The skies were becoming busy, yet all was quiet. The dam broke on June 24. On that day, pilot and businessman Kenneth Arnold from Boise, Idaho, was flying near Mount Rainier, Washington, in search of a downed C-46 Marine transport and a sizable reward. He saw a “tremendously bright flash” and noticed a formation of nine bright, extremely fast objects moving along in a column. He was startled because he saw no tail on the objects. At first he thought they must be experimental jets and that the air force was using camouflage to hide the tails. He said “they flew in a definite formation” but “backward” (with the first craft elevated more than the others). “Their flight was like speed boats on rough water” or “like a saucer would if you skipped it across water.” He estimated their size to be about one hundred feet in diameter. Arnold was struck by how fast the objects seemed to be moving, so he decided to measure their speed as they passed between Rainier’s peak and another peak he knew to be fifty miles away. They covered this distance in one minute and forty-two seconds—a speed of 1,700 mph! Arnold could not accept his own calculations, the speed was just too fast. He reworked his calculations, allowing for all possible errors, and arrived at the still-incredible speed of 1,200 mph. In 1947, no flying craft could reach much more than half that speed.
Arnold gave up on the C-46, flew to Yakima, and told his story. One pilot said, “It’s just a flight of those guided missiles from Moses Lake.” Arnold was unconvinced and flew on to Pendleton, Oregon, unaware that someone at Yakima had telephoned ahead to report his strange encounter. When he arrived, a large crowd on hand for an air show was waiting for him. A discussion followed, and Arnold warmed to the idea of guided missiles. Speaking to the East
The next day, the East Oregonian ran the first flying saucer story under the headline “Impossible! Maybe, But Seein’ Is Believin’, Says Flier.” The story hit the AP wire and made page one of the Chicago
As people began talking about flying saucers, it became apparent that Arnold’s sighting had not been the first. In fact, there were many other sightings from the twenty-fourth, most from the Pacific Northwest. Within the hour of Arnold’s sighting, an Oregon prospector named Fred Johnson saw five or six “round, metallic-looking discs” through a telescope over the Cascade Mountains. As they circled overhead, they disrupted his compass needle. Johnson insisted he had not heard of the Arnold report, which was not broadcast until early evening. He later wrote about the incident to the air force and was interviewed by the FBI, which judged him “very reliable.”3
The day after Arnold’s sighting, people in Kansas City, Oklahoma City, and Pueblo, Colorado, reported sightings of “flying discs.” All of these involved several objects flying in loose formations. Sightings were also being made in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. On June 27, Army Air Force Public Relations Officer Captain Tom Brown stated the army had “no idea what they are.”4 In mid-afternoon of the twenty-eighth, an army air force pilot in an F-51 flying near Lake Meade, Nevada, saw a formation of five or six circular objects off his right wing. That same day, four air force officers (two pilots and two intelligence officers) from Maxwell AFB in Montgomery, Alabama, saw a bright light traveling across the sky. It zigzagged with bursts of high speed.5 On June 29, at White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico, a naval rocket expert, Dr. C. J. John, along with two fellow scientists, saw a silvery disc. He reported the sighting to the army with the observation:
We noticed a glare in the sky. We looked up and saw a silvery disc whirling along. We watched the thing for nearly sixty seconds and then it simply disappeared. It didn’t go behind the mountain range. At one time it was clearly visible, and then it just wasn’t there.6
The next day, a navy officer flying near the Grand Canyon at thirty thousand feet saw two gray, circular objects diving at “unconceivable” speed. The objects looked about ten feet in diameter and seemed to land about twenty-five miles south of the canyon.7
