AIRLINER CREW REPORTS UFO SIGHTING

• Document Type: FOIA
• Keywords: UFO SPECIAL COLLECTION
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 0005516658
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: June 24, 2015
• Document Release Date: January 31, 2011
• Case Number: F-2010-00651
• Publication Date: January 30, 1985

C00174708
Moscow TRUD in Russian 30 Jan 85 p 3
~0 4+/ 0 02-7
[Report by TRUD Special Correspondent V. Vostrukhin: "At 4:10 Precisely,"
followed by commentary on the report by N:rA.'Zheltukhin, deputy chairman of
the Commission on AYa [Aerodynamic Phenomena] attached to the VSNTO [All-Union
Council of Scientific and Technical Societies] and corresponding member of the
USSR Academy of Sciences]
[Text] Flight No 8352 from Tbilisi to Rostov to Tallin, a
Tu-134 aircraft, was being manned by a crew from the
Estonian Administration of the USSR Ministry of Civil
Aviation. The aircraft commander was Igor Alekseyevich
Cherkashin. He completed the Buguruslan Flight School and
- has--accr-ued-7ACj0_hours_szf_flieht He is a Pilot _First
Class. The copilot was Gennadiy Ivanovich Lazurin. He
completed the Sasovo Flight School and the Order of Lenin
Academy of Civil Aviation, and has accrued 4,500 hours of
flight time. He is a Pilot Second Class. The navigator,
Yegor Mikhaylovioh Ognev, completed the Order of Lenin
Academy of Civil Aviation and has accrued 3,500 hours of
flight time. He is a Navigator Second Class. The flight
engineer, Gennadiy Mikhaylovioh Kozlov, has accrued 12,500
hours of flight time. He is a Flight Engineer First Class.
At 4:10 am., they were 120 kilometers from Minsk. The aircraft was not
flying--it was standing in the center of the universe. There was not a sound
in the earphones. As luck would have it, they were alone in the clear air, in
a block of black glass with little holes made by the stars.
Glanoing over his portion of the sky, the copilot noticed a large star that
was not flickering on his upper right. But this is no star, this yellow speck
the size of a 5-kopeck coin, stretched out along the edges. "No matter..," he
told himself calmly, "refraction of light in the atmosphere or something
else..." A very thin beam of light emerged from the speak and fell vertically
down to the ground itself. Then the pilot nudged the flight engineer:
"Look, Mikhalyoh..."
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The flight engineer had barely glanced outside when he said:
"Commander, we must report this to the ground."
But the beam of light suddenly opened up, turning into a brilliant luminous
cone. From this moment, everyone saw what was taking place outside on the
right. A second cone emerged, wider, but not as bright as the first one.
Then a third one, broad and quite bright.
"Wait," the commander said, shrugging his shoulders, "what do we report? We
have to see what happens further. And in general--what could this be?"
If anyone understands that you cannot ascertain distance by eye, pilots do.
Nevertheless, all four had the same perception--an unidentified object is
hovering over the earth 40 to 50 kilometers away. The copilot hastily began
sketching a drawing of the unusual phenomenon. It was unbelievable, but on
the ground, illuminated by the cone-shaped beam of light, everything would be
clearly visible--houses, roads. How powerf4 this "projector" must be?!
The beam of the "projector" rose from the ground and focused on the aircraft.
Now they saw a blinding white spot, surrounded by concentric colored circles.
The commander was still hesitating: should he report what is taking place or
not? But something that put an and to the doubts happened here. The white
spot flashed up, and a green cloud emerged in its place.
"He out in the engines and is running away,." the copilot said, automatically
Shifting the phenomenon to the plane of an aviator's customary experience.
But it seemed to the commander that the object began coming closer at
tremendous speed, intersecting the aircraft's course at a sharp angle. In
short, it was rushing to intercept the path of the aircraft.
Cherkashin shouted to the navigator:
"Tell the ground!"
But there was a strange coincidence: after Ognev's very first words, the
object stopped. It stopped coming closer, it seemed to the commander. It
stopped moving farther away, the copilot decided.
The Minsk controller took the crew's report into consideration and politely
said that he himself, unfortunately, sees nothing--either on the screen of the
surveillance radar or in the sky.
"Well, now they will say that we're not in our right minds," Lazurin said,
offended.
But the green cloud suddenly dropped down, rushing past the aircraft's
altitude. Then it climbed vertically the same way. It was cast right and
left. And again down and up. And finally, it fixed itself exactly opposite
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to the aircraft. It flew after it as if it were attached to it--at an
altitude of 10,000 meters at a speed of 800 kilometers per hour.
Inside the cloud little lights "sparkled"--they blinked on and off like the
string of lights on a New Year tree. Then fiery zigzags glided horizontally.
The navigator conscientiously reported everything to the ground.
The controller's excited voice was heard to respond:
"I am observing the northern lights on the horizon. Where do you see your
cloud?"
The navigator responded.
"It coincides," the controller said.
The cloud continued to change. A "tail" grew out of it, like a tornado--wide
at the top and thin at the ground. A "comma" was formed. Then the tail began
rising "to the horizon" and the cloud changed from an elliptical shape into a
quadrangular one.
Indeed, they were now being escorted by a sharp-nosed "cloud airplane"--
without wings, with a tapered tail. .It was shining with yellow and green
light. There was a sense of a dense nucleus where the real aircraft's nozzle
was-. situated.
A flight attendant entered the cockpit.
"The passengers are interested in knowing what is flying alongside us."
Cherkashin sighed:
"Tell them it's a cloud of some kind. The yellow is city lights breaking
through from below. The green... tell them it's the northern lights."
At this time one more real aircraft entered the Minsk controller's control
area. A Tu-134 from Leningrad was flying in the direction opposite to that
being flown by the crew from Tallin. About 100 kilometers separated the two
airliners. It was impossible not to notice the huge cloud airplane from such
a distance. However, the commander of the other "Tu" [Tupolev aircraft]
responded to Cherkashin's question that he...observes nothing. The Minsk
controller, who now saw the cloud airplane, gave the Leningrad crew the
coordinates, the direction in which they should detect the unusual phenomenon.
But it was as if they were blind. And at a distance of only about 15
kilometers before the encounter they recovered their sight. They described
the aloud airplane exactly.
Much later, in attempting to explain to themselves what they had seen,
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Charkashin's crew will assume that the light from the object was polarized,
that is, it was not dispersed in all directions.
When they were coupled with the cloud airplane they passed over Riga and
Vilnius, and the controllers of these cities consistently positioned the odd
tandem. Passing over the Chudskoye and Pskovskoye lakes, Cherkashin's crew
were able to estimate the dimensions of the cloud airplane.
These two lakes, oblong in shape, are separated by a small strip of land. The
Tu-134A was flying 100 kilometers to the left of them. And the cloud airplane
was on the right, closer to Tartu. From the point where it seemed they
guessed there was a dense nucleus, a beam again appeared. A luminous spot
fell on the clouds and slid along the ground. The object automatically gave
its coordinates. It was now possible to estimate that it itself was equal in
length to the Pskovskoye Lake.
The combined flight continued until Tallin itself.
And after their landing, the Tallin contrppler told the crew these curious
details. The Tu-134A was not seen alone on the screen of the Tallin Airport's
surveillance RLS [radar]. Two more blips followed its radar return on the
screen, although there was not one more aircraft in the air. In addition,
these two blips were continuously visible, as also assumed. But the
illuminated speck for the "Tu" first vanished, then reappeared. "I would
understand if you had 'flickered' on the screen of the landing radar," the
controller said. "But this does not happen on the surveillance radar; it
cannot be."
We_ asked _N. A. Zhe_ltukhin,_ deputy chairman. of_ the Commission
on Aerodynamic Phenomena attached to the All-Union Council of
Scientific and Technical Societies and corresponding member
of the USSR Academy of Sciences, to comment on our
correspondent's report.
"The commission is conducting a systematic study of NL0 [unidentified flying
objeot--UFO] sightings over the territory of the Soviet Union. There is
already plenty of material to work on. However, we have to note that
regrettably, all the accounts which we have at our disposal suffer from being
one-sided or fragmentary to one degree or another.
"The sighting made by the Tallin crew has been investigated by the Estonian
section of our commission (I. Volke, E. Parve and others). The case is really
interesting, although we know of similar cases. The fact that the object
instantly changed its movement to the opposite direction and reached the
ground with a beam of light from a very high altitude is unquestionably
atypical.
"However, in determining the nature of a phenomenon, the commission is guided
first of all by the character of the locality. That is, if'the phenomenon is
indigenous, limited in range, it may be claimed as an anomaly. But the
dimensions of the object which the aviators saw automatically alerted them.
It was really very huge. It was natural to assume that somewhere distant,
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many thousands of kilometers away, a global atmospheric or geophysical process
of a type still unknown to science is taking place. But it seemed to the
aviators only that it was somewhere close by--a typical optical illusion, so
to speak.
"But in the final analysis this explanation proved to be untenable. After
all, the aviators succeeded in determining the distance to the object.
"For this reason, there is only one conclusion that may be drawn: the Tallin
crew dealt with what we call a UFO. The fact that we now have a consistent
and detailed picture of the transformation of an unidentified flying object is
especially important. G. Lazurin's drawings also provide it with word
descriptions.
"We are again requesting the readers of TRUD to report all similar sightings
to this address: 101000, Moscow, Glavpoohtamt [Main Post Office], Box 76k, the
Commission on Aerodynamic Phenomena."
8936
CSO: 8144/0029