The Coming of the Saucers
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$2.50 The Coming of the Saucers By Kenneth Arnold & Raymond Palmer --cover-- The Coming of the Saucers A Documentary Report on Sky Objects That Have Mystified the World By KENNETH ARNOLD Member Idaho Search and Rescue Mercy Flyers; Flying Deputy for the Ada County Aerial posse; Acting Deputy Federal United States Marshal; Aerial Salesman and originator of the Great Western Fire Control System and RAY PALMER Editor and Publisher; Owner Clark Publishing Company, Publishers of Fate Magazine and Other Worlds Science Stories; Author and Traveler; Amateur Archaeologist and Ethnologist Copyright 1952 BY RAY PALMER AMHERST, WISCONSIN Privately Published by the Authors Boise, Idaho and Amherst, Wisconsin --01-- OUR SINCERE APPRECIATION TO ... CAPTAIN E.J. SMITH -- for a big hand -- and a good eye.* CO-PILOT RALPH STEPHENS -- he saw them too. STEWARDESS MARTIE MORROW -- and so did she. J.EDGAR HOOVER -- for the many nice chats we had for his operatives. COLONEL DONALD L. SPRINGER -- a very busy man. MAJOR GEORGE SANDER -- "Quick, Major, the slag!" CAPT. WM. L. DAVIDSON 1st LT. FRANK M. BROWN -- who died in the performance of their duty. VELMA BROWN DAVE JOHNSON MAJOR WALKER -- who didn't fool anyone. FRED CRISMAN -- for the wildest stories ever told. HAROLD DAHL -- who could enjoy a movie while the world exploded. THE MYSTERY TELEPHONE CALLER -- who deserves a horrible fate. TED MORELLO - for meaning well. PAUL LANCE -- whose death we regret. EVELYN WHITMAKER ARMY INTELLIGENCE -- for it's courteous personnel. FOURTH AIR FORCE INTELLIGENCE - the mystery men of the U.S.A. PROJECT SAUCER -- spending money like water. HAROLD T. WILKINS -- a whale of a good researcher. CURTIS FULLER COLONEL PAUL WIELAND -- for his patience. BEATRICE MAHAFFEY -- for just plain work. MILDRED MURDOCH -- for more just plain work. WILLIAM A. RHODES -- his camera didn't lie. DICK RANKIN FATE MAGAZINE - for the facts. AMAZING STORIES MAGAZINE -- more truth than fiction. TRUE MAGAZINE SATURDAY EVENING POST -- not so true. RICHARD S. SHAVER THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN CHEMICAL ANALYSIS DEPARTMENT THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE -- who sent us valuable information and pictures. Our wives, DORIS and MARJORIE, our children, KISKA, CARLA, LINDA, JENNIFER and RAYMOND - for their patience and the anxious moments we caused them. THE LITTLE MEN FROM VENUS -- who weren't there at all. * Captain Emil J. Smith, his first name is never quoted in the book and he is identified here for that reason. --02-- Contents Page INTRODUCTION ... 5 Chapter I. HOW THE "BIG STORY" HAPPENED ... 9 II. THE TACOMA AFFAIR ... 9 III. THE MYSTERIOUS INFORMANT ... 42 IV. DEATH TAKES A HAND ... 52 V. "GET OUT - FOR YOUR OWN GOOD!" ... 65 VI. "PROJECT SAUCER" REPORT ... 85 VII. COMMENTS ON THE "PROJECT SAUCER" REPORT ... 103 VIII. ONE THOUSAND YEARS OF FLYING SAUCERS ... 113 IX. THE STRANGE FO FIGHTERS ... 122 X. FOREIGN SIGHTINGS ... 131 XI. REPORTS FROM AMERICAN OBSERVERS ... 136 XII. ANALYSIS VERSUS OPINION ... 156 XIII. CAMERA STORY OF THE SAUCERS ... 160 --03-- INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK --04-- INTRODUCTION It is my impression that everyone, no matter what part they play in this existence that seems to go on into infinity, has a special purpose or a special task or a special reason for being what they are and for doing the things they do. I don't say that we are placed here by a divine Providence to accomplish a great mission. Nothing so egotistical. perhaps it is purely a personal reason: merely to add to our own experience; our mental growth, our ability to become a functional part in a whole of society which may be more vast than we dream. When I was a boy I collected green grasshoppers. I went swimming in a swimming hole like the other boys; but unlike them, it seems, I learned how by such apparently foolish waste of time as watching tadpoles swim and trying to imitate their motions. When I was twelve it was terribly important that I become a Boy Scout. Again it was because of the little things in Nature that I loved to study that I wanted to don that uniform. I realized that a great ambition the day my mother proudly pinned an Eagle badge on my shirt front in a court of honor in Minot, North Dakota. It was during scouting that swimming and diving became one of my most enjoyed activities and I served several years as a field representative for the American Red Cross life saving service. I developed myself to a healthy robustness. Then I took up riding motorcycles - and nearly killed myself. The scars I still have remind me that a life carelessly and adventurously lived can become a bit complex. I had my first airplane ride from Earl T. Vance of Great Falls, Montana when I was fourteen years old. I'll never forget that day on the north hill at Minot. it seemed the greatest thrill of my life. When I was sixteen I took my first flying lesson. I had no money to pay, but my father furnished the gasoline for the plane from his filling station in Crosby, North Dakota. How I wished I could continue flying! But it was far too expensive at that time. As a little boy my head was always on the cloud. The reason I enjoyed bird study, I think, was because I so envied their ability to fly. --05-- Then, suddenly being a football player seemed important. Glen Jarrett, my Minot High School coach, somehow achieved enough coordination between my brain and my limbs to enable my being placed on the All-State North Dakota football teams in 1932 and 1933. Finishing high school, even with football, was quite a struggle; education from books didn't seem nearly as necessary as going fishing. Somehow I graduated, and went on to the university of Minnesota with the promise of a job from Bernie Bierman, at that time head football coach there. Except for my promised job, my total assets amounted to $57.00 and a model T. Ford. About all I remember of my short-lived college career was the dishes I washed for Chris Copilis of the Bridge Cafe on Fourteenth and Fourth in Minneapolis, Minnesota. My football interests vanished with a knee injury that put an end to them. The depression was at it's deepest point when I took up selling. I drafted from sportswear into fire control work. I stayed with selling fire extinguishers because I felt it was doing some good for humanity besides giving me an income to provide for my wife, two daughters, one partly- paid-for home, an airplane, and pets of various shapes and colors. Since 1944 I have spent more than 4,000 hours in the air flying in mountainous country. I call on my customers in five western states by plane and I take an active part in the Idaho Search and Rescue mercy flights as well as acting as a deputy sheriff for the Ada County, Idaho, Sheriff's Aerial Posse. I also act as relief deputy Federal United States Marshal, and frequently fly Federal prisoners up to McNeil Island Federal penitentiary. I has been nearly five years since my original observation of the formation of flying saucers over the Cascade Mountains. it is not difficult for me to recall the true events as they took place, since everything that happened was dictated on sound records within a very short period afterward. What I saw over the Cascades in the State of Washington, as impossible as it may seem, is fact. I never asked, wanted, nor expected any notoriety for accidentally being in the right spot at the right time to observe that chain of nine mysterious objects. --06-- I reported something any would have reported. if, reasoning along patriotic lines alone, I had not reported by observations, I would have been rightfully considered disloyal to my country. My observations were not due to any particular sensitivity of eyesight, nor to any abnormal or supernatural ability. Am positive that any pilot at the same place at the same time would have observed what U did. By no stretch of imagination can I classify my observations in the categories of illusion, hallucination, apparition or vision. Since that day I have been repeatedly questioned and investigated by such agencies as Military Intelligence, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Bureau of Internal Revenue, Central Intelligence, Marine Intelligence, private detective agencies, individuals, and just plain busybodies. I have been subjected to ridicule, much loss of time and money, newspaper notoriety, magazine stories, reflections on my honesty, my character, my business dealings. In short, the amount of actual persecution that has come about (whether intended as such or not) because of my accidental involvement in what as become the strangest story ever told, has been a continual source of amazement to me. To me the search has not ended. But participation of the sort involved in the fatal "Tacoma Incident" in which two Central Intelligence military investigators lost their lives and a two hundred thousand dollar aircraft was destroyed is something that I would refuse to enter into again - largely because it is my conviction that nothing concrete will be learned by such obtuse methods. This thing is big. It is something to which we most certainly ought to have the answer. It is my conviction that the facts already at hand must not be buried beneath a mass of official stupidity and a smokescreen of variant idiocies. it is time the truth was sifted from the untruth, the facts from the fakery, the real flying saucer from the fanciful. It may be the most vitally important fact of our time! KENNETH ARNOLD Boise, Idaho, February 10, 1952 --07-- INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK --08-- CHAPTER I HOW THE "BIG STORY" HAPPENED It was Tuesday, June 24, 1947.