The article below was published in the newspaper The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, on page 2, on July 7, 1947.
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San Francisco, July 6 (AP) -- Military aircraft hunted the skies over Pacific Coast states today for sight of the mysterious "flying saucers" that for twelve day have puzzled the entire country.
Early reports of results were negative.
Five P-51's of the Oregon National Guard cruised over the Cascade mountains of Washington -- the area where the strange objects were first reported sighted. A sixth circled over Portland, in constant radio contact with the other five. All carried photographic equipment.
Col. Robert O. Dodson, commanding, described their flight as a "routine patrol," but said they had been instructed to watch for the flying disks.
At Manhattan Beach, col., A. W. McKelvey took a Mustang fighter plane up above Van Nuys. For two hours he cruised at 35,000 feet.
"I didn't see a thing," he said when he landed.
Denial by Spaatz
Gen. Carl Spaatz, commandant of the Air Forces, was in the Pacific Northwest. He denied knowing anything about the flying disks -- or of plans to use the AAF planes to look for them.
"I've been out of touch with things for four or five days," he said.
Then he went to Medford, Ore., in a fishing trip.
Louis E. Starr, national commander in chief of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, said in Columbus, Ohio, yesterday he understood General Spaatz had a "group out right now" looking for disks.
Attitude Is Cautious
A cautious attitude marked both official and scientific comments, but Capt. Tom Brown, of the Air Forces public relations staff in Washington acknowledged that the Air Force has decided "there's something to this" and had been checking up on it for ten days.
"And we still haven't the slightest idea what the discs could be," he added.
First sighted June 25 and greeted generally with scornful laughs, the objects have been reported every day since by observers in 33 states. Most of the objects were reported seen on July 4. A few were reported yesterday.
Called Larger Than Aircraft
Competent observers such as airline pilots said they had seen the totally unexplained discs or saucers, larger than aircraft and flying in "loose formation" at high speed.
David Lilienthal, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, said they had nothing to do with atomic experiences and Army and Navy officials also entered positive disclaimers.
Captain Brown said he air forces were not making a formal investigation. Official interest, however, was no longer casual.
"We don't believe anyone in this country, or outside this country, had developed a guided missile that will go 1.2000 miles an hour as some reports have indicated," said the Air Forces public relations man.
A Los Angeles newspaper story quoting an unidentified California Institute of Technology scientist as saying the phenomena might have to do with experiments in "transmutation of atomic energy" caused a brief sensation late yesterday. The institute quickly denied the report. Dr. Harold Urey, atom scientist at the University of Chicago, called it it "gibberish." He said elements could be "transmuted" but not energy.
Reports generally agreed that the flying objects were round or oval. Estimates of their speed ranged from about 300 miles to 1.200 miles an hour. They were described as flying with an undulating motion, at heights of 10.000 feet and less. Some described them as glowing, or luminous.
Nova Hart, St. Louis mechanic who was trained during service in the war to spot all types of aircraft, said he saw one of the strange objects near Pattonville yesterday. It was flying at an altitude of 300 feet, he said. He described it as circular, with a ribbed framework and silver gray in color. Hart said it appeared to have a motor with a propeller attached on the center and it kept turning like an airplane doing a slow roll.
A report of a "saucer" seen over the District of Columbia came tonight from Hazen Kennedy, former AAF flying cadet.
He said he saw it about 8:40 P.M. through a window of his home, thought at first it was a reflection
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Spokane, Wash., July 6 - (AP) - Eight flying saucers were reported today to have made a landing on a mountainside near St. Maries, Idaho in full view of ten persons.
Mrs. Walter Johnson of suburban Dishman said the saucers came down in timber there Thursday evening but had not been reported until she returned to her home in Dishman today.
The saucers were seen to fall near Butler's Bay on the St. Joe River six miles west of St. Maries, where Mrs. Johnson was visiting her parents.
She said they came into view at an extreme speed, traveling from the south to the north. Suddenly, they slowed, she said, and then "fluttered like leaves to the ground."
"The mysterious part was that we couldn't see them after the landing," said Mrs. Johnson. "We could see them flutter down into the timber, yet we couldn't see that they did anything to the trees."
She said the objects were saucer-shaped, but thicker she would have expected, resembling washtubs more than disks. She described them as "about the size of a five-room house.".
London, July 6 (AP) -- Don't mention those flying saucers on this side of the Atlantic unless you're prepared for an argument about your sanity.
Maybe they have been seen by sober citizens over a vast area of the United States, but Europe won't believe in them until somebody lassoes one and has it photographed by Frank Sinatra, the British ambassador and Five Supreme Court justices.
America's Monster?
"America's reply to the Loch Ness monster," chortled today's Sunday Dispatch, referring to Britain's hoariest tall story - the vast serpent that is "seen" romping in Scotland's Loch Ness every time the tourist trade needs a shot in the arm.
"Citizens of a country which possesses the atom bomb ought not to be afraid of anything," scoffed the Communist Daily Worker, adding:
"You remember those stories about rockets streaking out over Sweden - or is your memory so short?
Swedish military headquarters announced last October 10 that radar equipment had detected some kind of "ghost rockets" over Sweden, but that "it proved impossible on the basis of indications, to decide the nature of the things." Peculiar aerial objects have been reported sighted in great numbers
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[Photo caption:] SEE ANY SAUCERS? -- Students at Centenary college, Shreveport, La., have formed the Flying Saucer Club in watch for aerial disks, some of which were reported over Shreveport on July 5. Holding glasses is Betty Jean Rickham, special disk watcher. Others are L. to R.: Betty Sue Matthews, secretary-treasurer; Billie Jean Sapaugh, vice president, and Bettie Joe Mitterlehner, president.
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"THEY LOOKED SOMETHING LIKE THIS" -- Capt. E. J. Smith, of Seattle, United Air Line pilot, demonstrates with a dinner plate as he give Toni Carter, stewardess, a description of the flying disks which he and his crew reported seeing while on a flight from Boise, Idaho, in Seattle.
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on the glass, and raised the window for an unobstructed look.
He described the object as flying about 1,200 to 1,500 feet up at "well over 1,000 miles an hour." He said it was of orange hue. After a short time it just "disappeared," he recounted.
First Reported June 25
First published reports of the phenomena occurred June 25. Kenneth Arnold, Boise (Idaho) businessman pilot, told of seeing nine of the disks flying in formation at 1,200 miles an hour over the Cascade Mountains in Washington.
Arnold's account was taken lightly. Various explanations were offered -- "reflections," "persistent vision," "snow blindness."
Soon afterward other individuals -- in New Mexico, Missouri, California and other states -- reported they had also seen the flying objects.
Then on Independence Day 200 persons in one group and 60 in another saw them in Idaho. Hundreds of others in Oregon, Washington, and other Western States reported seeing them.
Wide Area covered
July 4 also brought first reports of the flying disks from east of the Mississippi. Since then they have been reported seen in widely separated sections of the country -- in 33 states at all.
C. E. Holman, of Walter, Okla., asserted yesterday he also had seen the flying saucers June 25. He watched them "flying around and around each other" for about 30 minutes, he said. Then he just went to bed.
"I thought about waking up some of my neighbors, but decided if it meant the end of the world they would be just about as happy sleeping when the world ended," Holman said.
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between July and October, 1946. There was speculation that they might be experimental rockets from the Russian-occupied Baltic coast of Germany.
Liquor Antidote Urged
Europeans generally took the position that the flying saucers like Sweden's "ghost rockets," would go away if everybody took a good stiff bicarbonate of soda and the pledge, in that order.
Frenchmen shrugged at the story, Scandinavians grinned good-naturedly and Englishmen - most infuriatingly of all - asked Americans about the skyborne crockery as one might ask a child how his G-men game was progressing.
"What is it, mass hallucination, or one of those American hoaxes?" inquired a Fleet street sub-editor.
"You Americans do have a lot of fun playing games like that, don't you?" suggested a school teacher.
"When one of our British G.I. brides writes home to say she's seen it, then I'll believe it," said a grocer.
But then, lots of Englishmen still think the Empire State building is a publicity man's nightmare and flatly doubt there is any such thing as a chocolate sundae with whipped cream and walnut.
Port Washington, N. Y., July 6 (AP) -- "Flying disks" aren't anything new to John J. Floherty, Port Washington author of juvenile books. He says he's seen them lots of times.
But Floherty's disks - slightly elongated saucers apparently traveling at high speeds - are the beams of revolving airline beacons playing on or through cloud layers, he said today.
Under certain cloud and weather conditions, Floherty said, the beacons, many of which remain on day and night, produce the startling effect of disks speeding across the sky. He declared he had seen them numerous times from planes.
He hastened to add, however, that the beacons couldn't have caused many of the disk-like objects reported recently, for conditions existing at the time of the sightings apparently would rule them out.
Floherty said he saw the saucer-like objects while standing on a Port Washington dock several nights ago. They appeared through an upper cloud layer, almost perfect ovals spinning through the clouds.
But, Floherty added, it was just the searchlights at LaGuardia Field, 12 miles away, playing tricks in the sky.
Philadelphia, July 6 (AP) -- Paul Moss, 14, said today he saw a "flying saucer" about 40 inches in diameter following a transport plane crossing the Delaware River today.
Moss said he was playing baseball with a group of other boys when he saw the disk, orange in color, at one time outdistance the plane.
A spokesman of the weather bureau at the southwest airport said the disks might have been balloons which the bureau releases about six times daily to determine wind direction and velocity.
Boise, Idaho, July 5 (AP) -- The airman who reported sighting "flying saucers" said today he had invested $150 in a movie camera to get film photographic proof of the disks he said flipped through the wild blue yonder "like fish skimming through water."
Kenneth Arnold, 32, Boise, flying business man, said he would take the camera with him on every flight he makes overs his five states business territory because "a picture of them would be the most beautiful thing you ever saw and it would provide a record of what I saw and I know to be true."
Arnold said the avalanche of reports since he first told about the "flying saucers" has pointed up two factors which he considers significant:
1. Most observers on the ground and in the air place the height of the disks at "9,000 feet or higher - never any lower."
2. Generally a large volume of reports of saucers being sighted in the Pacific Northwest "occurs only on days when the air is quiet -- hardly ever when the air is turbulent."
[Photo caption:] AFTER DISK PICTURE -- A movie camera is being fitted into this P-51 Oregon National Guard plane in hopes of obtaining a photo of the "flying saucers" that have been reported by Oregonians.
To: Kenneth Arnold or Newspapers 1940-1949.
