Project Blue Book case file: Kenneth Arnold

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

but which one? Until that question was settled, the computed speed was meaningless, since to estimate the velocity of a moving object, an observer must know either its true distance or its true size. Even after a careful study, Air Force investigators could not identify the disks; they might have been clouds, a mirage, or some kind of aircraft, but no definite answer was possible from the evidence available.

Predictably, after so much publicity, a rash of similar sightings broke out all over the country and continued for the rest of the summer. During the hot months of the "silly season," newspapers are traditionally hospitable to tales of barnyard freaks, sea serpents, and man-bitten dogs. Such stories were now shoved aside as people in every state began to report unorthodox objects sailing through the sky--flying disks, flying dimes, flying ice-cream cones, flying shoe heels, and flying hubcaps. Seeing saucers became a national pastime, but who had reported the strange objects in all good faith, resented the implied ridicule. Deluged with telephone calls and mail, he resolved to keep silent in the future even if he should happen to see a ten-story building flying through the air.

In spite of the publicity, the flying-saucer scare would probably have died with the first frost of autumn but for the efforts of a talented writer, editor, and publisher of science fiction, Raymond A. Palmer. Among the many letters received was one from Palmer, then editor of Amazing Stories. Tired of being laughed at, found the tone of "sincere interest" so appealing that he answered the letter [2]. After a second letter a week later, he changed his mind about keeping silent and agreed to sell his story for publication.

Under the title, "I Did See the Flying Disks," the article appeared in the first issue of a new magazine, Fate, which published "true stories of the strange, the unusual, the unknown." [3] Although

was not a professional writer, he had the assistance of an expert and produced a vivid, clearly written story—Palmer had had unusual experience in helping fledgling authors tell their tales. Interesting differences between its original statements and those in the magazine version demonstrate how much he must have owed to editorial help. Without it, he might not have included certain colorful details that he had apparently overlooked earlier. In his original reports, for example, he said that he had at first supposed the disks to be some type of experimental aircraft; in the magazine version he added that, even at the time, the objects had given him