Article from the: St Louis Post-Dispatch July 3, 1947
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ARMY GETS AROUND TO CHECKING `FLYING DISC‘ AND IS MYSTIFIED
WASHINGTON, July 3 (UP)- Army research experts can’t explain the ” flying saucers” reported seen in several western states, but they are investigating, they said. The Army air forces has checked all of their research authorities and contractors, but none of them knew or could suggest anything concrete about the “saucers. At first, Army officers laughed off the reports. Now they are beginning to take them at least a little seriously. At any rate, the Air Research Center at Wright Field, O., is looking into the reports, and all service intelligence agencies are at work on them. Army experts suggested-as a bare possibility-that some civilian inventor has been making experiments of some kind.
The possibility that the discs might be of foreign origin was indirectly put forward by an A.A.F. spokesman who said: “If some foreign power is sending flying discs over the United States, it is our responsibility to know about it and take proper action.” Meanwhile eight more names were added to the list of persons who say they have seen strange objects in the sky. E. E. Unger, meteorologist in charge of the United States Weather Bureau at Louisville, Ky., said today he saw one of the mysterious discs objects last night when leaving a Louisville theater. In Boise, Lt. Governor Donald S. Whitehead revealed that last June 24, the day Kenneth Arnold of Boise, Idaho, said he saw speeding objects wavering through the air along the slopes of Mount Rainier, he and Head Justice of the Peace, J. M. Lampert observed a strange, comet-like object hanging in the western sky. Dick Rankin, a former Portland (Ore.) flyer with more than 7000 hours air time, declared he saw the mysterious discs over Bakersfield, Calif., going 300 to 400 miles an hour June 23.
Now a comment from ****DON****,
I find it interesting to note at this time the quoted witnesses are not yet as Mr. Bill Moore phrased “two farmers along the Mississippi river..” (I hope you don’t mind me quoting you Mr. Moore), but are:
a) E. E. Unger United States Weather Bureau Meteorologists
b) Donald S. Whitehead Lt. Governor Boise, Idaho
c) J. M. Lampert Head Justice of the Peace
d) Dick Rankin A former flyer with 7000 hrs. flight time.
It would seem to me that the meteorologist would have been able to identify a “WEATHER BALLOON” if he had seen one. And it also would seem difficult for a weather balloon to travel 300 to 400 miles an hour if it had been a “WEATHER BALLOON” as stated by the pilot who again would seem to me to be a reliable source as to the velocity of the object he saw. And of course you have a Lt. Governor and a Head Justice of the Peace, hardly incompetent sources. In later articles when “the Army and Navy began a concentrated campaign to stop the rumors” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch 07-09-47 UP) the citizens are told that hundreds of these weather balloons are sent aloft by many organizations throughout the U.S. each and every day.