Are there aliens? And were they already near the earth with unknown flying objects? In any case, there are said to have been some sightings of UFOs, the first of which dates back 75 years. The thing about the saucer, however, was misunderstood.
It started with a misunderstanding: when objects are called flying saucers in science fiction films today, this has something to do with an incident 75 years ago. On June 24, 1947, US businessman and amateur aviator Kenneth Arnold was flying in the sky of the US state of Washington. He later reported light phenomena over Mount Rainier. This supposed sighting of UFOs (unidentified flying objects) should help the phenomenon to gain worldwide attention.
Nine objects glistening in the sun raced past him in a relay formation like “saucers jumping over water,” Arnold said later. However, in reports of its sighting, this description was taken to mean that the objects were shaped like saucers. The term “flying saucer” as a synonym for the UFO (abbreviation for: unknown flying object) was born.
Arnold later insisted that the objects seen were always described as “disk”. In a radio interview on April 7, 1950, he reiterated his dilemma: “Most newspapers misunderstood and misquoted it. They wrote I said they were saucer-like. But I said they flew like saucers. “
“The modern UFO phenomenon as we know it today began with the sighting of Kenneth Arnold,” says Danny Ammon, a medical IT specialist from Jena and in his free time a case investigator at the Society for Researching the UFO Phenomenon (GEP). This also gave rise to ideas that we “today have to declare as wrong”. The expert explains that UFOs do not always appear as saucers. The UFO observations are, in Ammon’s words, “many forms.”
But what did Arnold see that day? Or what does he think he saw? Author Ted Bloecher provides information in his 1967 report on the 1947 UFO wave. In it, Arnold describes his UFOs as “nine flat, disk-shaped objects flying in a diagonally graded, stepped formation.” The group raced past him about 32 to 40 kilometers away.
Case investigator Ammon classifies Arnold’s sighting as a typical observation of the DD variety. This stands for “Daylight Disc”, which, according to the GEP expert, means “objects observed in the sky from a greater distance during the day, but not necessarily disc-shaped objects”. Since there was no UFO case investigation at that time, the sighting remains unexplained.
Kenneth Arnold first looked for logical explanations for the objects, which he said were moving smoothly. When the amateur pilot realized that these were not airliners or geese flying in formation as he first thought, his next thought was that he was witnessing tests for modern military aircraft.
At the time, however, these should have been very advanced aircraft. Because Arnold tried to measure the speed of the objects. He calculated the time it took UFOs to travel between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams. According to his estimate, they covered the distance of about 80 kilometers between the mountains in one minute and 42 seconds. That would mean that the objects reached a speed of about 2800 kilometers per hour.
If this rough estimate were halfway correct, the nine objects would have traveled at more than twice the speed of sound and thus much faster than any other known aircraft at the time. To assess: A short time later, the US test pilot Charles “Chuck” Yeager succeeded in October 1947 in a supersonic flight, which was recognized as the first in aviation history.
Kenneth Arnold’s observation so excited world public opinion that thousands of similar reports followed. “The hype fits into a time when, shortly after the end of the war, mankind was on the up again and later reaching for the stars came into focus,” Ammon explains in retrospect. The media hype ensured that the myth of “aliens in flying saucers” took hold in people’s minds, says the expert: “Today, this enriches our culture in the form of science fiction films, series and books.”
It was the beginning of UFO research. “Without a trigger like Arnold’s sighting and the first big press response to it, there would be no such thing today,” says GEP expert Ammon. However, that such phenomena could be of extraterrestrial origin remains pure speculation. In most cases, natural or artificial phenomena such as stars, satellites, balloons or burning space debris could be identified as the cause.