Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting
He made a brief detour after learning of a $5,000 reward (equivalent to $68,000 today) for the discovery of a U.S. Marine Corps C-46 transport airplane that had crashed near Mount Rainier.
[2] A few minutes before 3:00 p.m. (15:00) at about 9,200 feet (2,800 m) in altitude and near Mineral, Washington, Arnold had given up his search and began heading eastward towards Yakima, when he noticed a bright flashing light, similar to sunlight reflecting from a mirror.
Worried that he might be dangerously close to another aircraft, Arnold scanned the skies around him but all he could detect was a DC-4 to his left and behind him, about 15 miles (24 km) away, with the assistance of ground radar.
They flew in a long chain, and Arnold for a moment considered they might be a flock of geese, but quickly ruled this out for a number of reasons, including the altitude, bright glint, and obviously very fast speed.
[2] Using a Dzus cowling fastener as a gauge to compare the nine objects to the distant DC-4, Arnold estimated their angular size as slightly smaller than the DC-4, about the width between the outer engines (about 60 ft (18 m)).
[6] Arnold said the objects were grouped together, as Ted Bloecher[7] writes, "in a diagonally stepped-down, echelon formation, stretched out over a distance that he later calculated to be five miles".
They would occasionally flip or bank on their edges in unison as they turned or maneuvered causing almost blindingly bright or mirror-like flashes of light.
Not knowing exactly the distance where the objects faded from view, Arnold conservatively and arbitrarily rounded this down to 1,200 miles (1,900 km) an hour, still faster than any known aircraft, which had yet to break the sound barrier.
After landing in Yakima, Arnold 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.
"[13] The previous day, Bernier had also spoken to his local newspaper, the Richland Washington Villager, and was among the first witnesses to suggest extraterrestrial origins: "I believe it may be a visitor from another planet.
A member of the Washington State forest service, who had been on fire watch at a tower in Diamond Gap, about 20 miles (32 km) south of Yakima, reported seeing "flashes" at 3:00 p.m. on the 24th over Mount Rainier (or exactly the same time as Arnold's sighting), that appeared to move in a straight line.
Similarly, at 3:00 p.m. Sidney B. Gallagher in Washington state (exact position unspecified) reported seeing nine shiny discs flash by to the north.
[17] The primary corroborative sighting, however, occurred ten days later (July 4) when a United Airlines crew over Idaho en route to Seattle also spotted five to nine disk-like objects that paced their plane for 10 to 15 minutes before suddenly disappearing.
(see quotations further below) Years later, Arnold claimed he told Bill Bequette that "they flew erratic, like a saucer if you skip it across the water."
A review of early newspaper stories indicates that immediately after his sighting, Arnold generally described the objects' shape as thin and flat, rounded in the front but chopped in the back and coming to a point, i.e., more or less saucer- or disk-like.
For example, in a surviving recorded radio interview from June 26, 1947, made by reporter Ted Smith, United Press correspondent in Pendleton, and aired on KWRC, the local radio station of Pendleton,[28] Arnold described them as looking "something like a pie plate that was cut in half with a sort of a convex triangle in the rear."
"[1] On July 9, AAF intelligence, with help from the FBI, secretly began an investigation of the best sightings, mostly from pilots and military personnel[citation needed].
According to Major Edward J. Ruppelt, In the weeks that followed Arnold's June 1947 story, at least several hundred reports of similar sightings flooded in from the U.S. and around the world—most of which described saucer-shaped objects.
[33] The commander of the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico, Lieutenant Colonel Harry R. Turner, also told reporters that Arnold's sighting was consistent with the appearance of jet airplanes.
[36] Philip J. Klass[37] cited an article by Keay Davidson of the San Francisco Examiner in arguing that Arnold might have misidentified meteors on June 24, 1947.
