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Mount Rainier to Maury Island
by Curt Sutherly
FATE :: July 2007

Sixty years ago an aviator from Idaho was thrust into the national spotlight and ultimately into the global aviation record. The pilot was Kenneth Arnold, and he is listed in Air Facts and Feats: A Record of International Aerospace Achievement.

Unlike most history-making aviators, Arnold was not a stunt flyer or a test pilot, nor even an aviator out to establish a new long-distance record. A 28-year-old private pilot and owner of a fire-control equipment company in Boise, Idaho, Arnold unintentionally established his record while aloft in a single-engine CallAir A-2 on a business trip. The date was June 24, 1947—a beautiful day, sunny and clear with tremendous visibility, he would later recall.

The veteran pilot had departed Che­halis (Washington) Airport about 2:00 p.m., en route to Yakima, Washington, a distance of about 100 miles. Arnold was in the vicinity of Mt. Rainier when he elected to deviate from his eastward path to see if he could locate the wreckage of a C-46 Curtiss Commando that had reportedly crashed in the area the previous December. The transport had been part of a flight of six C-46 aircraft carrying more than 200 U.S. Marines when it vanished during heavy weather over southwest Washington. A search for the lost aircraft was suspended after two weeks, but a $5,000 reward for information concerning the whereabouts of the wreckage was still posted the following June by survivors of the missing Marines.

Reward, however, had little to do with Arnold’s decision to search for the missing C-46. A part-time search and rescue pilot, his action was prompted more by an inherent desire to help than anything else. He was, in fact, a man of staunch moral fiber—prototypically American in the best sense of the word. He was patriotic, fun-loving, and action-oriented, and this clearly came across in his love of aviation and in the many facets of his personality.

In addition to being a pilot and a self-made businessman, Arnold was a field representative for the American Red Cross, a relief (part-time) federal marshal, and an athlete whose talent as a swimmer and board diver was world class (nearly Olym­pic level at a younger age). He was also a dedicated husband and father.

Arnold’s knowledge of the Cascade Mountain chain and the surrounding region was intimate, and he employed this knowledge on that fateful day in June 1947. However, instead of finding any trace of the C-46 he found something else—something he would later have reason to regret ever seeing.

At an altitude of about 9,200 feet, in the vicinity of Mineral, Washington (about 15 miles southwest of Mt. Rainier National Park), Arnold gave up the search as he still had a business appointment to keep. He banked his A-2 east toward Yakima, 75 miles away. A flash of light—akin to reflected sunlight—abruptly caught his attention. When subsequent flashes occurred, Arnold located the source: nine objects, gleaming in the sun as they flew south from the direction of Mt. Baker, flying in echelon formation, sometimes tipping on end while sweeping back and forth among the peaks.

Although amazed at the sight, Arnold had enough presence of mind to scan his surroundings, noting the only other aircraft in the vicinity—a DC-4 trailing his port (left) wing at a distance of about 15 miles. Meanwhile, up ahead and also to his port, at an estimated distance of 23 miles, the nine puzzling objects sailed effortlessly through the mountain peaks. At one point they passed behind a sub-peak of Mt. Rainier before entering the span separating Rainier from Mt. Adams, 45 miles to the south. The presence of the sub-peak, combined with Arnold’s knowledge of the distance between the major peaks, helped him estimate the speed of the objects, which he later revised downward to allow for any miscalculation. He estimated their speed at between 1,200 and 1,600 miles per hour, far faster than any known aircraft—much faster than even the secret Bell X-1 rocket plane being tested by the Air Force, which that October would exceed the speed of sound for the first time by going 700 miles per hour. (The speed of sound is 660 miles per hour at 40,000 feet.)

Arnold described the motion of the objects as unusual, like “speedboats on rough water,” or “like a saucer…if you skipped it across water.” The sighting pushed him into the media spotlight. Unwillingly, he became a celebrity—the first pilot to officially report and document the sighting of UFOs.....

Read the rest of this article in the July 2007 issue of FATE

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