Flight 105 UFO sighting

The Flight 105 UFO sighting occurred on July 4, 1947 when three crew members aboard a United Airlines flight reported seeing multiple unidentified objects in the skies over the Pacific Northwest. A week prior, private pilot Kenneth Arnold had reported seeing similar objects nearby -- a sighting that was followed by nearly 800 "copycat" reports during the summer of 1947. Four days after the Flight 105 sighting, Roswell Army Air Field issued a press release stating that they had recovered a "flying disc"; that statement was quickly retracted after the crashed object was identified as a conventional weather balloon. The following month, on July 29, an air crew flying the same route also reported unidentified objects. The Flight 105 sighting was the first "flying disc" report from professional airline pilots. As a result of the sighting, Flight 105's Captain Emil Smith and original saucer witness Kenneth Arnold began a collaborative investigation of additional disc reports, including the Maury Island hoax. The Air Force ultimately concluded that the sighting was attributable to "ordinary aircraft, balloons, birds, or pure illusion". Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting and 1947 flying disc craze The Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting occurred on June 24, 1947, when a private pilot claimed that he saw a string of nine, shiny unidentified flying objects flying past Mount Rainier at speeds estimated to exceed 1,200 miles an hour (1,932 km/h). This was the first post-World War II sighting in the United States that garnered nationwide news coverage and is credited with being the first of the modern era of UFO sightings, including numerous reported sightings over the next two to three weeks. Arnold's description of the objects also led to the press quickly coining the terms "flying saucer" and "flying disc" as popular descriptive terms for UFOs. Between June 24 and July 4, "flying discs" were reported across the country. At 8:04 pm (PST), United Airlines Flight 105 took off in a DC-3 from Boise, Idaho, bound for Pendleton, Oregon.