The Kennith Arnold sighting is when we first became familiar with the term "Flying Saucer" yet in the image above there is little resemblance to the disk shaped craft we are familiar with as a 'common' UFO.

This page will track the origin and description that started the UFO craze in the first place

A similar sighting of eight objects also occurred over Tulsa, Oklahoma on July 12, 1947. In this instance, a photo was taken and published in the Tulsa Daily World the following day (photo above). Interestingly, the photographer, Enlo Gilmore, said that in blowups of the photo, the objects resembled baseball catcher's mitts or flying wings. He was of the opinion that the military had a secret fleet of flying wing airplanes. He had been a gunnery officer in the Navy during the war, and using information from another witness, also a veteran, he performed a triangulation and arrived at an estimation of speed of 1,700 miles per hour (2,700 km/h), or essentially the same estimate as Arnold's. One of the objects, he said, seemed to have a hole in the middle.[2]

Two or three photos of a similar, solitary object were taken by William Rhodes over Phoenix, Arizona on July 7, 1947, and appeared in a local Phoenix newspaper and some other newspapers. The object was rounded in front with a crescent back. These photos also seem to show something resembling a hole in the middle, though Rhodes thought it was a canopy. [3] Rhode's negatives and prints were later confiscated by the FBI and military. However, the photos show up in later Air Force intelligence reports. [4]

Arnold was soon shown the Rhode's photos when he met with two AAF intelligence officers. He commented, "It was a disk almost identical to the one peculiar flying saucer that had been worrying me since my original observation—the one that looked different from the rest and that I had never mentioned to anyone." As a result, Arnold felt that the Rhode's photos were genuine.

Publicity and origins of term "flying saucer"

Arnold's account was first featured in a few late newspaper editions on June 25, appeared in numerous U.S. and Canadian papers (and some foreign newspapers) on June 26 and thereafter, often on the front page. Without exception, according to Bloecher, the Arnold story was initially related with a serious, even-handed tone. The first reporters to interview Arnold were Nolan Skiff and Bill Bequette of the East Oregonian in Pendleton, Ore. on June 25, and the first story on the Arnold sighting, written by Bequette, appeared in the newspaper the same day.

Starting June 27, newspapers first began using the terms "flying saucer" and "flying disk" to describe the sighted objects. Thus the Arnold sighting is credited with giving rise to these popular terms. The actual origin of the terms is somewhat controversial and complicated. Jerome Clark cites a 1970 study by Herbert Strentz, who reviewed U.S. newspaper accounts of the Arnold UFO sighting, and concluded that the term was probably due to an editor or headline writer: the body of the early Arnold news stories did not use the term "flying saucer" or "flying disc." However, earlier stories did in fact credit Arnold with using terms such as "saucer", "disk", and "pie-pan" in describing the shape. (see quotes further below)

Years later, Arnold claimed he told Bill Bequette that "they flew erratic, like a saucer if you skip it across the water." Arnold felt that he had been misquoted since the description referred to the objects' motion rather than their shape. Thus Bequette has often been credited with first using "flying saucer" and supposedly misquoting Arnold, but the term does not appear in Bequette's early articles. Instead, his first article of June 25 says only, "He said he sighted nine saucer-like aircraft flying in formation..."

The next day in a much more detailed article, Bequette wrote, "He clung to his story of shiny, flat objects racing over the Cascade mountains with a peculiar weaving motion ‘like the tail of a Chinese kite.' ...He also described the objects as 'saucer-like' and their motion 'like fish flipping in the sun.' ...[Arnold] described the objects as 'flat like a pie-pan and somewhat bat-shaped'." It wasn't until June 28 that Bequette first used the term "flying disc" (but not "flying saucer").

A review of early newspaper stories indicates that immediately after his sighting, Arnold generally described the objects’ shape as thin and flat, rounded in the front but chopped in the back and coming to a point, i.e., more or less saucer- or disk-like. He also specifically used terms like "saucer" or "saucer-like", "disk", and "pie pan" or "pie plate" in describing the shape. The motion he generally described as weaving like the tail of a kite and erratic flipping.

For example, in a surviving recorded radio interview from June 25, Arnold described them as looking "something like a pie plate that was cut in half with a sort of a convex triangle in the rear." His motion descriptions were: "I noticed to the left of me a chain which looked to me like the tail of a Chinese kite, kind of weaving... they seemed to flip and flash in the sun, just like a mirror... they seemed to kind of weave in and out right above the mountaintops..." [5]

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 a written statement to Army Air Forces (AAF) intelligence the following day(July 12), Arnold several times referred to the objects as "saucer-like." At the end of the report he drew a picture of what the objects appeared to look like at their closest approach to Mt. Rainier. He wrote, "They seemed longer than wide, their thickness was about 1/20th their width." (document with Arnold's drawing at right) As to motion, Arnold wrote, "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." He also spoke of how they would "flip and flash in the sun."

Text of written report - Project 1947

To complicate the shape descriptions further, a month after his sighting, Arnold was to become involved in the bizarre Maury Island incident. Arnold was dispatched by a magazine publisher to Tacoma to investigate it, although he eventually turned the investigation over to the AAF. In a meeting with two AAF intelligence officers (the same ones who interviewed him on July 12 and for whom he wrote his report), Arnold first revealed one of the nine objects was different, being larger and shaped more like a crescent coming to a point in the back (see picture at article top). It was at this time that Arnold was also shown the Rhode's photos of a crescent-shaped object over Phoenix, which Arnold deemed authentic because of the unusual shape.

Some note the object in the drawing bears an uncanny similarity to the WW2 German design, the Horten Ho 229, sometimes further claiming it was captured German technology being tested. But there is no historical evidence of any kind supporting this.

Widespread UFO reports after Arnold sighting

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.

Bloecher collected reports of 853 flying disc sightings that year from 140 newspapers from Canada, Washington D.C, and every U.S. state save Montana. This was more UFO reports for 1947 than most researchers ever suspected. Some of these stories were poorly documented or fragmentary, but Bloecher argued that about 250 of the more detailed reports (such as those made by pilots or scientists, multiple eyewitnesses, or backed by photos) made a persuasive case for a genuine mystery.

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. Likewise, on July 6, speculation arose in newspaper articles that the objects being sighted were due to either the "flying wing" or "flying flapjack," a disc-shaped aircraft, both experimental planes under development by the U.S. military at the time (see military flying saucers). The military repeated that neither aircraft could account for the sightings, which is also born out by historical records.

The most famous UFO event during this period was the Roswell UFO incident, the alleged military recovery of a crashed flying disk, the story of which broke on July 8, 1947. To calm rising public concern, this and other cases were debunked by the military in succeeding days as mistaken sightings of weather balloons.[7]

Military investigation of Arnold story

The first investigation of Arnold's claims came from Lt. Frank Brown and Capt. William Davidson of Hamilton Field in California, who interviewed Arnold on July 12. Arnold also submitted a written report at that time. Regarding the reliability of Arnold's sighting, they concluded:^[13]

"It is the present opinion of the interviewer that Mr. Arnold actually saw what he stated he saw. It is difficult to believe that a man of [his] character and apparent integrity would state that he saw objects and write up a report to the extent that he did if he did not see them."

In addition, on July 9 AAF intelligence, with help from the FBI, secretly began an investigation of the best sightings, mostly from pilots and military personnel. Arnold's sighting, as well as that of the United Airline's crew, were included in the list of best sightings. Three weeks later they came to the conclusion that the saucer reports were not imaginary or adequately explained by natural phenomena; something real was flying around. This laid the groundwork for another intelligence estimate in September 1947 by Gen. Nathan Twining, commanding officer of the Air Materiel Command, which likewise concluded the saucers were real and urged a formal investigation by multiple government agencies. This in turn resulted in the formation of Project Sign at the end of 1947, the first publicly acknowledged USAF UFO investigation. Project Sign eventually evolved into Project Grudge, and then the better known Project Blue Book.

The personnel of the U.S. Air Force's Project Sign (1947 - 1949) also later studied Arnold's story. According to Major Edward J. Ruppelt,^[14]

I found that there was a lot of speculation on this report [amongst Sign personnel]. Two factions ... joined up behind two lines of reasoning. One side said that Arnold had seen plain, everyday jet airplanes flying in formation ... 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 ...

There was an old theory that maybe Arnold had seen wind whipping snow along the mountain ridges, so I asked [Air Force investigators] about this. I got a flat "Impossible."

One skeptical objection raised is that Arnold was suspiciously precise in his descriptions (for example, "approaching Mt. Rainier at about 107 degrees" and "passed almost directly in front of me, but at a distance of about 23 miles"), perhaps calling into question Arnold's reliability as a witness.^[15] However, Arnold's "about 107 degrees" was clearly not meant to be exact but an estimate, based on judging flight bearings from thousands of hours of flying experience. Arnold was also explicit from the beginning that his 23-mile (37 km) distance figure was based on seeing the objects momentarily disappear behind a sub-peak of Rainier of a known distance.

Skeptic Steuart Campbell has argued that the objects Arnold reported could have been mirages of several snow-capped peaks in Cascade Range. Campbell's calculation of the objects' speed determined that they were travelling at roughly the same speed as Arnold's plane, indicating that the objects were in fact stationary. Mirages could have been caused by temperature inversions over several deep valleys in the line of sight.^[16]

It is true that when Arnold had turned the plane so as to fly parallel to the apparent N-S course of the objects the relative bearing to very distant mountains would change at a much slower angular rate than the bearings to nearby peaks, i.e. as nearby landmarks fell aft of the left wing parallax would cause distant landmarks to be relatively displaced in the opposite direction. Because mirage affects visual elevation but preserves visual bearing, detached mirage images of distant peaks could appear to pace the plane. However, Arnold said that he first saw the objects crossing the nose of the plane at speed from N - S before he turned S in order to watch them through the open side canopy. Parallax does not explain this. He also said he saw the objects fly in front of Mt. Rainier; they could be seen in profile and also flashing brightly against the snowfields of Rainier. That would be impossible for mirages of mountain peaks dozens of miles away to the south.

UFO skeptic Philip J. Klass^[17] cited an article by Keay Davidson of the San Francisco Examiner in arguing that Arnold might have misidentified meteors on June 24, 1947. In rebuttal, optical physicist Bruce Maccabee pointed out a meteor theory would require impossibly slow speeds and durations for brightly glowing meteors on a horizontal trajectory. ^[18]

James Easton^[19] was the first of several skeptics to suggest that Arnold may have misidentified pelicans: the birds live in the Washington region, are rather large (wingspans of over three meters are not uncommon), have a pale underside that can reflect light, can fly at rather high altitudes, and can appear to have a somewhat crescent-shaped profile when flying.

Similarly, Richard Carrier recently claimed ^[20] to have seen the same UFOs as Arnold described, "ovoid objects flying in formation" "rotating along their axis of motion, like footballs, with one side black and one bright white, so they alternated in color while they spun." Then he realized it was an optical illusion and a flock of seagulls of which he misgauged the speed. He further claimed that Arnold's account showed that Arnold was incorrectly estimating his height, believing himself level to mountains four thousand feet below him giving him erroneous estimates of the level, distance, and speed of the objects. Birds unable to meet these erroneous estimates are ruled out by the minds eye as a possible explanations for the object and aren't recognized.

Rebutting the various bird explanations, Maccabee, argues it is physically impossible for a bird to be blindingly bright as reported by Arnold—the objects; brilliant brightness being what initially attracted Arnold's attention. Further, Arnold was flying at roughly 110 miles (180 km) an hour on a parallel course to the objects. Arnold reported the objects rapidly moving forward of his position as he observed them flying southward on a parallel course between Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams. However, no bird could possibly fly faster than Arnold's plane; instead birds would have steadily moved backward, not forwards, relative to his position.^[21]

Donald Menzel's explanations

Donald Menzel was a Harvard astronomer and one of the earliest UFO debunkers. Over the years, he offered several mutually exclusive explanations for the Arnold's 1947 UFO sighting. Bruce Maccabee rebutted Menzel's explanations in a 1986 monograph, arguing that Menzel often left out data that conflicted with a given 'explanation'.^[22]

• In 1953, Menzel argued that Arnold had seen clouds of snow blown from the mountains south of Mt. Rainier. Maccabee noted that such snow clouds have hazy light, not the mirror-like brilliance reported by Arnold. Further, such clouds could not be in the rapid motion reported by Arnold, nor would they account for Arnold first seeing the bright objects north of Rainier.
• In 1963, Menzel argued that Arnold had seen orographic clouds or wave clouds; Maccabee noted that this conflicted with testimony from Arnold and others that the sky was clear, and again can't account for the brightness of the objects or their rapid motion over a very large angular region.
• In 1971, Menzel argued that Arnold had merely seen spots of water on his airplane's windows; Maccabee notes that this contradicts Arnold's testiomony that he had specifically ruled out water spots or reflections shortly after seeing the nine UFOs. For example, the early Bill Bequette article of June 26 in the Pendleton East Oregonian has Arnold saying he at first thought that maybe he was seeing reflections off his window, but "he still saw the objects after rolling it down."

In a 1950 interview with journalist Edward R. Murrow, Arnold reported seeing similar objects on three other occasions, and said other pilots flying in the northwestern U.S. had sighted such objects as many as eight times. The pilots initially felt a duty reporting the objects despite the ridicule, he said, because they thought the U.S. government didn't know what they were. Arnold did not assert that the objects were alien spacecraft, although he did say: "being a natural-born American, if it's not made by our science or our Army Air Forces, I am inclined to believe it's of an extraterrestrial origin." Then he added that he thought everybody should be concerned, but "I don't think it's anything for people to get hysterical about."

The first issue of Fate (1948) featured the article The Truth About The Flying Saucers by Arnold. In 1952 he described his experiences in the book The Coming of the Saucers, which he and a publisher friend named Raymond A. Palmer published themselves.

See also

• List of UFO sightings
• UFO

1. Jerome Clark, The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial. Visible Ink, 1998. ISBN 1-57859-029-9
2. Story, Ronald, editor, The Encyclopedia of UFOs, Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc, 1980, ISBN 0-385-13677-3
3. Diana Palmer Hoyt, "UFOCRITIQUE: UFO's, Social Intelligence and the Condon Committee"; Master's Thesis, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, 2000; read it online
4. Clark, 1998
5. The UFO Wave of 1947 by Ted Bloecher, 1967; URL accessed March 7, 2007
6. Dash, Mike, Borderlands: The Ultimate Exploration of the Unknown; Woodstock: Overlook Press, 2000; ISBN 0-87951-724-7
7. Bremerton (Washington) Sun, June 28, 1947, p. 1
8. Oregon Journal, Portland, July 4, 1947, p. 2
9. Michael D. Hall & Wendy A. Connors, Alfred Loedding & the Great Saucer Wave of 1947, online, p. 27
10. Hall & Connors, 27
11. Hall & Connors, 27-28
12. Seattle Daily Times, June 27, 1947, p. 1; Bremerton Sun, June 28, 1947, p. 1
13. reprinted in Bloecher, 1967
14. Edward J. Ruppelt; Report On Unidentified Flying Objects; New York: Doubleday 1956
15. see Story, 1980
16. Chapter 5 ("The first flying saucers") in The UFO Mystery Solved (1994) ISBN 0952151200
17. The Skeptics UFO Newsletter (SUN) #46, July 1997 URL accessed March 13, 2007
18. Bruce Maccabee, "Another Failed Explanation for the Kenneth Arnold Sighting"
19. RRRGroup, "Kenneth Arnold and the pelicans" (Wednesday, April 4, 2007); URL accessed June 27, 2007
20. "I saw a UFO" (Wednesday January 23, 2008); URL accessed January 24, 2008
21. Maccabee account of Arnold sighting with critique of skeptical explanations
22. see Clark, 2005 for more details and Maccabee's website [1]
23. Clark, Jerome, The UFO Encyclopedia: The Phenomenon from the Beginning, Volume 2, A-K, Detroit: Omnigraphics, 1998 (2nd edition, 2005), ISBN 0-7808-0097-4
24. Campbell, Steuart, The UFO Mystery Solved, Explicit Books, 1994, ISBN 0-9521512-0-0
25. Obituary, Idaho Statesman, January 22, 1984

Out of This World: 60 Years of Flying Saucers by Nigel Watson
The most complete Arnold sighting description and analysis on the net
Resolving Arnold part 1
Resolving Arnold part 2
Transcript of telephone conversation with Arnold by Edward R. Murrow
Some early newspaper articles on the Arnold sighting

• Alfred Loedding & the Great Saucer Wave of 1947 - Michael D. Hall & Wendy A. Connors - (PDF)
• Report on UFO Wave of 1947 -  by Ted Bloeche - (PDF)
• NICAP version online - (HTML)
• UFOCRITIQUE - UFOs, Social Intelligence, and the Condon Committee - by Diana Palmer Hoyt - (PDF)

• The Story of the Arnold Sighting - by Bruce Maccabee - (Archived)
• Facts About the UFO / FBI Connection: "The REAL X-Files"- by Bruce Maccabee - (Archived)
• Out of This World: 60 Years of Flying Saucers - by Nigel Watson - Wired - (Archived)
• Resolving Arnold Part 1 - by Martin Kottmeyer - (Archived)
• Resolving Arnold Part 2 - by Martin Kottmeyer - (Archived)
• Transcript of Ed Murrow-Kenneth Arnold Telephone Conversation - Edward R. Murrow - (Archived)
• Some early newspaper articles on the Arnold sighting - Project 1947 - (Archived)