Kenneth Arnold
Kenneth Arnold is best-known for making what is generally considered the first widely reported unidentified flying object sighting in the United States, after claiming to see nine unusual objects flying in a chain near Mount Rainier, Washington on June 24, 1947.
Arnold described the objects’ shape as resembling a flat saucer or disc, and also described their erratic motion as resembling a saucer skipped across water; from this, the press quickly coined the new terms “flying saucer” and “flying disc” to describe such objects, many of which were reported within days after Arnold’s sighting.
Later Arnold would add that the objects resembled a crescent or flying wing. The U.S. Air Force formally listed the Arnold case as a mirage; this is one of many explanations that have been disputed by critics, and researchers Jerome Clark[2] and Ronald Story[3] both argue that there has never been an entirely persuasive conventional explanation of the Arnold sighting.
On June 24, 1947, Arnold was flying from Chehalis, Washington to Yakima, Washington in a CallAir A-2 on a business trip. He made a brief detour after learning of a $5000 reward for the discovery of a U.S. Marine Corps C-46 transport airplane that had crashed near Mt. Rainer. The skies were completely clear and there was a mild wind.
A few minutes before 3:00 p.m. at about 9,200 feet (2,800 m) in altitude and near Mineral, Washington, he saw a bright flashing light, similar to sunlight reflecting from a mirror. Afraid he might be dangerously close to another aircraft, Arnold scanned the skies around him, but all he could see was a DC-4 to his left and back of him, about 15 miles (24 km) away.
About 30 seconds after seeing the first flash of light, Arnold saw a series of bright flashes in the distance off to his left, or north of Mt. Rainier, which was then 20 to 25 miles (40 km) away. He thought they might be reflections on his airplane’s windows, but a few quick tests (rocking his airplane from side to side, removing his eyeglasses, later rolling down his side window) ruled this out. The reflections came from flying objects.
They flew in a long chain, and Arnold for a moment considered they might be a flock of geese, but quickly ruled this out for a number of reasons, including the altitude, bright glint, and obviously very fast speed. He then thought they might be a new type of jet and started looking intently for a tail and was surprised that he couldn’t find any.
According to Clark[5] Arnold said that one of the objects was rather crescent shaped, while the other eight objects were more circular, but initially Arnold’s descriptions were only of the latter disk-like shape.
Curious about their speed, Arnold began to time their rate of passage: he said they moved from Mt. Rainer to Mt. Adams where they faded from view, a distance of about 50 miles (80 km), in one minute and forty-two seconds, according to the clock on his instrument panel. When he later had time to do the calculation, the speed was over 1,700 miles per hour (2,700 km/h). This was about three times faster than any manned aircraft in 1947. Not knowing exactly the distance where the objects faded from view, Arnold conservatively and arbitrarily rounded this down to 1,200 miles (1,900 km) an hour, still faster than any known aircraft, which had yet to break the sound barrier. It was this supersonic speed in addition to the unusual saucer or disk description that seemed to capture people’s attention.
The following day (June 26) were the following quotes attributed to Arnold: [6]
- United Press: “They were shaped like saucers and were so thin I could barely see them…”
- Associated Press: “He said they were bright, saucer-like objects–he called them ‘aircraft’. …He also described the objects as ‘saucer-like’ and their motion ‘like a fish flipping in the sun.’ …Arnold described the objects as ‘flat like a pie pan’.”
- Associated Press: “They flew with a peculiar dipping motion, ‘like a fish flipping in the sun,’ he said. … He said they appeared to fly almost as if fastened together — if one dipped, the others did, too.”
- Chicago Tribune: “They were silvery and shiny and seemed to be shaped like a pie plate…. I am sure they were separate units because they weaved in flight like the tail of a kite.”
- Portland Oregon Journal: “‘They were half-moon shaped, oval in front and convex in the rear. …There were no bulges or cowlings; they looked like a big flat disk.’ …Arnold said that the objects weaved ‘like the tail of a Chinese kite’.”
In the weeks that followed Arnold’s June, 1947 story, at least several hundred reports of similar sightings flooded in from the U.S. and around the world — most of which described saucer-shaped objects. A sighting by a United Airlines crew of another nine, disk-like objects over Idaho on July 4 probably garnered more newspaper coverage than Arnold’s original sighting, and opened the floodgates of media coverage in the days to follow.
Adding intrigue to Arnold’s story, the U.S. military denied having any planes at all in the area of Mount Rainier at the time of his sighting.
References (Wikipedia)
- ^ http://www.project1947.com/fig/arnbiog.htm
- ^ Jerome Clark, The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial. Visible Ink, 1998. ISBN 1-57859-029-9
- ^ Story, Ronald, editor, The Encyclopedia of UFOs, Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc, 1980, ISBN 0-385-13677-3
- ^ Diana Palmer Hoyt, “UFOCRITIQUE: UFO’s, Social Intelligence and the Condon Committee”; Master’s Thesis, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, 2000; read it online
- ^ Clark, 1998
- ^ The UFO Wave of 1947 by Ted Bloecher, 1967; URL accessed March 7, 2007
