1947 is known as the year of the first “wave” of modern flying saucer sightings. A study of U.S. newspapers that year documents over 832 sightings in the United States just in the thirty days between June 15, 1947 and July 15, 1947. For the entire year there were over 1,500 reports. Included on this website is a CIA report tracking saucer sightings in 1947. This report was secret and withheld from the public for decades
The Kenneth Arnold Case
This is the first key flying saucer case of modern times. As you can see from my sections, ‘Ancient Alien Sightings’ and ‘Aliens in Ancient Art’, reports of flying objects are certainly not unique to our century. However, this is the case that caught the attention of the media and re-informed the contemporary world that flying saucers existed.
The Facts
Kenneth Arnold was a private pilot and a businessman. He was also a member of the Idaho Search and Rescue Mercy Flyers and a Federal Deputy Marshall. On June 24, 1947 Arnold joined in a search mission to find a Marine Curtis C-46 transport plane that was believed to have crashed in the Cascade Mountains.
While flying at about 9,000 feet at 2:00 p.m., Arnold saw nine silver disks moving in formation directly across his flight path. He estimated them to be about twenty-five miles away. Since they were unusual, to say the least, Arnold decided to time them to estimate their speed. He checked his watch as they passed Mt. Ranier and again when they passed Mt. Adams. It took them 1 minute and 42 seconds. After landing and checking the distance between the two peaks, Arnold realized the disks had been traveling over 1,700 miles per hour! This was twice the speed of sound, and the world airspeed record in 1947 was only about 650 miles per hour!
Not only Arnold, but people flying in a nearby Douglas DC-4 also saw the flying disks. In addition, disks were seen by hundreds of people on the ground. The disks made no sound. They were completely silent. In an interview with The East Oregonian newspaper, Arnold said: “They flew like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water.”
When the Associated Press picked up the story, they called the disks “saucer-like objects.” From this, the term ‘Flying Saucer’ was officially made an integral part of the human language. NOTE: The above image is a rendering.
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