Wednesday, March 20, 2013

The June 23, 1947 UFO Sighting

I believe that I have found the original source for the story of a Cedar Rapids engineer who saw the flying discs. A headline in the Cedar Rapids Gazette said, “Flying Discs Seen By Railroad Man.” The problem? The newspaper is dated June 28, 1947 and appears two days after the Arnold story. And it didn’t happen in Cedar Rapids.

The article, which is not six lines or six paragraphs, but a little longer than that, said:

A railroad man said Friday [which is June 27, 1947 and eliminates the need for further information right there because the story appeared after Arnold] he saw “about nine” spinning discs speeding through the sky last Tuesday [June 24] the same day an Idaho flyer said he saw some flashing objects in the air.
Charles Kastl [yes, that is the way it is spelled consistently in the article], 60 [which means he would be 126 today], an employe [sic] of the Elgin, Joliet and Eastern railroad for 38 years, saw he saw the discs about 1:50 p.m. (CST) as he was walking along the highway to work.
No other person in the Joliet area reported anything unusual.
Kastl said he saw a string of flat, circular objects going faster “than any plane I ever saw” about 10 to 12 miles east of Joliet [Illinois]. They were flying about 4,000 feet, he said.
“They appeared to be very high, and were going from north to south,” he said. “I could see no connecting link between them, but they acted as though the leading disc had a motor in it to power the others, because when it flipped, the others would too. When it would right itself, the others would right themselves.”
Kastl said he did not tell anyone but his wife about seeing the objects until Friday, “because I didn’t think anything about it.”
When he returned from a railroad run Friday, however, he learned that Kenneth Arnold, Boise, Idaho, pilot had reported seeing objects similar to the ones he claimed to have seen. Arnold said he saw objects over the Pacific Northwest.
Charles Preucil, head of the Joliet astronomical society, said there would be no natural cause for a display such as Kastl described.

Given the information in this article and given the descriptions given for the Cedar Rapids sighting, I believe this is the source. It did not happen in Cedar Rapids, nor did it happen on June 23. I will assume here, risking fate, that someone (Frank Edwards?) miscalculated the date of Tuesday, believing it to be the 23rd, and not realizing it was the 24th.
In Alfred Loedding and the Great Flying Saucer Wave of 1947 by Michael Hall and Wendy Connors, the story was reported on page 22 as:

Thus, neither of those sightings made the papers before Arnold's account, but one story was actually reported to newspapers on the 23rd. The tale came from a railroad engineer in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. As he was climbing off his engine, he observed ten shiny disc-shaped objects flying in a string-like formation, "like wild geese." The six line story it generated produced little attention at the time.
 
Their footnote indicated that this information came from a speech given by Frank Edwards on April 28, 1956, to the Civilian Saucer Intelligence.
As I have mentioned, Richard Hall, in The UFO Evidence, reported, “6-23-47. Cedar Rapids, Iowa. 10 shiny discs “fluttering along in a string.”
Even if we wish to keep the entry as a reliable report, we now know that it didn’t happen on June 23 and it was not Cedar Rapids but Joliet, Illinois.
And as also mentioned, Robert Loftin, in his Identified Flying Objects reported, “June 23, 1947 – Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Railroad engineer saw ten shiny disc-shaped objects, very high, fluttering in a string toward the northeast.”
This should put to rest the idea that there was a sighting in Cedar Rapids on June 23 by an engineer. It should end the discussion that this case preceded Arnold by a day. Everything I have learned about it suggests that it happened on the day of the Arnold sighting but was not reported until two days later.
I will confess one other thing about this case. I don’t believe it. I think the guy was just spinning a tale about seeing something and because these things were now part of that news cycle, a reporter talked to him and wrote the story. The original importance of it had been the suggestion that it preceded Arnold, and without that, it is another single witness case that does not advance our knowledge…
And I will add this. It is frightening because of how far it has been circulated and how distorted it has become. I don’t know what motivated Edwards to quote it, and quote it so badly, but quote it he did. Others picked up on it without checking the original sources, and it took me quite a while to chase it down. If I could, I would strike if from the UFO literature, but books last a long time and the Internet might be forever. This will live on but I can hope that others will stumble across this information as they search for evidence.

20 comments:

Kandinsky said...

'I will confess one other thing about this case. I don’t believe it. I think the guy was just spinning a tale...'

I'm cautious too and we really can't stray too far from improbability when all we have is anecdote.

On the other hand, I'm not as confident that the guy was 'spinning a tale.'

Sure, he probably was, but as the news cycle represented a couple of days can we be certain that Arnold's publicity was seminal in this account?

This quote stood out for me, '[..]because when it flipped, the others would too. When it would right itself, the others would right themselves.'

It's rather novel and could easily be conjured from a decent hoaxer's imagination. At the same time, given the limited amount of contemporary/cultural source material he could have drawn from, it's got a little nuance that makes me wonder.

Dating discrepancies are definitely more wood for the fire for anyone wishing to argue that ufology is littered with inaccurate reporting.

Wade said...

Congratulations on solving the source!

I looked for him immediately and found Mr. Kastl. I also found an AP wire story in the Dixon Evening Telegraph (IL), page 10 on June 28th with a dateline of Joliet, IL.

It also appeared in the Nevada State Journal (Reno) on June 29th, as a UP credit, worded slightly differently.

Then there are other UP wire story appearances datelined White Sands Proving Ground, June 28, where the Kastl story is folded into a longer story that includes the Arnold sighting. These appeared in Waukesha Daily Freeman (Wisconsin), Logansport Pharos Tribune (Indiana), Ogden Standad Examiner (Utah) and San Mateo Times and Daily News Leader (California).

I wonder where AP or UP originally picked it up?

Mr. Kastl died June 1, 1951.

Don said...

Am I missing something? I thought this was resolved days ago. Edwards combined the Kastl case, which is where he got the railway engineer part with the RD Taylor report, which was the Cedar Rapids part. Both stories are multiple disk sightings in the midwest.

Regards,

Don

Don said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Don said...

Meant that for the previous discussion.

Mea culpa

Regards,

Don

David Rudiak said...

Kandinsky wrote:

This quote stood out for me, '[..]because when it flipped, the others would too. When it would right itself, the others would right themselves.'

It's rather novel and could easily be conjured from a decent hoaxer's imagination. At the same time, given the limited amount of contemporary/cultural source material he could have drawn from, it's got a little nuance that makes me wonder.


I was struck by the same thing. The seemingly coordinated flipping. It reminds me a bit of the famous Nash-Fortenberry pilot sighting over Norfolk/Newport News, Virginia in July 14, 1952, where they too reported formation flying and a coordinated flipping of the 6-8 glowing "discs" they saw just before they made an instantaneous course change. The sighting turned Nash into a "believer", who a year and a half later also made news when he said the Air Force had saucer debris in their possession. (Later he would reveal he had been told this by AF intel officers during the debriefing he got after his sighting.)

http://www.roswellproof.com/Spokane_D_Chronicle_1954-03-23-1_AF_Denies_has_saucers.jpg

Nash commented: "'From their maneuvers, there is no doubt in my mind these objects were controlled by intelligent beings. When you have seen them, you realize they were not made on this planet.'"

This is also in response to cda's "question" previous thread about how do you "prove" the ETH? Even without saucer parts, you can infer it indirectly (just like you can infer the existence of dark matter, black holes, Earth's core or extrasolar planets from indirect evidence).

Regarding Nash's beliefs (also Kenneth Arnold's and his similar sighting):

1) Were they real, "nuts and bolts" aircraft?: Yes in their minds, they had seem them clearly with their own two eyes. (Nash also had his co-pilot as a corroborating witness, so no hallucination.)
2) Could they have been manufactured on Earth? No, flight characteristics far beyond human technology and maneuvers too extreme for human pilots.
3) Could any natural phenomenon account for them? No.
4) Whats left for an explanation?: "ETH" by process of elimination

(By "proof", I mean the strong preponderance of evidence and absence of a decent, alternative explanation.)

Anthony Mugan said...

As David Rudiak notes, co-ordinated flipping certainly is a striking feature of the report. Either way it must be an insufficient evidence verdict at the moment.

KRandle said...

Gentlemen -

This is a single witness case, evidence provided by a man who died in 1951. There isn't much here and I don't see how it advances our knowledge at all. I freely admit that there was something about the tale that struck me as fraudulent. I sometimes have these reactions and it is just a gut feeling.

However, I don't how this case does anything for us. Had it actually been published on June 23, then yes. But with it printed on June 28, it just is another in a long line of reports that appeared after Arnold.

cda said...

Sorry to digress, but the idea that AF Intel officers told a civilian pilot they had UFO fragments in their possession is just plain dotty, and merely reduces Nash's credibility.

Just in case anyone thinks (or hopes?) this was the Roswell debris, I would point out that the Canadian Wilbert B. Smith, another civilian and, moreover, from another country, was told the same tale in July 1952. Smith went further in that the AF actually handed this debris over to his UFO 'laboratory' to analyse for the USAF!! The glowing chunk had been shot out of a flaming UFO. Smith said he did not return the piece to the USAF but instead to a 'highly classified group'.

So UFO fragments (and knowledge of their existence) were, apparently, not so secret after all. Certain privileged civilians were told the great news, while others actually handled the stuff.

That is, if you want to believe these tales.

David Rudiak said...

Kevin wrote:
"I don't how this case does anything for us. Had it actually been published on June 23, then yes. But with it printed on June 28, it just is another in a long line of reports that appeared after Arnold."

What I don't understand is why restrict ourselves to disc-like reports from just before Arnold, when there are other similar recorded reports that long predate Arnold:

From Wikipedia UFO page:

1. The Schofield sighting: On February 28, 1904, there was a sighting by three crew members on the USS Supply 300 miles west of San Francisco, reported by Lt. Frank Schofield, later to become Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Battle Fleet. Schofield wrote of three bright red egg-shaped and circular objects flying in echelon formation that approached beneath the cloud layer, then changed course and "soared" above the clouds, departing directly away from the earth after two to three minutes. The largest had an apparent size of about six suns, he said. [Reported in ship's logs and NY Times March 9, 1904]

2. Explorer Nicholas Roerich's sighting: On August 5, 1926, while traveling in the Humboldt Mountains of Tibet's Kokonor region, Russian explorer Nicholas Roerich reported, members of his expedition saw "something big and shiny reflecting the sun, like a huge oval moving at great speed. Crossing our camp the thing changed in its direction from south to southwest. And we saw how it disappeared in the intense blue sky. We even had time to take our field glasses and saw quite distinctly an oval form with shiny surface, one side of which was brilliant from the sun.”['Shambhala: In search of the new era', Rochester, VE: Inner Traditions, 1990 (1930), pp. 6–7, 244] Another description by Roerich was of a "shiny body flying from north to south. Field glasses are at hand. It is a huge body. One side glows in the sun. It is oval in shape. Then it somehow turns in another direction and disappears in the southwest."['Shambhala: In search of the new era', Rochester, VE: Inner Traditions, 1990 (1930), pp. 6–7, 244
http://roerich.org/nr.html?mid=wrtgs]

So oval, high speed, shiny surface brightly reflecting sun, and dramatic course change, not much different than what Arnold reported 20 years later. (I have also read Roerich's wife was also a witness, recorded the event in her diary, and opined it was extraterrestrial--no, skeptics, I haven't seen the diary.)

Or Dominique Weinstein's NARCAP catalog of pilot sightings:

http://www.ufoevidence.org/newsite/files/WeinsteinPilotCatalog.pdf

Jan. 1926 (1:00 p.m.), between Wichita, Kansas, and Colorado Springs, "six flying manhole covers". [original source from Project 1947 Reports, newsclippings and documents (cases from Jan Aldrich and Barry Greenwood) ]

1933 (daytime): Greenland, RDAF Three Heinkel He.8 seaplanes pilots, one hexagonal, flat, aluminum looking object following planes' course [same source]

July 7, 1933: a huge circular light dropped in the center of the aircraft formation. One a/c forced to land (EM interference??) [same source]

WWII & "Foo fighters"
March 25, 1942 (midnight), Holland Zuider See, RAF bomber crew, one luminous orange disc [source: Jerry Clark, The UFO Encyclopedia]

Etc., etc., the point being the flat, discoid UFO description did not originate with Kenneth Arnold, whether described by Arnold as "disc-like, "saucer-like," "pie-plate" (or media created "flying saucers/discs), or earlier "flying manhole covers" or Roerich's brightly reflecting oval. Pretty much the same thing in my opinion, whether or not you use saucers or discs to describe their shape.

David Rudiak said...

CDA wrote:
Sorry to digress, but the idea that AF Intel officers told a civilian pilot they had UFO fragments in their possession is just plain dotty, and merely reduces Nash's credibility.

No, this alone does not reduce Nash's credibility. (Does CDA so quickly forget Nash's spectacular sighting itself confirmed in detail by his co-pilot Fortenberry?) Skeptics will ALWAYS clutch at any flimsy rationale to dismiss witness testimony and credibility simply because they have the "will to disbelieve" everything (the flip side of the "will to believe" everything).

There are more details to Nash's story of what happened, as I have on my website:

http://www.roswellproof.com/Post-1947-Roswell-references.html

Leonard Stringfield in his first crash/retrieval report in 1978 notes contacting Wright-Patterson after Nash's 1954 statements and being told that the idea that the Air Force had possession of saucers was "ridiculous." Stringfield in the same report (Abstract IV) also quoted Nash from an interview, reported in the March 1965 issue of Saucer News, edited by Jim Moseley... The article was titled "Reconsidering The Mysterious Little Men," by Keith Roberts. According to Nash:

"Before the interview [interrogation by military intelligence officers right after their sighting], Fortenberry and I had agreed to ask the Intelligence men if there was any truth behind the rumor that the Air Force had one or more saucers at Wright-Patterson Field. Bill remembered to ask, and on of the investigators said 'Yes, it is true!' Later, when we were all in one room following separate de-briefings, I remembered to ask the question. All the investigators opened their mouth at the same time to answer, but Major Sharp, who was in command, broke in with a quick 'NO!' It appeared as if he was telling the others to shut up..."


So I had it a little bit wrong working from memory. Nash didn't hear it directly; co-pilot Fortenberry did, and Nash got the confirmation second-hand from Fortenberry, although had the interesting experience of the subject being hushed up by the C/O in the briefing when he raised the question.

CDA: Just in case anyone thinks (or hopes?) this was the Roswell debris, I would point out that the Canadian Wilbert B. Smith, another civilian and, moreover, from another country, was told the same tale in July 1952. Smith went further in that the AF actually handed this debris over to his UFO 'laboratory' to analyse for the USAF!! The glowing chunk had been shot out of a flaming UFO. Smith said he did not return the piece to the USAF but instead to a 'highly classified group'.

Note that Nash wasn't talking about the single-piece story being shot off a flying saucer in 1952 (which I also discuss), but rumors of actual crashed saucers held at W-P, which would indeed relate to Roswell.

Wilbert Smith wasn't the only person to mention the shot off piece or pieces. So did Vice-Admiral Herbert Knowles, who said Smith showed it to him during a visit (the visit also being mentioned by Smith in another interview):

http://www.roswellproof.com/debris8_misc.html#anchor_3699

Another person possibly referring to the same thing was Naval Commander Alvin E. Moore, who said he recovered a piece of anomalous, heavy, manufactured "stone" that fell on his Virginia property, first found July 23, 1952, which he believed came off one of the reported saucers flying over the area at the time. This is covered in great detail in a reprint of his diary, "The Secret UFO Diary of CIA Operative Comm. Alvin E. Moore." (I must admit, Moore had a number of strange theories about UFOs, including that they resided permanently in our atmosphere.)

cda said...

There was John Martin, a farmer from Denison, Texas. His 'saucer' (he used that very word) was seen in January 1878 while out hunting. Details are in Keyhoe's FLYING SAUCERS ARE REAL, ch VII.

But I doubt Kevin is interested in this. You can doubtless find the occasional reference to a saucer-shaped object in historical incidents, if you are willing to search for them.

KRandle said...

David, CDA -

I was going to mention John Martin as actually using the term saucer, but it was size rather than shape and CDA beat me to it.

David, the problem with of these early sightings is that the documentation for them comes later. I looked through Keith Chester's book for reports that mentioned disks specifically, but it seemed that all of them were reported after Arnold... except for some little things that were about two or three inches in diameter and might have been new types of AAA (anti-aircraft artillery). The Royal Air Force sighting of March 25, 1942 is credited to Creighton in 1962.

For the purposes here, I was looking for reports made after 1940and before June 24, 1947. It is a narrow range, but I was thinking that it would reduce the skeptical idea that Arnold influenced the later reports with his description. I'm not sure how vaild that idea is, given the way things developed and the way flying saucer became a sort of generic description that covered almost anything that wasn't identified.

That's why I began looking for this particular story. It was supposedly reported on June 23... but as we now know, that isn't true. He said nothing about it until after the Arnold report (and by that I mean we can document nothing until after Arnold, though Kastl said he told his wife before then.)

Yes, I had looked at some of those very early reports, but they were so old, I don't believe that they are germaine to this discussion.

What I have found is little documentation for disk shapes prior to Arnold, though the April, 1947 weather bureau reports seem to be the exception.

Anthony Mugan said...

Tend to agree on balance with Dr Rudiack on this one. There are many historical examples of reports very similar to what today we would term UFO reports (the UK Ministery of Defence 'Condign' report (2000) describes some from central Europe to make this point, for example.
Only a minority of UFO reports are actually of disk shapes and so any cultural influence that Arnold may have had in that respect needs to be kept in proportion. I acknowledge that the tendancy for the observation to actually be of an area of ionisation which may obscure any underlying form is a factor here.
My impression of the history of this is that the significance of the Arnold report is that media and public interest did not die out afterwards and it occurred at a time when technological rather than supernatural explanations were the main focus of thinking on the subject. It seems to me that the greatest single factor in this particular 'meme' running in our society was the leaking of the internal debate on this phenomena from with US Air Force Intelligence to Keyhoe, but that's just a personal impression of the history.

I agree with Kevin that the specific case under discussion is not of any use one way or the other in terms of evidence.

David Rudiak said...

Kevin wrote:
"David, the problem with of these early sightings is that the documentation for them comes later."

In the case of the 1904 Schofield sighting of the glowing red oval and two circles flying at low altitude below he cloud layer at high speed and then sharply changing direction and departing into the sky at a steep angle, the event was reported at the time in the N.Y. Times and maybe some other newspapers (maybe I'll try to dig this out from microfilm archives and electronic searches). It was also military, so there was a ship's log to document the event as well, which can be seen on Bruce Maccabee's website.

So this is a very well-documented at-the-time early UFO sighting from a very credible source of discoid-shaped UFOs, also flying in eschelon formation like Arnold's "discs".

Much the same with the Roerich sighting of 1926, recorded by Roerich in two books from 1929 and 1930. This account also had the oval shape, high speed, sharp direction change, with the added brightly reflecting surface, like Arnold. I would say this is also a well-documented early UFO sighting, but from a civilian source.

Fort mentioned the Schoefield sighting, so Fort readers might have been aware of it, but who else? Probably not Kenneth Arnold or 999 out of 1000 of the rest of the public. And probably not even that many were aware of the Russian explorer Roerich and his writings. I don't see him having much influence on the public in 1947 either. Fort's earlier documentation of "flying saucers" was mentioned in the press after Arnold's sighting, but not Roerich.

Don said...

A note on R.D. Taylor, of the actual Cedar Rapids report. I've the 1947 'Taylor' page from the Cedar Rapids directory, thanks to the CR public library's research librarian. There is one R. D. Taylor, male or female, in the book, and at the 4th Ave address, noted in the previous discussion. Google Earth shows a backyard at the address, but times change. I don't know if it did in 1947. I doubt the buildings are the same today.

Has it been determined where Edwards got his story? I know Kenneth Arnold in his AF report referred to the "locomotive engineer" in Illinois. Was Kastl such an engineer or another sort working for the railway?

I can't say whether the type of reports we are referring to, pre-Arnold, but not documented pre-Arnold, are true or not. But then, we don't know whether Arnold saw anything or not on the 24th, just that he said he did to someone who recorded it on the 25th.

Considering disc-like objects in the sky have a history, there is no reason why others besides Arnold couldn't have seen them, and before he did. Arnold made a fuss about it. Others didn't.

Any hope of success in finding out whether the incident was mentioned before the newspaper accounts means developing a biography of the observer and seeing what turns up. If I had a local case along those lines, I'd give it a shot, but small towns are a better venue for such research.

After having read through the news stories again, I've become interested in the Byron Savage case, Oklahoma City, which was attached to the Arnold story along with Kastl. He claimed a sighting of one disc weeks before Arnold.

Has anyone done any research on the reported pre-Arnolds?

Regards,

Don

Wade said...

Don,

The 1945 Joliet, IL City Directory lists Kastl's occupation as loco eng EJ&ERy. His 1942 draft registration lists his employer as E.J. &.E. R.R. (Elgin, Joliet and Eastern Railway).

Don said...

@Wade: The 47 Wave is a field for archeologists, I think, collecting and piecing together bits of pottery and scraping though middens. It is not a task for the impatient. Unlike later periods, there is little contemporary documentation except the news stories, and mostly only those that got on the wires, or big city papers. The AF gets proactive in July and at least some of what was collected made it into Project Sign. There was no follow-up on the stories, no fact checking, not even of Arnold.

I haven't looked into it, but the data collected about sightings, how accurate is it as to, for example, 'shape' and the date of the report? Is the shape description taken from what a reporter or editor wrote, or from a quotation of the observer? Is the date reported, only the date of publication?

Kastl talked to reporters on the 27th. You've documented the subject is who the stories say he is. The bit of data we need is whether Kastl called the press or whether the press called him. If he called them on the 27th, then we can be nearly certain there is no earlier report. But if the press called him, then we have to wonder where and when they got the story.

We know when Arnold reported and when his report was published. For the rest, the Kastls and Savages, we only know when their story was published.

I haven't seen a Joliet paper with the Kastl story, but assume there is one. Was it published on the 27th? Morning, Afternoon, or Evening edition?

Even with the internet, finding out anything more about the Kastl sighting beyond we now have is unlikely. But someone in Joliet with an interest might poke around. There's nothing like looking for finding.

Regards,

Don

Don said...

Wade, almost forgot. Thanks for the "loco eng". The reason I ask, is that I don't recall 'locomotive engineer' in the press, just "railway engineer". I'll have to reread them.

Another reason is Arnold in his reports refers to the "locomotive engineer" from Illinois.

Regards,

Don

Don said...

David,

The reason for wanting a documented report of a disc sighting immediately prior to the publication of Arnold's story, is to have independent corroboration of the Wave disc phenomenon he said he saw. As it stands, we only have Arnold's word. Those of us who accept his word would like that corroboration.

The problem is it is unlikely to be found in the newspapers, because, I think, none of the accounts we have of pre-Arnold sightings are as elaborate, long, interesting, and detailed as Arnold's. And, obviously, the observers didn't have Arnold's persistence and interest. There is not much story to them, and there was not a column inch worth of interest in them, if the stories got to the local papers. But it is important, at least technically, to have the corroboration if it can be found.

In his report to the AF, Arnold listed those "that I can truthfully say must have observed the same thing that I did". His article in Fate, based on his report to the AF, added several more observerations. Excluding Morrow, who corroborates two pilots' statements, I think Kastl is the only non-pilot on the list. I need to check several of the reports he refers to be certain. I wonder if Arnold placed a phone call to Kastl. Maybe that's where he got the "locomotive engineer".

Regards,

Don