The Oregonian, p. 24
Dimanche 6 juillet 1947
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By Associated Press
The nation was baffled Saturday by the “flying saucers” reported seen in 28 states by hundreds of persons while conjectures on their meaning flew as furiously as the reported speed of the silvery discs.
Official government sources took a “let’s see one” stand on the phenomenon, and so scientists preferred a detailed explanation.
Near unanimity was recorded on some of the discs’ characteristics — terrific speed, bright reflections, round or oval in shape, flat, and flying with a peculiar undulating motion. Size was moot and expressed by Captain Smith of United Air Lines as “hard to judge” without knowing the distance from the observer to the objects.
An army air forces spokesman in Washington on July 3 said there was not enough fact to “warrant further investigation,” but the air materiel command at Wright field, Dayton, Ohio, said it was making a study. Saturday at Washington an army researcher admitted “we’re mystified” and the navy said it had no theories.
Meanwhile Kenneth Arnold, the man who first reported them, could recall his insistence when his report was widely questioned, that “I don’t believe it, either — but I saw it.”
Two Chicago astronomers said the discs probably are “manmade.” The undulating, flashing objects “couldn’t be meteors,” said Dr. Gerard Kluper, director of the University of Chicago’s Yerkes observatory at Williams Bay, Wis.
“We realize,” said Dr. Oliver Lee, director of Northwestern university’s Dearborn observatory, “that the army and navy are working on all sorts of things we know nothing about.”
Officials of the atomic energy commission in Washington said it had no experiments involving “flying saucers” underway, and one official added, “All we know is what we read in the papers.”
An army air force official in Washington said the AAF was “completely mystified” by the saucer reports.
Although no general alert had been sent out for radar scanning of the heavens, he said: “Reports of the interception of any suspicious object or ground radar screens will be carefully evaluated.”
Col. F. J. Clarke commanding officer of the Hanford engineering works in the Pacific coastal area, where the largest saucer influx was reported, said the saucers were not coming from the atomic plant there.
“I have been waiting for someone to tie the discs to the Hanford atomic plant,” he said. But he declared that as far as he knew no experiments were under way there that would solve the mystery.
Credence in the saucers — widely laughed off at their first reported appearance June 25 — grew as hundreds of observers, many of them trained fliers, reported seeing them.
A crowd of 200 observed a disc at Hauser Lake, Idaho, on the Fourth of July. A group of 60 picnickers saw them at Twin Falls, Idaho.
And in Portland so many residents witnessed them that same day that the police department sent out an all cars broadcast.
The discs were seen Saturday in California, Oregon, Washington, Iowa, and South Carolina.
Two persons in different sections of Charleston, S. C. — one of them a newspaper reporter — said a flying saucer passed over Charleston heading east at 6:20 P. M. (EST) Saturday.
J. E. Jonston, Waterloo, Ia., said he saw one Saturday, too. His description — about the size of a dinner plate and only some 25 feet above ground — was at odds with most reporters which have said the saucers were big and flying at great heights.
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