| KENNETH ARNOLD |
| THE FIRST MODERN UFO SIGHTING |
| Kenneth Arnold was a pretty average straight forward guy, he was an Eagle Scout when he was a teenager. He worked for the Red Cross. He was an All-State football star in high school with hope of becoming a collage star until he injured his knee. When Arnold left collage he became a salesman and learned how to fly a areoplane, combining the two by flying to small towns selling fire control equipment. Eventually he became the owner of the Great Western Fire Control Supply Comany. He was a member of the sheriff's "aerial posse" of Ada County, Idaho, Arnold was a relief U.S Marshal, and sometimes flew prisoners to the Federal Penitentiary. Flying was Arnolds livelihood, so he was a trustworthy and honest man married with two children. On June 24th 1947 Arnold was returning from a business trip when he made a detour into Yakima, Washington to help in the search for a missing C-46 marine transport plane which that was believed to have crashed in that area. At about 3:00pm in the afternoon, he was flying about 9000ft near Mount Rainier, when a flash of light caught his attention. Arnold turned and saw a procession of nine strange objects flying north to south in front of his plane. They were flat discs, like pie tins, very shiny, and they moved erractically, like a "saucer would if you skipped it across water". He estimated their size about two-thirds that of a D.C-4 and calculated thier speed over 1500 mph by timing their speed betwwen two mountain peaks of known distance. Arnold landed his plane Yakima Washington, he told several pilots about his sighting they told him it must be some type of military "secret weapon". He later found out the U.S military was also mysterfied by the objects. He then travelled to Pendleton, Oregon to report the event to the F.B.I but the local office was closed. So he went and saw the editor of the East Oregonian newspaper and it was the editor who put the story on the newswires. Because of Arnold's background and his reliability as a witness, the story got wide circilation. In the middle of July Arnold recieved a letter from Raymond Palmer, editor of the pulp magazine (amazing stories). Arnold did not know Palmer and did not read the pulp. Palmer offered money for his story but Arnold did not care for the money but did send him a copy of what he had already told the newspaper and the Army Corps. Later in July, a couple of Army Air Force intelligence officers named Lt. Frank M Brown and Capt. William Davidson had a friendly meeting with Arnold. He gave them an account of his sighting and they asked him to report further sightings. |
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| By Jeff Fausch Paranormal Field Investigators |