- Note- And so it begins. Kenneth Arnold's sighting quickly
swept the country and coined the term "flying saucer." Although
Arnold later said that the objects didn't "look like" flying
saucers, but there movements mimicked saucers skipping over water, the
term stuck never-the-less. This was the "beginning" of UFOlogy
as we know it today.
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- Sacramento Bee June 26, 1947
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- Pilot Reports Seeing Mystery 'Aircraft' Over Coast Range
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- PENDELTON (Ore) June 26.-(AP)-Nine shiny objects flying
at 1200 miles per hour over the Coast Range of Western Washington-that
is what pilot Kenneth Arnold of Boise, Ida., reported he saw while on a
routine flight over the mountains. He stuck to his story while fellow pilots
openly scoffed at his report and experts said they had no explanation as
to what the "objects" could be.
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- "It seems impossible, but there it is," Arnold
insisted.
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- Calls Them Aircraft
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- He said they were bright, saucer like
objects-he called them "aircraft"-flying at 10,00 feet altitude.
A flash of reflected sunshine brought them to his attention, he asserted,
and for a second he was stunned by their "incredible" speed.
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- He said he rolled down the window of his plane, thinking
it might have caused the reflection, but he still saw them with the window
down.
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- They flew with a peculiar dipping motion, "like
a fish flipping in the sun," he said, and "they were extremely
shiny, and when they caught the sun right it nearly blinded me."
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- Figures Speed
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- He reported they were about 25 to 30 miles away when
first sighted flying north. He glanced at his instrument clock and timed
them between Mount Adams and Mount Rainier, a distance of 47 miles.
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- It took 1:42 minutes, Arnold reported, added that after
he landed, he got out a map and by triangulation figured the speed of the
"objects" at 1200 miles per hour.
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- "I might have missed a second or two in my timing,
but the speed still would be near 1,200 miles per hour," he asserted.
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- In Portland, the state senior Civil Aeronautics Administration
Inspector, Edward Leach, said he doubted "that anything would be traveling
that fast."
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- Size of Transport Plane
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- Arnold also said a DC4 was flying in the vicinity and
he estimated that the "objects" were about the same size as the
four engined passenger ships, although the "objects" did not
have wings.
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- "One thing that struck me," he said, "was
that they were flying so low. Ten thousand feet is very low for anything
going at that speed."
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- He reported that they appeared to fly almost as if they
were fastened together-if one dipped the others did too.\
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