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In 1946, however, little was known about the nature and origins of the ghost rockets, and so the few who thought seri- ously about them assumed there was some connection with presumed Soviet rocket or missile experiments, even though the rocket-shaped UFOs usually flew level like airplanes and made little or no noise. Historians agree that no such tests ever took place at Peenemunde, and to have made any would have recklessly endangered secrecy as well as relations with a tradi- tionally neutral neighbor. But logic does not appear to have played a major role in the public's perception of the story. The ghost rockets, which eventually were seen as far south as Greece, faded away at the end of 1946, just another peculiar interlude. But strange sky sightings did not. They were re- ported into the spring of 1947, but very quietly, as the fear of ridicule carried more weight than did the need to make news or record potentially important information. The slowly simmering pot suddenly boiled over on June 24, 1947, with the historic experience of a veteran mountain pilot in Washington State. Pilot and businessman Kenneth Arnold was helping in the hunt for a lost military transport plane in the vicinity of 14,410-foot Mount Rainier when his attention was captured by the brilliant glint from something in the dis- tance. He forgot the search and concentrated on what now appeared as a formation of nine roundish craft, flying in a line and snaking around a series of mountain peaks Armold knew well from previous flights. Their speed amazed him, so he used the sweep second hand of the clock on his instrument panel to determine that they had covered the 48 miles between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams in | minute, 42 seconds, which works out to 1,700 mph! At the time, the world speed record for airplanes was only 624 mph; it wouldn't approach 1700 mph for another fifteen years. There were a few experimental and research airplanes capable of flying faster than the official record, but they never flew in formation. Arnold described the flying motion of the objects as resem- bling that of saucers skipping across the water; this was picked CRASH AT CORONA