The Flying Salesman and the Flying Saucer

QUEEN CITY COFFEE BLEND

One Man’s Unbelievable Story

The disc at the top of the Seattle Space Needle is often referred to as a flying saucer, a design inspired by space-age fantasies. What many don’t realize, though, is that there were no flying saucers, before there was Kenneth Arnold. Kenneth Arnold was not a man prone to flights of fancy. He was an Eagle Scout in his youth, as well as an All-State football player and a diver with Olympic aspirations. The only unusual thing about him may have been his job: a flying salesman. Arnold would kiss his wife and daughters farewell on any given morning and fly his Callair between small towns, selling fire control equipment.

One fateful June day, 1947, his world changed. It was the kind of clear blue Tuesday where a North-Westerner will stop and say, “the Mountain’s out.” Arnold had just finished a job in Chehalis and was about to fly to Yakima when word came across the radio that a Marine transport had gone down on the Southwest side of Mount Rainier. Arnold was a member of the Ada County Sheriff’s aerial posse so, naturally, he delayed his trip to sweep over Rainier in search of the downed plane.

One fateful June day, 1947, his world changed. It was the kind of clear blue Tuesday where a North-Westerner will stop and say, “the Mountain’s out.” Arnold had just finished a job in Chehalis and was about to fly to Yakima when word came across the radio that a Marine transport had gone down on the Southwest side of Mount Rainier. Arnold was a member of the Ada County Sheriff’s aerial posse so, naturally, he delayed his trip to sweep over Rainier in search of the downed plane.

He marked them as any pilot would, using what tools he had to judge their size and speed as they flipped and flashed in the sun. They moved with the smooth speed of jets, traveling like geese in a formation nearly five miles long, but though he squinted and stared, he could see no tail on any of them. Their shape, highlighted against the bright snow of Rainier, was almost boomerang, and unline any aircraft he’d ever seen. It bothered Arnold, this deviation, though he was sure some logical explanation existed. Who knew, he thought, what secret planes the military might be testing. He couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to it.