The article below was published in the newspaper Abilene Reporter-News, Abilene, Texas, USA, on page 8, on June 30, 1947.
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PORTLAND, Ore., June 29 -- (AP) -- Westerners were seeing "flying saucers" almost everywhere Sunday -- From Canada to Texas -- and a red-hot controversy raged about it all.
Kenneth Arnold, Boise, Idaho, flying businessman started it by reporting he saw nine mystery objects zipping over western Washington last Tuesday at what he estimated was 1,200 mile an hour speed.
Experts dismissed his report with statements that no known aircraft could go that fast and that no guided missiles tests were being made over that part of the West.
Hardly were the words out of their mouths when others began reporting "flying saucers" and the controversy was on.
There was a similarity in all reports - the objects were round like saucers, traveling south at a high rate of speed with little or no noise, and of such brightness that reflections from the sun were "almost blinding."
Three persons in El Paso said they had seen them recently, as did two persons in Vancouver, B. C. The latest of a score of reports in the Pacific Northwest came from a Seaside, Ore., woman, who said she saw one before sunset Saturday night.
There were two popular theories - that the objects were experimental airplanes or guided missiles to which the armed forces will not admit, or that they were guided missiles from foreign soil.
A spokesman for the Army expressed interest in anything that could go 1,200 miles an hour, but no responsible official or air expert came to the defense of the reports or the theories behind them. Some suggested that perhaps imagination had become the better part of sight.
To: Kenneth Arnold or Newspapers 1940-1949.
