New information has been obtained by reanalyzing the rupture process of three large strike‐slip earthquakes that occurred in the Gulf of Alaska on November 17 and 30, 1987 and March 6, 1988. We used spectral analysis of P‐waves complemented with a simple technique for inverting body waves using a fixed source mechanism. Our results show that the M_s=7.0 event of November 17, which can be considered to be a foreshock to the November 30 event, consisted of two pulses of large seismic moment release: the first one with a duration of ∼15 sec coincides with those obtained by other studies; the second, which occurs 20 sec after the first arrival is clearly visible on the records, but was not previously reported. The M_s=7.4 earthquake of November 30 is a complex event that ruptured on a fault plane trending north‐south. The M_s=7.7 shock of March 6, 1988 was a simple event along the same north‐south trend south of the November events. P‐wave far field spectra exhibit an ω⁻¹ intermediate trend between the usual ω⁰ and ω⁻² slopes. This trend is due to rupture along a long, narrow fault, so the corner frequency associated with this intermediate trend is related to the reciprocal of rupture propagation time. We suggest that these events were due to a tear in the Pacific plate.