In his letter, Arnold then stated since the formation of the craft was at almost right angles to him, and that he was traveling north to south, he was in a great position to try and clock there speed. So he made an attempt to do so. He said he remembered that his sweep second hand on on his eight day clock located on the instrument panel had read one minutes to 3pm as the first object passed the souther edge of Mt. Rainier.

Note: When clocking speed using only a sweep second hand, it fairly difficult to get it completely accurate. This is because several seconds can get lost when you break your gaze to look at the clock.

In the letter arnold wrote, it states:

I watched these objects with great interest as I had never before observed airplanes flying so close to the mountain tops, flying directly south to southeast down the hog's back of a mountain range. I would estimate their elevation could have varied a thousand feet one way or the other up or down, but they were pretty much on the horizon to me which would indicate that they were near the same elevation as me. They flew like many times I have observed geese to fly in a rather diagonal chain-like line as if they were linked together. They seemed to hold a definite direction but rather swerved in and out of the high mountain peaks. I could quite accurately determine their pathway due to the fact that there were several high peaks a little this side of them as well as higher peaks on the other side of their pathway."

While Arnold times the flight he observed the objects carefully. Here is a list of the decriptions he gave.
- Did not fly like other aircraft he had seen before.

-There echelon formation was backwards than what was practiced by the navy.

- The elevation of the first craft was much higher than the elevation of the last craft.

- Could be compared to speed boats on rough water.

- Similar to the formation of geese.

- In a diagonal chain like, almost like there were linked together somehow.

- "They flew like a saucer would if you skipped it across water."

- They fluttered and sailed, while tipping there wings alternately and emitting very bright blue -white flashes from there craft surface.

- Arnold states at the time he did get the feeling the flashes were being produced by the craft but rather the suns reflection off its highly polished wings.

-Never could make out a tail on the craft.

-When the sun reflected from two or three of them, they appeared to be completely round.

-When the objects flew almost straight and level, they had appeared to be just a black thin line.

- The objects held almost a constant elevation and did not appear to be going up or down.


So as the objects started to pass Mt. Rainier he then turned around his plane in the southward direction on a course that would decribes as parallel. At that point he decided to open up the side window on the plane so when he observed these objects the glass would be unable to to produce a reflection and hinder his sight. The objects didnt disappear and they had continued to move southward at a very fast speed, all the while still moving forward of his position. So he continued to time and rate there speed, and said that they had moved from Mt. Rainier to Mt. Adams where they had then faded from view, which was a distance of about 50 miles, in one minute and forty-two seconds, or 1760 Miles Per Hour. ( It is noted Arnold intentionally underestimate this speed saying it was around 1200 Miles Per Hour.) Which was still around three times faster than any known manned aircraft in 1947, which had yet to break the sound barrier. So because of the supersonic speed and the unusual saucer or disk description, it really seemed to capture peoples attention.

After Arnold had seen all of this, he had thought about continuing the search for the downed C-46, but he said somehow the 5,000 reward didnt seem very important anymore, and he wanted to get to Yakima so he could share what he saw with his fellow pilots.

Arnold Reports His Sightings

Arnold landed in Yakima at around 4:00pm and told his friend whom was an airport general manager, Al Baxter, his story. And it didnt take long before the whole airport staff knew the claims Arnold had made. He had discussed the whole story with the staff, but said Baxter did not believe him.
So he continued on to fly to Pendleton, Orgeon for his buisness trip. During the flight he noted that one of the crafts had seemed to look different than the rest of them. And that it was darker and had a slightly different shape. Which would be the craft illustratred with the double crescent rear. He had not planned on discussing the matter any more, but someone at the airport called the press and told them that Arnold had seen some new high speed craft. So at that time Arnold studied the maps, and determined the distance between Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams and then calculated the speed. He told alot of his pilot friends and wrote in his account to AAF Intelligence that none of them laughed. But they did suggest he may have seen guided missiles or something new, but Arnold thought that was inadequate. He also wrote that some former Army pilots told him they were briefed before going in combat that "they might see objects of similar shape and design as I described and assured me that I wasnt dreaming or going crazy." And a former Air Force Pilot informed him; "What you observed, I am convinced, is some type of jet or rocket propelled ship that is in the process of being tested by our government or even it could possibly be by some foreign government."

When he had arrived at Pendleton he was suprised to see many reporters eager to his story and learn about the strange new aircraft he had saw. So Arnold told them all about his sighting and his (under)estimated speed of 1200 MPH. He said the crafts "wobbled and flipped, like saucers skipping on the water." After several days, the reporter used the description of the way the crafts flew and condensed the name that we have stuck with ever since, FLYING SAUCERS.

June 25th - The Day After The Sighting

Arnold now made his way to the office of The East Oregonian in Pendleton. He was interviewed first by a man named Bill Bequette, along with Nolan Skiff. They were in a fairly small office. They both listened to his story and concluded they had no idea what he had seen but told him they would send the story to the Associated Press in hopes that some editor or newspaper reader just might have an explaination to what he had saw. That first meeting lasted no longer than maybe Five minutes. Nolan wrote down a few quick notes then wrote a short quick story that was squeezed into the bottom of page one in the newspaper. Then he recalled he punched down and even shorter version into the AP wire. He said they were only minutes from putting the newspaper "to bed" so they didnt have much time.

Note: The initial stories on the new wires were based on that very short interview and description of Arnolds sighting. So the brevity can explain why some of the important details didnt make it in the first published news stories and could explain some of the confusion about the details.



Later, Arnold gave a more extensive interview. He said when he returned to the office that day after he had some lunch, the receptionists told him that newspapers from around the country and also Canada had been calling, wanting to know his story. Bequette stated he spent the next two hours with Arnold in his hotel room and from that interview he wrote a story about 40 column inches long and telephoned it to the AP Bureau in Portland. The next morning to Arnolds suprised, the story was on almost every newspaper in the country, on Page One! Bequette also formed an opinion on Arnold stating ""Mr. Arnold did not impress me then as a person who 'saw things.' And Nolan Skiff also believed Mr. Arnold to be an honest and sincere person who was genuinely puzzled by what he had seen that day. Arnold was most cooperative when I went to his hotel room for a follow-up story. He seemed eager, as I remember, to answer all my questions as fully as possible. Arnold became the butt of many jokes, some of which were not good-natured, in the ensuing days and weeks. " He also said Arnold was a very respected buisnessman and experienced pilot and did not seem to be exaggerating what he saw, and neither seemed to be adding details to his report. He said he struck him as a person who was a very careful observer.

Corroboration

Arnolds sighting was a bit corronorated by a prospector named Fred Johnson on Mt.Adams. He wrote AAF intelligence and said he had saw six of the objects on June 24th around the same time Arnold did, and that he veiwed them through his small personal telescope. He described them as round and that they tapered sharply to a point in the head and in an oval shape. He also said the strange objects seemed to disturb his compass he had with him. When the AAF evaluted the witness, they found him credible. But in an ironic twist, Johnsons report was listed as the first unexplained UFO report in the Air Force Files, and Arnolds was just dismissed as a mirage. Even though Johnson just seemed to be decribing a continuation of Arnolds same exact event.

July 4th

The Portland Oregon Journal recieved a letter from a man named L. G. Bernier of Richland, Washington. Richland is about 110 miles east of Mt. Adams and 140 miles southeast of Mt. Rainier. He had wrote he saw three of the same strange objects over Richland and that they were flying almost edgewise towards Mt. Rainier about half an hour before Arnold did. He said they were traveling at a high speed. He also stated " I have seen a P-38 appear seemingly on one horizon and then gone to the opposite horizon in no time at all, but these disks certainly were traveling faster than any P-38. [The max speed of a P-38 was 440 miled an hour.] No doubt Mr. Arnold saw them just a few minutes or seconds later, according to their speed." The day before, Bernier had also spoken to his local newspaper, which was the Richland Washington Villager, ad he was among the first witnesses to suggest extraterrestrial origins.
Then, in Yakima, Washington, which is 60 miles west-northwest of Richland, a woman by the name of Mrs. Ethel Wheelhouse also reported seeing several strange flying discs moving at a very high speed around the same time as Arnold had seen them.

The military intelligence began investigating Arnolds sighting around early July and they found another witness from that area. They were a member of the Washington State forest service and had been on fire watch at a tower in Diamond Gap which is about 20 miles south of yakima. At 3:00pm they reported seeing flashes on the 24th over Mount Rainer which is the same exact time Arnold saw them and appeared to move in a very straight line. Then at 3:00pm a woman named Sidney B. Gallagher in Washinton State reported that she saw nine shiny discs flash by to the north.

A woman near Tacoma that a Seattle newspaper mentioned claimed she had saw a chain of nine, bright obejcts, flying at a high speed near Mt. Rainier. And the DC-4 Arnold has saw said he didnt see anything unusual. Also, other Seattle newspapers reported sighting and flashing and rapidly moving unknown objects on the same day but not the same time as Arnolds. Most were over Seattle or west of Seattle in Bremerton either in the morning or at night. There were 16 other reported sighting altogether the same day as Arnolds.

A woman near Tacoma that a Seattle newspaper mentioned claimed she had saw a chain of nine, bright obejcts, flying at a high speed near Mt. Rainier. And the DC-4 Arnold has saw said he didnt see anything unusual. Also, other Seattle newspapers reported sighting and flashing and rapidly moving unknown objects on the same day but not the same time as Arnolds. Most were over Seattle or west of Seattle in Bremerton either in the morning or at night. There were 16 other reported sighting altogether the same day as Arnolds.

A primary corroborative sighting then occured ten days later on July 4th. A United Airlines crew that was flying over Idaho on there way to Seattle said they had spotted five to nine disk like objects that paced there plane for about 15 minutes and then disappeared quickly. The next day Arnold had met with the pilot by the name of Captain E. J. Smith and his co-pilot and they compared details of there sightings together. The biggest difference in there descriptions was shape in that the United crew though the objects appeared rouch on the top.

Then two or three photos of an object were taken by a man named William Rhodes over Phoenix, Arizona on July 7th, 1947. The object was rounded in front with a crescent back. The photos seem to showsomething that resembled a hole in the middle and Rhodes thought it was a canopy. His photos were taken by the FBI and military but they show up later in Air Force intelligence reports. Arnold was show these photos and met with two AAf intelligence officers and said "It was a disk almost identical to the one peculiar flying saucer that had been worrying him since his original observation which was the one that looked different to the rest.

Kenneth Arnold's original sketch. The only one I trust as reflecting what he claims he saw. Everything that came later is ideological fantasy.

Hi all,

Informative stuff for sure. Do we know why Arnold was flying in the area to begin with?
Military air-transport disappeared in the Mountainous area.

Decoy

Thank you so much for your time spent gathering all the info on this case and putting it all together for us here. Excellent job

Stars and flag for you.

The cockpit area seems strange.
Any idea that Arnold 'had' to point to the depiction of his sighted ship.
People would say right off its a flying wing.
And the papers said a flying saucer because so many had been in the wind
of popular news.
So a fantastic plane was known as a saucer and he points to a wing.
I'd say he was coerced except for the fact a giant wing of the same
look was witnessed among the Hudson Valley sightings that ran
silent in the dark night.
So saucer capabilities can be given to almost any shape of craft.

Great post, this case is required reading for anyone interested in UFOs and Ufology. It always strikes me that at this point the subject of UFOs had not yet lost it's "innocence", although this would only last a few weeks until the crash at Roswell and subsequent cover-up.

S and F.

Originally posted by Jess_Undefined
The Kenneth Arnold Sighting

Wonderful presentation of an amazing UFO case Jess_Undefined, thanks for sharing this.
You really did some good research here, so my flag and star for it all are well disserved.
Very important to know is what you said here.

that there was also a woman near Tacoma that a Seattle newspaper mentioned who claimed she had also saw a chain of nine, bright objects, flying at a high speed near Mt. Rainier.

Because there have been attempts to try to debunk this sighting by claiming that the objects Kenneth saw where noting more than light reflections in the windows of his airplane.

And as you said here, Kenneth did checked that already out himself.

Arnolds first thought was that they must have been some kind of reflection on his airplanes windows, so he proceeded to do some quick tests in which he rocked his plane from side to side, removed his glasses, and later, rolled down his side window, in which ruled out this possibility. It was then determined that the reflection had in fact come, from flying objects.

It's as jkrog08 said here.

Originally posted by jkrog08
It is always good to see some well thought out threads come out.

And such threads are for me the cherries on the pie.

Excellent supplementary information to this case internos, thanks for that.

The shape of the craft you showed here has indeed some very interesting similarities with the one on Kenneth Arnold drawings, nice find.

Starred and Flagged!

Great research and well put together.


Thanks for sharing.

this is truly great research on a classic case, written far better than i have read in numerous books on the subjects of UFOs, also some great input from fellow members, this is how a report should read.

could this be related to the roswell crash? i think maybe it could, the date's the same discription.

Thank you all for the replies I really do appreciate it because I worked really hard on this thread, its my first extensive thread ive ever done.

I couldnt believe how many scientists and peoples were trying to pass this off as just a mirage or other ridiculous theories, because ide like to think a pilot nonetheless can tell the difference between an actual craft and just a mirage or "mote in the eye".

And giving the many other people who saw something similar that day around the same time, I really do feel like he did see an actual craft.

WOW! is all I can say !

This thread has so much information with in it that it should be required ats reading!

Thanks for the awesome job!