Kenneth Arnold's sighting

Fast "Flying Pie-Pans" Stump Army CAA Men

Pendleton, Ore., June 26. -- (AP) -- Army and CAA spokesmen expressed skepticism today over a report of nine mysterious objects - big as airplanes - whizzing at 1200 miles an hour.

Kenneth Arnold, a flying Boise, Idaho, businessman who reported seeing them, clung, however, to his story of the shiny, flat objects, each as big as a DC-4 passenger plane, racing over Washington's Cascade Mountains with a peculiar weaving motion "like the tail of kite."

An Army spokesman in Washington, D. C., commented, "as far as we know, nothing flies that fast except a V-2 rocket, which travels at about 3,500 miles an hour - and that's too fast to be seen."

The spokesman added that the V-2 rockets reported by Arnold, and that no high-speed experimental tests were being made in the area where Arnold said the objects were.

A Civil Aeronautics Administration inspector in Portland, Ore., added, "I rather doubt that anything would be traveling that fast."

Arnold described the objects as "flat like a pie pan," and so shiny that they reflected the sun like a mirror.

He said he was flying east a 2:59 p.m. two days ago toward Mt. Rainier when they appeared directly in front of him 25-30 miles away at 10,000 feet altitude.

By his plane's clock he timed them at 1:42 minutes for the 47 miles from Mt. Rainier to Mt. Adams, Arnold said, adding that he later figured by triangulation that their speed was 1,200 miles an hour.

"I could be wrong by 200 or 300 miles an hour", he admitted, "but I know I never saw anything so fast."

He said at first he thought they were geese, but quickly saw they were too big-as big as a DC-4 that was about 20 miles away, he said. The DC-4 pilot reported nothing unusual sighted.

Then Arnold said he thought of jet planes and started to clock them, "But their motion was wrong for Jet jobs."

"I guess I don't know what they were - unless they were guided missiles," said Arnold, who continued here on a business trip.