The article below was published in the newspaper The Plain Speaker, Hazleton, Pennsylvania, USA, on page 1, on June 26, 1947.
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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 1.200 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 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 3.600 miles an hour - and that's too fast to be seen."
The spokesman added that the V-2 rockets would not resemble the objects 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 at 2:29 p.m. two days ago toward Mt. Rainer when they appeared directly in front of him 25-30 miles away at 10.000 feet altitude.
To: Kenneth Arnold or Newspapers 1940-1949.
