On July 9, 1947, three teenage Anchorage girls — Judy Kerr, Vicky Novack and Nancy Green — claimed to see an unusual white “disc-shaped object” above Elmendorf Air Force Base, where it streaked across the sky and disappeared to the south. According to the girls, the unidentified object “traveled at great speed and was moving faster than ordinary planes.” The girls also said that it was smaller than any fighter plane and not a weather balloon, which they were familiar with since they were all daughters of servicemen and passed the time watching the base flight operations. These three girls had made the first documented UFO sighting in Anchorage history.
The continuing American fascination with UFOs began in 1947, not in Roswell, New Mexico, but Mineral, Washington, a small town south of Tacoma. On June 24, amateur pilot Kenneth Arnold was in the air above Mineral when he spotted nine unidentified flying objects in an echelon formation traveling at an extreme speed. Lights flashed from them, all together and then in a sequence down the line of objects. He reported the sighting after he landed and was interviewed by an intrigued reporter the next day.
The story spread like wildfire from there, aided by overeager editors. Headlines boldly announced reports of “flying saucers” and “flying discs,” wordings based on a misunderstanding. Arnold said the objects above Mineral “flew like they take a saucer and throw it across the water,” skipping and fluttering in the air. He did not say the objects looked like saucers or discs. However, the misquote endured, influencing science fiction and the gullible public for decades.
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