The article below was published in the newspaper The Daily Capital Journal, Salem, Oregon, USA, on page 1, on July 8, 1947.
|
(By the Associated Press)
America's "flying saucer" jag reeled on today. Stiff necks and goggle eyes were the order of the day. Sky watchers was a new profession.
North Carolina joined the disc parade.
For the first time the discs were reported whirling through the atmosphere over Asheville in western North Carolina and over Greensboro and Raleigh in the north central portion.
As reports continued to pour in from all over the nation tabulators ran the tally of states in which the saucers had been seen to 44. Observers in the District of Columbia and Canada also said they had sighted the mysterious objects.
The only states whose skies were still clear of the discs were Nevada, Mississippi, New Hampshire and Rhode Island.
Explanations. Take your choice: They were radio controlled flying missiles sent aloft ny the U. S. military scientists. Or they were merely light reflections from wing tanks of jet propelled planes. Or --
No one knew for sure.
The World Inventors Congress posted $1000 for delivery of a flying disc to the exposition which opens in Los Angeles on July 11.
Could they be spotted by radars?
A spokesman for the army air forces said in Washington that no attempt had been made to spot the spinning, flying, whirling, stationary discs because there was not enough equipment to blanket the nation.
Lt. Col. Harry W. Schaefer of the Wisconsin civil air patrol announced in Milwaukee his group planned to conduct a series of mass flights in hopes of learning something about the flying objects.
Searching for an answer, Caspar W. Ooms, the patent commissioner, said he did not think any of the 3.000.000 patents on his file in his office held the explanation to the saucers.
The Portland Oregonian said today that Maj. Gen. Nathan F. Twining, chief of AAF material command, told it flatly that the "flying saucers" are not the results of experiments by the armed services.
"Neither the AAF not any other component of the armed forces has any plane, guidedd missile of other aerial device under development which could possibly be mistaken for a saucer or formation of flying discs," the newspaper quoted Twining as telling it by telephone from Kirtland army air base, Albuquerque, N. M.
Sighted flying bombs -- Kenneth Arnold (above), Boise, Ida., business man flyer, who first reported seeing mysterious "flying discs" in formation while flying over the Cascade mountains in Washington, holds a camera he bought and which he hopes to use to take pictures of the discs if he spots them again (AP Wirephoto)
To: Kenneth Arnold or Newspapers 1940-1949.
