The Kenneth Arnold UFO Sighting Revisited
On June 24, 1947, businessman and pilot Kenneth Arnold made what is regarded to be the first widely reported sighting of an unidentified flying object in the United States.
Kenneth Arnold saw a chain of objects flying near Mt. Ranier while flying from Chehalis to Yakima, Washington. Arnold said one of the objects was crescent-shaped while the other eight were disc-shaped, later telling a reporter that they flew “like a saucer if you skipped it across the water.” Thus the term “flying saucer” was coined.
As the objects flew around Mt. Ranier, Arnold estimated their distance from him to be 23 miles. He said they flew from Ranier to Mt. Adams, a distance of about 50 miles, in one minute and forty-two seconds. This would make their speed about 1700 miles per hour, which was three times faster than any manned aircraft in 1947.
Arnold’s sighting was corroborated by several witnesses during the next few weeks. The most important of these was the crew of a United Airlines plane who spotted nine discs pacing them over Idaho for 15 minutes. The first eyewitness was a prospector named Frank Johnson on Mt. Adams. Johnson reported to Army Air Force Intelligence that he saw six objects similar to the ones seen by Arnold on June 24.
L.G. Bernier spotted three objects flying edgewise over Richland, Washington. Bernier told the Portland (Oregon) Journal that this was about 30 minutes before Kenneth Arnold’s sighting. Mrs. Ethel Wheelhouse of Yakima, Washington, said he saw flying saucers about the same time as Arnold. Other witnesses came forth from Diamond Gap and Tacoma.
After the Arnold sighting, strange objects began being seen all over America. Kenneth Arnold and others saw something near Mt. Ranier on June 24, 2008, that is for sure. The AAf said it was a mirage but could all of these people have seen the same illusion from different angles. The incredible speed of the objects indicates that they did not come from Earth.
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