I’ve always rather liked Arnold’s elegant crescent-shaped UFO. It looks far more futuristic than the clunky Adamski-style saucers that followed it.

I think that’s the reason I don’t like it! I’ve always had a soft spot for the preposterousness of the Adamski type saucers.

Oddly enough, the jacket illustration of Arnold’s own book depicts a flotilla of golden discs hovering menancingly over his tiny plane - an image far removed from the reality of the encounter.

Wasn’t the book written a good few years after the sighting? I’m guessing (though I don’t know) that by the time it came out the term “flying saucer” had so gripped the public imagination that the publishers probably thought any other shape would just confuse people (and muddy the issue)!

There’s quite an interesting piece by Martin Kottmeyer here:
http://www.debunker.com/texts/SaucerError.html

The piece by Kottmeyer sort of points to why reports of very oddly-shaped UFOs and bizarre looking aliens are actually (in some ways) more credible/interesting than those which seem to fit an established template (saucers/greys etc).

However, claiming that people’s imaginations were influenced by the early, ubiquitous (and erroneous) media use of the term “flying saucer” to the point that they could only subsequently “see” saucer-shaped objects sounds far too convenient and facile an explanation to me.

Even if one accepts (and I’m not sure I do) that actual saucer sightings were somehow “produced” by media coverage of the Arnold case, it’s not remotely clear (to me at least) how this process might actually work.

Kottmeyer’s claims that: “The reason excited imaginations didn’t come up with hundreds of radically different variations is that they were constrained by Bequette’s description of the objects.” - Bill Bequette being the reporter who may have accidentally coined the phrase “flying saucer”. Again I’d ask, can imaginations really be “constrained” to this extent? Isn’t the human imagination a more resilient and creative thing than this suggests?

Oddly enough, the jacket illustration of Arnold’s own book depicts a flotilla of golden discs hovering menancingly over his tiny plane - an image far removed from the reality of the encounter.

There’s quite an interesting piece by Martin Kottmeyer here:
http://www.debunker.com/texts/SaucerError.html