AT ABOUT 3PM on Tuesday, 24 June 1947, American businessman Kenneth Arnold accidentally discovered flying saucers. He’d been flying near Mount Rainier, Washington, in his CallAir three-seater aircraft, looking for a missing military aircraft at the time, when nine shiny objects, flying in formation, attracted his attention.
Though he calculated that the objects were about 100 miles away, he could immediately see that they did not resemble any aircraft he was familiar with. “What startled me most at this point was the fact that I could not find any tails on them,” he recalls in The Coming of the Saucers, the book he co-authored about the incident – and his life afterwards. “I felt sure that, being jets, they had tails, but figured they must be camouflaged in some way so that my eyesight could not perceive them.”
The objects also didn’t move like any aircraft he had ever seen before. According to Arnold, “… their flight was like speed boats on rough water or similar to the tail of a Chinese kite that I once saw blowing in the wind. Or maybe it would be best to describe their flight characteristics as very familiar to a formation of geese, in a rather diagonal chain-like line, as if they were linked together. As I put it to newsmen in Pendleton, Oregon, they flew like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water.”
“As I put it to newsmen in Pendleton, Oregon, they flew like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water.”
But what truly astonished Arnold was the speed of the objects. He calculated that they were moving in excess of 1,000 miles per hour – a speed well beyond what aircraft were capable of at that time.
Following his strange encounter, Arnold stopped off briefly at an airfield in Yakima, Washington, where he told several pilots what he had seen, before flying on to Pendleton in Oregon.
When he arrived in Pendleton, Arnold discovered that news of his strange encounter had arrived ahead of him, and a crowd of curiosity seekers and journalists had gathered to hear his story.
So, he told them his story.
The “flying saucers” – as the press named them – instantly became big news. And immediately, others started coming forward with their own sightings of the “saucers.” For example, Richard Rankin, a pilot with over 7,000 hours flying time, claimed to have seen ten similar objects flying over Bakersfield, California, on 23 June 1947. And in Idaho, a Mrs Johnson reported seeing eight flying saucers land on a mountainside near the town of St Maries. According to Mrs Johnson, the saucers – which were, she said, about the size of a house – approached with great speed, came to an abrupt halt, then “fluttered like leaves to the ground.”
Within two weeks, nearly every state had reported sightings. And by the end of the year, over 1000 sightings of flying saucers had been made in the USA. But this wasn’t an exclusively US phenomenon: reports were coming in from around the world.
The flying saucer sightings continued beyond 1947. But the nature of the sightings was changing.
In January 1948, Thomas F Mantell, a 25-year-old captain in the Kentucky Air National Guard, was killed when his plane crashed during the pursuit of what he believed was a flying saucer.
In November 1952, George Adamski not only saw a flying saucer up close, but he also met one of the saucer pilots – or so he claimed. The pilot, a tall, blonde, incredibly attractive man – according to Adamski – communicated with George through telepathy and gestures. He would later take George on a day trip to Venus in his flying saucer.
Frank Sutton also claimed to have met flying saucer pilots, after they landed in a field near his house in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, in August 1955. It’s fair to say that the pilots Frank met were not as pretty as George’s. They were 3 feet tall, had big heads and big pointy ears, and they had freakishly long arms that ended in claws. They were also less congenial, in that they spent the better part of a night crawling over the outside of the Sutton family home and peering in through the windows. Frank Sutton became so terrified he fired his shotgun at one of them.
In short, the simple flying saucer sightings triggered by Kenneth Arnold’s original report had evolved into incredibly exotic, dramatic – and sometimes tragic – encounters.
So, when a County Antrim farmer had a very brief sighting of a flying saucer in 1958, it shouldn’t really have raised any eyebrows. However, the Belfast Telegraph newspaper covered the story for four straight days.
Why?
Well, it seems that this farmer actually had something that was incredibly rare. Something that was missing from all of these other cases. He had actual physical evidence of his close encounter.
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On Sunday, 28 December 1958, Joseph Bennett, a middle-aged farmer from Bracknamuckley, was taking a walk in the countryside just outside the village of Portglenone. At about 3:30 pm, he heard a strange noise, “like rushing wind,” and looked up. What he saw – the “thing,” as he later called it – was about seven feet wide and looked like a black cloud. But it was a black cloud that was travelling at tremendous speed. “It was going so fast that I could not tell whether it was a solid object or not,” he told a journalist from the Belfast Telegraph. “It was going at many times the speed of a jet plane.”
The object, which appeared to have come from the direction of Lough Neagh, was flying at about 20 feet off the ground. And the question of its solidity quickly became a pressing concern as it bore down on Bennett.
It swooped over his head, however, missing him by a matter of feet. He turned and watched as it crashed through some trees. But the trees didn’t stop it – and the strange black cloud carried on its journey.
The “thing” was gone in seconds. But it had left its mark: a 40 feet tall oak tree had been “sliced clean through eight feet from the base,” and it came crashing to the ground.
This would appear to be the first case in the United Kingdom where such a mysterious happening has been reported and in which some tangible evidence remains in the shape of the damaged tree.
When news of Joseph Bennet’s strange encounter appeared in the Belfast Telegraph on Tuesday, 30 December, it immediately attracted the attention of a number of experts.
One of those experts was Terence Nonweiler. Nonweiler’s background was in hypersonic flight, and at that time he was involved in a study “of the physics of the upper atmosphere” at Queen’s University Belfast. He was also, according to the Belfast Telegraph, a former member of The Council of the British Interplanetary Society, an organisation founded in 1933 to promote space exploration.
Nonweiler seemed quite open to the possibility that Joseph Bennett may have had a close encounter with something from beyond this world, when he arrived at the site on 31 December. “This would appear to be the first case in the United Kingdom where such a mysterious happening has been reported and in which some tangible evidence remains in the shape of the damaged tree,” he said.
Nonweiler examined the tree for 15 minutes. He found four strange marks on the bark – three on the trunk and one on a branch – all in a line. He also found signs of rotting at the point where the trunk had snapped. “I think the rotten state of the trunk explains why it broke at that particular point,” he explained, “and the four cuts in the bark may have some significance.”
Nonweiler did not say if the marks had been made by a flying saucer. In fact, he didn’t say much else to the press that day. He met with Bennett, to hear the story from the man himself, before heading off to have a long hard think.
A forester called McLean arrived soon after to perform his own examination. McLean had been sent by the Forestry Department of the Ministry of Agriculture, who were keenly interested in the Portglenone incident. “This is most unusual in an oak tree but not in an elm,” said a spokesperson for the ministry, seeming to imply that elm trees get hit by flying saucers all the time. “We have never had an instance of this before. We will be glad to have full details for the record.”
Like Nonweiler, McLean was tight-lipped while at the “crash” site. It would be another 24 hours before either man’s assessment was made public.
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Back in 1947, though it seemed that the whole world had gone flying saucer mad, Arnold and his fellow saucer seers quickly came to the attention of a varied selection of scoffers and scorners, all of whom had their own take on what the seers had actually seen.
Joseph Allen Hynek, who was an astro-physicist at Ohio State University at the time but would later become an important and controversial figure in the study of flying saucers, believed that Arnold’s estimations of the saucers’ size, speed and performance were wrong, and that the objects were, in all probability, conventional aircraft travelling at conventional aircraft speeds.
Professor F S Cotton, Professor of Physiology at the University of Sydney in Australia, believed that what Arnold and his cohorts had seen was nothing more than red blood cells passing across the retinas of their eyes.
In New York, psychologist Dr Jesse Sprowls declared that flying saucers were “purely a delusion.” According to Dr Sprowls, following wars or periods of repression, people subconsciously want their minds to remain excited – that they enjoy being frightened.
And in Idaho, Twin Falls resident Chirl Kirk claimed that the saucers were possibly just “big shiny pelicans” after witnessing the birds flying over Twin Falls during a flurry of flying saucer activity over the city in July 1947.
“It is more propaganda for war to stir up the people and excite them to believe a foreign power has designs on this nation.”
Even Orville Wright – one half of the flight-pioneering Wright Brothers – had a theory about the saucers. Orville, who was 75 years old in 1947, believed the whole flying saucer craze was a US government campaign to get the country back into another war. He was incredibly critical of the media coverage that was being given to the sightings, and said: “It is more propaganda for war to stir up the people and excite them to believe a foreign power has designs on this nation.”
In short, Kenneth Arnold was being attacked from all sides – and he would have given his left aileron for some physical evidence of what he’d seen.
Then, unexpectedly, that evidence fell out of the sky. At least, that’s what a man called Harold S Dahl was claiming.
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Harold S Dahl was a harbour patrolman from Tacoma, Washington. On 21 June 1947, which was a few days before Arnold’s sighting, Dahl was in his patrol boat with two crewmen, his 15-year-old son and his dog.
At around 2pm, while they were patrolling close to the shore of Maury Island, Dahl claims that six donut-shaped aircraft appeared, flying at about 2,000 feet above the water. Five of the donuts were circling the sixth, which seemed to be in some sort of difficulty and was losing altitude rapidly.
Soon the sixth donut was just 500 feet above the water – and almost directly over Dahl’s boat.
It – and its companions – came to a stop.
According to Dahl, the donuts were 100 feet in diametre, with a hole in the centre of 25 feet. They appeared to be made of metal and were coloured silver and gold. They had large portholes and large observation windows. But Dahl could see no engines or propellors – and the donuts made no sound.
The donuts remained in this position for about five minutes. Then one of the five donuts dropped from its position and touched the stricken donut. They remained like this for a few minutes – giving Dahl the impression that one donut was assisting the other.
Dahl then heard a thud, and the stricken donut began to spew out what looked like thousands of newspapers. He would later discover that this was actually a very light metal.
Then a darker material was being ejected by the donut. And this darker material began to rain down on the boat. It was hot – and caused steam to rise from the water. Both Dahl’s son and his dog were hit by the material; his son was injured – but the dog was killed. The boat, too, was significantly damaged.
When the strange shower stopped – the donuts drifted out to sea.
Dahl and his crew immediately got to work collecting as much of the ejected material as they could.
On 29 July 1947, Kenneth Arnold flew to Tacoma, Washington, to meet Dahl and examine the debris for himself. Arnold immediately recognised Dahl’s flying saucer debris: it was nothing more than pieces of lava rock – something readily found in fish tanks and shrubberies.
The story was a hoax, and Arnold’s hopes of vindication disappeared.
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So, had Joseph Bennett really stumbled upon the physical evidence for flying saucers that Kenneth Arnold – and so many others – were desperately hoping for?
“No” – said the experts.
Terence Nonweiler, though impressed with Bennett’s testimony, said that the evidence for the tree having been brought down by a solid flying object was just “too flimsy.”
Mr McLean from the Ministry of Agriculture was also of the opinion that a flying saucer was unlikely to have been involved.
The consensus amongst the experts was that the tree had been felled by wind of some kind. The Meteorological Office had recorded gusts of wind of 52 mph in the area at the time. And according to their spokesperson, it was perfectly possible that a whirlwind had taken down the tree without causing any other damage.
And given that Mr McLean’s examination of the tree revealed that it was incredibly decayed, wind of some kind seemed to be a very plausible explanation. As the spokesperson for the Ministry of Agriculture explained: “The tree snapped just below a dead branch. It was very heavily branched at the top and the strain over the years had damaged the cells. A sudden gust of wind was all it needed.”
But what about the cleanness of the break?
That was puzzling, admitted the Ministry’s spokesperson, but they were still ruling out the involvement of a flying saucer. “There was certainly no evidence of impact damage on the outside of the tree, or on trees nearby,” they added.
Astronomer Dr E M Lindsay, who was director of the Armagh Obervatory at the time, also believed wind was responsible – but a slightly more exotic kind of wind. Lindsay believed Mr Bennet had encountered a waterspout: a phenomenon similar to a tornado, which forms over bodies of water.
Lindsay pointed out that the “cloud” reported by Bennett had come from the direction of Lough Neagh, a body of water where the formation of waterspouts had previously been reported.
Admittedly, all of these reports were from the previous century – and Dr Lindsay had never actually seen a waterspout in Northern Ireland. But he’d seen plenty during his time in South Africa, and he believed his waterspout theory adequately explained Bennett’s strange encounter.
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And that was that, as far as the experts and the Belfast Telegraph were concerned. Joseph Bennett’s strange, tree-wrecking cloud was merely a wind phenomenon – and not a machine from another world.
The Belfast Telegraph seemed not to notice that none of the experts’ theories properly addressed what Bennett had seen – nor did they explain the strange marks on the tree identified by Nonweiler.
What Bennett thought of this assessment, the Telegraph didn’t report. But we can imagine that he was disappointed. Disappointed like Kenneth Arnold was – and thousands of others were – before him.
Today, nearly eighty years after Arnold’s sighting near Mount Rainier, irrefutable evidence for the reality of flying saucers is yet to be found. Many are searching the skies and the stars for this evidence. But it could still turn up in Portglenone.
iow
Recommended Reading
If you enjoyed this post and would like to know more about flying saucers (aka UFOs), you might enjoy the following books:
The Complete Book of UFOs – by Peter Hough & Jenny Randles
Although it was published in the 1990s and has been out of print for some time, I believe that The Complete Book of UFOs is the most accessible introduction to the UFO/flying saucer phenomenon available. Secondhand copies can be found quite readily and cheaply.
Conspiracy of Silence: UFOs in Ireland – by Dermot Butler & Carl Nally
Butler & Nally’s Conspiracy of Silence was the first book to cover the phenomenon in Ireland. The Portglenone incident gets a very brief mention, but if you want to know more about UFOs in Ireland, then this is the book. It’s available as an ebook – so it should be quite easy to find a copy.
Great story and amazed these things were happening worldwide at the same time. Strange.