if it didn't make the headlines, at least made the front page. I had
the reason for this explained to me one day when I was investigating
a series of UFO reports in California in the spring of 1952.

I was making my headquarters at an air base where a fighter-bomber
wing was stationed. Through a mutual friend I met one of the fighter-
bomber pilots who had known Arnold. In civilian life the pilot was a
newspaper reporter and had worked on the original Arnold story. He
told me that when the story first broke all the newspaper editors in
the area were thoroughly convinced that the incident was a hoax, and
that they intended to write the story as such. The more they dug into
the facts, however, and into Arnold's reputation, the more it
appeared that he was telling the truth. Besides having an
unquestionable character, he was an excellent mountain pilot, and
mountain pilots are a breed of men who know every nook and cranny of
the mountains in their area. The most fantastic part of Arnold's
story had been the 1,700-miles-per-hour speed computed from Arnold's
timing the objects between two landmarks. "When Arnold told us how he
computed the speed," my chance acquaintance told me, "we all put a
lot of faith in his story." He went on to say that when the editors
found out that they were wrong about the hoax, they did a complete
about-face, and were very much impressed by the story. This
enthusiasm spread, and since the Air Force so quickly denied
ownership of the objects, all of the facts built up into a story so
unique that papers all over the world gave it front-page space.

There was an old theory that maybe Arnold had seen wind whipping
snow along the mountain ridges, so I asked about this. I got a flat
"Impossible." My expert on the early Arnold era said, "I've lived in
the Pacific Northwest many years and have flown in the area for