The article below was published in the newspaper The Daily World, Opelousas, Louisiana, USA, on page 18, on June 29, 1947.
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Poor Kenneth Arnold of Boise, Idaho. Arnold is the man who saw the flying saucers.
There he was, flying along in his private plane, minding his own business, and heading for Pendleton, Oregon, when he sees nine shiny round objects skimming through the air in formation between Mt. Rainier, Wash., and Mt. Adams. They were moving up and down, and changing formation places at intervals.
He clocks them with the stopwatch in his plane, and finds that they are making a neat 1,200 miles an hour. (How Arnold, flying in a moving airplane can sight moving objects and clock their speed with sufficient accuracy to give one figure.)
Ever since he's had no peace. A preacher from Texas called him to say that all he saw were "harbingers of doomsday." Women look at him in cafes and shriek, calling him the "man who saw the men from Mars."
Experts in the aviation world hop on him. One airline pilot informed him that all he saw was the reflection of the airliner's instrument panel. Others say that if something were moving that rapidly, the only way it could be tracked is with radar.
(We saw one shiny black thing moving rapidly along the Port Barre-Opelousas highway recently. Some youngsters had tied a St. Landry parish turtle, a snapper, to a long wire and were towing it behind their auto.)
Other residents around the nation suddenly recall that they, too, saw the flying platters. Just didn't think to mention it at the time.
One thing about Arnold, his friends say that he is a thoroughly responsible fellow. Anyhow, he sticks to his story.
Others agree that he must have seen the things, and hazard that they are either new planes or guided missiles belonging to this or some other nation.
Regardless of such considerations, Arnold has learned one thing about sudden press notoriety.
People won't let him alone. Not even the FBI.
To: Kenneth Arnold or Newspapers 1940-1949.
