Nine UFOs Encountered
above Mount Rainier
Date: June 24, 1947
Location: Mount Rainier, Washington, United States
One of the earliest modern UFO sightings was made by pilot Kenneth Arnold. On June 24, 1947, a US Marine Corps C-46 aircraft had crashed at Mount Rainier, a mountain range close to Seattle and a $5,000 reward was offered to anyone who could locate the debris of the aircraft. On July 24, Arnold was flying a CallAir A-2 aircraft from Chehalis to Yakima, Washington. Having a few hours to spare, Arnold thought he would fly over Mount Rainier and attempt to locate the debris.
It was around 15:00 when Arnold was flying over the city of Mineral at an altitude of 9,200 feet. Noticing a bright light to his rear left, Arnold was able to locate just one other aircraft in the airspace, which was a DC-4 aircraft. Within a few seconds, a second bright light appeared, this time in front of him. It could not have possibly been the DC-4 aircraft he had observed as there was no way it could have traveled that fast, and Arnold had not seen any other aircraft in the vicinity. As he got a better look at the light, Arnold noticed that there were nine bright objects emitting the light. The lights were extremely close to the mountains and were flying at approximately the same altitude as Arnold.
At first, Arnold assumed that it must have been another aircraft that he had failed to previously locate. His assumption was quickly proven wrong as he noticed the long chain of nine separate objects flying in formation. They had no wings, nor did they leave any trails. Moreover, the objects were lustrous and had a semicircular convex shape, as well as a flat and shiny surface. One of the nine objects had a slightly different shape, that of a crescent. It was at this moment that Arnold knew this was no ordinary aircraft.
Just twenty-three miles away, the nine aircraft started flying toward Arnold’s aircraft, their silhouette appearing dark against the bright surrounding. To confirm that the lights were not reflections, Arnold opened his side window and got an unobstructed view of the UFOs. Their shape and position remained unchanged. Knowing full well these aircraft were unconventional, he used his aircraft’s instruments to calculate the incredible speed they were traveling. In just one minute and forty-two seconds the objects traveled fifty miles, meaning that they must have been traveling well over seventeen thousand miles per hour, three times the speed of any aircraft in 1947. The objects continued moving rapidly toward the south as they disappeared out of sight.
The Aftermath
Arnold landed in Yakima at approximately 16:00 and he immediately informed the airport manager of his encounter. To his surprise, a pilot on board another CallAir aircraft had made a similar report just minutes prior to Arnold’s sighting. The only explanation authorities could provide Arnold was that the UFOs must have been guided missiles.
Knowing full well that the description of a missile did not match up with what he had seen in the sky, Arnold went to the East Oregonian, a newspaper published in Pendleton, Oregon. At the newspaper’s offices, Arnold spoke with reporter Bill Bequette, who at first did not take Arnold’s claims seriously. However, as Arnold began recounting his experience in detail, Bequette’s doubts were erased. The following day, an article was published in the newspaper recounting Arnold’s encounter with the unknown. The article, which was picked up by newspapers across the country, reads as follows:
“Nine bright saucer-like objects flying at ‘incredible speed’ at ten thousand feet altitude were reported here today by Kenneth Arnold, Boise, Idaho, pilot who said he could not hazard a guess as to what they were.
“Arnold, a United States Forest Service employee [sic] engaged in searching for a missing plane, said he sighted the mysterious objects yesterday at three pm. They were flying between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams, in Washington state, he said, and appeared to weave in and out of formation. Arnold said that he clocked and estimated their speed at twelve thousand miles an hour.
“Enquiries at Yakima last night brought only blank stares, he said, but he added he talked today with an unidentified man from Ukiah, south of here, who said he had seen similar objects over the mountains near Ukiah yesterday.
‘It seems impossible,’ Arnold said, ‘but there it is.’” 10
As Arnold’s report started getting more coverage, several other individuals came forward and stated that they had seen similar objects in the sky on the same day. One witness was Fred Johnson, who at the time was at Mount Adams. Through his telescope Johnson stated that he had seen six round and bright objects flying in formation. The objects came to a point in the head and had a general oval shape. As he took out his compass to determine their flight location, he noticed that his compass was spinning. Another unnamed witness was just twenty miles south of Yakima at a tower in Diamond Gap. The witness stated that he saw flashes in the sky moving in a straight line for a number of minutes before they disappeared.
The Investigation
An investigation into Arnold’s report was initiated in early July 1947. Air Force personnel Lieutenant Frank Brown and Captain William Davidson interviewed Arnold on July 12 and found him to be a very reliable witness. In their report, Brown and Davidson stated that “Mr. Arnold actually saw what he stated he saw. It is difficult to believe that a man of his character and apparent integrity would state that he saw objects and write up a report to the extent that he did if he did not see them.” 11
A number of explanations have been provided for Arnold’s case. The first explanation we shall examine was put forward by renowned UFO skeptic Philip J. Klass. In Klass’s newsletter titled The Skeptic UFO Newsletter from July 1997, Klass stated that the nine objects Arnold had encountered in the sky were in actual fact meteorites.12 This explanation does not hold true for several reasons; the first being that Arnold reported seeing the UFOs close to the mountain range. If the objects had been meteorites, then they would not have maneuvered and would have impacted on the mountains. No explosions or impacts were reportedly seen by Arnold or any of the other witnesses. The second reason is that meteorites can travel up to 160,000 miles per hour. The UFOs were too slow to be meteorites and the objects’ maneuverability disproves this hypothesis.
Astrophysicist and skeptic Donald Menzel provided a number of possibilities for the UFO sighting. The first explanation he provided was in 1953 and he stated that Arnold had seen a cloud of snow that was blown from the mountains and had reflected the sunlight. He also suggested that the objects could have been a thin layer of fog, haze or dust, caused to move by air circulation. These two hypotheses could not have been the case for a number of reasons. Firstly, no wind current is strong enough to carry snow clouds over fifty miles from Mount Rainier to Mount Adams, where witness Fred Johnson was when he spotted the UFOs. Even if it was the case that this could be possible, this does not explain the rapid speed, maneuverability and the intense brightness of the objects.
Ten years later in 1963, Menzel came out with three more explanations. Menzel stated that the UFOs could have been mountaintop mirages, orographic clouds (clouds commonly seen on mountains caused by a lift of air), or wave clouds in motion. Given that mountaintop mirages can only form under a stable atmosphere and above the mountain peaks, this immediately disproves Menzel’s theory. Mount Rainier has an elevation of over fourteen thousand feet and Arnold stated that the nine UFOs were approximately at the same altitude as his aircraft (roughly at nine thousand feet). Moreover, orographic clouds appear motionless and are not bright clouds. This is another discrepancy in Menzel’s theory since the objects were intensely bright and also traveled at a fast speed. The wave cloud explanation also does not match up with Arnold’s report as wave clouds are not semi-circular in shape nor do they carry out maneuvers or travel faster than any aircraft from that time period. Having provided five explanations and having all five explanations disproved, Menzel provided one final explanation in 1971. This time, Menzel stated that the UFOs could have been water drops on Arnold’s window. However, if Menzel had paid attention to the details that Arnold provided in his witness statement, he would have noticed that Arnold had opened his window to get an unobstructed view of the objects, and when he did so the objects remained in the sky.
Although the multiple explanations Menzel provided were disproved, the United States Air Force stated that the most plausible explanation for the sighting was that what Arnold had seen was, in actual fact, a mirage.
Conclusion
Given that the mirage explanation does not truly explain what Arnold had seen in the sky on June 24, 1947, many have wondered if the objects were interplanetary. Kenneth Arnold’s sighting was the first of many sightings reported in 1947, with one of the most infamous UFO crashes occurring just a month later in the New Mexico desert.
10. “Supersonic Flying Saucers Sighted by Idaho Pilot,” The Chicago Sun, June 26, 1947, 2.
11. Ted Bloecher, Report on the UFO Wave of 1947 (Washington, D.C.: National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, 1967), 24.
12. Philip J. Klass, “New Research Suggests Kenneth Arnold’s UFOs Were Meteor-Fireballs,” Skeptics UFO Newsletter 46 (July 1997): 1–2, https://skepticalinquirer.org/the-skeptics-ufo-newsletter/.