Page 28 - Pierce County Lawyer - September October 2025

The Summer of the Saucers
"What I saw over the Cascades in the State of
Washington, as impossible as it may seem, is fact. I
never asked, wanted, nor expected any notoriety for
accidentally being in the right spot at the right time
to observe that chain of nine mysterious objects."
–Kenneth Arnold
America’s Summer of the Saucers opened in Washington state
with a bang on June 24, 1947. Idaho pilot, Kenneth Arnold,
age 33, was flying his airplane from Chehalis to Yakima, when
he decided to search for a U.S. Marine Corps plane which had
crashed into Mount Rainier in December of 1946, resulting in
the loss of more than thirty Marines.
Arnold was a respected member of the Boise business
community, an experienced pilot specially trained in Mountain
Search and Rescue, and a deputy United States Marshal who
occasionally flew prisoners one way to McNeil Island Federal
Penitentiary.
It was a beautiful sunny mid-afternoon day and “the sky and
air were as clear as crystal.” As Arnold flew over the town of
Mineral at 9,000 feet, he saw a “bright flash” reflected on his
airplane. He could not find the source until he looked to the
left and to the north of Mt. Rainier where he saw nine aircraft
flying from north to south “very close to the mountain tops and
moving at tremendous speed.” Every few seconds, two or three
of the objects would dip or slightly change course just enough
for the sun to strike them at an angle that caused a bright
reflection allowing Arnold to observe their outline against the
snow “quite plainly.”
The objects flew, as Arnold had seen geese fly, in a diagonal
chain-like line as if they were linked together. They held a
definite direction, but swerved in and out of the mountain
peaks. Arnold watched the objects with great interest because
2 8 P I E R C E C O U N T Y L A W Y E R | S e p t e m b e r / O c t o b e r 2 0 2 5
he “had never before observed airplanes flying so close to the
mountain tops, flying directly south to southeast down the hog's
back of a mountain range.” He assumed they were some kind of
new military jet but he thought it very strange he could see no
exhaust or contrails.
Between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams, there is a high
plateau with definite north and south edges. Part of this chain-like
formation of objects traveled above this plateau toward Mount
Adams, while part of the formation actually dipped below the
near edge. As the first unit of these craft cleared the southernmost
edge of this background, the last of the formation was just entering
the northern edge. I later flew over this plateau in my plane and
came to a close approximation that this whole formation of craft,
whatever they were, formed a chain in the neighborhood of five
miles long.
I had two definite points-Mt. Rainier
and Mt. Adams-to clock them by, and
the air was so clear that it was very
easy to see objects and determine their
approximate shape and size as far as
fifty miles. I remember distinctly that
my sweep-second hand on my eight-
day clock, which is located on my
instrument panel, read one minute to 3
P.M. as the first object of this formation
passed the southern edge of Mt. Rainier.
The objects traveled the forty miles between Mt. Rainier and
Mt. Adams in one minute and forty two seconds, which meant
they were moving at 1200 miles per hour or more, which is
almost twice the speed of sound (750 mph), and well beyond the
capability of any jet propelled aircraft of the day.1
1 The Bell X-1 was an experimental rocket-powered aircraft piloted by Chuck Yeager
that broke the sound barrier in level flight on October 14, 1947. The possibility that
Arnold saw unmanned supersonic military rockets or missiles was reasonably excluded
because such weapons created large exhaust trails and could not significantly vary
altitude and direction mid-flight.