The article below was published in the newspaper The Lawton Constitution, Lawton, Oklahoma, USA, on pages 1 and 6, on June 26, 1947.
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OKLAHOMA CITY, June 26 (AP) Don't sell those strange flying objects reported whizzing over western Washington short until the returns are all in - a flyer claimed today he saw one flash over Oklahoma City.
"It was about five or six weeks ago, as near as my wife and I can remember," said Byron Savage, 38, Oklahoma City businessman pilot.
"I was standing in my front yard at the time, about dusk, with a little sunlight in the sky, when a flat, disc-like object came across the city from just a little east of south and was gone in about four of five seconds.
"The machine, or whatever it was, was a very shiny, silvery color - very big - and was moving at a terrific rate of speed.
"The funny thing about it was that it made no noise. I don't think it had any kind of internal combustion engine."
Referring to a claim by Kenneth Arnold, flying Boise, Idaho, businessman that he saw nine objects in western Washington similar to the one Savage described, the Oklahoma City pilot declared:
"I know that boy up there (Arnold) really saw them."
Savage said he told his wife about the object at the time, but "she thought I must have seen lightning," and he also told some pilot friends who were skeptical.
"I kept quiet after that," he continued "until I read about that man seeig nine of the same things I saw and I thought it only fair to back him up."
Savage said the object he saw
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was high in the air - "somewhere around 10,000 feet. I could'nt be sure, judging it from the ground where I was."
Despite skepticim of army and other experts, the Boise flying businessman stuck to his story of seeing nine shiny, flat objects as big as a DC-4 passenger plane passing over the Cascade moutnains with a peculiar weaving motion.
The Boise man said he was flying toward Mount Rainier when the objects appeared.
PENDLETON, Ore., June 26 -- (UP) -- Residents of Pendleton sought an explanation today for the nine strange "saucer-shaped" planes an amateur pilot claimed he saw flying at an estimated speed of 1,200 miles an hour across southwestern Washington.
The story was told by Kenneth Arnold, flying fire extinguisher salesman from Boise, Ida.
He landed here slightly bugeyed, yesterday and told how he spotted the "extremely shiny nickle-plated aircraft" skimming along at 10,000 feet on Tuesday. Arnold was on search for a missing marine corps plane at the time.
"They were shaped like saucers and were so thin I barely could see them," he told Jack Whitman, a local businessman.
"There were nine of them and they were flying in screwy formation about 25 miles away from me. It wasn't any military formation i ever saw before. And they were traveling faster than I ever saw before."
"I figured they were moving about 1,200 miles per hour because I clocked them with a stop watch during the time it took them to fly from Mount Rainier to Mount Adams. That's 42 miles and they made it in one minute 42 seconds - about 1,200 M.P.H."
Arnold said the strange aircraft were skittering across the southwest slope of Mount Rainier when he first sighted them.
Whitman suggested tactfully that Arnold had "been seeing things" but the pilot insisted "I must believe my eyes."
There was no comment from military authorities on Arnold's story.
To: Kenneth Arnold or Newspapers 1940-1949.
