It was one of the darnedest things I ever saw
I want you to write a story about these flying saucers and make this goofy bastard look silly
A flying saucer landed in U.S. newspapers a quarter-century before the Wright Brothers first took flight. John Martin — a farmer living roughly six miles outside Denison, Texas city limits — recounted the arrival of a circular flying object. At first glance, it was roughly the size of an orange, traveling at “wonderful speed,” before pausing overhead.
“When directly over him it was about the size of a large saucer and was evidently at great height,” the paper explained. “Mr. Martin thought it resembled, as well as he could judge, a balloon. It went as rapidly as it had come and was soon lost to sight in the heavenly skies. Mr. Martin is a gentleman of undoubted veracity and this strange occurrence, if it was not a balloon, deserves the attention of our scientists.”
Versions of the story appeared in Dallas and Oklahoma papers, before fading away. Even then, flying discs were neither strictly new, nor wholly American, with infrequent accounts dating back to the Middle Ages. It wasn’t until the following century, however, that the notion entered the public vernacular.
Foo fighters famously dotted the skies above Western Europe during the Second World War — first sporadically, before appearing more frequently as 1944 drew to a close. “The Germans have produced a 'secret' weapon in keeping with the Christmas season,” The New York Times wrote, in an article titled, ‘Floating Mystery Ball Is New Nazi Air Weapon.’ “The new device, apparently an air defense weapon, resembles the huge glass balls that adorn Christmas trees.”
Most accounts described the objects as balls of red fire, which appeared to be toying with allied fighter pilots, chasing them through the skies, before shooting ahead at high speeds. Their alliterative name had been chosen almost at random by American radar operator, Donald Meiers, borrowing the nonsense phrase from comic strip fireman, Smokey Stover. Meiers’ full descriptor, "fuckin' foo fighters,” would quickly drop the first word.
Two years after the end of the war, a highly publicized sighting of an altogether different unidentified aerial phenomenon returned the phrase “flying saucer” to newspaper headlines. The first light flashed just before 3PM. Half-a-minute later, Kenneth Arnold spotted several more not far from Mount Rainier. The pilot removed his glasses for a moment and changed altitude, ruling out potential reflections on his windows as a source. Up ahead, several discs flew in formation at high speed.
“It was one of the darndest things I ever saw,” Arnold said decades later, in an interview with The Seattle Times. “I was pretty well familiar with most civilian and military aircraft…and it wasn’t any type of our manufacture.”
The pilot, who had been in the area to locate a downed U.S. Marine Corps C-46 transport plane, reported having an “eerie feeling” about the objects he alternately described as a “saucer” and “pie pan.” He watched as they darted between hills and trees, traveling at a speed he later calculated as 1,700 MPH. The following day, Arnold took his story to reporters. "No orthodox plane would be flying like that," he told The East Oregonian. "Ten thousand feet is very low for anything going at that speed."
The paper clocked the private pilot as a credible witness, emblazoning the first column of the front page with the headline, “Boise Flyer Maintains He Saw 'Em.”
The report explained,
Army and civilian air experts either expressed polite incredulity or scoffed openly at Mr. Arnold's story, but the 32-year-old one-time Minot, N.D. football star, clung to his story of shiny, flat objects racing over the Cascade mountains with a peculiar weaving motion ‘like the tail of a Chinese kite.’
Additional incredulous comments from military official followed. Arnold later complained of mocking coverage from newspapers over the years. “I’ll tell you, sometimes I think that an editor of a newspaper says to the newsman, ‘Now lookit, I want you to write a story about these flying saucers and make this goofy bastard look silly.”
In the weeks that followed, however, several Washington residents corroborated his sighting. “I believe it may be a visitor from another planet, more developed than ours,” one told the Richland Washington Villager. “In my opinion we're just beginning to see things this world never dreamed of."
Subsequent military investigations determined that, at very least, Arnold had accurately reported what he believed he had seen, but ultimately wrote the vision off as “a mirage.” In subsequent weeks, more than 800 people would report seeing flying saucers in the skies across the U.S. Five years later, Amazing Stories publisher Raymond Palmer enlisted Arnold to coauthor a book on the phenomenon titled, The Coming of the Saucers. The first chapter recounts the Mount Rainier incident, while the second tells the story of Harold Dahl, who had his own encounter the same month.
Dahl’s story includes a visit from a nondescript businessman, in what may be the first published reference to a man in black. The authors describe a conversation between the two over breakfast,
After the man finished, he made the remark, ‘What I have said is proof to you that I know a great deal more about this experience of yours than you will to believe.’ He made the flat statement that Harold and his crew had made an observation that shouldn't have happened for some mysterious reason, and he was giving him some sound advice. This man told Harold that if he loved his family and didn't want anything to happen to his general welfare, he would not discuss his experience with anyone.
In the early 60s, Arnold won the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor of Idaho, only to be defeated by the incumbent Democrat in the general. He would report seven more UFO sightings before his death.
“It gave them hope of the reality of other dimensions,” Kim Arnold said of her parents on the 70th anniversary of her father’s death, “and perhaps death was not the end but a new beginning that we live on into other worlds full of all kinds of activity.”
Sources:
The Coming of the Saucers by Kenneth Arnold and Raymond Palmer
The Sighting That Shook the World https://www.eastoregonian.com/opinion/editorials/the-sighting-that-shook-the-world/article_b9d638cf-da11-534f-b805-5f9848d12e31.html
Flying saucers still evasive 70 years after pilot’s report https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2017/jun/25/flying-saucers-still-evasive-70-years-after-pilots/
Floating Mystery Ball Is New Nazi Air Weapon https://www.nytimes.com/1944/12/14/archives/floating-mystery-ball-is-new-nazi-air-weapon.html