24, June 1947 the world changed forever! The creation of the term “Flying Saucers” coincided with a sighting of nine silvery unidentified flying objects near Mt. Rainier in Washington State. This term would stick as the iconic description used to label UAP’s for decades to come. Kenneth Arnold was a bush pilot accustomed to the heavily forested landscape of the Pacific Northwest. He often participated in searches for reported crashed aircraft and on this day had been conducting an air search for a crashed C-46 cargo plane.

First glimpse

Alerted by a flash of light reflected from nine elliptical objects, Kenneth at first thought it had been the aluminum fuselage of the C-46 he was looking for. Instead, he was confronted by the sight of unknown airborne crafts that were closing the distance from Mr. Rainier to Mt. Adams. He quickly timed the speed of covering the distance he knew between the two peaks! Arnold estimated that the air speed of the nine objects was 1,200 mph. An incredible speed for any aircraft at that time! Not only this, but the nine silvery objects were in an upper echelon formation, which is generally a military type of maneuver.

Who were they?

When the US Air Force questioned Kenneth Arnold, they knew he was a qualified observer and did not even question his estimation of the speed of the “Flying Saucers” he observed. By the way, Kenneth had described the objects motion as if they were saucers skipping across the water, hence “Flying Saucers”.  Being a seasoned pilot, there was little the USAF intelligence officer could do to dispute his sighting as weather conditions provided excellent visibility. The only question was, who owned those high speed vessels? Did the Russians have them and were violating US air space?

Undisclosed technology

In his book, “The Report on UFO’s” circa 1956, Captain Edward J. Ruppelt revealed how frustrated and seemingly powerless the US Air Force was in intercepting unidentified aerial vehicles! He discussed Kenneth Arnold’s sighting as being irrefutable, and made a strange comment, saying that he knew of no Delta Winged US aircraft on the west coast! This may well have indicated that the US was already in possession of unusual appearing X-planes that had exceeded the sound barrier flight of Chuck Yeager in his Bell X-1 rocket plane.

A transformative time

Kenneth Arnold’s sighting was superseded by the Maury Island Mystery on 21^st of June that same year and the infamous Roswell crash of a flying disk during the first week of July of 1947 in New Mexico. The month of June in 1947 was a pivotal point for not only the beginning of the golden age of UFO’s but also an inflexion point for the human race, as suspicion of extraterrestrial intervention in human affairs was now highly suspect. This also opened the Pandora’s Box of public distrust for the government’s secrecy over the true nature of UFO’s and whether or not they presented a threat to national security.

Suppression of the forbidden truth

Due to the hysteria that seemed to accompany public fascination of “Flying Saucers” the US Air Force established “Project Grudge” a proposed investigation branch of the ATIC I (Air Technical Intelligence Center) to investigate the phenomenon and interview witnesses. This program reportedly infuriated veteran WWII pilots who would report their sightings and then be ridiculed by USAF intelligence officers attempting to discourage active reporting. As Captain Ruppelt, appointed the Director of Project Blue Book in 1950, he was met by many airline pilots bitter over their experiences with previous “Project Grudge” and “Project Sign” for their skepticism toward pilots who had fought for their country before becoming airline captains and commercial cargo pilots.

Ramifications

One might note that Ufologist, Norio Hayakawa, once pointed out that it was no accident that the emergence of the security state occurred the same year as these three major UFO sightings that had created such controversy. The sudden and radical alteration of national defense and espionage policy with the establishment of NDAA protocols forever changed the nature of American’s privacy and Constitutional rights of the individual as a result. A perceived but undeclared threat must have been the cause!