On June 24th,
1947, Kenneth Arnold was flying his private plane in the area of Mount Rainier
in Washington State. Just another flight for this experienced pilot and business
man. Little did he know, that this was not going to be ”just another flight”.
As he was looking out his
windows, he suddenly saw nine, as he describes them, half moon shaped, oval in
front and sort of convex triangle shaped in the back, objects. Flying in
formation in the area of Mount Rainier. Sometimes in a later interview, Arnold
described the objects as crescent shaped, or a flying wing. Being an experienced pilot he estimated their speed at about 12oo mph, by
estimating the distance between two maintain tops he was familiar with, and the
time it took the objects to cover it.
As to the flight characteristics, he said
they were looking a bit unstable, bouncing up and down like a saucer skipping
on water. Over time, he gave slightly different descriptions, but still adhering to his original statements. Out of those different yet similar descriptions, it was actually THE
PRESS that coined the phrase “Flying Saucer”, and not Kenneth Arnold. He also
mentioned that he had seen flying saucers on several other occasions. So, as we
can see, Kenneth Arnold is not the father of the phrase “Flying Saucer”, and
furthermore, in this instance he didn’t see any flying discs or UFOs either.
So, what did he see?
































