Project Blue Book case file: Kenneth Arnold

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

Incident #17 -- Lt. Hanier, Washington -- 24 June 1947

There appears to be no astronomical explanation for this classic incident, which is the prototype of many of the later flying saucer stories.

It is impossible to explain this incident away as snoer nonsense, if any credence at all is given to Mr. Integrity. However, certain inconsistencies can be pointed out in the facts as reported:

attention was first drawn to the objects by a bright flash on his plane, which was followed by numerous other similar flashes. If those were something like the flash one gets from a distant mirror, it means that the reflection was specular, or direct. For a direct reflection, the angle between the observer, sun, and object must be "just right," and at such distances as 20 or 20 miles, the chance of a series of direct reflections is extremely small. If the object was a diffuse reflector -- that is, scattering the sunlight falling on it, much as the moon or a balloon does -- then at such a distance it seems quite unlikely that it would have been startled, or that our attention would have been called to it, unless the objects reflecting were extremely large.

The supersonic speeds called for if the estimated distance is correct also throw suspicion on the original calculations; by computation (see below) it can be seen that, considering the detail which Arnold observed in the objects, at least one of his estimates