An early photo of Kenneth Arnold with his 1947 CallAir mountain plane (NC33355) The Singular Adventure of Mr Kenneth Arnold Martin Shough1 © June 2010 (revised July 2010) The author would like to acknowledge in particular Mary Castner, Barry Greenwood, Patrick Gross, Jean-Pierre Pharabod, Don Ledger, Tom Tulien, Brad Sparks, Joel Carpenter, Bruce Maccabee & Andy Coupland for valuable discussions, encouragement and information during the course of this inquiry. 1 UK Research Associate, National Aviation Reporting Centre on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP).
[email protected] The Singular Adventure of Mr Kenneth Arnold Martin Shough 1) Introduction In one sense it would be true to say that this seminal sighting of nine "peculiar looking aircraft" over the Cascade Mountains of Washington on June 24 1947 (see Appendix 1) needs little introduction. As a result of it pilot and businessman Kenneth Arnold acquired a fame and notoriety far beyond anything he could ever have envisaged when he took off from Chehalis, Washington, and set a course for Yakima in his little CallAir plane that sunny afternoon. News of what the press dubbed "flying saucers" instantly captured the imagination of the world, and reports of things seen in the sky have ever since continued to fuel one of the 20th century's - and now the 21st's - most widespread, most persistent and most influential popular mythologies. Yet that mythology has effloresced into many extraordinary forms, most of which the Kenneth Arnold of 1947 would hardly have recognised as having anything to do with his own puzzling but straighforward observation. And it is necessary to record that despite more than 60 years of sometimes scholarly debate about this hydra-headed mythological monster, its origins remain not well-understood, its meanings controversial, its ultimate cultural value uncertain.