[1][2][3][4] The craze began on June 24, when media nationwide reported civilian pilot Kenneth Arnold's story of witnessing disc-shaped objects which headline writers dubbed "Flying Saucers".

"[11] Another scholar opined: "The 'flying saucers' may have been a hoax, imagination, illusion, mirages, phantoms of preposterous eyesight, et al, yet they caused a phenomenon reverberations of which were heard around the world.

"[15][16] Folklorist Gordon Arnold similarly writes: "Many aspects of the great flying saucer wave raise questions about human behavior and America's social, cultural, and political inclinations".

[7] Folklorist Howard Henry Peckham similarly argued that "students of folklore have had a rare opportunity to witness the birth and development of a modern myth – the 'flying saucers'".

On June 27, retired Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts warned the US was headed "down the old familiar road of appeasement" towards "An all-out shooting World War III".

[24] When Arnold landed in Yakima, he described what he had seen to a number of pilot friends, who suggested that maybe he had seen guided missiles or a new airplane being secretly developed by the United States Army.

[56] On July 1, Air Force intelligence officer Col. Alfred Kalberer and astronomer Oscar Monnig briefed press to provide reassurance that "we're not being invaded by little platter-like planes from Mars".

[58] In San Angelo, on July 2 the press relayed a report from Ivy T. Young who speculated that his hobby of releasing silvery balloons with his name attached may have been responsible for the disc sightings.

"[67] On July 3, press nationwide reported a story from California Highway Patrol Sergeant David Menary who told of seeing six large metallic discs dive into the San Francisco Bay at high speed the prior day.

[73] Alternatively, the San Francisco Chronicle published a letter from local eccentric Ole J. Sneide who claimed that the discs were "oblate spheroid space ships" who "have been absent from our planet since before the fall of the Roman Empire, when the Great Master left earth for the outer galaxy by fohatic [sic] teleportation.

[83] A Louisiana paper quoted physicist Norris Sill, a member of the Navy staff at the Bikini tests, as discounting the suggestion that nuclear fission was causing the sightings, saying there was "no plausible connection between the two".

The scientist declared "People are not 'seeing things'" and 'said flatly that experiments in "transmutation of atomic energy" being conducted at Muroc Lake Calif; White Sands, N.M.; Portland Ore., and elsewhere are responsible for the "flying discs".

[93][96] Retired general Hap Arnold (no relation) publicly speculated the discs had either been developed by United States scientists or were foreign technology that "operating out of control".

[97] In contrast, Harry A. Steckel, psychiatric consultant to the Veterans Administration, dismissed the "mass hysteria" explanation, adding that the disc might be the result of "experiments by unknown government agencies".

[100][101] On July 8, United Press reported that Soviet Vice Counsel Eugene Tunantzev denied responsibility for the discs, saying that "Russia respects the sovereignty of all governments and by no stretch of the imagination would use another country for a proving ground."

[107] On July 8, papers ran comments by White House press secretary Charles G. Ross who jokingly shared a telegram from a professional juggler who reported the "saucers" were things used in his act that "got out of hand".

[112] Science-fiction author and Fortean R. DeWitt Miller compared the current craze to 19th-century folklore, speculating the discs were either a new weapon, interplanetary, or else "things out of other dimensions of time and space".

On July 9, Roswell Daily Record reported that the debris consisted of "large area of bright wreckage made up of rubber strips, tinfoil, a rather tough paper and sticks.

[126] On July 9, airplane inventor Orville Wright argued the disc reports are "more propaganda for war, to stir up the people and excite them to believe a foreign power has designs on this nation".

[127] On July 9, Missouri press reported that a contraption made from pie pans, wires, and radio tubes was found burning on the Clayton County courthouse lawn.

[52] Another scholar commented on the brevity of the craze, writing: "The first newspaper accounts preceded a sweep of confirmative stories — some creditable, some doubtful, some proven hoaxes, and innumerable explanations — that caught the nation's attention in a matter of days, and the world inside of three weeks...Yet a hypothetical person not in contact with a medium of communication during the incident, and returning to read an American newspaper after July 20, 1947, would know nothing of the episode which, shortly before, held the world in its grip.

[41][42] By June 29, public speculation suggested that the reports might be attributed to "Flying Flapjack", an experimental Navy fighter aircraft with a somewhat disc-shaped body that had been profiled in the May 1947 issue of Mechanix Illustrated.

[55][165] On July 3, Army Lt. Gen Nathan Twining, head of Air Material Command and commander of Wright Field, announced an investigation into the discs and informed the public that the Army Air Forces "have nothing that would compare to the descriptions of the object" [166] On July 6, the International News Services interviewed racecar builder Leo Bentz who speculated the discs were the work of an inventor named George De Bay.

[96] Retired general Hap Arnold (no relation) publicly speculated the discs had either been developed by United States scientists or were foreign technology "operating out of control".

[172] On July 3, the International News Service suggested a sociological component, arguing that Arnold had "broken the ice" and induced "trained observers to tell stories they had hesitated to relate before in the fear nobody would believe them".

[182] Another line of thought argued that the reports might be caused not by technological alien spacecraft or mass hysteria, but rather by animal lifeforms that are indigenous to Earth's atmosphere or interplanetary space.

[73][8] Layne claimed to be in telepathic communication with "people in the saucers", arguing "it is possible for objects to pass from an etheric to a dense level of matter and will then appear to materialize.

"[198][54][197] Original saucer witness Kenneth Arnold went on to detail his purported sightings and subsequent disc investigations in a 1952 book co-authored with Amazing Stories editor Raymond Palmer.

[199][200] Arnold was the Republican nominee in the 1962 Idaho lieutenant gubernatorial election;[201] In 1977, he appeared at a convention curated by Fate Magazine to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the "birth of the modern UFO age".

In 1961, he self-published The Flying Saucer Mystery and Its Solution, continuing to argue for his "Ether Ship" belief; Layne would come to be seen as an early proponent of the interdimensional hypothesis.