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Jimmy Akin : Kenneth Arnold の 「UFO 目撃事件」の詳しい解説

· 74 min read

前置き​

Kenneth Arnold の 「UFO 目撃事件」に関する最良の解説がこの動画。

この動画は過去記事、

❏ Jimmy Akin による「Kenneth Arnold の UFO 目撃事件」の詳しい解説：文字起こし＋日本語訳 (2024-03-28)

でも取り上げたが、今回は AI で整理した。

目次​

  1. 音声対話
  2. 要約
  3. 詳細
  4. 時系列
  5. 主要関係者
  6. この事件を推測する
  7. 情報源
  8. 文字起こし

AI 整理​

AI

音声対話​

https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/8b9d13a0-8823-40f3-82be-49da835ec66f/audio

AI

ケネス・アーノルドと最初のUFO

このソースは、ジミー・エイキンのミステリアス・ワールドのエピソード46からの抜粋です。

ケネス・アーノルドによる最初のUFO目撃談に焦点を当てており、1947年6月24日に彼が経験した出来事、そしてそれが現代のUFO目撃時代の始まりにどのように火をつけたかを探ります。目撃の経緯、アーノルドの体験談、およびさまざまな仮説（地球外航空機、既存の航空機、自然現象、幻覚、デマなど）について詳しく説明されています。

また、「空飛ぶ円盤」という言葉の由来や、目撃の信頼性に関する議論、そして後のUFO関連の出来事（ロズウェル事件やプロジェクト・サインなどの政府プログラム）への影響についても議論しています。信仰と理性の両方の視点からこの現象を考察し、アーノルドの証言の独立した裏付けを強調しています。

AI

ケネス・アーノルドと最初のUFO：詳細なブリーフィングドキュメント​

はじめに​

本ブリーフィングドキュメントは、「ジミー・エイキンのミステリアス・ワールド」のエピソード46「ケネス・アーノルドと最初のUFO」を基に、ケネス・アーノルドのUFO目撃事件の主要なテーマ、重要なアイデア、および事実をレビューすることを目的とする。この事件は、現代のUFO目撃時代の幕開けとなった古典的なケースとして位置づけられる。

  1. ケネス・アーノルドの目撃と現代UFO時代の始まり

*目撃日時と場所: 1947年6月24日、ワシントン州上空で、実業家兼パイロットのケネス・アーノルドが自身の飛行機を操縦中に奇妙なものを目撃した。

*目撃内容: 「9つの奇妙な物体が信じられないほどの速度で空を移動する編隊」であった。彼はそれらを「中国の凧の尾のような、うねりながら猛烈な速さでレインボー山脈の顔を横切る連鎖」と表現した。

「空飛ぶ円盤」という用語の誕生: アーノルドは当初、物体の動きを「水面をスキップするソーサー（受け皿）のよう」と表現したが、報道機関によって「ソーサーのような形」と誤報され、「空飛ぶ円盤（flying saucer）」という言葉が生まれた。彼は「パイ皿を半分に切ったような形に、後部に凸型の三角形」を持つものや、「ブーメランや三日月形のパンのような」形をしていたと描写している。

現代UFO時代の幕開け: アーノルドの目撃は、1947年のUFO目撃波（「UFOフラップ」と呼ばれる）のきっかけとなり、それ以降、UFO報告が爆発的に増加した。彼の目撃以前にも報告はあったが、彼の事件が現代におけるUFO現象の起点となった。

  1. 目撃を取り巻くUFOフラップの状況

1947年の目撃波の推移:

  • 1947年1月、4月、5月にも目撃があり、6月上旬にはほぼ隔日、6月20日までは1日約2件に増加した。
  • アーノルドが目撃した6月24日には20件の報告があり、特にワシントン、オレゴン、アイダホの北西部で集中した。
  • 7月上旬には目撃件数が1日20件以上に急増し、7月8日には驚異的な189件を記録した。
  • その後、7月末までに1日1件程度、8月には週数件へと減少した。

ロズウェル事件との関連: アーノルドの目撃からわずか2週間後にロズウェル事件が発生しており、このUFOフラップの一部として捉えられる。

政府の対応: 事件後、空軍はUFO目撃を調査する「プロジェクト・サイン」（1948-1949年）を開始し、その後「プロジェクト・グラッジ」、そして有名な「プロジェクト・ブルーブック」へと引き継がれた。

  1. ケネス・アーノルドの信頼性

個人的な資質: 彼は実業家であり、独立した思考を重んじる人物であった。

証言の一貫性: 彼は目撃直後から複数のインタビューに応じ、一貫してその内容を主張した。FBI捜査官を含む面談者たちは、彼が「実際に見たものを見た」と信じ、「アーノルド氏の人格と明らかな誠実さを持つ人物が、これほど詳細な報告書を作成するとは信じがたい」と述べた。

私生活への影響: 目撃報道後、彼は「報道機関から嘲笑され、ほとんどの米国人の目には低能者と映る」ほど評判が落ち、事業にも大きな支障をきたした。しかし、それでも彼は「10階建てのビルが空を飛ぶのを見ても、二度と口をきかないだろう」とまで言いながらも、自身の目撃談を撤回することはなかった。このことは彼の証言の真実性を裏付けるものとして強調される。

報道機関への非自発的関与: 彼は自ら報道機関に連絡したわけではなく、友人に話したことがきっかけでメディアの注目を浴びることになった。

  1. 提唱された理論とその反論

アーノルドの目撃に対しては、様々な説明が試みられたが、多くは彼の詳細な証言や科学的分析によって反論されている。

4.1. 地球外航空機説 (Extraterrestrial Hypothesis)

  • アーノルド自身は当初、政府の機密プロジェクトと考えていたが、政府が否定したため、「極端な可能性」（地球外起源）を考慮するようになった。
  • 事件後の研究者たちは、この説を裏付ける証拠を見出した。

4.2. 地上航空機説 (Terrestrial Aircraft Hypothesis)

候補: 実験的な陸軍航空隊のロケットや航空機、あるいは鹵獲したドイツの航空機（例：ホルテンHo 229）の可能性が挙げられた。

反論:

  • 速度: アーノルドが推定した時速1,200マイル（実際には1,700マイルと計算される）は、当時の有人航空機の最高速度（時速647マイル）をはるかに上回っていた。音速の壁すらまだ破られていなかった（1947年10月にチャック・イェーガーが達成）。
  • 政府の否定: 陸軍航空隊は、それが自軍のものでもなく、外国の航空機でもないと否定した。
  • J.アラン・ハイネックの近距離説: 当初はUFO懐疑派だった天文学者ハイネックは、物体が実際にはアーノルドの想像よりもはるかに近い（約6マイル）場所にあり、その場合、速度は時速400マイル程度で説明可能だと提案した。
  • ブルース・マカビーによる反論: 光学物理学者ブルース・マカビーは、ハイネックの主張を「全くの誤り」と指摘。アーノルドの視力は、10～15マイル離れたDC-4型機を識別できるほど優れており、物体を報告された距離で識別する能力があったと結論付けた。

4.3. 自然現象説

反論の共通点: 多くの自然現象は、アーノルドが報告した「飛行速度」「形状の明瞭さ」「光の閃光」「高度の変化」といった特性を説明できない。

窓の反射/水滴: アーノルドは窓を開けても物体を見続けたため、この可能性は排除された。また、他の目撃者にも見えたことから、個人的な窓の現象ではない。

ファタ・モルガーナ（蜃気楼）: 空軍の説明ともされたが、蜃気楼は同じ高度から見られるものであり、アーノルドが9,000フィートから14,000フィートのレーニア山に対して見た現象とは合致しない。また、蜃気楼は明るい閃光を放たず、移動もしない。

山頂からの雪の吹き飛ばし: 雪はアーノルドが描写したような明るい光を反射せず、その速度で移動する風も報告されていない。また、雪が航空機のような明確な形に見えることはない。

ガンや他の鳥: 鳥は航空機のコックピットを照らすほどの明るい閃光を出せず、アーノルドの飛行速度（時速100マイル以上）よりはるかに遅い（最大時速50マイル）。アーノルドは、鳥が自分より速く移動するのを見たため、鳥ではないと判断した。

雲: 雲はそのような高速で移動せず、航空機のような明確な形に見えることもない。

流星: 流星は数秒しか視界に留まらず、アーノルドが数分間観察した時間とは合致しない。また、流星は加熱された空気の層であり、明確な形は見えず、上昇することもない。

4.4. 幻覚説 / でっち上げ説

幻覚: アーノルドが飛行していた高度9,000フィートは、酸素欠乏による幻覚が起こるような高度ではない（通常23,000フィート以上）。

でっち上げ: 前述のFBI報告書や、事件が彼の評判とビジネスに悪影響を及ぼしてもなお証言を堅持したことから、でっち上げの可能性は低いと判断されている。

  1. 地球外仮説を支持する可能性のある要素

物体の発光: アーノルドは、物体が太陽を反射しているだけでなく、自ら光を発していた可能性があると考え、光学物理学者ブルース・マカビーの計算も、コックピットを照らすには物体が自ら発光する必要があったと結論付けている。アーノルドは「溶接トーチのような青い光」と表現しており、これは原子エネルギーによって生成されるチェレンコフ放射と関連付けられる可能性が言及されている。

磁気的影響: 同じ日に目撃したフレッド・ジョンソンという探鉱者は、自身のコンパスの針が物体によって影響を受けたことを報告している。これは「計り知れない磁場強度」を示唆しており、当時の技術では利用できなかった推進システムを暗示している。

複数人による目撃: アーノルドの目撃を裏付ける複数の独立した目撃者が存在した。

  • フレッド・ジョンソン（レーニア山、望遠鏡で確認）
  • L.G.バーニエ（リッチランド、アーノルドの半時間前）
  • エセル・ホイールハウス（ヤキマ、同時刻）
  • ロバート・フーバッハ（森林監視塔、同日午後3時にレーニア山で閃光を目撃） これらの独立した証言は、幻覚やでっち上げの可能性を排除する強力な根拠となる。
  1. 結論

ジミー・エイキンは、当初は懐疑的であったものの、この事件の詳細な調査を通じて、「この物語には当初考えられていた以上のものがある」と結論付けた。

彼は「地球外のものだとは言えないが、それが何であるかは分からない」と述べ、アーノルドが物体を測定できる位置にいたことの重要性を強調している。従来の航空機や自然現象による説明では、アーノルドの測定値と証言を真剣に否定する必要があり、それは難しい。複数の独立した目撃者による裏付けは、でっち上げや幻覚の可能性を排除する傾向にある。

この事件は、単なる一過性の出来事ではなく、その後のUFO研究と大衆文化に多大な影響を与えた画期的な出来事として位置づけられる。

AI

タイムライン

1915年​

  • ケネス・アーノルド、ミネソタ州で誕生。

1890年代​

  • 「ミステリー飛行船」と呼ばれる、時代を先取りした地上航空機の目撃が相次ぐ。

1939年～1945年 (第二次世界大戦中)​

  • 連合国側と枢軸国側の双方が、空中で「フー・ファイターズ」と呼ばれる奇妙な物体を目撃。互いに相手側が開発したと考えられた。

1945年8月​

  • アメリカが日本に原子爆弾を投下。

1947年1月、4月、5月​

  • ケネス・アーノルドの目撃以前にも、UFO目撃報告（「UFOフラップ」の始まり）が散発的に発生。

1947年6月上旬​

  • UFO目撃報告がほぼ隔日に増加。

1947年6月20日​

  • 目撃報告が1日約2件に増加。

1947年6月24日 (火曜日)​

  • 午後2時15分頃：実業家兼パイロットのケネス・アーノルド、自身の飛行機（Call Air A2）を操縦中に、ワシントン州シャヘイリスを離陸し、ヤキマへ向かう。
  • 午後2時58分頃：アーノルド、レーニア山上空9,200フィートで、9つの奇妙な物体が信じられないほどの速度で空を移動するのを目撃。物体は「水面をスキップするソーサーのよう」な動きをし、その形は「パイ皿を半分に切ったような形に、後部に凸型の三角形」や、「ブーメランや三日月形のパンのような」形をしていたと描写。閃光を発し、コックピットを照らすほどであった。
  • アーノルドの目撃時間は約2分半。レーニア山からアダムズ山までの距離を1分42秒で移動したと計測。これは時速1,200マイル（実際には1,700マイルと計算される）に相当した。
  • 同じ日、ワシントン、オレゴン、アイダホの北西部を中心に20件のUFO報告が記録される。
  • フレッド・ジョンソン（探鉱者）、レーニア山で望遠鏡を使って同じ物体を目撃し、コンパスに磁気的影響があったと報告。
  • L.G.バーニエ、リッチランドでアーノルドの約30分前に同様の物体を目撃。
  • エセル・ホイールハウス、ヤキマで同時刻に同様の物体を目撃。
  • ロバート・フーバッハ（森林監視塔の職員）、同日午後3時にレーニア山で閃光を目撃。

1947年6月25日​

  • アーノルド、地元のラジオ局のインタビューに応じる。この中で彼は「空飛ぶ円盤（flying saucer）」という言葉は使っておらず、物体の動きを「水面をスキップするソーサーのよう」と表現したことが、報道機関によって「ソーサーのような形」と誤報され、「空飛ぶ円盤」という用語が誕生したとされる。

1947年7月上旬​

  • UFO目撃報告が1日20件以上に急増。
  • 7月4日：88件の目撃報告。
  • 7月5日：75件の目撃報告。
  • 7月6日：156件の目撃報告。
  • 7月7日：159件の目撃報告。
  • 7月8日：189件の目撃報告を記録し、UFOフラップのピークとなる。

1947年7月2日頃 (アーノルドの目撃からわずか2週間後)​

  • ロズウェル事件が発生。

1947年7月末​

  • UFO目撃報告が1日1件程度に減少。

1947年8月​

  • UFO目撃報告が週数件に減少。

1947年9月​

  • アメリカ陸軍航空隊からアメリカ空軍が独立した軍種となる。

1947年10月14日​

  • チャック・イェーガーがベルX-1で音速の壁を突破（時速814マイル、マッハ1.07）。

1948年～1949年​

  • アメリカ空軍、「プロジェクト・サイン」を開始しUFO目撃を調査。

1950年​

  • アーノルド、エドワード・R・マローのインタビューに応じ、自身の目撃について再び語る。

1952年​

  • ケネス・アーノルド、自身の体験に関する著書「The Coming of the Saucers」を出版。

1962年​

  • ケネス・アーノルド、アイダホ州の副知事選に立候補するも落選。

1984年​

  • ケネス・アーノルド、ワシントン州で68歳で死去。
AI

登場人物

ケネス・アーノルド (Kenneth Arnold)​

  • 1915年ミネソタ州生まれ、1984年ワシントン州で死去。
  • 「Great Western Fire Control Supply Company」を設立した実業家であり、航空機（Call Air A2）を操縦するパイロットでもあった。
  • 1947年6月24日、ワシントン州上空で9つの未確認飛行物体を目撃し、これが現代UFO時代の幕開けとなった。
  • 当初は政府の機密プロジェクトと考えたが、政府の否定を受けて「地球外起源」という可能性も考慮するようになった。
  • 目撃談についてFBIの調査官からも信頼性を高く評価され、事業への悪影響や嘲笑に晒されながらも証言を撤回しなかった。
  • 「空飛ぶ円盤」という言葉が広まったのは、彼の証言が報道機関に誤って伝えられたことによると主張している。

ジミー・エイキン (Jimmy Akin)​

  • ポッドキャスト「Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World」のホスト。
  • UFO報告に対しては当初懐疑的な立場を取っていたが、ケネス・アーノルドの事件を詳細に調査した結果、「この物語には当初考えられていた以上のものがある」と結論付けた。

ドム・ベティネリ (Dom Bettinelli)​

  • ポッドキャスト「Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World」の共同ホスト。

テッド・ブルーチャー (Ted Blucher)​

  • 1947年の新聞記事からUFO目撃統計を収集した研究者。

ブルース・マカビー (Bruce McAbee)​

  • 光学物理学者。ケネス・アーノルドの目撃事件を詳細に調査し、J.アラン・ハイネックの距離に関する主張を反証した。
  • 物体の光がコックピットを照らすには、単なる太陽の反射ではなく、物体自体が発光している必要があったと計算した。
  • 「Three Minutes in June, The UFO Sighting That Changed the World」の著者。
  • UFO報告に対して批判的思考を持ち、フェニックス・ライツ事件のセカンド・イベントがフレアであると結論付けたことで知られる。

フレッド・ジョンソン (Fred Johnson)​

  • 探鉱者。ケネス・アーノルドと同じ日、レーニア山で同様の物体を目撃。

  • 望遠鏡で物体を確認し、自身のコンパスの針が物体によって影響を受けたことを報告した。

L.G.バーニエ (L.G. Bernier)​

  • ワシントン州リッチランドの住民。アーノルドの約30分前に、レーニア山に向かう物体を目撃した。

エセル・ホイールハウス (Ethel Wheelhouse)​

  • ワシントン州ヤキマの住民。アーノルドと同時刻に同様の物体を目撃した。

ロバート・フーバッハ (Robert Hubach)​

  • 森林監視塔の職員。アーノルドの目撃と同じ日、午後3時にレーニア山で閃光を目撃した。

J.エドガー・フーヴァー (J. Edgar Hoover)​

  • 当時のFBI長官。ケネス・アーノルドの目撃事件について調査を命じ、陸軍航空隊から「自軍のものでも外国の航空機でもない」との報告を受けた。

J.アラン・ハイネック (J. Alan Hynek)​

  • 天文学者。「プロジェクト・ブルーブック」に携わり、当初はUFO懐疑派だった。

  • アーノルドが目撃した物体は実際には彼が推定したよりもはるかに近く（約6マイル）、その場合、速度は時速400マイル程度で説明可能だと提案したが、後にブルース・マカビーによって反証された。

チャック・イェーガー (Chuck Yeager)​

  • 1947年10月14日に音速の壁を破ったパイロット。アーノルドの目撃当時にはまだ音速飛行は達成されていなかった。

エドワード・R・マロー (Edward R. Murrow)​

  • ジャーナリスト。1950年にケネス・アーノルドのインタビューを行った。

情報源 : 動画(56:03)​

Kenneth Arnold and the First UFOs - Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World

動画概要欄​

3,100 views Jun 21, 2019 Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World On June 24, 1947, pilot Kenneth Arnold saw something odd in the skies of Washington state. When he landed, he touched off the modern era of UFO sightings. Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli discuss the theories of what he saw and eliminate them all, until only one remains.

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Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World is brought to you by the StarQuest Production Network and is made possible by our many generous patrons. If you'd like to support the podcast, please visit sqpn.com slash give. You're listening to episode 46 of Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World, where we look at mysteries from the twin perspectives of faith and reason. In this episode, we're talking about Kenneth Arnold and the first UFOs. I'm Dom Bettinelli, and joining me today is Jimmy Akin. Hi, Jimmy. Howdy, Dom. On June 22, 1947, 72 years ago this week, businessman Kenneth Arnold was piloting his plane over the skies of Washington State when he saw something strange. (0:00:58)

It was a convoy of nine unusual objects moving in the sky at a fantastic speed. When he landed, he reported what he saw, and it touched off the modern era of UFO sightings. And that's what we'll be talking about on this episode of Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World. So, Jimmy, let's start by having you tell us how you became aware of this particular case. (0:01:18)

I don't remember when I first became aware of it, but I've known about it for a long time. It's the classic case kicking off the modern UFO era, so it's mentioned in all the literature. I'd been aware of the basic facts of the case, like the ones you just mentioned, and some others for some time. (0:01:39)

But I'd never really taken a hard look at the details of this case until I started researching this episode. In approaching UFO reports, I try to have healthy skepticism. Even by people who support the extraterrestrial hypothesis, they'll admit 90, 95, 98% of all UFO sightings are either misidentifications of something that's not exotic, or they're outright hoaxes. (0:02:08)

And so when I, you know, was thinking about this episode before starting the research process, I assumed one of the first things that I assumed was that when he saw these things out his window moving at fantastic speeds, they could be reflections, you know, and depending on shifting your perspective and the way your head moves, it could look like they're going really fast. (0:02:28)

Or if it wasn't that, it could be some kind of conventional but experimental aircraft that he saw, you know, with purely terrestrial origin. And then I read Arnold's own account, and there's more to it than I thought. Well, let's set the context for this event then. You mentioned that the Kenneth Arnold sighting touched off the modern era of UFO sightings. Were there previous eras of UFO sightings? (0:02:53)

There have been claims of, hey, I saw something strange in the sky, you know, as old as human history, because sometimes there are strange things in the sky, like eclipses. But there are allegations that there have been previous encounters with UFOs that are mentioned in various historical writings, including the Bible, you'll hear a lot of people in the UFO community say, oh, yeah, Ezekiel's wheels, that was those were UFOs. Well, not, we know what those were, and they're not UFOs. But we'll be devoting an episode in the future to UFOs in the Bible. Also, they'll say, oh, it's in this art from some ancient people or from the Middle Ages, or things like that. (0:03:42)

And we'll be doing episodes on that too. In fact, I know we have a weird question show where I talk specifically about the medieval art claim that it has UFOs in it. (0:03:48)

In the 1890s, there was a series of sightings of what were known as mystery airships, which basically seemed to be terrestrial aircraft that were ahead of their time, that it was powered flight ahead of the Wright brothers. And we'll be talking about the mystery airships in World War Two. So you know, 1939 to 1945, both sides saw something in the sky that they referred to in English as Foo Fighters. Don't know exactly what they were, both sides assumed it was something that the other side had developed. (0:04:28)

So we assumed the Germans developed this, the Germans assumed we developed it. And we'll be doing future episodes on all of those. But it was really with Kenneth Arnold and this sighting in 1947, two years after the war, that the modern UFO era began. And it's from this, that we get the term flying saucer. Now, I should point out, there were previous sightings in 1947, before Arnold's. His was towards the beginning of the 1947 UFO flap, or wave of sightings. (0:05:05)

That's what it's called in UFO literature. A wave of sightings is called a UFO flap. And there were in January, there was a sighting in January, there was another in April, and there were three in May, just the month before. Then relying on statistics compiled from newspapers by the researcher Ted Blucher, a guy we'll be talking about later in this episode named Bruce McAbee, who is an optical physicist that has researched the Kenneth Arnold sighting. (0:05:39)

According to McAbee, based on these Blucher statistics from newspapers, there was approximately one sighting every other day for the first half of June. These were scattered over the Midwest and Western United States. Then the sighting rate doubled to about two per day until June 20th. Blucher found three sightings for June 20th, two for June 21st, three on June 22nd, six on June 23rd, and then the explosion. (0:06:06)

Blucher found 20 reports on June 24th. That's the day Kenneth Arnold saw. These were mostly in the far northwestern states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Sightings were scattered throughout the day from morning to night. After the 24th, the sighting rate rate stayed at about 10 per day or higher, with sightings occurring not just in the west but throughout the country. In early July, the sighting rate climbed to over 20 per day to 88 sightings on July 4th, 75th on July 5th, 156 on July 6th, 159 on July 7th, and a whopping 189 on July 8th. After that, it dropped quickly back to 20 per day and then only a few per day. (0:06:59)

By the end of July, the sighting rate was about one per day, and by August it was down to several per week. So that's the shape of the UFO flap of 1947. And in fact, in addition to Arnold, there were 19 other sightings on July 24th that got reported in newspapers. So all of these are what got reported in newspapers. (0:07:25)

Who knows how many didn't get reported in newspapers. So that's how Arnold sighting fits into the context of what was going on at the time. So tell me, who is Kenneth Arnold? Well, he was born in Minnesota in 1915. He was a businessman. He started the Great Western Fire Control Supply Company in Boise, Idaho, and it sold and installed fire suppression systems. (0:07:52)

He was also an aviator. He flew a Call Air A2 airplane, and he used it to make business trips around the Pacific Northwest. He apparently did believe in God, but he wasn't really religious, and he praised independent thinking. In 1952, he wrote a book about his experience. And in 1962, he ran unsuccessfully for the post of Lieutenant Governor of Idaho, where he lived. (0:08:20)

He then died in Washington State in 1984 at age 68. Let's start with our theories about this. What are the theories about what Kenneth Arnold saw? (0:08:27)

Well, the big one is he saw extraterrestrial aircraft. That's kind of the one that people want to know about. The alternatives are he may have seen terrestrial aircraft, such as Experimental Army Air Force rockets. And I have to say Army Air Force at this time, or at least mention it that way, because the Air Force was not an independent branch of the service until September of 1947. At this time, the Air Force was still part of the Army. It could have also been an Experimental Army Air Force plane, could have been a captured German plane. And in fact, some have noted that the lead craft in the convoy he cited looks kind of like a German aircraft known as the Hortenhoe 229, which was a sort of experimental German airplane. (0:09:21)

It was a flying wing. In addition to aircraft, there have been proposals that he saw meteors, he saw clouds, he saw geese or other birds like pelicans, he saw snow being blown from mountaintops, he saw a mirage, he saw spots of water on his window, he saw reflections in his window. That was the first one that occurred to me. Or then that there was no actual phenomena at all, that he was just hallucinating, maybe because of the low oxygen environment in his unpressurized airplane, or he was just hoaxing it all. So let's cover what we know about what happened here. (0:09:55)

What did Kenneth Arnold say about his encounter? He gave several interviews about it almost immediately, and we'll refer to them as we go along. But by way of an overview, I was really fortunate I found a radio interview he did on June 25. So the day after his sighting, he was interviewed by a local radio station and a recording of it has survived. (0:10:20)

And it's a few minutes long, but we're going to go ahead because it's such a nice overview and play that for you Well, at about 2.15, I took off from Chehalis, Washington, en route to Yakima. And of course, every time that any of us fly over the country near Mount Veneer, we spend an hour or two in search of the marine plane that's never been found, that they believe is in the snow someplace southwest of that particular area. (0:10:46)

That area is located at about, its elevation is about 10,000 foot. And I had made one sweep in close to Mount Veneer and down one of the canyons and was dragging it for any types of objects that might prove to be the marine ship. And as I come out of the canyon there, it was about 15 minutes, I was approximately 25 to 28 miles from Mount Veneer. I climbed back up to 9,200 feet and I noticed to the left of me a chain, which looked to me like the tail of a Chinese kite, kind of weaving and going at a terrific speed across the face of Mount Veneer. I at first thought they were geese because it flew like geese, but it was going so fast that that I immediately changed my mind and decided it was a bunch of new jet planes in formation. (0:11:29)

Well, as the planes come to the edge of Mount Veneer, flying at about 160 degrees south, I thought I would clock them because it was such a clear day and I didn't know where their destination was, but due to the fact that I had Mount St. Helens and Mount Adams to clock them by, I just thought I'd see just how fast they were going since among pilots we argue about speed so much. And they seemed to flip and flash in the sun just like a mirror. (0:12:00)

And in fact, I happened to be at an angle from the sun that seemed to hit the tops of these peculiar looking things in such a way that it almost blinded you when you looked at them through your plexiglass windshield. (0:12:12)

Well, it was about one minute to three when I started clocking them on my sweet second-hand clock. And as I kept looking at them, I kept looking for their tails. They didn't have any tails. I thought, well, maybe something's wrong with my eyes. And I turned the plane around and opened the window and looked out the window and sure enough, I couldn't find any tails on them. (0:12:38)

And the whole observation of these particular ships didn't last more than about two and a half minutes. And I could see them only plainly when they seemed to tip their wing or whatever it was and the sun flashed on them. They looked something like a pie plate that was cut in half with a sort of a convex triangle in the rear. (0:13:04)

Now, I thought, well, that maybe they're just planes with just the tails painted green or brown or something and didn't think too much of it, but kept on watching them. Now, they didn't fly in a conventional formation that's taught in our army. They seemed to kind of weave in and out right above the mountaintop. And I would say that they even went down into the canyons in several instances, oh, probably a hundred feet. (0:13:24)

But I could see them against the snow, of course, on Mount Rainier and against the snow on Mount Adams as they were flashing and against a high ridge that happens to lay in between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams. But when I observed the tail end of the last one passing Mount Adams, and I was at an angle near Mount Rainier from it, but I looked at my watch and it showed one minute and 42 seconds. (0:13:52)

Well, I still thought, well, that's pretty fast and I didn't stop to think what the distance was between the two mountains. Well, I landed at Yakima, Washington, and Al Baxter was there to greet me and saw up here. And he told me, I guess I'd better change my brand. (0:14:11)

But he kind of gave me a mysterious sort of a look that maybe I had seen something he didn't know. And well, I just kind of forgot at the end. Well, I got down at Pendleton and I began looking at my map and taking measurements on it. And the best calculation I could figure out now, even in spite of error, would be around 1,200 miles an hour, because making the distance from Mount Rainier to Mount Adams in, we'll say, approximately two minutes, it's almost, well, it'd be around 25 miles per minute. (0:14:35)

Now, allowing for air, we can give them three minutes or four minutes to make it, and they're still going more than 800 miles an hour. And to my knowledge, there isn't anything that I read about outside of some of the German rockets that would go that fast. These were flying in more or less a level, constant altitude. They weren't going up and they weren't going down. (0:14:55)

They were just simply flying straight and level. And I laughed when I told the pilots at Pendleton, I said, they sure must have had a tailwind. (0:15:00)

But it didn't seem to help me much. But to the best of my knowledge and the best of my description, that is what I actually saw. And like I told the Associated Press, I'll be glad to confirm it with my hands on a Bible, because I did see it. And whether it has anything to do with our army or our intelligence or whether it has to do with some foreign country, I don't know. (0:15:22)

But I did see it and I did clock it and I just happened to be in a beautiful position to do it. And it's just as much a mystery to me as it is to everyone else who's been calling me the last 24 hours wondering what it was. Well Kenneth, thank you very much. I know that you've certainly been busy these last 24 hours because I've spent some of the time with you myself. (0:15:41)

And I know that the press associations, both Associated Press and our press, the United Press, has been right after you every minute. The Associated and United Press all over the nation have been after this story. It's been on every newscast over the air and in every newspaper I know of. The United Press in Portland has made several telephone calls here to Pendleton to me and to you this morning. (0:16:00)

And from New York I understand they're after this story. And we may have an answer for it before night, because if it is some new type of army or navy secret missile, there will probably a story come out on it from the army or navy asking, saying that it is a new secret plane and that will be all there is to it and they will hush up the story or perhaps that we will finally get a definite answer to it. (0:16:20)

I love how they say in the radio interview that they hope to have a solution for this mystery by evening. And that was 72 years ago. Such optimism. So a couple of things to note about the experience. He said that he saw the objects weaving in and out of the mountains and he could see them silhouetted against the mountains. So that means they were lower than the peaks. So we can estimate how high these things were. (0:16:48)

And he doesn't say this in the radio interview, but he says that the flashes that he saw lit up his airplane. So they weren't just like flashes in his eye, like if you see a mirror reflecting the sunlight, this was something bright enough to illuminate the cabin in his airplane. And that's because he later in thinking about it, he thought, well, even though his first thought was they were just reflecting the sun at him, he later thought maybe they were making that light. (0:17:20)

Maybe they weren't just reflecting the sun. And Bruce McAbee, an optical physicist, ran the calculations and says, yep, that's right. In order to illuminate his plane, the objects would have had to been generating that light. Just reflecting sunlight wouldn't have done it. (0:17:34)

The one interesting to note is that Kenneth Arnold didn't use the term flying saucer in this interview. When did this term come about? How did this get applied here? It's disputed. Arnold later said that he described the motion of the objects as being like what you'd see if you skipped a saucer across water. (0:17:57)

So kind of bobbing and weaving. He said then that he'd been misquoted by the press in saying they were shaped like saucers. And since they were flying and he was understood to have said they were shaped like saucers, most likely a newspaper editor coined the term flying saucers in a headline. Because that's actually newspaper writers. Reporters don't typically write headlines. (0:18:23)

The editors do that. In a 1950 interview with Edward R. Murrow, Arnold said this. He said, these objects more or less fluttered like they were, oh, I'd say, boats on very rough water or very rough air of some type. And when I described how they flew, I said that they flew like they take a saucer and throw it across the water. Most of the newspapers misunderstood and misquoted that too. (0:18:50)

They said that I said that they were saucer-like. I said that they flew in a saucer-like fashion. So what did he say their shape looked like? Well, he said they weren't all the same shape. He said that most of them looked like a pie plate cut in half with a kind of point on the back. (0:19:10)

And he drew a diagram of that for the military. And if you look on the Wikipedia page that we'll link, you can see the drawing. It actually is almost a circle. It's just got a couple of edges to the back of it. Then he said this other one that was, I believe, the leader of the convoy was crescent-shaped, kind of like a boomerang or a crescent roll. (0:19:33)

If he was misquoted, what implications does that have for the fact people have reported seeing saucer-shaped craft? It could suggest that a press misquote misled a bunch of people into thinking they were seeing saucers when they weren't. Either they weren't seeing anything at all, and they were just misidentifying them as saucers, or they were seeing a natural thing and imposing a saucer-like shape on it. (0:19:57)

Or they were seeing, you know, maybe these things Arnold saw that look almost circular, but not quite because of those two angles on the back. And maybe they just kind of mentally omitted seeing the angles. On the other hand, UFOs reportedly come in a bunch of different shapes. They're not all reported to be saucers. And so if they come in a variety of shapes, maybe some of them are saucer-shaped, just not the ones Arnold saw. (0:20:27)

And frankly, identification of aircraft is a very tricky thing, even for professionals, like in the military. And that could account for some of it too. So is there more to this story? It's hard to say. We know what Arnold said later on. It's a little harder. If you look at the different accounts of what he was reported in the press as having said, it does seem like he definitely used the word saucer, but it's a little... it's like, why did all these people get it wrong in terms of understanding him? Also his claim in 1950 that he was talking about skipping a saucer across water. (0:21:07)

Who does that? I mean, when I was growing up, I know men who would... I mean, I've never actually tried to do it as an adult, but I knew men, my father and other men who would like skip stones across water. I'd do that with my kids. Yeah. Yeah. But I wouldn't throw away a saucer to do that. (0:21:23)

You know, rocks are easy to do that with because they're cheap. They're laying on the ground right there. Nobody owns them. You can just pitch one across the water. But I wouldn't try to skim a saucer across the water. I'd lose the saucer. So I've always thought that was kind of weird. And it's not like one newspaper misquoted him. A bunch of them did. (0:21:47)

Wire services had him describing the shape as being like saucers or other similar terms like disc or pie plate. And even in the interview we heard, you'll note he said one looked like a pie plate cut in half or with some modifications of it. So maybe that's part of the origin. (0:22:06)

It's also possible that some or all of what he saw were round, but his viewing angle was such because of the brightness and the flashing, it made it hard for him to see the shape clearly. Even by his own diagram, most of the things were either circular or almost circular. (0:22:18)

So we always approach things from a faith and reason perspective. Does this have any significance from the faith perspective? Not really. Obviously, the existence of aliens, if the extraterrestrial hypothesis turned out to be true, that would raise theological questions. But there aren't really questions of a theological nature raised by what did this guy see on this date. And we've talked about that a little bit in previous episodes. (0:22:43)

And we'll have a whole episode in the future on the theological aspects of aliens. So from the reason perspective, what are we to make of the claims that there was no real phenomena he saw, that it was a hoax or hallucination? Well, anytime someone says they saw something extraordinary, you have to take seriously the possibility that they're hoaxing. People do hoax stuff. And so we can't just dismiss that option. (0:23:07)

But we have to look at the evidence. And the people who spoke with Arnold, including the military investigators, found him to be very credible and didn't think he was hoaxing. One of the things that's come to light is the report of the FBI, also the FBI talked to him, and we have the report of the FBI agent who interviewed him. (0:23:30)

And I'll just quote it. He says, It is the personal opinion of the interviewer that Mr. Arnold actually saw what he stated he saw. It is difficult to believe that a man of Mr. Arnold's 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. (0:23:55)

To go further, if Mr. Arnold can write a report of the character he did while not having seen the objects that he claimed he saw, it is the opinion of the interviewer that Mr. Arnold is in the wrong business that he should be writing Buck Rogers fiction. So the FBI agent, like other people who talked to him, thought he was sincere, telling the truth, didn't think he would bother writing up such a detailed report if he didn't see something. (0:24:21)

Arnold also stuck by his story even after he concluded that he was never again going to talk about anything he saw in the sky. And that's actually mentioned here, the fact that he reached that conclusion is actually mentioned in the FBI agent's report. According to the FBI agent, Mr. Arnold says his business has suffered greatly since his report on July 25th due to the fact that at every stop on his business routes, large crowds of people were waiting to question him as to just what he had seen. (0:24:50)

Mr. Arnold stated further that if he, at any time in the future, saw anything in the sky, to quote Mr. Arnold directly, quote, if I saw a 10-story building flying through the air, I would never say a word about it, close quote, due to the fact that he has been ridiculed by the press to such an extent that he is practically a moron in the eyes of the majority of the United States. Is this Fox Mulder writing this? (0:25:19)

So even after Arnold had a bad taste in his mouth by this whole thing and said, I'm never talking about anything again like that, he still stuck by this story and said, yeah, no, I really did see these things, even though it damaged his reputation and his business prospects. He didn't say, oh, guess what, guys, I was just funning y'all. So at this point, where did the E.T. hypothesis come from? (0:25:47)

Yeah, well, initially, Arnold didn't propose it. He thought that what he was seeing was some government project. And it was only after the government said, nope, that's not us, that he was led to envision what Fox Mulder might call extreme possibilities. So he didn't come down from flying his plane and say, guess what, guys, I saw aliens. He came down and said, I saw something that looked like an interesting classified government project. (0:26:19)

And so that's why in the radio interview, they're checking like we've called the Army Air Force to see if this was one of theirs. And we hope to have a reply by evening. Well, when the reply came, it was, nope, that's not one of ours. And that's what led to the extraterrestrial hypothesis. (0:26:33)

Also, in terms of hoaxing, notice Arnold didn't call the press. He landed at the airport at Yakima and told a friend of his what he had seen. And his friend didn't really believe him. In the interview, he says his friend kind of suggested maybe you need to change your brand. And that's a reference to the fact that in 1947, basically everybody smoked. (0:27:00)

But then either his friend or someone else at the airport called ahead to the airport at Pendleton where he was going. And so when he got to Pendleton, the press was waiting there for him. He didn't seek press attention on his own. And basically, as in part of the radio interview that we cut for reasons of time, they're talking about how there's all these different news agencies that have been mobbing him trying to get his story. (0:27:25)

So he didn't bring that on himself. He just landed and told his friend, I think I saw this government aircraft project thing. Now, in addition to the hoax proposal, there's the hallucination hypothesis. And it's true that oxygen deprivation can lead to hallucinations. So we need to consider that. But I don't know that Arnold was high enough to suffer that degree of oxygen deprivation. He was only flying at about 9,000 feet. (0:27:53)

Now, Mount Rainier, one of the mountains he was passing, and these UFOs were whatever they were, were lower than the peak of Mount Rainier by quite a bit, because he saw them silhouetted against it. Mount Rainier is 14,000 feet tall above sea level. And I don't know of people hallucinating on Mount Rainier. I did some checking and reports of mountain climbers and their experiences indicate that they can start hallucinating above 7,000 meters or 23,000 feet. (0:28:27)

So if you use 23,000 feet as a benchmark and Arnold is flying at only 9,000 feet, he's not at the level to be seeing hallucinations. Most general aviation aircraft without pressurized cabins will fly at 9,000 feet no problem, which is what would have been the case here. Exactly. And you don't want, if people did hallucinate at 9,000 feet, you wouldn't want them flying an unpressurized plane. (0:28:56)

You wouldn't let them if pilots would just go up to 9,000 feet and start seeing pink elephants. Right. And I'm pretty sure that mountain climbing up to 14,000 foot height is non-bottle oxygen climbing. You don't need to be below that point. So that's checked out. Yeah. Even if you said, well, okay, maybe, I don't know what, maybe he didn't sleep well that night or something. (0:29:23)

And he was a little more prone to hallucinate. The problem is with any kind of hallucination or hoax theory is there seems to be independent corroboration for the Arnold sighting and not just one person, several people, a number of people claim to see the same thing on the same day. There was a prospector named Fred Johnson who was on Mount Adams. That's one of the mountains he was passing. (0:29:50)

And he said he saw them also and even viewed them through a small telescope that he had. I don't know if it was handheld or what, but he had a small telescope and he looked at them. Another person named LG Bernier or Bernier in Richland, Washington, saw them moving towards Mount Rainier about half an hour before Arnold did. (0:30:06)

A woman named Ethel Wheelhouse in Yakima reported seeing them at the same time Arnold did. And the military interviewed a forestry worker named Robert Hubach or Hubach who was on duty at a fire watch tower. So he's up there. His job is to look at the horizon for fires. And he reported seeing flashes over Mount Rainier at 3pm the same day when Arnold said he saw these things flashing. (0:30:36)

So you've got multiple independent corroborations of Arnold seeing something. On the flip side, Arnold had a DC-4 aircraft that was about 10 to 15 miles behind him at the time of the sighting, and the pilot of that aircraft didn't notice anything unusual. But he may just not have noticed it. The balance of the evidence points to independent confirmation which would eliminate the hoax or hallucination hypotheses. (0:31:09)

Well, what about the theories that say he misidentified a natural phenomenon like reflections or water droplets on his window? So as I mentioned, the reflection theory was the first one that occurred to me, but Arnold eliminated it. He turned his plane to fly south to parallel these things, and so the side of his aircraft was to them, and they remained where he saw them. A reflection probably wouldn't have done that. (0:31:32)

But then when he rolled down the window, as we heard in the radio interview, well it can't be reflections or raindrops in or on his window if he rolls down the window and still sees them. Also, if it was reflections or water drops on his window, they would have been visible to him, but not all these other people. (0:31:59)

And so that means that if he misidentified a natural phenomenon, it couldn't have been something close to him. It had to be something in the distance. Okay, then what about the idea that he saw a mirage? Well, this is apparently the Air Force explanation, although that's not entirely clear to me. Bruce McAbee says it's the Air Force explanation, but I haven't seen a quote from their documents that would indicate that clearly. (0:32:25)

So then the question is, well, how would you explain him seeing a mirage? Well, one theory is that it would be a temperature effect that can cause mountaintops to look doubled or detached. That's known as the Fata Morgana effect. So that's possible. And we'll have a link on Wikipedia for that so you can see what a Fata Morgana image looks like. But mirages have to be seen from the same elevation. (0:32:51)

When you look at a road in the desert and you see a mirage, you're looking at eye level for that road. You're not looking at something a thousand feet above you or more. And as Bruce McAbee points out, Arnold was too low. He was flying at 9,000 feet. Mountaintop for Rainier is at 14,000. So he was too low to see such an effect. (0:33:18)

Also, he saw the object silhouetted against Rainier. So it's not just reflected mountaintops, you know, looking detached because of a temperature inversion. Also, mirages don't make bright flashes. And being mountaintops, they don't move. And what Arnold saw was something flying faster than he was because they were overtaking him. He was losing ground to them. (0:33:44)

And mountaintops don't do that. So what about the idea that he saw snow blowing from the mountaintops? Snow cannot reflect the amount of light needed to create the brightness of what Arnold described. Also, there were no fast winds on the surface to carry clouds of snow. There are no winds that would carry snow all the way from Mount Rainier to Mount Adams where he lost sight of the things. (0:34:11)

If there had been strong winds, he would have been buffeted by the winds in his tiny little airplane. But he reported smooth skies. Also, the snow would have looked like snow. It wouldn't have looked like aircraft. Right. With such defined shapes. Yeah. So what about the idea that he saw geese or other birds like pelicans? Birds also don't cause flashes bright enough to illuminate an airplane cockpit. (0:34:40)

They also would have had to have been much too close to him for what he saw. And that would have had implications because we know Arnold was flying over 100 miles an hour. And we know he had to be flying something like that because the stall speed on his aircraft was 80 miles an hour. So if he flies slower than 80 miles an hour, he's falling out of the sky. (0:35:01)

And he wasn't. So, you know, his account of going over 100 miles an hour is plausible. He flew, when he turned his plane to parallel these objects, he was flying parallel to them. If they were birds, they would have had to have been flying at a typical bird speed, which maxes out at 50 miles an hour. (0:35:27)

If they're just flapping flat out as fast as they can go, they're not going much faster than 50 miles an hour, but he's got to be going over 80 and his account is over 100. And so if, when he's flying parallel to them, they had been going at bird speed, he would see himself overtaking them. They would be losing ground to him. And that's the reverse of what he saw. (0:35:47)

What he was seeing was going faster than he was by quite a bit. So it couldn't have been birds for that reason. Also, they would have looked like birds. They would have been so close, they would look like birds. So what about the idea he saw clouds? Clouds are either motionless or don't move anywhere near that fast. Even on a breezy day where you can see clouds moving, they don't overtake you when you're flying 100 miles an hour in, you know, in less than two minutes and go that many miles. (0:36:18)

Fortunately, the winds are not strong enough to drive clouds at 1200 or more miles an hour. And also they would have looked like clouds, especially when he flew past the mountains a few minutes later, he would have seen, oh, it's just clouds. So then there's this other theory that they were meteors that he saw. What about that? (0:36:36)

Well, he saw their shapes too clearly for them to be meteors. When meteors are traveling through the Earth's lower atmosphere, they're encountering so much friction that they, the surface of the meteor ionizes and becomes plasma, and that's why they glow. So you're not actually seeing a meteor, you're seeing the heated air envelope around it. And so he wouldn't have seen these clearly defined shapes that he did. (0:37:04)

Also, meteors don't stay in the sky for two or three minutes. They stay in the sky for one or two seconds. That's why we talk about things moving at meteoric speed. And Arnold used a clock so he knew how long they were. He said he saw the sweep hand of the clock and the sweep second hand marking out the time. And when he measured it, it was much longer than a meteor would have stayed in the sky. (0:37:28)

And if they had stayed in the sky all that time, they would have gone much further than they did. Also, meteors cool and slow at lower altitudes. And Bruce McAbee brings out this point. He says, the suggestion that one or several meteors could travel many miles horizontally at a speed high enough to glow while at an altitude below 10,000 feet is not supported by any known physics of meteors. So just says they could not move this way. (0:38:03)

If they were moving that slow, they wouldn't glow. This just doesn't work. If they were moving that slow, they'd just fall out of the sky. Yeah, yeah, they wouldn't stay in the sky for that long. Also, Arnold reported seeing some of the objects rise as they passed one of the mountains. And meteors don't do that. They don't rise, they fall. (0:38:27)

So then those are the natural phenomena explanations. What about the idea that he saw some kind of conventional aircraft, whether captured German or American or Russian or experimental or some other kind? So the first point is the Army Air Force denied any responsibility of it being them. They also said it's not possible this is a foreign aircraft. So it's not like the Russians are flying over Washington State. That was their view. (0:38:54)

They also apparently told this to J. Edgar Hoover, when he was having it investigated. The head of the FBI. Yeah, the head of the FBI. They told J. Edgar Hoover, this isn't us and it isn't the Russians. A big problem is that we didn't have anything that could move this fast as what Arnold saw. In the radio interview, Arnold estimated that they were going 1,200 miles an hour. (0:39:18)

But he's actually bringing the number down to make it sound less crazy. What his calculation actually showed is that they were moving 1,700 miles an hour. And at the time, the fastest recorded manned flight was only 647 miles an hour. The sound barrier had not been broken. The sound barrier would be broken later that year by Chuck Yeager. He broke it on October 17, and he was able to achieve a speed of Mach 1.07, which is 814 miles per hour. So that's 1.07 times the speed of sound at an altitude of 40,000 feet. (0:40:04)

But that hadn't happened yet. The fastest thing we had was 647 miles per hour for manned flight. (0:40:11)

And these craft were going three times that. Now, guided missiles could go this fast. The peak speed of a German V2 rocket was 3,600 miles an hour. So they could go twice what these things were going. But these weren't missiles. And if they were, they would have fallen to earth somewhere. I mean, Arnold saw their shape, and they're not shaped like missiles. (0:40:34)

Also, they would have fallen to earth somewhere, and the government denied responsibility for them. So that makes it hard to claim this is, you know, that it's just missiles or some other kind of conventional aircraft, if he's seeing them at the distance, he said. Now, if you want to challenge that, the logical thing to do is challenge the distance and say maybe they were way closer, in which case they could have been going slower. (0:41:05)

And that's what J. Alan Hynek did. Now, J. Alan Hynek was an astronomer who worked with Project Blue Book, which didn't exist yet. But he eventually worked with Project Blue Book, and he initially was a UFO skeptic. Over the course of time, his views changed, and he came to find the extraterrestrial hypothesis much more plausible. (0:41:32)

But at this early stage, when he looked into the Kenneth Arnold sighting, he proposed that Arnold saw conventional aircraft, but they were much closer to him, like six miles away, in which case they would have only been going 400 miles an hour instead of 1700 miles an hour, which was consistent with the maximum man flight speed at the time. He based his claim that they were closer on the fact that the human eye can't distinguish details of things smaller than three arc minutes of angular sight. (0:42:07)

So if like if Arnold could see the shape of these things the way he said, then they had to take up at least three arc minutes of angular sight. That's a little sliver, you know, of a degree. He couldn't have done that if they were more than six miles away. Well, J. Alan Hynek was an astronomer, so he knew a good bit about optics, but he wasn't an optical physicist. (0:42:33)

Bruce McAbee is, and he says that Hynek was flat wrong on the claim that people can see objects that are less than three arc minutes in length and in angular size, and that Arnold was one of those people because he could identify the DC-4 airplane that was 10 to 15 miles behind him, and its diameter angularly would have only been about one arc minute, and yet he could see that's what it was. (0:43:06)

So he clearly, according to McAbee, had had sufficient quality eyesight to accurately see these things at the distance he reported. And McAbee, not only is he an optical physicist, but he's not a dyed-in-the-wool believe-ever UFO claim. We've actually mentioned him here on Mysterious World before. If you remember our Phoenix Lights episode, where there are the two events during the course of the same night over Phoenix, there's the earlier event and then there's the second event that people said might have been flares at the nearby Air Force Range. Well, McAbee was the guy we mentioned as the optical physicist who investigated the videotape of the second event and said that's just flares. So sorry to disappoint everybody, but the second event at least is only flares. (0:43:57)

And so McAbee is a critical thinker. He doesn't just accept every UFO claim. (0:44:03)

Also, if these things were that close, then Arnold should have seen tails and wings and engines and things like that. He didn't see any of that. All right. So that eliminates that conventional explanation. So where does that leave us? I think I know. Well, it certainly tends to support the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Now, one of the things... so just to tie in a couple of other things that may be connected to that. (0:44:31)

Well, Arnold thought afterwards these things may have been making their own light. And McAbee's calculations agreed with that, that if it lit up his cockpit at that distance, they had to be making their own light. Arnold described the light as being blue, like a welder's torch. And I can't help but wonder if it might have been connected with Cherenkov radiation. (0:44:54)

Cherenkov radiation is produced by atomic energy, and it looks bluish. Anytime you see a blue flash, if you read Jim Haffey's book, Atomic Accidents, blue flashes are bad. And so since these things are described as flashing blue, I can't help but wondering, is that some kind of nuclear thing happening and they're releasing Cherenkov radiation? Also, the prospector, Frank Johnson, who was up in the mountains and saw this, he not only had a telescope with him, he had a compass. (0:45:27)

And he looked at his compass and said the needle was affected by these things, and he estimated they were about a thousand feet above him at around 5,000 feet in altitude. And to have these objects affecting the needle of his compass at a distance of a thousand feet would indicate immense magnetic field strength. And so you have possible indications of atomic and magnetic things happening with the propulsion of these craft. So that would also not be what we had available to us at the time. (0:46:00)

In fact, there was later a project to make nuclear powered aircraft. We didn't end up finally pulling the trigger on that because in order to make a nuclear reactor, you need to make it like really heavy and shielded, and that doesn't go well with putting it in an airplane. I'm going to guess people were opposed to flying nuclear reactors over their homes too. (0:46:23)

Yeah, it's kind of like a flying, possibly crashing nuclear power reactor. Bad idea. So in any event, you know, I can't say it was extraterrestrial, but there's evidence pointing in that direction. I've mentioned that meme before. I'm not saying it's aliens, but it's aliens. So what happened after the Kenneth Arnold sighting? Well, the 1947 flap continued and it even got way stronger in July. You know, there was that one day there were 189 sightings reported in the newspapers. (0:46:57)

Now, a lot of that's probably exactly because of the Arnold sighting. Once this got reported, people started looking more. And so of course, for one cause or another, they saw more and they reported more. But Arnold didn't just kick off the whole thing. The flap was already underway and already accelerating before Arnold had his sighting. (0:47:21)

And then the flap died down by the end of August. But I mean, who knows if the ET hypothesis were true? Maybe. It's hard for me not to notice this is two years after 1945. And as we know, in August of 1945, as we heard about in the John Hendricks Tennessee Profit episode, we dropped a couple of nukes on Japan. And those things make flashes that you could hypothetically see through your telescope probe thing in the outer solar system. (0:47:51)

And it could say, hey, these people that you've been watching have just developed nukes. Maybe you want to come look at this. And so having a major UFO flap in 1947 is not implausible, given the circumstances that had been going on at the time. Also, as part of that same flap, that same summer, we got a number of other major sightings and major UFO related events, including Roswell, which happened two weeks after this. (0:48:29)

It's like that close. So that was one of the fallouts of this. And then eventually the Air Force, now that it was split from the Army, started a program called Project Sign, which operated in 1948 and 1949. It looked at UFO sightings. It was then replaced by Project Grudge, and then the famous one, Project Blue Book. So, Jimmy, what's your bottom line on the Kenneth Arnold sighting then? (0:48:53)

Initially, I was quite skeptical. I thought it was just going to be reflections or something conventional, but I concluded there's more to this story than I originally thought. (0:49:00)

I can't say that it's extraterrestrial, but I don't know what it is. What makes this one significant compared to all the other sightings people had in 1947, or other times, is the fact that Arnold was in the right position to measure these things. He was up in the air at a similar altitude. He had these landmarks, like Mount Rainier and Mount Adams, and a clock that he could measure them, and then he decided to do that. (0:49:32)

And so if you want to propose a conventional aircraft or other conventional explanation, you're going to need to say there's something seriously wrong with his measurements. Now, still can't eliminate hoax, except those independent confirmations seem to support it, seem to support the sighting, but it's harder to dismiss this than I thought it was going to be. So, Jimmy, what further resources can we offer to our listeners about this topic? (0:49:56)

Well, there's a book by Bruce McAbee called Three Minutes in June, The UFO Sighting That Changed the World, so we'll have a link to that. Also have a picture of Arnold holding an illustration of the lead object, the one that's kind of crescent-shaped. Also, Arnold's diagram of the others that were more pie-plate-shaped. Wikipedia's article on Kenneth Arnold and on the sighting, those are two different articles. (0:50:22)

His book, The Coming of the Saucers, that he wrote in 1952, is still in print, and we'll have a link to that. Also, we'll have a link to the 1950 interview he gave to Edward R. Murrow, as well as an article on mountain climbing and hallucination. Wikipedia's entry on the Fata Morgana mirage phenomena, and also Wikipedia's page on the Horton Ho 229 aircraft. (0:50:45)

And as we like to do, we have some mysterious feedback from our listeners. On the Golden State Killer episode, BeWill140 writes on YouTube, The true crime was robbing an aspiring California rapper of an excellent stage name. I don't know that we won't have someone calling themselves the Golden State Killer at some point in the future. (0:51:12)

We might. I mean, we've got Marilyn Manson. Yeah, exactly. It's probably coming. And then from an iTunes review, A Heize says, and thank you, by the way, again, for those iTunes reviews. They're invaluable, and so thank you so much. A Heize writes, I've really enjoyed listening to Jimmy and Dom on the podcast. I've always appreciated Jimmy's knowledgeable and clear answers when he's on Catholic Answers Live, and he's just as accessible and intelligent in Jimmy Akin's mysterious world with Dom. I love the wide variety of mysteries explored by these two hosts and especially enjoyed the Dyatlov Pass episode. (0:51:47)

Oftentimes when I listen, it feels like I'm part of a Catholic X-Files episode. And that's exactly what we're going for. We're both big X-Files fans, so yeah, that's gratifying. And then Lil Zaza writes, also on iTunes review, Jimmy has so much knowledge and presents it in an easy, clear style. Long-time listener and will donate to SQPN. Thank you so much, Lil Zaza. We really appreciate your support. (0:52:13)

It enables us to do this program and all of the other programs that we do here on Starquest. That's right. So, Jimmy, what do you have for mysterious headlines? (0:52:18)

Well, so one of the topics we've talked about here on the show is Bigfoot. And Bigfoot is what sometimes called a cryptid. A cryptid is like an animal that hasn't been discovered by science. And this year, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary added cryptid to its dictionary. And so I've got a link to an article talking about that, as well as additional words they also added, if you click the links. (0:52:51)

And then also have one on a group called the Jasons. I've been aware of the Jasons for some time. They are a group of high power scientists that have been advising the government. And they've been doing that since the Cold War. They're somewhat not secretive necessarily, but they keep a low profile. And the Pentagon is ending its contract with the secret scientist group, the Jasons. And one of the theories as to why that is, is because the Jasons are a little outspoken and don't always tell the Pentagon what it wants to hear. (0:53:26)

But they have vowed they're going to continue and there is another government agency that may be picking up their contract. Interesting, interesting. Excellent. So thanks for those headlines. Jimmy, what's our next episode going to be about? It's going to be about the famous, and people would say sinister, Bilderberg group. This is one of the groups that people have accused of being the secret overlords pulling the strings behind world politics and finance. (0:53:59)

And they are a real group and they really meet every May or June. And so we're going to be talking about them. So as we close out, we're going to take a moment to thank our patrons who make this show possible, including Sam E., Eric E., Brian S., Michael P., and Brian K. Their generous donations at sqpn.com slash give make it possible for us to continue Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World and all the shows at StarQuest. You can join them by visiting sqpn.com slash give. (0:54:28)

And again, thank you so much for your support. Not only does it help us continue the show, it shows us that you enjoy this, you want to hear more of it, and that this is that we're making an impact on folks. And so we do appreciate that. So that's it from us. What did you think about this Kenneth Arnold sighting of the first UFOs, the first flying saucers, which he disputes. (0:54:53)

Is that what he called it? But let us know by visiting sqpn.com or the Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World Facebook page and leave us some feedback there or send us an email to mysterious at sqpn.com or send a tweet to at mys underscore world or use the hashtag of hashtag mysterious feedback. No spaces, no underlines, no nothing, just mysterious feedback. Be sure to check out the Mysterious World bookstore at mysteriousworldstore.com. We have the link to Bruce McAbee's book Three Minutes in June from today's episode. (0:55:25)

We put links to all the books and videos that Jimmy mentions in the show on the bookstore. And if you click the link when you want to buy it, if you click the link there, that also helps support the show. And again, we really do appreciate that. You can find those links to Jimmy's resources from our discussion and links to those mysterious headlines on our show notes at sqpn.com slash mysterious. (0:55:46)

Until next time, Jimmy Akin, thank you for exploring with us our Mysterious World. Thanks, Dom. And once again, I'm Dom Bethinelli. Thank you for listening to Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World on StarQuest. (0:55:56)

この事件を推測する​

自然現象だと推測する。その理由は以下の過去記事で述べた。

Daniel Liszt : Kenneth Arnold の目撃した UFOs の挙動の詳細 → この UFO はたぶん自然現象 (2022-06-28)

❏ Kenneth Arnold の目撃した UFO の正体が orb である別の根拠 （途中 2） (2024-04-03)

❏ Keneth Arnold の UFO 目撃事件：地上で UFO を目撃した時、コンパスが影響を受けた (2024-03-29)

❑ Norman Gagnon : 眼下に見えた「12個ほどの連なった orb」が蛇のように動き、ジェット旅客機の真横に飛来した (2023-07-20)

関連​

【編集中】2017-04-10、Arizona の "Phoenix Lights"（V 字型超巨大 UFO）はたぶん自然現象だ。 （途中：その2） (2020-06-07)

❏ 仮説：「Phoenix Lights UFO 事件」と同じ現象が昼間に発生したのが「Kenneth Arnold の目撃した UFO の編隊」だ （途中 1） (2024-03-29)

Dr. Lynne Kitei："Pheonix Lights" 当日、奇妙なガンマ線が降り注いた (2018-04-10)

Kevin Day : tic-tac UFO 出現時、偵察衛星がガンマ線バーストを観測 (2022-02-05)

1997-03-13, Phoenix Lights : 自然現象である証拠の一つ : V字型を構成する光点が入れ替わった (2025-03-01)

(2025-07-08)