I told myself that I might as well just buy the plane I know I’m going to want,” he explained. I decided to do some research, and people were calling it the Lamborghini of small aircraft. “I was talking to my girlfriend about it, and she told me that celebrities owned and flew in Cirrus aircraft. In January 2015, he decided he would learn how to fly, but what plane would he buy? Jason laughed when recalling the story behind choosing Cirrus. Flying became the only solution,” said Jason. Driving back and forth 250 miles each way for business from the central coast of California to Los Angeles was too hard on my family and me. “I was on a hell-bent mission to get my Private Pilot License. Jason had great ambitions for every aspect of becoming a Cirrus owner. Interviewed 30 years later, Arnold said, “I have, of course, suffered some embarrassment here and there by misquotes and misinformation” published in various outlets.Jason gave the Cirrus Design team a run for their money with one of the most challenging paint schemes ever created for his custom aircraft. It’s been on every newscast, over the air, and in every newspaper I know of.” The Chicago Sun ran the headline, “Supersonic Flying Saucers Sighted by Idaho Pilot.” Arnold became a media sensation, but he did not welcome the attention. A radio host interviewing Arnold on June 26 noted how rapidly the story was shared, saying, “The Associated and United Press, all over the nation, have been after this story. By afternoon, the tale that he had seen “flying saucers” had spread nationwide. After suggesting to Arnold that a wire story might generate comments from the military on flights of experimental aircraft that could explain Arnold’s sighting, Bequette published a brief story picked up by the Associated Press wire service, using the words “nine bright saucer-like objects” to describe what Arnold said he saw. Skiff used the words “saucer-like aircraft” when he published a short print article that same day. Chuck Yeager flew the Bell X-1 rocket airplane to a speed of 700 miles per hour and exceeded the speed of sound.Īrnold emphatically denied that he initially described the objects as “flying saucers,” but as Megan Garber wrote in her June 15, 2014, article for The Atlantic, “Stories of the time credit Arnold with using the terms “saucer,” “disk,” and “pie-pan” in his description of the objects he had seen.” He told his story to reporters Bill Bequette and Nolan Skiff of the East Oregonian newspaper the day after his sighting. He calculated the objects were flying at about 1,200 mph (some accounts say 1,700 mph), two times faster than any airplane known at that time. The formation was crossing in front of Arnold and he decided to time its passage from Mt. The objects periodically flipped, banked, and weaved side-to-side, “like the tail of a Chinese kite.” Arnold described each object as circular, about 100 feet across, and with no discernible tail. He claimed they emanated from nine shiny objects flying in an echelon formation about five miles long. I just assumed it was some military lieutenant out with a shiny P-51 and I had the reflection of the sun hitting the wings of his plane.” After more flashes appeared, Arnold ruled out a nearby Douglas DC-4 airliner as the source. Rainier, searching for the C-46, he saw a bright flash to the northeast. Shortly before 3:00 p.m., as Arnold circled his airplane about 20 miles west of Mt. Marines on board somewhere near his eastward course, and Arnold hoped to find the downed aircraft and claim a $5,000 reward. Marine Corps Curtiss C-46 Commando transport had crashed with 32 U.S. He was piloting a single-engine CallAir A-2 light airplane. He was an experienced pilot with 4,000 hours of flying time logged, and a member of an Idaho search and rescue unit. That June afternoon, Arnold took off from Chehalis, Washington, on his way to an air show in Pendleton, Oregon, with a planned fuel stop at Yakima, Washington. Arnold stands in front of the CalAir A-2 light airplane he was flying when he sighted the “flying saucers” (Chronicle/Alamy Stock Photo).
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