Kenneth Arnold's sighting

He Invented Flying Saucers, Chattanooga Man Asserts

By Wire Services

The game of spotting "flying saucers" broadened yesterday to include Massachusetts and Vermont as stories about the disks continued to swirl fully as rapidly as the objects themselves.

A. B. Cross of Chattanooga, Tenn., a 34-year-old watchmaker, announced he invented the "flying saucer" and submitted it to the war department in 1943 but his idea was rejected as not practical "at the present time."

Later, he said, he became convinced that the department elaborated on his plan. His model was powered with a rubber band, cross said, but he believed atomic power now is being used.

The mysterious saucers first were reported by Kenneth Arnold, June 25 in the state of Washington, but Charlie T. Hamlet, superintendent of the Kingsport, Tenn., Times-News composing room, said yesterday he had seen the disks two years ago.

They were "of a bright, aluminum color" and "were going at

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[Photo caption:] - AP Wirephoto
Kenneth Arnold
Saw Them First?

He Invented

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terrific speed," Hamlet said, explaining he kept quiet about them because of the Oak Ridge atomic bomb plant, then a war secret.

Other explanations of the phenomena ranged from the theory that they were radio-controlled flying missiles sent aloft by U. S. military scientists to the suggestion that they might be merely sunlight reflected on wing tanks of jet-propelled planes.

A Spokane, Wash., woman insisted the objects she saw were "about the size of a five room house" but a Clearwater, Fla., woman said the disks she observed resembled "pie pans."

At Rutland, Vt., a woman reported she and her husband witnessed a brilliant object in the night sky which she assumed to be a "flying saucer" although it was stationary.

But at Cambridge, Mass., a housewife said she saw "a group of white, flying saucers whirling around and going at a tremendous speed."

The Massachusetts and Vermont reports brought to 40 the number of states in which the objects have been observed.

With New England getting into the game, the Harvard University astronomical observatory took note of the reports but said it had had no luck so far in pohtotographing one of the disks.

Lester Barlow of Stamford, Conn., internationally known explosives inventor, advanced the theory that the objects were radio-controlled flying missiles.

Meanwhile the highest ranking officers and best scientific brains of the war department and army air forces professed last night to be just "as baffled as the average citizen by the mystery of the "flying saucers."

In official statements the army ground forces and AAF said they had the matter under investigation and were keeping an open mind. But privately most high-ranking army officers said they believed the saucers were a hoax and some people were victims of hysteria.

They discounted emphatically rumors that flying discs might be a secret weapon designed by some foreign power for future bacteriological warfare. They were equally emphatic that there were no army research projects that could possibly be involved.