Project Blue Book case file: Kenneth Arnold

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

UNCLASSIFIED

The next search, begun within half an hour after landing from the first one, consumed another two hours, but was negative. I explored the region where I saw the object.

Immediately after sighting the object, I asked if there were other aircraft in the area. There was a P-51 of the 190th squadron practicing maneuvers in the vicinity of Kuna, but that was behind me. A G-82 passed over Boise, but I saw that aircraft go beneath me by some 2,000 feet.

The P-51 in the vicinity of Kuna proceeded to the area where I saw the object, at my request, and conducted a search. It was negative.

During the afternoon, flights of P-51s were sent out to cover the area, and some of them flew high altitude missions on oxygen. These searches were negative.

I was subsequently informed that personnel on both the United Air Lines side of Gowen field, and on the national guard side, observed a black object maneuvering in front of the same cloud formation, which by now had grown so that the clouds reached a probable height of 19,000 or 20,000 feet from a mean base of 15,500 or 14,000 feet, mean sea level. Three of these men were national guard personnel and I talked to them, asking them to describe what they saw, before telling them my story, in order to avoid suggestion or inference of a leading nature. They saw the object (from the ground) while I was on my second search. They believed the time to have been 14:00 hours. The object performed in the same erratic manner, they said, as I observed.

The above is the extent of the story, and information concerning myself is now in order.

I have approximately 2800 hours of flying time in equipment ranging from primary trainers to 3-29s. Of course, that does not increase my powers of observation except as to those practiced daily by an airman. UNCLASSIFIED