cont...
Richard J. Reed suggested orographic clouds.14 Since these tend to stay
motionless, the large a angular distance traveled by the objects is hard to
account for. So, too, the angular velocity cannot be explained. These
objections also apply to notions involving wave clouds and detached
mountain top mirages.15
Menzel tried again in his last book with the idea that Arnold might have
been tricked by water droplets on the airplane window.16 This overlooks the
fact that Arnold explicitly states he rolled down the window to get a
better look at the objects.17
Otto Billig proposes that Arnold was suffering a regression suggestive of
reduced personality cause the undulations of the objects indicate the
surfacing of serpent imagery like that common to religions.18 Such an
analysis is contradicted by Billig's own mythography which says undulations
signify benevolence. Arnold explicitly felt the objects to be a threat, a
bother, and disturbing.
Paul Devereux proposed Arnold saw earth lights.19 This would mean the
objects would be emitting light. This is inconsistent with Arnold's
description of the objects as forming a "black-thin line" when silhouetted
against snowy mountain ridges. He also indicated that he saw the sun
reflected off the objects from time to time. It is also difficult to
imagine how earthlights could maintain an unconventional formation for over
a minute without scattering or merging due to electrical charges.
Stuart Campbell has proposed an exotic scheme involving mirages of distant
mountains. Easily the funniest detail is the necessity for Arnold to
confuse Mount Rainier and Mount Adams with Pinnacle Peak and Lookout of the
Tatoosh Range even knowing they are roughly half as big.20
Extraterrestrials begin to look pretty good at this point. They at least
could potentially account for the exotic speed which otherwise seems
impossible for the era. The undulations which Arnold warned would have
killed a human pilot might be acceptable to an alien biology. Gerald Heard,
for example, proposed the notion of some super-bee evolved in the hostile
environment of Mars.21 One might question if insect physiology truly would
be more resilient in high gee maneuvers, but the more attractive point
could be that insects might be psychologically pre-disposed to fly in
erratic ways and this could undermine presumptions that no intelligent
being would fly in such a bizarre fashion. One could perhaps even point out
that, though it took close to two decades before close encounters with them
began showing up, some people have reported insectoid beings in UFOs.22 A
preference for traveling in groups could also be attributable to bug
psychology, albeit the echelon formation seems problematic. Is this, then,
a good resolution to the paradoxes of the Arnold report?
                                   Notes
  1. "Pilot Says He Saw Big 'Saucers' Fly Over West Coast — Officials
     Skeptical of Report of 1200 Mile-an-hour Object," St. Louis Post
     Dispatch, June 26, 1947.
  2. Vallee, Jacques & Janine, Challenge to Science, Ace Star, 1966, p.
     251.
  3. Spencer, John & Evans, Hilary, Phenomenon, Avon, 1988 pp. 26-45.
  4. Salisbury, Frank, The Utah UFO Display, Devin-Adair, 1974, p. 218.
     Story, Ronand D., UFOs and the Limits of Science, William Morrow,
     1981, pp. 48-56.
  5. Oberg, James, "Repeaters," Omni, August 1980, p. 32.
     Hansen, Kim, "UFO Casebook" in Evans, Hilary & Spencer, John, UFOs:
     1947-1987. Fortean Times, 1987.
  6. Long, Greg, "Kenneth Arnold Revisited," MUFON UFO Journal, #230, June
     1987, pp. 3-7.
  7. Kottmeyer, Martin S. "Ufology Considered as an Evolving System of
     Paranoia," in Stillings, Dennis, Cyberbiological Studies of the
     Imaginal Component in the UFO Contact Experience, Archaeus, 1989, pp.
     51-60.
  8. Little, J. Crawford, "The Athlete's Neurosis - A Deprivation Crisis,"
     Acta Psychiat. Scand., 45, (1969) pp. 187-97.
  9. Fried, Yehuda & Agassi, Joseph, Paranoia: A Study in Diagnosis, D.
     Reidel, 1976, pp. 4-5.
 10. Ruppelt, Edward, Report on UFOs, Doubleday, 1956, p. 17.
     Hartmann, William K., "Historical Perspectives: Photos of UFOs" in
     Sagan, Carl & Page Thornton, UFOs: A Scientific Debate, Cornell, 1972,
     p. 15.
     Ridpath, Ian, Messages from the Stars, Harper & Row, 1978, p. 218.
 11. Maccabee, Bruce S. "Still in Default" MUFON 1986 UFO Symposium
     Proceedings, pp. 131-60.
 12. Ruppelt, op. cit. p. 19.
 13. Gardner, Martin, Fads and Fallacies: In the Name of Science, Dover,
     1957, p. 58.
     Gardner, Martin, The New Age: Notes of a Fringe Watcher, Prometheus,
     1988 p. 209.
 14. Reed, Richard J., "Flying Saucers over Mount Rainier,"Weatherwise,
     April 1958, pp. 43-5, 65-6.
 15. Maccabee, ibid.
 16. Menzel, Donald & Taves, Ernest, The UFO Enigma, Doubleday, 1977, pp.
     5-6.
 17. Maccabee, op. cit. p. 141.
 18. Billig, Otto, Flying Saucers: Magic in the Skies, Schenkman, 1982, pp.
     128-31.
 19. Devereux, Paul & McCarthy, Paul & Robins, Don, "Bringing UFOs Down to
     Earth," New Scientist, September 1, 1983, p. 629.
 20. Kottmeyer, Martin, "Mirage Sale," MUFON UFO Journal, #327 July 1995,
     pp. 16-18.
 21. Heard, Gerard, Is Another World Watching? Bantam, 1953, ch. 11 & 12.
 22. Kottmeyer, Martin, "Space Bug a Boo Boo," Talking Pictures, #15,
     September 1996, pp. 10-14.
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