Since this incident was the original UFO sighting, I used to get many inquiries about it from the press and at briefings. To get the true and accurate story of what did happen to Kenneth Arnold on June 24, 1947, I had to go back through old newspaper files, official reports, and talk to people who had worked on Project Sign. By cross-checking these data and talking to people who had heard Arnold tell about his UFO sighting soon after it happened, I finally came up with what I believe is the accurate story.
Arnold had taken off from Chehalis, Washington, intending to fly to Yakima, Washington. About 3:00P.M. he arrived in the vicinity of Mount Rainier. There was a Marine Corps C-46 transport plane lost in the Mount Rainier area, so Arnold decided to fly around awhile and look for it. He was looking down at the ground when suddenly he noticed a series of bright flashes off to his left. He looked for the source of the flashes and saw a string of nine very bright disk- shaped objects, which he estimated to be 45 to 50 feet in length.
They were traveling from north to south across the nose of his airplane. They were flying in a reversed echelon (i.e., lead object high with the rest stepped down), and as they flew along they weaved in and out between the mountain peaks, once pa.s.sing behind one of the peaks. Each individual object had a skipping motion described by Arnold as a "saucer skipping across water."
During the time that the objects were in sight, Arnold had clocked their speed. He had marked his position and their position on the map and again noted the time. When he landed he sketched in the flight path that the objects had flown and computed their speed, almost 1,700 miles per hour. He estimated that they had been 20 to 25 miles away and had traveled 47 miles in 102 seconds.
I found that there was a lot of speculation on this report. Two factions at ATIC had joined up behind two lines of reasoning. One side said that Arnold had seen plain, everyday jet airplanes flying in formation. This side"s argument was based on the physical limitations of the human eye, visual acuity, the eye"s ability to see a small, distant object. Tests, they showed, had proved that a person with normal vision can"t "see" an object that subtends an angle of less than 0.2 second of arc. For example, a basketball can"t be seen at a distance of several miles but if you move the basketball closer and closer, at some point you will be able to see it. At this point the angle between the top and bottom of the ball and your eye will be about 0.2 of a second of arc. This was applied to Arnold"s sighting.
The "Arnold-saw-airplanes" faction maintained that since Arnold said that the objects were 45 to 50 feet long they would have had to be much closer than he had estimated or he couldn"t even have seen them at all. Since they were much closer than he estimated, Arnold"s timed speed was all wrong and instead of going 1,700 miles per hour the objects were traveling at a speed closer to 400 miles per hour, the speed of a jet. There was no reason to believe they weren"t jets. The jets appeared to have a skipping motion because Arnold had looked at them through layers of warm and cold air, like heat waves coming from a hot pavement that cause an object to shimmer.
The other side didn"t buy this idea at all. They based their argument on the fact that Arnold knew where the objects were when he timed them.
After all, he was an old mountain pilot and was as familiar with the area around the Cascade Mountains as he was with his own living room.
To cinch this point the fact that the objects had pa.s.sed _behind_ a mountain peak was brought up. This positively established the distance the objects were from Arnold and confirmed his calculated 1,700-miles-per-hour speed. Besides, no airplane can weave in and out between mountain peaks in the short time that Arnold was watching them. The visual acuity factor only strengthened the "Arnold-saw-a- flying-saucer" faction"s theory that what he"d seen was a s.p.a.ceship.
If he could see the objects 20 to 25 miles away, they must have been about 210 feet long instead of the poorly estimated 45 to 50 feet.
In 1947 this was a fantastic story, but now it is just another UFO report marked "Unknown." It is typical in that if the facts are accurate, if Arnold actually did see the UFO"s go _behind_ a mountain peak, and if he knew his exact position at the time, the UFO problem cannot be lightly sloughed off; but there are always "ifs" in UFO reports. This is the type of report that led Major General John A.
Samford, Director of Intelligence for Headquarters, Air Force, to make the following comment during a press conference in July 1952: "However, there have remained a percentage of this total [of all UFO reports received by the Air Force], about 20 per cent of the reports, that have come from credible observers of relatively incredible things. We keep on being concerned about them."
In warping, twisting, and changing the Arnold incident, the writers of saucer lore haven"t been content to confine themselves to the incident itself; they have dragged in the crashed Marine Corps" C-46.
They intimate that the same flying saucers that Arnold saw shot down the C-46, grabbed up the bodies of the pa.s.sengers and crew, and now have them pickled at the University of Venus Medical School. As proof they apply the same illogical reasoning that they apply to most everything. The military never released photos of the bodies of the dead men, therefore there were no bodies. There were photographs and there were bodies. In consideration of the families of air crewmen and pa.s.sengers, photos of air crashes showing dead bodies are never released.
Arnold himself seems to be the reason for a lot of the excitement that heralded flying saucers. Stories of odd incidents that occur in this world are continually being reported by newspapers, but never on the scale of the first UFO report. Occasional stories of the "Himalayan snowmen," or the "Malayan monsters," rate only a few inches or a column on the back pages of newspapers. Arnold"s story, if it didn"t make the headlines, at least made the front page. I had the reason for this explained to me one day when I was investigating a series of UFO reports in California in the spring of 1952.
I was making my headquarters at an air base where a fighter-bomber wing was stationed. Through a mutual friend I met one of the fighter- bomber pilots who had known Arnold. In civilian life the pilot was a newspaper reporter and had worked on the original Arnold story. He told me that when the story first broke all the newspaper editors in the area were thoroughly convinced that the incident was a hoax, and that they intended to write the story as such. The more they dug into the facts, however, and into Arnold"s reputation, the more it appeared that he was telling the truth. Besides having an unquestionable character, he was an excellent mountain pilot, and mountain pilots are a breed of men who know every nook and cranny of the mountains in their area. The most fantastic part of Arnold"s story had been the 1,700-miles-per-hour speed computed from Arnold"s timing the objects between two landmarks. "When Arnold told us how he computed the speed," my chance acquaintance told me, "we all put a lot of faith in his story." He went on to say that when the editors found out that they were wrong about the hoax, they did a complete about-face, and were very much impressed by the story. This enthusiasm spread, and since the Air Force so quickly denied ownership of the objects, all of the facts built up into a story so unique that papers all over the world gave it front-page s.p.a.ce.
There was an old theory that maybe Arnold had seen wind whipping snow along the mountain ridges, so I asked about this. I got a flat "Impossible." My expert on the early Arnold era said, "I"ve lived in the Pacific Northwest many years and have flown in the area for hundreds of hours. It"s impossible to get powder snow low in the mountains in June. Personally, I believe Arnold saw some kind of aircraft and they weren"t from this earth." He went on to tell me about two other very similar sightings that had happened the day after Arnold saw the nine disks. He knew the people who made these sightings and said that they weren"t the kind to go off "half c.o.c.ked." He offered to get a T-6 and fly me up to Boise to talk to them since they had never made a report to the military, but I had to return to Dayton so I declined.
Within a few days of Arnold"s sighting, others began to come in. On June 28 an Air Force pilot in an F-51 was flying near Lake Mead, Nevada, when he saw a formation of five or six circular objects off his right wing. This was about three-fifteen in the afternoon.
That night at nine-twenty, 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 was first seen just above the horizon, and as it traveled toward the observers it "zigzagged," with bursts of high speed. When it was directly overhead it made a sharp 90-degree turn and was lost from view as it traveled south.
Other reports came in. In Milwaukee a lady saw ten go over her house "like blue blazes," heading south. A school bus driver in Clarion, Iowa, saw an object streak across the sky. In a few seconds twelve more followed the first one. White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico chalked up the first of the many sightings that this location would produce when several people riding in an automobile saw a pulsating light travel from horizon to horizon in thirty seconds. A Chicago housewife saw one "with legs."
The week of July 4, 1947, set a record for reports that was not broken until 1952. The center of activity was the Portland, Oregon, area. At 11:00A.M. a carload of people driving near Redmond saw four disk-shaped objects streaking past Mount Jefferson. At 1:05P.M. a policeman was in the parking lot behind the Portland City Police Headquarters when he noticed some pigeons suddenly began to flutter around as if they were scared. He looked up and saw five large disk- shaped objects, two going south and three going east. They were traveling at a high rate of speed and seemed to be oscillating about their lateral axis. Minutes later two other policemen, both ex- pilots, reported three of the same things flying in trail. Before long the harbor patrol called into headquarters. A crew of four patrolmen had seen three to six of the disks, "shaped like chrome hub caps," traveling very fast. They also oscillated as they flew. Then the citizens of Portland began to see them. A man saw one going east and two going north. At four-thirty a woman called in and had just seen one that looked like "a new dime flipping around." Another man reported two, one going southeast, one northeast. From Milwaukie, Oregon, three were reported going northwest. In Vancouver, Washington, sheriff"s deputies saw twenty to thirty.
The first photo was taken on July 4 in Seattle. After much publicity it turned out to be a weather balloon.
That night a United Airlines crew flying near Emmett, Idaho, saw five. The pilot"s report read:
Five "somethings," which were thin and smooth on the bottom and rough-appearing on top, were seen silhouetted against the sunset shortly after the plane took off from Boise at 8:04P.M. We saw them clearly. We followed them in a northeasterly direction for about 45 miles. They finally disappeared. We were unable to tell whether they outsped us or disintegrated. We can"t say whether they were "smearlike," oval, or anything else but whatever they were they were not aircraft, clouds or smoke.
Civilians did not have a corner on the market. On July 6 a staff sergeant in Birmingham, Alabama, saw several "dim, glowing lights"
speeding across the sky and photographed one of them. Also on the sixth the crew of an Air Force B-25 saw a bright, disk-shaped object "low at nine o"clock." This is one of the few reports of an object lower than the aircraft. At Fairfield-Suisun AFB in California a pilot saw something travel three quarters of the way across the sky in a few seconds. It, too, was oscillating on its lateral axis.
According to the old hands at ATIC, the first sighting that really made the Air Force take a deep interest in UFO"s occurred on July 8 at Muroc Air Base (now Edwards AFB), the supersecret Air Force test center in the Mojave Desert of California. At 10:10A.M. a test pilot was running up the engine of the then new XP-84 in preparation for a test flight. He happened to look up and to the north he saw what first appeared to be a weather balloon traveling in a westerly direction. After watching it a few seconds, he changed his mind. He had been briefed on the high-alt.i.tude winds, and the object he saw was going against the wind. Had it been the size of a normal aircraft, the test pilot estimated that it would have been at 10,000 to 12,000 feet and traveling 200 to 225 miles per hour. He described the object as being spherically shaped and yellowish white in color.
Ten minutes before this several other officers and airmen had seen three objects. They were similar except they had more of a silver color. They were also heading in a westerly direction.
Two hours later a crew of technicians on Rogers Dry Lake, adjacent to Muroc Air Base, observed another UFO. Their report went as follows:
On the 8 July 1947 at 11:50 we were sitting in an observation truck located in Area #3, Rogers Dry Lake. We were gazing upward toward a formation of two P-82"s and an A-26 aircraft flying at 20,000 feet.
They were preparing to carry out a seat-ejection experiment. We observed a round object, white aluminum color, which at first resembled a parachute canopy. Our first impression was that a premature ejection of the seat and dummy had occurred but this was not the case. The object was lower than 20,000 feet, and was falling at three times the rate observed for the test parachute, which ejected thirty seconds after we first saw the object. As the object fell it drifted slightly north of due west against the prevailing wind. The speed, horizontal motion, could not be determined, but it appeared to be slower than the maximum velocity F-80 aircraft.
As this object descended through a low enough level to permit observation of its lateral silhouette, it presented a distinct oval- shaped outline, with two projections on the upper surface which might have been thick fins or n.o.bs. These crossed each other at intervals, suggesting either rotation or oscillation of slow type.
No smoke, flames, propeller arcs, engine noise, or other plausible or visible means of propulsion were noted. The color was silver, resembling an aluminum-painted fabric, and did not appear as dense as a parachute canopy.
When the object dropped to a level such that it came into line of vision of the mountain tops, it was lost to the vision of the observers.
It is estimated that the object was in sight about 90 seconds. Of the five people sitting in the observation truck, four observed this object.
The following is our opinion about this object:
It was man-made, as evidenced by the outline and functional appearance.
Seeing this was not a hallucination or other fancies of sense.
Exactly four hours later the pilot of an F-51 was flying at 20,000 feet about 40 miles south of Muroc Air Base when he sighted a "flat object of a light-reflecting nature." He reported that it had no vertical fin or wings. When he first saw it, the object was above him and he tried to climb up to it, but his F-51 would not climb high enough. All air bases in the area were contacted but they had no aircraft in the area.
By the end of July 1947 the UFO security lid was down tight. The few members of the press who did inquire about what the Air Force was doing got the same treatment that you would get today if you inquired about the number of thermonuclear weapons stock-piled in the U.S."s atomic a.r.s.enal. No one, outside of a few high-ranking officers in the Pentagon, knew what the people in the barbed-wire enclosed Quonset huts that housed the Air Technical Intelligence Center were thinking or doing.
The memos and correspondence that Project Blue Book inherited from the old UFO projects told the story of the early flying saucer era.
These memos and pieces of correspondence showed that the UFO situation was considered to be serious; in fact, very serious. The paper work of that period also indicated the confusion that surrounded the investigation; confusion almost to the point of panic.
The bra.s.s wanted an answer, quickly, and people were taking off in all directions. Everyone"s theory was as good as the next and each person with any weight at ATIC was plugging and investigating his own theory. The ideas as to the origin of the UFO"s fell into two main categories, earthly and non-earthly. In the earthly category the Russians led, with the U.S. Navy and their XF-5-U-1, the "Flying Flapjack," pulling a not too close second. The desire to cover all leads was graphically pointed up to be a personal handwritten note I found in a file. It was from ATIC"s chief to a civilian intelligence specialist. It said, "Are you positive that the Navy junked the XF-5- U-1 project?" The non-earthly category ran the gamut of theories, with s.p.a.ce animals trailing interplanetary craft about the same distance the Navy was behind the Russians.
This confused speculating lasted only a few weeks. Then the investigation narrowed down to the Soviets and took off on a much more methodical course of action.
When World War II ended, the Germans had several radical types of aircraft and guided missiles under development. The majority of these projects were in the most preliminary stages but they were the only known craft that could even approach the performance of the objects reported by UFO observers. Like the Allies, after World War II the Soviets had obtained complete sets of data on the latest German developments. This, coupled with rumors that the Soviets were frantically developing the German ideas, caused no small degree of alarm. As more UFO"s were observed near the Air Force"s Muroc Test Center, the Army"s White Sands Proving Ground, and atomic bomb plants, ATIC"s efforts became more concentrated.
Wires were sent to intelligence agents in Germany requesting that they find out exactly how much progress had been made on the various German projects.
The last possibility, of course, was that the Soviets had discovered some completely new aerodynamic concept that would give saucer performance.
While ATIC technical a.n.a.lysts were scouring the United States for data on the German projects and the intelligence agents in Germany were seeking out the data they had been asked for, UFO reports continued to flood the country. The Pacific Northwest still led with the most sightings, but every state in the Union was reporting a few flying saucers.
At first there was no co-ordinated effort to collect data on the UFO reports. Leads would come from radio reports or newspaper items.
Military intelligence agencies outside of ATIC were hesitant to investigate on their own initiative because, as is so typical of the military, they lacked specific orders. When no orders were forthcoming, they took this to mean that the military had no interest in the UFO"s. But before long this placid att.i.tude changed, and changed drastically. Cla.s.sified orders came down to investigate _all_ UFO sightings. Get every detail and send it direct to ATIC at Wright Field. The order carried no explanation as to why the information was wanted. This lack of an explanation and the fact that the information was to be sent directly to a high-powered intelligence group within Air Force Headquarters stirred the imagination of every potential cloak-and-dagger man in the military intelligence system.
Intelligence people in the field who had previously been free with opinions now clammed up tight.
The era of confusion was progressing.
Early statements to the press, which shaped the opinion of the public, didn"t reduce the confusion factor. While ATIC was grimly expending maximum effort in a serious study, "certain high-placed officials" were officially chuckling at the mention of UFO"s.
In July 1947 an International News Service wire story quoted the public relations officer at Wright Field as saying, "So far we haven"t found anything to confirm that saucers exist. We don"t think they are guided missiles." He went on to say, "As things are now, they appear to be either a phenomenon or a figment of somebody"s imagination."
A few weeks later a lieutenant colonel who was a.s.sistant to the Chief of Staff of the Fourth Air Force was widely quoted as saying, "There is no basis for belief in flying saucers in the Tacoma area [referring to a UFO sighting in the area of Tacoma, Washington], or any other area."
The "experts," in their stories of saucer lore, have said that these brush-offs of the UFO sightings were intentional smoke screens to cover the facts by adding confusion. This is not true; it was merely a lack of coordination. But had the Air Force tried to throw up a screen of confusion, they couldn"t have done a better job.