The article below was published in the newspaper The Herald-Tribune, New York City, New York, USA, on page 1, on June 30, 1947.
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PORTLAND, Ore., June 29 (AP) -- Westerners were seeing "flying saucers" almost everywhere today from Canada to Texas, and a red hot controvery raged about it all.
Kenneth Arnold, of Boise, Idaho, started it ny reporting he saw nine mysterious objects zipping over western Washington last Tuesday at what he estimated was 1,200-miles-an-hour speed.
Experts dismissed his reports with statements that no known aircraft could go that fast and that no guided missiles tests were being made in that part of the West.
Then 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 psersons in El Paso, Tex., said they had seen them recently, as did two persons in Vancouver, B. C. The lastest of a score of reports in the Pacific Northwest came from a seaside Ore., woman, who said she saw one before sunset last night.
There were two popular theories that the objects were experimental planes of guided missiles to which the armed forces will not admit, ot that they were guided missiles from foreign soil.
An Army Spokesman 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 of the theories behind them.
To: Kenneth Arnold or Newspapers 1940-1949.
