At about 2 pm on June 24, 1947, thirty-two-year-old entrepreneur Kenneth Arnold took off from the Checheilis, Washington airfield in a single-engine Kohler aircraft. Arnold's firm was engaged in the manufacture, sale and installation of fire fighting equipment. The office was located in Boise, the field of activity covered the entire mountainous Northwest. Every month, the head of the company had to spend 40 to 100 hours in the air, land his plane on meadows and vacant lots - in a word, flying was a common thing for Arnold. But that voyage began and ended unusually. Airfields in the area of the Cascade Mountains received radiograms: a military transport plane crashed, presumably south of the extinct Mount Rainier. All pilots who were in the air near those places were asked to join the search. The route ran over that areaand Arnold headed for Rainier. He walked at an altitude of 9500 feet (2895 meters). Not finding anything on the first approach, the pilot turned to the west, turned over the village of Minarel and - again to Rainier, now at an altitude of 9200 feet (2800 meters), looking into the canyon gaps, whether the wreckage of the aircraft would flash wherever. Later, Arnold wrote in the report:
The sky and the air were crystal clear. I flew no more than two or three minutes on the course when a bright flash illuminated the cockpit. I got worried and decided that I was in dangerously close proximity to some kind of plane. But no matter how I looked around, I could not find the source of radiation until I noticed on the left side and north of Mount Rainier a chain of nine strange-looking devices flying from north to south at an altitude of about 9500 feet, as it seemed to me, a firm course of about 170 degrees … They were rapidly approaching Mount Rainier, and the thought flashed through my mind that they were jet aircraft. In any case, there was an explanation for the flashes: with a frequency of several seconds, two, or even three of them simultaneously seemed to dive, slightly changing the direction of movement, and this was enough for them, tilting on an edge and illuminated by the sun, sending a reflection to my plane.
Objects flew in a ledge, in other words, on different planes. The difference in height between the topmost and bottommost object was about a thousand feet (304 meters). They flew almost perpendicular to the plane's course. The flight trajectory was undulating: the objects seemed to flow around the peaks of the mountains. In addition to translational motion alternately, in pairs and triplets, they tilted on the edge and at that moment, like mirrors, reflected sunlight.
Soon they approached Mount Rainier, and against the background of the snow, I could clearly see their outlines. It seemed strange that I could not distinguish between their tail sections, nevertheless, I decided that these were some models of jet aircraft. Whenever sunlight was reflected from one, two, or three objects at once, they appeared to be perfectly round.
In a footnote to a drawing depicting one of the objects, Arnold wrote: "Their thickness was about 1/20 of the length." Before us is the classic shape of a disc, swollen in the middle, narrowed at the edges. And if the disks flying at the height of the plane were all the time turned to it by the edge, Arnold, at best, would have discerned a vague dash - the distance was considerable - 20 - 25 miles. How the calculations were made deserves special mention. Slightly changing the course of the plane, Arnold pushed back the glass of the lantern - he wanted to make sure that what he saw was not a mirage, not an optical illusion. The head disk reached the southern slope of Mount Rainier, and Arnold timed it. I pointed the hand-held rangefinder at the DC-4 transport aircraft looming to the left along the side and behind, - he noticed it a little earlier, the transport plane was approximately at the same distance as the disks,- the resulting value is compared with one of the tilted discs. The size of the disc was about 2/3 of the wingspan of the DC-4, or 45 to 50 feet (about 15 meters). At Pendlond, Arnold calculates the speed of the discs. Forty-seven miles - such is the length of the snow-covered mountain range - the head disk traveled in one hundred and two seconds. 1,700 miles per hour! To be absolutely precise - 1656.71 (approximately 2710 km / h). This is despite the fact that the newest models of fighter-interceptors barely crossed the 400 mph bar.that the newest fighter-interceptor models barely surpassed the 400 mph bar.that the newest fighter-interceptor models barely surpassed the 400 mph bar.
On June 28, 1947 at 15.15 a fighter pilot, flying in the area of Lake Mead, Nevada, noticed six circular objects. At 9.20 p.m. the same day, at Maxwell Air Force Base near Montgomery, Alabama, pilots and two intelligence officers observed a luminous object making zigzag maneuvers. At first, the object was at a considerable distance, but then made a turn at an angle of ninety degrees and passed over the air base. On June 29, the secret White Sands test site near the nuclear town of Alamogordo, New Mexico, was visited by a silvery disc, reported by rocket specialist Dr. S. Zon. A report came from Fairfield-Suisan Air Force Base, California: the pilot was observing an object that swayed along its horizontal axis in motion.
Eastern Airlines DC-3 took off from Houston, Texas, late on the evening of July 23, 1948. The plane followed to Atlanta and Boston. The night was clear, moonlit, below the lights of cities and towns flickered. At 2.45 on a new day - July 24, twenty miles from Montgomery, Alabama, the commander of the ship Clarence Chiles was the first to see a rapidly approaching luminous object. A few seconds later, the plane almost collided with a torpedo-like body: Chiles took to the left, the same was done by an oncoming object. We missed each other at a distance of seven hundred feet. Its speed was 500-700 miles per hour, it was about a hundred feet long, and its hull was twice as thick as the B-29 fuselage. The bottom was blue with a quivering flame. From the tail - half the length of the torpedo - a train escaped, bright orange in the middle, faded at the edges. And no fenders, no stabilizers. In the bow, Chiles managed to distinguish something similar to a cockpit with an openwork rod resembling a radar antenna. The object passed to starboard, on the side where the co-pilot, John Whitted, was seated, but he saw the object a split second later. Everyone will then sketch a drawing - the discrepancies in them will be insignificant, both drawings depicted a wingless rocket. Chiles and Whitted argue that after they missed the object, the pillar of fire from its tail almost doubled, the rocket soared up and disappeared before our eyes. Having transferred control of the aircraft to the assistant, the ship commander went into the cabin. The hour was late, people were dozing, yet there was one passenger - Clarence McKelvey, an editor by profession, who confirmed that he saw a luminous object fly past the glass.resembling a radar antenna. The object passed to starboard, on the side where the co-pilot, John Whitted, was seated, but he saw the object a split second later. Everyone will then sketch a drawing - the discrepancies in them will be insignificant, both drawings depicted a wingless rocket. Chiles and Whitted argue that after they missed the object, the pillar of fire from its tail almost doubled, the rocket soared up and disappeared before our eyes. Having transferred control of the aircraft to the assistant, the ship commander went into the cabin. The hour was late, people were dozing, yet there was one passenger - Clarence McKelvey, an editor by profession, who confirmed that he saw a luminous object fly past the glass.resembling a radar antenna. The object passed to starboard, on the side where the co-pilot, John Whitted, was seated, but he saw the object a split second later. Everyone will then sketch a drawing - the discrepancies in them will be insignificant, both drawings depicted a wingless rocket. Chiles and Whitted argue that after they missed the object, the pillar of fire from its tail almost doubled, the rocket soared up and disappeared before our eyes. Having transferred control of the aircraft to the assistant, the ship commander went into the cabin. The hour was late, people were dozing, yet there was one passenger - Clarence McKelvey, an editor by profession, who confirmed that he saw a luminous object fly past the glass. Everyone will then sketch a drawing - the discrepancies in them will be insignificant, both drawings depicted a wingless rocket. Chiles and Whitted argue that after they missed the object, the pillar of fire from its tail almost doubled, the rocket soared up and disappeared before our eyes. Having transferred control of the aircraft to the assistant, the ship commander went into the cabin. The hour was late, people were dozing, yet there was one passenger - Clarence McKelvey, an editor by profession, who confirmed that he saw a luminous object fly past the glass. Everyone will then sketch a drawing - the discrepancies in them will be insignificant, both drawings depicted a wingless rocket. Chiles and Whitted argue that after they missed the object, the pillar of fire from its tail almost doubled, the rocket soared up and disappeared before our eyes. Having transferred control of the aircraft to the assistant, the ship commander went into the cabin. The hour was late, people were dozing, yet there was one passenger - Clarence McKelvey, an editor by profession, who confirmed that he saw a luminous object fly past the glass. The hour was late, people were dozing, yet there was one passenger - Clarence McKelvey, an editor by profession, who confirmed that he saw a luminous object fly past the glass. The hour was late, people were dozing, yet there was one passenger - Clarence McKelvey, an editor by profession, who confirmed that he saw a luminous object fly past the glass.
Stewart told me: "I noticed that you were looking through the window." I replied: “There was something flashed by, like a cigar with a cherry flame from its tail. There was a row of windows on it, and the thing was flying in the opposite direction. She was silent. I didn't hear anything because of the roar of the engines. Disappeared very quickly. I was sitting on the right side of the plane. She disappeared or we rushed past her. " Stewart asked if I would mind if the pilot spoke to me. No, I don’t mind. The pilot returned and recorded my testimony. He didn’t say anything - he was depressed. He only said that he flew off the whole war, and this is the strangest test that he had to endure. He was shaking all the time.
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Other witnesses were also found. Shortly before the described meeting, the pilot, who was in the sky near the border of Virginia and North Carolina, noticed a luminous object rushing in the direction of Montgomery. The pilot mistook him for a falling star and therefore reported it only a few days later, after reading about the incident in the newspaper. But another important piece of evidence came in time. An officer from Robins AFB, near Macon, Georgia, a few minutes after DC-3 rendezvous with a wingless missile, saw an object in the sky and attracted the attention of those who were nearby. According to eyewitnesses, it was a cigar-shaped body with a flaming tail.