was sent to the Federal Aviation Authority headquarters in Washington. 240 00:23:55,460 --> 00:24:02,460 A senior investigator, John Callahan, would prepare a file about the case for the CIA. 241 00:24:02,460 --> 00:24:09,460 But the file would be buried in what some believe was the start of a major government cover-up. 242 00:24:15,460 --> 00:24:22,460 On November 7th, 1986, one of the most infamous UFO encounters occurred in Alaska. 243 00:24:26,460 --> 00:24:35,460 Once safely on the ground at Anchorage Airport, the case of Flight 1628 was investigated by the Federal Aviation Authority. 244 00:24:36,460 --> 00:24:46,460 This is a remarkable case because this isn't some reported sighting in some back country area where someone could be making something up. 245 00:24:46,460 --> 00:24:55,460 These are professional, career-focused pilots that are telling us that they had a sighting in the sky and it startled them. 246 00:24:56,460 --> 00:25:05,460 The FAA's senior investigator, John Callahan, prepared a file on Flight 1628's near miss with the UFO. 247 00:25:07,460 --> 00:25:11,460 He then briefed the FAA about his shocking conclusions. 248 00:25:12,460 --> 00:25:18,460 John Callahan was blown away by the amount of data that they actually had. 249 00:25:18,460 --> 00:25:26,460 UFO data, not just seconds, over 30 minutes of data to comb through radar data, coupled with the voice cockpit recordings. 250 00:25:32,460 --> 00:25:39,460 If you listen to the cockpit recordings, you'll hear Captain Teruuchi extremely concerned about what he's looking at. 251 00:25:41,460 --> 00:25:48,460 He's looking at something five, six times bigger than a 747, and he's unable to identify this thing, and you can hear it in his voice. 252 00:25:48,460 --> 00:25:50,460 The guy's freaking out. 253 00:25:56,460 --> 00:26:05,460 John Callahan did not believe in UFO encounters prior to this incident, and after reviewing the evidence was convinced that UFOs existed. 254 00:26:06,460 --> 00:26:15,460 An urgent meeting was convened with the CIA the next day, where John Callahan presented his disturbing findings. 255 00:26:17,460 --> 00:26:29,460 They reviewed the evidence, they reviewed the cockpit recording tapes, and they were all silenced and told that this matter was classified top secret and not to ever speak about the incident. 256 00:26:30,460 --> 00:26:40,460 John Callahan said that when they briefed it at the national level, there was a person from the intelligence community there who collected all the paperwork afterwards that this is classified. 257 00:26:42,460 --> 00:26:53,460 The CIA officials said, we're going to confiscate all the radar data that you guys have, and told him, I was never here. This meeting never took place. 258 00:26:54,460 --> 00:27:05,460 But word did get out. Captain Teruuchi told his story to reporters and recreated his initial sketches for the world's media, as seen in this photo. 259 00:27:08,460 --> 00:27:16,460 Under pressure of the media spot might, the federal aviation authority went public four months after the event. 260 00:27:16,460 --> 00:27:29,460 The FAA held a press conference denying that there was proof of any unidentified flying objects that were captured using radar. They attributed this to an illusion called a split radar image. 261 00:27:30,460 --> 00:27:48,460 The federal aviation authority claimed the blip seen tracking Flight 1628 was no UFO, but a shadow created by the Japanese airliner itself. Former FAA investigator Jim Derry questions this explanation. 262 00:27:49,460 --> 00:28:03,460 The FAA even produced a rather elongated report telling how this kind of shadowing takes place, but any radar specialist that I have talked to before or since denies that that was any kind of a radar shadow. 263 00:28:04,460 --> 00:28:25,460 So how his Flight 1628 become one of the most well documented cases of a UFO incident in US history? It's thanks to John Callahan, who in 2001 went public with the cockpit recordings and radar data contradicting the FAA statement. 264 00:28:26,460 --> 00:28:42,460 He had made copies of the cockpit recordings, of the radar confirmation, every bit of investigation that took place with the FAA. John Callahan had kept copies at his desk because they tried to cover this incident up. 265 00:28:42,460 --> 00:28:47,460 So if it wasn't for John Callahan, no one would probably know about the details of this incident. 266 00:28:48,460 --> 00:29:01,460 As a result of the publicity, Japan Airlines grounded Captain Teruichi for two years, but pilot Dan Hampton believes the evidence revealed later by John Callahan vindicates him. 267 00:29:01,460 --> 00:29:14,460 As a pilot, I am always skeptical of non-pilots, even other pilots that say they've seen something strange. But Captain Teruichi is a professional commercial airline pilot. 268 00:29:14,460 --> 00:29:26,460 He's an ex-military aviator with over 10,000 hours of flying time, and he knew very well that by saying anything about this, it would impact his career, and it did. 269 00:29:26,460 --> 00:29:36,460 But I have to say, in all honesty, after looking at all the evidence, reading the transcripts and analyzing it from my standpoint, I believe him. 270 00:29:42,460 --> 00:29:51,460 Flight 1628 also opened Jim Derry's eyes to the many reports of UFOs in the skies above Alaska. 271 00:29:52,460 --> 00:29:59,460 I haven't seen any UFOs, but I have interviewed people, a lot of people who have seen them, to include many pilots. 272 00:30:00,460 --> 00:30:09,460 Considering the size of the universe, for us to think that we are the only life form out there is extremely egotistical of us, we don't know what's out there. 273 00:30:11,460 --> 00:30:14,460 Indeed, what else is out there? 274 00:30:14,460 --> 00:30:25,460 Are there other mysteries waiting to be discovered? And what might the US government know about them? 275 00:30:27,460 --> 00:30:39,460 The JAL incident had a lasting impact on all involved, and no one more so than Captain Teruichi. Now in retirement, he's withdrawn from the public eye. 276 00:30:40,460 --> 00:30:55,460 But in the skies of the triangle, it's not only UFOs that have caused panic and confusion. There have been reports of a giant flying creature, big enough to prey upon moose and even whales. 277 00:30:56,460 --> 00:31:05,460 Can such a creature really exist? Could a monstrous bird be behind the numerous disappearances of the Alaska Triangle? 278 00:31:06,460 --> 00:31:17,460 If there's one place on the planet where strange and mysterious creatures could exist under the radar, it could only be in the Alaska Triangle. 279 00:31:18,460 --> 00:31:29,460 Here, native legends tell of terrifying beasts that roam the lands and stalk the skies, the most frightening of all, the giant Thunderbird. 280 00:31:30,460 --> 00:31:41,460 Thunderbirds are reported to be really huge raptors, much bigger than the 7-8 foot wingspan of a stellar sea eagle, more approximating the wingspan of a small plane. 281 00:31:41,460 --> 00:31:47,460 But there have been reports of this gigantic flying predator, right up to present day. 282 00:31:47,460 --> 00:31:54,460 That was just flabbergasted by its wingspan that was so huge, a human would have been like a midday snack. 283 00:32:00,460 --> 00:32:10,460 In Alaska, the legends of the giant Thunderbird have been passed down through the generations. 284 00:32:10,460 --> 00:32:18,460 Ketuviduak Lichard is a native shaman who was brought up on stories of this fearsome creature. 285 00:32:18,460 --> 00:32:26,460 Thunderbirds have always been part of our native history. Stories of them go back, as far back as native stories go back. 286 00:32:27,460 --> 00:32:32,460 And they've always been a terrifying presence to native people. 287 00:32:32,460 --> 00:32:45,460 Terrifying because of their massive size and unimaginable strength, elders warn their children to keep safe from this flying beast for fear of being plucked away from their parents. 288 00:32:45,460 --> 00:32:51,460 They are known to hunt everything from a moose, caribou to beluga and whales. 289 00:32:51,460 --> 00:32:55,460 Beluga get up to 3,000 pounds and they're able to lift a full grown beluga. 290 00:32:55,460 --> 00:33:00,460 So you got to think how big do these birds have to be in order to lift that much weight. 291 00:33:04,460 --> 00:33:08,460 People were terrified of the Thunderbird because it would swoop down and kill people. 292 00:33:08,460 --> 00:33:12,460 People were so terrified of it in fact that we wouldn't even attempt to hunt them. 293 00:33:12,460 --> 00:33:15,460 We didn't want to have anything to do with the Thunderbird. 294 00:33:15,460 --> 00:33:24,460 But for the Klingid people who inhabit the southeast of the Alaska Triangle, the Thunderbird is much more than a mere physical creature. 295 00:33:24,460 --> 00:33:29,460 Anna Brown Ellers is a fellow of their National Heritage Center. 296 00:33:29,460 --> 00:33:34,460 The Giant Thunderbird has always been a part of our native folklore. 297 00:33:34,460 --> 00:33:45,460 It is a spiritual being. It has thunderous wings and can control the weather, hazy rainstorms and floods. 298 00:33:45,460 --> 00:33:55,460 Anna is a weaver of traditional blankets. These carry the legends of her ancestors and the Thunderbird is a common motif. 299 00:33:55,460 --> 00:34:05,460 It's sacred to our society when we are wearing it on our blankets or if it's in our totem poles. 300 00:34:05,460 --> 00:34:10,460 It is a depiction of a powerful being. 301 00:34:12,460 --> 00:34:17,460 But stories of the Thunderbird aren't confined to native Alaskan legends. 302 00:34:17,460 --> 00:34:22,460 In modern times there have been numerous sightings of the airborne beast. 303 00:34:23,460 --> 00:34:35,460 In June 2005, Charles Gaines was on a road trip close to the Canadian border in the southeastern corner of the Alaska Triangle. 304 00:34:35,460 --> 00:34:40,460 On his way back north, Charles was looking out the window. 305 00:34:42,460 --> 00:34:51,460 I saw a giant bird down in a valley that had a wingspan, what I estimated to be 20 to 25 feet. 306 00:34:52,460 --> 00:34:57,460 Well the minute I saw the bird, I knew what it was. 307 00:34:57,460 --> 00:35:03,460 I knew that I was seeing the Thunderbird that I'd been reading about and hearing about and I was excited. 308 00:35:03,460 --> 00:35:06,460 I was glad that I'd gotten a chance to see it. 309 00:35:06,460 --> 00:35:19,460 Charles could tell that the trees on either side of the bird were about 40 feet apart and on both sides, each wing was less than 10 feet from these same trees. 310 00:35:19,460 --> 00:35:24,460 So I did the math, figured out a 20 to 25 foot wingspan. 311 00:35:24,460 --> 00:35:33,460 At this size, the bird would be twice as big as the California Condor, the largest known bird in North America. 312 00:35:35,460 --> 00:35:42,460 Charles was the only witness to this sighting, but there have been credible reports with multiple witnesses. 313 00:35:43,460 --> 00:35:56,460 In 2002, near Dillingham, in the west of the Triangle, the pilot and passengers of a local airplane came close to a huge bird, blinded at around 1,000 feet. 314 00:35:56,460 --> 00:36:01,460 Researcher Hugh Newman has been investigating the press reports. 315 00:36:01,460 --> 00:36:05,460 A remarkable eyewitness account of a Thunderbird was reported. 316 00:36:05,460 --> 00:36:13,460 They witnessed something they believed to be the same size as their plane, some kind of massive, unknown flying creature. 317 00:36:15,460 --> 00:36:23,460 The plane had a wingspan of 35 feet, making this creature larger than any bird on the planet. 318 00:36:23,460 --> 00:36:34,460 Crypto-Zoologist Lance Hightower has also been investigating these reports of a Thunderbird and found that a villager on the ground corroborated the sighting. 319 00:36:34,460 --> 00:36:37,460 It was huge, it was massive, it was the size of a small plane. 320 00:36:37,460 --> 00:36:50,460 Well, it bothered him so much that he radioed the next town over and he contacted the local authorities, who then told people to stay indoors, especially the children. 321 00:36:51,460 --> 00:36:57,460 This is remarkable and one of the most interesting sightings ever witnessed in Alaska. 322 00:36:57,460 --> 00:37:01,460 All these people, these eyewitnesses, they all can't be wrong. 323 00:37:03,460 --> 00:37:11,460 Since this sighting, there has been no official report from any pilot or passenger in the skies of the Triangle. 324 00:37:11,460 --> 00:37:18,460 But now, native Alaskan Ketuviduak Lichard is going in search of this elusive creature. 325 00:37:20,460 --> 00:37:27,460 This is a mountainous area. I'm going to see if I can find any nest or any evidence that they're around here. 326 00:37:27,460 --> 00:37:36,460 Ketuviduak will have to stay on his guard. For any creature that hunts moose and whales, he would make easy prey. 327 00:37:40,460 --> 00:37:44,460 Alaska is a strange and foreboding place. 328 00:37:44,460 --> 00:37:50,460 Some believe a mysterious airborne cryptid is hiding here, the giant thunderbird. 329 00:37:50,460 --> 00:37:57,460 But is this creature a forgotten relic from prehistoric times? And could it really exist? 330 00:37:57,460 --> 00:38:06,460 Thunderbirds most definitely still exist in Alaska. You think about it, we have 664,000 square miles and only 700,000 people. 331 00:38:06,460 --> 00:38:11,460 Most of the people live in two cities in Alaska and the rest of it is just fast wilderness. 332 00:38:11,460 --> 00:38:17,460 There's a lot of huge animals for them to hunt. There's a lot of open spaces for them to fly and never be seen. 333 00:38:17,460 --> 00:38:26,460 But today, Ketuviduak is on the trail of the thunderbird and his best chance to see it is from the air. 334 00:38:26,460 --> 00:38:31,460 I brought a drone with me. These drones can cover about 4 miles in diameter around me. 335 00:38:31,460 --> 00:38:41,460 It's hard to say how many thunderbirds could be out there. I want to see if I could find anything unusual that would indicate thunderbirds being in this area. 336 00:38:45,460 --> 00:38:47,460 There's a lot of trees here. 337 00:38:52,460 --> 00:38:58,460 I'm trying to look for an area to see if there's anything that would resemble a nesting site. 338 00:39:02,460 --> 00:39:09,460 If the creature is out there, one man who won't be surprised is Dr. Robert Alley. 339 00:39:09,460 --> 00:39:19,460 He's a former professor from the University of Alaska who's been studying the thunderbird phenomenon and has come to a truly radical conclusion. 340 00:39:20,460 --> 00:39:33,460 Newspaper reports of large birds being seen in Alaska could only be explained biologically by the possible continuing existence of relic populations of something like the Ice Age Territorns. 341 00:39:33,460 --> 00:39:42,460 The Territorn had an estimated 23-foot wingspan and it towered over humans at more than 6 feet tall. 342 00:39:42,460 --> 00:39:56,460 To discover a continuing living relic population, even an individual of a bird that was only known from fossils dating back to the Ice Age, it would be huge. 343 00:39:56,460 --> 00:40:14,460 Whereas an eagle can easily pick up a lamb from a mountain crag, a thunderbird such as a Territorn would easily be able to pick up something the size of a full-grown sheep or goat, perhaps even a human being. 344 00:40:15,460 --> 00:40:21,460 A Territorn would be an apex scavenger from hell. 345 00:40:21,460 --> 00:40:31,460 In 2018, there was an account of a young lady driving to the movie theater and as she was driving, she noticed she looked up and she noticed this huge bird flying. 346 00:40:31,460 --> 00:40:43,460 But it was so large, it really startled her. She noticed that the wingspan, she estimated close to 18-to-24 feet in width. It was the same width of the road. 347 00:40:43,460 --> 00:40:50,460 So when we look at the size of a thunderbird, the description of it is very much like Pelagornis. It's absolutely enormous. 348 00:40:50,460 --> 00:41:06,460 This bird had a wingspan of 24 feet. So enormous that the biggest flying birds today, the albatrosses, could have fitted on each of its wings. Absolutely enormous. 349 00:41:07,460 --> 00:41:16,460 This is a life-size model of the biggest prehistoric Territorn made for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. 350 00:41:16,460 --> 00:41:24,460 This monster once ruled the skies of the Americas with the reported wingspan of up to 26 feet. 351 00:41:28,460 --> 00:41:34,460 But now, evidence has come to light that the thunderbird may be even bigger. 352 00:41:37,460 --> 00:41:45,460 This comes from a resident of Kakanak on the shores of Lake Iliamna, Gary Nielsen. 353 00:41:48,460 --> 00:41:52,460 There are stories passed down about these big birds. They all have the same vein. 354 00:41:52,460 --> 00:42:02,460 Man was out hunting, the family was blown by themselves. Either the woman was doing something away from the camp or away from the fire. He looks back. A bird is taking his wife. 355 00:42:03,460 --> 00:42:14,460 While hunting with a friend in 2004, Gary says he saw a thunderbird that dwarfs the size reported in other sightings. 356 00:42:17,460 --> 00:42:24,460 We were hunting rabbits and I stopped for a break. And my buddy asked, who's that standing on that hill? 357 00:42:26,460 --> 00:42:29,460 And when he looked I said, I don't think that's a man. 358 00:42:33,460 --> 00:42:40,460 I looked at it through my scope and it wasn't a man and it wasn't an animal. I couldn't figure out what it was. 359 00:42:43,460 --> 00:42:49,460 I mean, it was very tall and we were probably about a mile away, a mile and a half. 360 00:42:49,460 --> 00:42:57,460 So we took off straight toward it and we got within a half mile this thing that we thought was a very tall person. 361 00:42:58,460 --> 00:43:08,460 Spread out its wings and the wings engulfed both edges of the hill. 362 00:43:11,460 --> 00:43:13,460 And just a few flaps, it was airborne. 363 00:43:16,460 --> 00:43:23,460 We started spiraling up and we're just watching it. You know, what is it? We're seeing it but we weren't bleeding it. I mean, it was so huge. 364 00:43:24,460 --> 00:43:32,460 Gary has lived here all his life and knows all the birds of the area but he had never seen a wingspan like this. 365 00:43:32,460 --> 00:43:41,460 Even though I'm saying it sounds fantastic, but I would say 50 feet. I was just flabbergasted by his wingspan. It was so huge. 366 00:43:41,460 --> 00:43:47,460 A creature this size could pluck a moose or caribou from the mountain plains with ease. 367 00:43:48,460 --> 00:43:58,460 As it was flying over, we saw a caribou in a brush. It was there trying to get that caribou. 368 00:44:00,460 --> 00:44:06,460 But the caribou was inside a patch of cottonwoods and it would not come out. 369 00:44:07,460 --> 00:44:19,460 Something that size, a large moose would not have any problem. A human would have been. Nothing. Midday snack. 370 00:44:20,460 --> 00:44:28,460 The sight of that massive creature has haunted Gary ever since. He can't prove what he saw but he's in no doubt. 371 00:44:29,460 --> 00:44:36,460 For Kitu Vidiwak, capturing such a sight on camera would be the fulfillment of a lifelong wish. 372 00:44:37,460 --> 00:44:42,460 But in this landscape, the range of a drone is a drop in the ocean. 373 00:44:43,460 --> 00:44:52,460 This is a very vast landscape and I'm only covering a few square miles here. So they're still out there. They're just avoiding us. 374 00:44:53,460 --> 00:45:00,460 If we're going to find thunderbirds in the future, I'm going to have to cover a lot more ground than this. 375 00:45:01,460 --> 00:45:06,460 But I believe it's only a matter of time before my investigation finds thunderbird. 376 00:45:10,460 --> 00:45:17,460 For now, it seems the giant thunderbird remains elusive. But it's a creature that's feared across Alaska. 377 00:45:18,460 --> 00:45:27,460 And it may not be alone. No one knows what else could be lurking in the hundreds of thousands of square miles of unexplored forest here. 378 00:45:28,460 --> 00:45:38,460 On land and in the air, the mysteries of the Alaska Triangle continue to defy explanation. The truth is out there. 379 00:45:39,460 --> 00:45:44,460 But for the moment, it remains beyond our grasp.