The year 1947 is often marked as the
beginning of our fascination with flying saucers and unidentified flying
object (UFO) sightings. That is mostly because of two specific events,
one seen from the air and the other on the ground.
On June 24th of
that year, Kenneth Arnold was flying his small plane across Washington
State. It was a bright, clear day as Arnold described it. He was on his
way to an air show in Oregon, but decided to do some exploring around
Mount Rainier. The mountain was near a recent military plane
disappearance, presumed crashed. A reward was being offered to anyone
able to find the site of the crash.
In the cockpit, Arnold saw a
DC-4 aircraft flying about 15 miles away. Then he noticed something
else. According to Arnold, a bright flash reflected light into his
airplane. Looking around for the source of the reflection, Arnold
spotted a group of nine objects flying close to Mount Rainier. They were
all flying in the same formation, similar to a flock of geese, as
Arnold described it.
Pilots
E. J. Smith, Kenneth Arnold, and Ralph E. Stevens look at a photo of an
unidentified flying object which they sighted while en route to
Seattle, Washington. Getty images.
Arnold also described the
objects as large in size, no tail, and traveling very fast at speeds
estimated up to 1,700 mph. They were also round in shape, something
Arnold had never seen before as an experienced pilot. Flying perilously
close to the mountain range, they were “saucer-like disks,” he said.
At
first, he guessed that what he might be seeing were advanced military
aircraft being tested. However, Arnold commented at the time, “The more I
observed these objects, the more upset I became, as I am accustomed and
familiar with most all objects flying whether I am close to the ground
or at higher altitudes.”
After
a few minutes of observation, the objects disappeared from Arnold’s
view. After landing his plane, Arnold recounted what he saw, and the
news spread quickly. The era of the alien flying saucer was born.
But
what did Arnold actually see that clear day? A brief U.S. air force
investigation concluded that the pilot had seen some sort of mirage,
perhaps involving unusual looking clouds. Some people just thought
Arnold was crazy. Almost immediately after the incident, people started
reporting their own “saucer” sightings.
After his famous flight,
Kenneth Arnold bought a camera and kept it with him whenever he flew. He
was determined to prove in photos what he saw that June day in 1947.
However, he never reported seeing anything out of the ordinary again.
On June 26, 1947, the Chicago Sun coverage of the story may have been the first use ever of the term flying saucer
Less
than a month after Arnold’s UFO sighting, on July 7, a rancher named
Mac Brazel found strange debris lying around his property near Roswell,
New Mexico. What he discovered were described as metallic sticks, as
well as plastic and paper-like chunks of material. Brazel called the
sheriff of Roswell. Then officials from the local army base were
summoned to the ranch.
Initially, the Roswell Army Air Field
issued a press release stating that a “flying disk” had crashed on
Brazel’s ranch during a powerful storm. Just a few hours later,
scientists who said they saw some of the material from the site insisted
that it was remnants from a weather balloon.
The
downed weather balloon was being used as part of an experiment named
Project Mogul, according to authorities. Project Mogul was designed to
use heavy-duty weather balloons to reach the upper atmosphere. The goal
was to detect sound waves from Soviet nuclear tests during the early
years of the Cold War. Being a secretive project, however, led skeptics
to conclude that it was all part of an elaborate government cover-up.
Kenneth
Arnold’s report to Army Air Forces (AAF) intelligence, dated July 12,
1947, which includes annotated sketches of the typical craft in the
chain of nine objects.
The skepticism only increased in the
1950s, when the Air Force conducted a series of secret “dummy drops” in
New Mexico. Using crash-test dummies, they dropped the featureless human
looking objects over various fields to test ways pilots survive falls
from high altitudes. The dummies were then retrieved by army personnel
for analysis.
To some residents already suspicious of the earlier
Roswell incident, it certainly seemed like extraterrestrial beings were
falling out of the sky. The alleged crash victims were then suspected of
being scooped up and experimented on.
Related
story from us: A set of strange mummified remains found in Chile fed
alien-among-us theories for decades, but it is a tragic human story
In
1994, the Pentagon declassified its files on Project Mogul and the
dummy drops; it also published a report debunking the rumored
extraterrestrial incidents around Roswell. However, that hasn’t put a
stop to ongoing suspicion of government cover-ups, as well as annual
pilgrimages to the Roswell area by people seeking what for them is the
real story.
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