My dads UFO sighting in 1947. (check the date...)

My dad had been back from the war for some months (occupied Japan), going to school... He got a summer job with the Forest Service in a fire tower (which to this day, he says is the best job he's ever had...)

The fire-tower, which is no longer there by the bye, was located on the north slopes of Mt. Adams with an incredible view of Mt. Rainier off the the north. It's 50-55 miles away, roughly...

It was early morning, June 3rd, 1947 (check the date) when my dad spotted five "aircraft" flying across the slopes of Mt. Rainier. He guesstimated the range at about 45 to fifty miles, height about 10,000 feet, and speed roughly 700 to 800 knots heading east to west.

My dad was, at the time, intimately familiar with the high performance American piston craft in service with the military at the time.

He worked on, in various capacities, P40's, P47's, P51's, P61's (blackwidow's), and P38's. He was a volunteer gunner on numerous occasions on both B25's (Mitchells), and B24's (Liberators). As both an armourer and a mechanic. He knew these aircraft intimately. The jets were just coming into service, and none were in the area.

He said it was the speed that caught his attention, and the fact that they were just too shiny.

It was two weeks later that Kenneth Arnold had his famous sighting in the same area...

Were these the same craft? If so, what does this imply? If anything... It's certainly interesting.

reply to post by seagull


Did your father detail the shapes, or was distance too great to resolve anything?

The Arnold Sighting describes vehicles more Crescent-Shaped than Saucer, where saucer sightings of actual reported saucer shapes would seem to imply false reporting from 'witnesses' in consideration that the whole "Flying Saucer" tag was applied to the Arnold sighting as more of a description of how the vehicles Arnold claims to have seen flew as opposed to how they appeared.

reply to post by AliceBleachWhite


I should have said that, shouldn't I? Sorry.

They were indeed disc shaped. Complete with the skipping across the water motion that so many have described.

As near as I can tell, his sighting was identicle in all respects to Arnolds. That's why it stuck in my head all these years, especially after I began delving into the UFO phenomena.

Thank you for that confirmation from another source.....so it would seem that there may be hope of even further confirmation of Kenneth Arnolds report.........

The early cases seem to have provided the best evidence, and continue to do so......
As the government has learned the psychological art of covering up better over time......S&F!

reply to post by seagull


Thanks for that addition.

I've always found the Disc Shaped UFO reports, coming in so soon after the Arnold sighting as UFO-mania became trendy to be somewhat suspect in consideration that the whole Disc-Shape description that came out of that report was more a misunderstanding in relation to the shape described by Arnold (edited previous post to include pic).

I'm not saying your father did not see what he say he saw. I just find the Psycho-Social model interesting when modeling concepts and archetypes played in media against trends in public reporting that seem to indicate a sympathetic unconscious response to media programming.

For instance, had reporting of the Arnold sighting labelled the reported craft as "flying crescents", I suspect we'd have more reports of flying crescents as opposed to flying saucers.

This isn't to say there isn't a genuine UFO phenomenon.
These early reports, before much of the contamination we see and know today, are more interesting to interrogate due lesser likelihood of media and social driving/ influence.

Interesting. Were their any other colleagues seeing these UFO's at that moment (or maybe around the time)?

reply to post by seagull


Well, if he reported them as "disc shaped" then is it not an identical sighting to Kenneth Arnold. He described them as crescent shaped, with a convex like tail (see the image of Arnold and his rendition Alice posted above). So, it cannot be a corroboration of Arnold's sighting if he was adamant they were discs.

It was the press of the day that coined the "flying saucer" term, and after that the shape was fixed in peoples minds as what to expect. It seems Arnold's description and drawings were either not interesting enough, or (my favorite) nobody cared or bothered to investigate his claim further and just took the word of the press.

reply to post by AliceBleachWhite


He's never claimed that they were "flying saucers". That's my addition. He told me, on numerous occasions, that he just didn't know what they were.

Given his experience with that era's aircraft, especially military, I found that telling.

The date, June 3rd, is telling as well, as it predates Arnold's sighting by more than a week. In an ideal world, I'd love to find a report that he may have filed and forgotten. I've always got the impression that, at the time, he didn't really think much of it, other than the speed they moved... I think the reason he told the story so often was that I wanted to hear it so often... I've been into UFO's since I was knee high on a gray alien...

reply to post by seagull


This last reply is a little confusing taken into context with the one before that.

What he saw was indeed Disc-Shaped, not Crescent, but also they were not "flying saucers"?

Could you please elaborate on this?

Thanks

Is there a previous thread on this ?

Only for a member who has been here since 2005 to post this now seems really odd.

Personally if I had that story to tell, that would have been my first thread after signing up.

And no offence meant for being critical.

reply to post by AliceBleachWhite


Mostly my own confusion/misremembering... It has been a while since I've heard the tale. Years, in fact. Only reason I'm telling it now is that my dad isn't doing all that well, he's over 90, and I spent a long holiday weekend with him, and I've been busily remembering, or misremembering stories that he's told over the years.

I'm hoping in the next couple of months to get a record of some of these stories from him, before it's too late.

That's all. Any discrepancies are my own, and no one else's.

reply to post by ken10


I doubt it. The only reason I posted it now, was the fact that he's not going to be with us much longer, and I just got done spending a weekend with him.

This is one of the stories that I recalled over the weekend.

Plus, I'm not in this forum very much, since it trends towards hostile far too much for my tastes...

But it's a tale, whether you believe it or not, that needs telling. Some day some sort of confirmation might surface. One never knows.

seagull, I thank you for sharing the story with us all. That did take intestinal fortitude, and I respect that. I as just trying to clarify your story so we can perhaps understand its place in history. That said, did he write any of this down at the time at all? That would be refreshing to hear if he did.

reply to post by seagull


No offense, but you've been a member of THIS site for over 8 years and you're just NOW bringing this up?????

reply to post by mymymy


None taken.

It's been the better part of 40 years since he told me this story, so I might be forgiven for not mentioning it prior to this weekend past...