Kenneth Arnold's sighting

Report of "Flying Saucers" Causes Furor; Texas Preacher Calls Flock for World's End

PENDLETON, Ore., June 27 (UP) -- Kenneth Arnold said today he would like to get on one of his 1200-mile-am-hour "flying saucers" and escape from the furor caused by his story of mysterious aircraft flashing over southern Washington.

"I haven't had a moment of peace since I first told the story," the 32-year-old Boise, Ida., businessman-pilot sighed.

He said a preacher called him from Texas and informed him that the strange objects Arnold claims to have seen batting through the ozone actually were harbingers of doomsday.

Arnold said he didn't get the preacher's name during their phone conversation, but the minister said he was getting his flock "ready for the end of this world."

That was unnerving, according to Arnold, but it wasn't half as disconcerting as the episode in a Pendleton cafe.

Arnold said a woman rushed in, took one look at him and then dashed out shrieking "there's the man who saw the men from Mars." She rushed out of the eating place "sobbing that she would have to do something for the children," Arnold added with a shudder.

Arnold, a representative of a fire control equipment firm, reporting he had seen nine shiny round objects skimming through the air in formation between Mt. Rainer, Wash, and Mt. Adams. Arnold said he was able to clock them on his own plane's instrument panel. He said they were spinning off a neat 1,200 MPH.

"Half the people I see look at me as a combination Einstein, Flash Gordon and screwball. I wonder what my wife back in Idaho thinks."

Meanwhile, aeronautical experts in Washington and elsewhere were teeing off on Arnold's story with facts and figures straight out of the books.

Their principle point seemed to be that of Arnold's saucer moved as fast as he claimed, they couldn't have been tracked with anything short of radar.

The fastest man has yet flown is 647 miles per hour - e record set recently by Col. Albert Boyd in a P-80.