That night at nine-twenty, four Air Force officers, two pilots, and two intelligence officers from Maxwell AFB in Montgomery, Alabama, saw a bright light traveling across the sky.  It was first seen just above the horizon, and as it traveled toward the observers it “zigzagged,” with bursts of high speed.  When it was directly overhead it made a sharp 90-degree turn and was lost from view as it traveled south.

Other reports came in.  In Milwaukee a lady saw ten go over her house “like blue blazes,” heading south.  A school bus driver in Clarion, Iowa, saw an object streak across the sky.  In a few seconds twelve more followed the first one.  White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico chalked up the first of the many sightings that this location would produce when several people riding in an automobile saw a pulsating light travel from horizon to horizon in thirty seconds.  A Chicago housewife saw one “with legs.”

The week of July 4, 1947, set a record for reports that was not broken until 1952.  The center of activity was the Portland, Oregon, area.  At 11:00A.M. a carload of people driving near Redmond saw four disk-shaped objects streaking past Mount Jefferson.  At 1:05P.M. a policeman was in the parking lot behind the Portland City Police Headquarters when he noticed some pigeons suddenly began to flutter around as if they were scared.  He looked up and saw five large disk-shaped objects, two going south and three going east.  They were traveling at a high rate of speed and seemed to be oscillating about their lateral axis.  Minutes later two other policemen, both ex-pilots, reported three of the same things flying in trail.  Before long the harbor patrol called into headquarters.  A crew of four patrolmen had seen three to six of the disks, “shaped like chrome hub caps,” traveling very fast.  They also oscillated as they flew.  Then the citizens of Portland began to see them.  A man saw one going east and two going north.  At four-thirty a woman called in and had just seen one that looked like “a new dime flipping around.”  Another man reported two, one going southeast, one northeast.  From Milwaukie, Oregon, three were reported going northwest.  In Vancouver, Washington, sheriff’s deputies saw twenty to thirty.

The first photo was taken on July 4 in Seattle.  After much publicity it turned out to be a weather balloon.

That night a United Airlines crew flying near Emmett, Idaho, saw five.  The pilot’s report read: 

Five “somethings,” which were thin and smooth on the bottom and rough-appearing on top, were seen silhouetted against the sunset shortly after the plane took off from Boise at 8:04P.M.  We saw them clearly.  We followed them in a northeasterly direction for about 45 miles.  They finally disappeared.  We were unable to tell whether they outsped us or disintegrated.  We can’t say whether they were “smearlike,” oval, or anything else but whatever they were they were not aircraft, clouds or smoke.