Fast "Flying Pie-Pans" Stump Army CAA Men

Daily News de Dayton, p. 11, jeudi 26 juin 1947
s1"NARA-PBB1", Project Blue Book Archive, p. 588
L'article d'origine
L'article d'origine

Pendleton, Ore., June 26.—(UP)—Army and CAA spokesmen expressed skepticism today over a report of nine mysterious objects—whizzing 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 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.

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 a 2:59 p. m. two days ago toward Mt. Rainier when they appeared directly in front of him 25-30 miles away at 10,000 feet altitude.

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 1,200 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.

He said at first he thought they were geese, but quickly saw they were too big—as big as a DC-4 that was about 20 miles away, he said. The DC-4 pilot reported nothing unusual sighted.

Then Arnold said he thought of jet planes and started to clock them, but their motion was wrong for jet jobs.

I guess I don't know what they were—unless they were guided missiles, said Arnold, who continued here on a business trip.