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This US Air Force Project Blue Book case file on Kenneth Arnold's sighting of nine objects near Mount Rainier, Washington, on 24 June 1947 was released through The Black Vault. It contains the Project 10073 record card, which concludes the objects were a mirage, plus Arnold's telegram, questionnaire data and interview notes. It also includes J. Allen Hynek's analysis arguing the objects were closer and slower than Arnold estimated. Other items are David Johnson's sworn statement on a Boise sighting, a Tacoma investigation telegram and news clippings.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
I could not see the object because of minuteness of scope introduced by the optical filter with which the camera, in P.1.5 Eastman, was equipped. Taking the camera away and once again centering my gaze on the object, I observed it to roll so that its edge was presented to me. At this time it flashed once in the sunlight. It then appeared as a thin black line. It then performed a maneuver which looked as if it had begun a slow roll, or a barrel roll, which instead of being completed, was broken off at about the 180-degree point. The object rolled out of the top of the maneuver at this point, and I lost sight of it. This entire performance was observed against the background of clouds previously forming over the Camas Prairie. The object appeared to me, relatively, as the size of a twenty-five cent piece. I do not know how far away it was. I do not know, nor can I truthfully estimate, its speed. I can only say it was not an airplane, and if it was at a very great dis-tance from me, its speed was great, taking into consideration that apparent speed is reduced to the viewer if an object is a very great distance away. I forgot to look at my clock to determine the exact time I saw the object. The CAA's log of radio contacts shows my first contact to have been made at 12:17 hours. But a few seconds elapsed between the time I first saw the object, and the time I called the CAA's station. I subsequently related over the radio a description of what I saw, and communicator Albertson may remember it. The control tower may have a record- ing of the conversation. I have not checked to determine that. The purpose of my relating over the air what I saw was to enable rapid transmission of the report to the newspaper, for at that time I was on assignment and my energies thereforth were devoted to (1) transmitting the information and (2) conducting a further search, which I did after landing for fuel and to make some telephone calls.
Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 62 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.