Project Blue Book case file: Kenneth Arnold

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

The overture to the Flying Saucer opera took place in the summer of 1947, presenting the main themes that were to develop with fantastic variations during the fifteen-year-long drama that followed: mysterious apparitions in the sky, alleged interplanetary visitors, government investigators, growing public excitement, civilians who zealously encouraged the hysteria, and, as a climax, and elaborate hoax that produced material "evidence" to prove the existence of spaceships.

## Arnold's Nine Disks

The first man to report a flying saucer was a veteran pilot named Bois, Idaho. On the afternoon of June 24 Arnold was flying a private plane on his way from Chehalis to Yakima, Washington. Above the Cascade Mountains at about 9200 feet, he noticed a series of bright flashes in the sky off to his left. Looking for the cause, he saw what appeared to be a formation of peculiar aircraft approaching Mount Ranier at fantastic speed. There were nine very bright, disk-shaped objects which he estimated to be twenty to twenty-five miles away, forty-five to fifty feet long, and traveling at a speed of almost 1700 miles an hour. Talking with a reporter that evening, Arnold said that the objects "flew like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water." In a later report to Air Force Intelligence he stated: "They flew very close to the mountaintops, directly south to southeast down the hogback of the range, flying like geese in a diagonal, chainlike line, as if they were linked together. . . . They were flat like a piepan and so shiny they reflected the sun like a mirror." [1]

Newspapers all over the country picked up the story and printed it under headlines describing flying pies, flying piepans, and flying saucers. Alert to the possibility that the objects might have been a new type of aircraft of Russian origin, investigators from Military Intelligence interviewed and officials from Air Technical Intelligence requested a report.

Intelligence requested a report. No one doubted his word. He was an experienced pilot, a respected citizen, and a careful observer. Nevertheless his description showed some inconsistencies that made it difficult to decide what the nine disks really were. If they had actually been forty-five or fifty feet long, they must have been much closer than he thought; objects that size would not have been visible at a distance of twenty to twenty-five miles. However, if the estimated distance was correct, then in order to be visible the objects must have been much larger. at least 210 feet long. One of the estimates must be wrong-