No one will say when a person first saw a UFO. Images of strange vehicles flying in the sky can be found on the pages of medieval manuscripts, ancient Chinese chronicles and on the walls of Egyptian tombs. But the birthday of ufology as a science is considered June 24, 1947, when businessman and pilot Arnold Kenneth first uttered the words "flying saucer".
Arnold Kenneth businessman
By 1947, 32-year-old Arnold Kenneth was the owner of a company that supplied and installed fire suppression systems. The business expanded to cover more and more areas in the American Northwest. Kenneth loved to keep his finger on the pulse, personally met with numerous partners, solving large and small issues. The distances had to be covered long, so Arnold bought himself not a car for business trips, but a single-engine plane.
On June 24, he flew from Cheheilis to Yakima, the route ran over the Cascade Mountains. At about 2 pm Arnold heard on the radio: “A Marine Corps transport plane crashed near Mount Rainier. All civil aircraft in the area are requested to assist in their search. Kenneth was a good citizen and a county deputy sheriff. He made a turn and began to fly around the area.
From the report of A. Kenneth
“At 9,200 feet, I noticed a group of 9 objects at a distance of 20-25 miles from me. They flew along the main ridge, stretching for nearly 5 miles. I saw them quite clearly and observed them for over 3 minutes. They were flat as frying pans and reflected the sun's rays. Objects moved on a ledge, like an airplane link, each subsequent one flew slightly behind and slightly to the left of the one in front of it. The objects are 45-50 feet (15 m) in size and 1/20 of the length.
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The difference in altitude between the flying highest and lowest flying was about 1,000 feet. Every 3-4 seconds two or even three objects rose or fell sharply, but returned to operation. The peaks of the mountains encountered on the way flowed around, tilting along the edge. The objects were crescent-shaped with a small 'dome' in the center."
Kenneth originally thought they were a school of geese, but speed, speed! The pilot estimated it at 1200-1500 mph. This exceeded the speed of sound almost twice, not like geese, no planes flew at such a speed then.
After landing
After landing in Yakima, Arnold told the head of the Central Aviation Service, Al Baxter, about what he had seen and immediately sketched a draft of a memo to the Aviation Administration. Then he refueled and flew to the Pendleton, Oregon air show. By the time he landed at Pendleton, a crowd of reporters were already waiting for him.
It was then in one of the articles that "they flew and jumped like a saucer launched in the water." The image turned out to be very bright and "flying saucers" (in the Russian interpretation "flying saucers") began to wander from newspaper to newspaper and for many years stuck with UFOs, although Kenneth never said that the objects he saw resembled saucers.
The birth of ufology
The article about the incident in the Cascade Mountains sparked a flurry of similar reports. Over the next two months, more than 850 people - pilots, tracking station operators, airplane passengers and just bystanders - said they saw "flying saucers." The topic was picked up by more than 150 American newspapers.
Kenneth was not the first to see a UFO, but his message seemed to have broken a dam - society recognized the existence of a UFO, the topic was entrenched in the media, and now every encounter with a "flying saucer" immediately appeared on the front pages of newspapers. In the United States, they began to collect a database of UFOs - which is where any science begins.
Arnold Kenneth's Unfulfilled Dream
Arnold became an overnight media star and the object of ridicule by skeptics, who claimed that the pilot mistook flying pelicans, clouds of dust or false suns for UFOs. Kenneth was also accused of outright lies.
Arnold replied to numerous accusations: “Let them call me a deceiver, but I will never doubt what I saw. But now even if I see a 10-storey building flying in the sky, I swear I will never tell anyone about it."
Kenneth could not keep his vow. Until the end of his life he hunted for UFOs. According to him, he saw them more than 10 times and even once filmed them. But his secret dream - to get in touch with them never came true.
Klim Podkova
