The article below was published in the newspaper The Ogden Standard-Examiner, Ogden, Utah, USA, on pages 1 and 2, on July 7, 1947.
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[Photo caption:] On the chance that the few readers of the Ogden Standard-Examiner have seen the "flying saucers" which have become a nationwide basis of gags and wonderments, Photographer Ted Collins provides this proof -- and leaves it up to you whether it's positive or negative. Collins thereby becomes probably the only observer among hundreds who has seen the discs without even leaving his photographic darkroom - for he created the illusion by picking a four-bit piece and four pennies (all he had left of his weekly's salary, no doubt) stopped a fogged negative and printing the results.
BOZEMAN, Mont., July 7 (UP) The nation's flying saucers have turned into flying yo-yos in Western Montana.
Vernon Baird, Los Angeles, pilot for the Fairchild Photographic Engineers Co., reported today he had tangled with a "flying yo-yo" over the Tobacco Root mountains in Western Montana yesterday.
Baird, flying a P-38 for the firm, which is mapping the area between Helena and Yellowstone park for the reclamation bureau, said he and his photographer, George Sutin, Los Angeles, were flying 360 m. p. h. at 32,400 feet when he turned to check an oil distribution mechanism.
"There about 100 yards behind me was the yo-yo," Baird said. "It was a pearl-gray clam-shaped airplane, with a plexiglas dome on top. It was about 15 feet in diameter and about four feet thick."
The curious yo-yo overhauled the P-38 and Baird took evasive action.
"The yo-yo got caught in my propwash and the thing came apart like a clamshell. The two pieces spiraled down some place in the Madison range."
Baird said that after the yo-yo fell apart he looked around and saw several of them darting around "like a batch of molecules doing the rhumba."
Baird said he was too busy handling his plane to notice if there was a man inside the gadgets.
His photographer didn't think about his camera until too late to get a picture, Baird said.
POCATELLO, Jul 7 (AP) -- The Pocatello Tribune received a communication this morning from H. C. McLean of Seattle, who reported that as he was driving through Pocatello he saw a disc about the size of a farm wagon wheel float lightly to the middle of the street and come to a stop. It stopped only a few seconds but he got a good look at it, since it was only twenty yards away and almost still.
"It was not a saucer, but a disc," said The Tribune. "This was surrounded by a tube that had an en-
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[Photo caption:] Kenneth Arnold (left) Capt. E. J. Smith, and First Officer Ralph Stephens (right) compare notes on "flying discs." Arnold, a private pilot, was first person to report the objects, and clocked them at about 1200 miles per hour. Smith and Stephens said they turned their United Airlines passenger plane off its course over Boise, Idaho and chased a "strange object" for 15 minutes before it outdistanced them or disintegrated in the dusk. Arnold and Dave Johnson, aviation editor of the Idaho Daily Statesman, Boise, were winging their way over the northwest looking for discs - and centering their search in the vicinity of the Hanford, Wash., atom research plant.
SAN FRANCISCO, July 7 (AP) -- From one end of the country to the other, new reports of disc-like "flying saucers" skimming through the skies today added the mystery which has baffled the nation since June 25.
There was no satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon. The saucers first were reported seen in the state of Washington June 25. Then persons in other western states said they had seen them. The peak came over the July 4 holiday when they were first reported seen east of Mississippi.
The latest tabulation showed the mystery objects had been reported seen in 30 states, the District of Columbia and in Canada.
Yesterday they were reported seen in more than a dozen states and in southwestern Ontario.
An aerial patrol by the Oregon National Guard failed to sight one of the objects. The guards planned to send a plane today to a spot near St. Maries, Idaho, where one woman said 10 persons saw 8 of the discs disappear in timber July 3.
Kenneth Arnold, businessman pilot of Boise, Idaho, first reported seeing the discs. He said he saw nine flying in formation at 1200 miles an hour over the Cascade mountains. Other observers have given the objects varying speeds and in at least one case said they appeared to be suspended in the air.
Most observers usually agreed that the objects were round or oval. Guesses as to their size have ranged from that of a five-room house or a large airplane to one description of "a silver ball, 6 inches in diameter."
The army, the navy and the atomic energy commission all disclaimed any connection with the mystery. An army spokesman in Washington said the A. A. F. had been checking into the reports "and we still haven't the slightest idea what they could be."
Some scientists suggested that reflections of light, such as from aircraft, might account for the bright objects which have been reported. In some cases, the observers
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have insisted that the "saucers" have been accompanied by sound.
A Hagerstrom, Md., woman, said she saw five go eastward at "terrific speed" and that they roared with a sound like a faraway train."
Mrs. Walter Johnson of Spokane, who reported she was one of a group which saw the objects fall near St. Maries, said she and her companions could not find either the disks or anything to indicate where they might have fallen. She described them as "about the size of a five-room house" and said they resembled washtubs, more than discks.
The coast guard [Fred Ryman] at Seattle said there was nothing to indicate that the objects might have come from foreign vessels near shore.
The objects were reported seen since June 25 in Canada, the district of Columbia, and the following states: Oregon, Washington, California, Idaho, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Louisiana, Kentucky, Georgia, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Illinois, Arkansas, Tennessee, Maine, Florida, Utah, Maryland, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, Alabama and Virginia.
Gen. Carl Spaatz, commandant of the army air forces, in the Pacific northwest on a fishing trip, said he knew nothing about the mystery objects or of plans to use AAF planes to search for them.
His comment came after Louis E. Starr, national commander in chief of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, said at Columbus, Ohio, that he understood Spaatz had "a group out right now" searching for the objects.
From the east coast to the Pacific, from the deep south to the Canadian border and beyond, the reports piled in.
Discs were reported seen high in the sky west of Salt Lake City and former Utah State Treasurer Oliver G. Ellis and others said: "The luminous discs behaved like radio-controlled objects, hovering in a group for one moment, then suddenly they formed a swiftly whirling horizontal circular pattern."
Ellis said two broke loose from the group "as if snapped from the end of a giant whip" and careened southward at "terrific speed" on a gradual slant toward the earth, after which others reassembled and resumed their horizontal circular movements He said they later formed a straight line, then a V-formation and then moved southwestward until they disappeared.
There were numerous reports of the objects in the skies overs San Francisco and neighboring cities.
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larged opening at one end, like a funnel, and ending in a tapered point at the other. In the middle of the disc he could make out a bulge as if a plate had been welded onto the disc and there were two narrow strips of metal running almost parallel to each other above and below the midsection. Something held it upright, and then the disc was subjected to a number of short jerks, moving forward each time a foot or two. The funnel part of the tube was set into the disc so that the latter could roll freely and after moving a distance of about twenty yards, it rose easily and began at once to climb."
"I examined the place where the disc had landed but it touched the ground so lightly that it left no mark. I am convinced that the disc's flight was controlled, that it gave out signals indicating its position and that it is harmless" said McLean.
The disc was observed Sunday morning just after dawn.
BOISE, Ida., July 7 (AP) -- Kenneth Arnold, Boise airman who first reported spotting "flying discs" in the Pacific northwest, took off from here today on an aerial search for the objects which his pilot, Aviation Editor Dave Johnson of the Idaho Daily Stateman said would center near the atomic research plant of Hanford, Wash.
Johnson, piloting the Statesman's plane Early Bird No. 3 was assigned to the flight by his city editor with instruction to "go up around the Hanford atom plant area in Washington and stay there until you find something or give it up."
Arnold accepted the newspaper's invitation to make the flight. Yesterday Arnold said he had purchased a movie camera to take with him on every flight he makes over the five-state territory he travels by air in his own plane. The 32-year-old Boisean said he hoped to obtain photographic proof of the "flying discs" he reported sighting June 24 over Washington state.
SPOKANE, July 7 (AP) -- Air and ground patrols today began a search of an Idaho mountainside where a Spokane housewife reported that 10 persons saw eight or nine "flying saucers" fall into timber.
Sheriff Oron L. Thomas organized a detail of Boy Scouts and other volunteers at St. Maries, Ida., to scour the area, and two light aircraft, one owned by A. W. Runser, secretary of the local chamber of commerce, were to take off shortly after nine a. m., Pacific standard time, to make an air search.
From Spokane, too, Col. Franck Frost, commanding officer of the 116th fighter squadron, Washington national guard, was preparing to take off for the area.
To: Kenneth Arnold or Newspapers 1940-1949.
