THE UFO BRIEFING DOCUMENT CASE HISTORIES 1947: FIRST AMERICAN SIGHTING WAVE
Cover of International UFO Reporter showing a photograph of Kenneth Arnold, his original sketches and a reconstruction of the flying wing he saw, which led to the name of flying saucers. Insert lower right shows Arnold's original sketch for Army Intelligence. Courtesy of CUFOS.
The first major wave of American sightings produced more than a thousand reports, the term "flying saucer," and the first confirmed investigations by the U.S. Government. The reports were from all 48 states, mainly of round objects seen in the daytime. For two weeks, especially around the July Fourth weekend, newspapers and radio broadcasts were full of stories of flying saucers and flying discs. Early official studies concluded that they were real and unexplained. It began on the afternoon of June 24, 1947 with the sighting of a formation of strange high-speed objects. Kenneth Arnold, flying his single-engine Callair airplane over southwestern Washington State, had interrupted his business trip to assist in the search for a missing military transport plane. From the official U.S. Army Air Force's report on the event: "I hadn't flown more than two or three minutes on my (new) course when a bright flash reflected on my airplane. It startled me as I thought I was too close to some other aircraft. I looked every place in the sky and couldn't find where the reflection had come from until I looked to the left and the north of Mt. Rainier where I observed a chain of nine peculiar looking aircraft flying from north to south at
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