[They were flying at incredible speed. I cannot hazard a guess as to what they were. My inquiries at Yakima last night brought only blank stares, but… - Kenneth Arnold

... I looked at my watch and it showed one minute and 42 seconds. Well, I felt that was pretty fast and I didn't stop to think what the distance was between the two mountains. ... they sure must have had a tailwind, but it didn't seem to help me much. But to the best of my knowledge, and the best of my description, that is what I actually saw, [and,] like I told the Associated Press, [I'd] be glad to confirm it with my hands on a Bible because I did see it, and whether it has anything to do with our army or our intelligence or whether it has to do with some foreign country, I don't know. But I did see it and I did clock it and I just happened to be in a beautiful position to do it and it's just as much a mystery to me as it is to everyone else who's been calling me the last 24 hours, wondering what it was.

Since my first observation and report of the so-called 'flying disks' I have spent a great deal of money and time thoroughly investigating this subject... It may be of interest to you to know there is a connection between tremendous amounts of furnace slag which is being found in giant dumps on our ocean floor, strange submarines, rocket ships and flying disks... There is no doubt in my mind but what these objects are aircraft of a strange design, and material that is unknown to the civilization of this earth.

… well, right here we’ve seen something, I’ve seen something, hundreds of pilots have seen something … in the skies. We have dutifully reported these things. And we have to have 15 million witnesses before anybody is going to look into the problem … seriously? Well this is utterly fantastic. This is more fantastic than flying saucers or people from Venus or anything as far as I am concerned.