Kenneth Arnold's sighting

Mysterious Objects Whizzing Over U.S.? Officials Skeptical

PENDLETON, Ore., June 26 (AP) -- Army and CAA spokesmen expressed skepticism today over a report of nine mysterious objects - big as airplanes - whizzing over western Washington 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 a 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.

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

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 1200 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."

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KANSAS CITY, June 26 (AP) -- nine shiny objects flying at a high rate of speed, such as described by a Boise, Idaho, pilot, were reported by W. I. Davenport, a carpenter, to have been sighted yesterday.

Davenport, working on the roof of a house, said he saw the objects flying west shortly after noon. He said he first heard the faint sound of motors.

"There were nine of them, flying in a group, with one a little on one side." he said. "They were flying so fast I barely had time to count them before they wee gone. They were leaving vapor trails."

He added that he could not describe the shape of the objects since he could not see them clearly.