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caused the flash. All this went through my mind in less than a tenth of a second as I began to look around below me and ahead of me. And then the flash came again. This very bright flash, almost like an arc light was coming from a group of objects far up to th north of Mount Rainier in the area of Mount Baker which is almost in a line with Mount Rainier· and Mount Adams. I saw a chain of very peculiar aircraft approaching Mount Rainier very rapidly - I think I described their formation at the time as looking like a "tail of a Chinese kite."
Read his report carefully, and the report of the prospector, and you will see that the objects were approximately 30 feet in diameter. They were weaving among the mountains at a speed in excess of 1,200 miles per hour! And they were twenty miles from Arnold's position. So Arnold was observing small (30 feet) objects travelling at supersonic speed twenty miles in front of him! Something is wrong here. If all his calculations were correct he would not be able to see those things at all. They were too small ... they were too far away ... and they were moving too fast to be visible to the naked eye!
About the flashes. As I have pointed out in my books and numerous articles, a brilliant flash of light often occurs before the appearance of UFOs, angels demons and chimeras. And in hundreds of cases, such as the famous Ohio helicopter incident in 1973, a flash phenomenon takes place just prior to distortion of time and space. In the Ohio incident the helicopter was suddenly transposed 3,000 feet with no action on the part of the pilot.
It was around 2 p.m. when Arnold saw the flash. A beautiful, cloudless day. He was travelling NE and the sun was above and slightly behind him. The objects were going SE. It is remotely possible that the sun could have reflected from the objects but remember that Arnold was almost level with them and they were twenty miles away. So it is highly unlikely that the flashes were reflections of the sun. It seems more probable that they were aimed directly at Arnold, a tiny speck in the sky twenty miles distant. KENNETH ARNOLD WAS SOMEHOW MEANT TO SEE THESE THINGS.
Clocks and stopwatches are very important in aerial navigation and, like all pilots, Arnold was accustomed to their use. His estimates of the speed of the UFO are probably accurate, 1.200 miles. But can anyone see a 30-ft. object travelling at 1,200 miles an hour at a distance of 20 miles?
The general rule is that anything going faster than 700 mph is invisible to the naked eye. A bullet, for example. However, experienced soldiers cannot only see artillery shells and mortar rounds in the air, they can even tell where they are going to land. But they travel at speeds between 400· 700 mph.
Kenneth Arnold led an exemplary life. He was a decent, honest man. There is no reason to think that he lied about his sighting. Yet heJ could not have seen what he thought he saw.
The most amazing thing of all is that, although his story has been told over and over again in countless books and articles, no-one has ever raised these simple questions before.
The objects passed over a measurable course fifty miles in length in l 02 seconds. "I had worked out mathematically how fast the strange craft were going" Arnold said in 197 7, "and every time I reworked it, it came out that they were going over l 700 miles a hour. It was mind-boggling! I even measured the base of the mountains - both Mount Rainier and Mount Adams - on my aeronautical charts, and took the minimum reading of twenty-nine miles and refigured it; they still clocked out at over 1300 miles an hour."
There was only one man-made supersonic plane in existence in 1947, and it could not attain l 700 mph.
If Arnold could not have seen objects moving that fast, what did he actually see? After the first flash of light he may have watched part of something ... something much larger and much different from what he thought he was seeing. The strobe-like movement of the objects even suggests that either they - or Arnold - were in a different time-frame ... a phenomenon well-known to Forteans. Arnold's navigational clock could have been malfunctioning temporarily.
Whatever happened on that sunny June 24th in 1947, Kenneth Arnold opened a magical door for all of us that afternoon, and all manner of weird entities and objects have been pouring through it ever since. - J.A.K.
DOCUMENT NO. 1
OFFICE MEMORANDUM. UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT TO: Director; FBI Date: 9-17-47 FROM: SAC, PortlandSUBJECT: REPORTS OF FLYING DISCS SECURITY MATTER-X
Refer San Francisco letter dated September 4, 1947. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Portland, reported without consulting any records that on June 24, 1947, while prospecting at a point in the Cascade Mountains approximately five thousand feet from sea level, during the afternoon he noticed a reflection, looked up, and saw a disc proceeding in a South-easterly direction. Immediately upon sighting this object he placed his telescope to his eye and observed the disc for approximately forty-five to six seconds. He remarked that it is possible for him to pick up an object at a distance of ten miles with his telescope. At the time the disc was sighted by Mr. xxxxxxxxxxxx it was banking in the sun, and he observed five or six similar objects but only concentrated on one. He related that they did not fly in any particular formation and that he would estimate their height to
