[The sighting] did not particularly disturb me at the time, except that I had never seen planes of that type. ... I never could understand at that ti… - Kenneth Arnold

… 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.

[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 I spoke today with a man from Ukiah, south of here, who said he had seen similar objects over the mountains near Ukiah yesterday.] It seems impossible, but there it is.

... 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.