Maury Island incident
Encyclopedia
The Maury Island Incident is said to be an early modern UFO
encounter incident
, which allegedly took place in June 1947, three days before the famous sighting by Kenneth Arnold
, widely considered the original encounter with flying saucers. It is also one of the earliest reported instances of an alleged encounter with so-called Men in Black
. Opinions remain divided on whether the case was a genuine flying saucer sighting, a hoax
or an attempt to cover up
the leak of an advanced, classified aerospace project.
(which is now a peninsula of Vashon Island
, in Puget Sound
, near Tacoma
, Washington, United States
; Maury Island is located directly across a narrow section of Puget Sound
from Sea-Tac International Airport and Boeing Field
). Dahl, his son Charles, an unnamed hand and Dahl's dog were on the boat. Dahl reported seeing four, five or six (the initial FBI report says four or five) "doughnut-shaped objects" flying in formation over the area where his boat was. He said he could see blue sky through the holes in the center of the discs, and that there appeared to be port holes lining the inside of the ring. One of the craft appeared to be malfunctioning, Dahl reported, and another craft edged up to it, then retreated. At this point the troubled craft began ejecting objects through the inner port holes. Slag
-like material began hitting the boat and damaged the windshield, the wheel house and a light fixture, and killed his dog on the deck. He said his son was also slightly injured by falling debris. Dahl claimed to have taken a number of photographs of the UFOs, and recovered some type of slag
ejected from the craft that malfunctioned. Dahl also recovered samples of sheaves of lightweight white sheets of metal that fluttered like "newspapers" out from the inner ring of the troubled UFO to the ground.
The next morning, Dahl reported a man arrived at his home and invited him to breakfast at a nearby diner
; Dahl accepted the invitation. He described the man as wearing a black suit and driving a new 1947 Buick
; Dahl assumed he was a military
or government representative. Dahl claimed the man told him details of the UFO sighting while they ate, though Dahl had not related his account publicly. The man also allegedly gave Dahl a non-specific warning which Dahl took as a threat that his family might be harmed if he related details of the sighting.
Some confusion and debate over Dahl's statements have occurred. Dahl would later claim the UFO sighting was a hoax, but has also claimed the sighting was accurate, but he had claimed it was a hoax to avoid bringing harm to his family.
, who had long claimed to have experience with unusual phenomena (and who was later alleged to be linked to the John F. Kennedy assassination
) and who also was the owner, or co-owner, of the boat used by Dahl. Crisman and Dahl also had a joint-venture to retrieve drifting logs from Puget Sound as a source of raw lumber. Crisman sailed to the island the following day and said he spotted a craft briefly, but it went behind a cloud. He gathered more of the slag which he found littering the beach area. He then sent a sample to Chicago with a request it be tested. According to the FBI report, Crisman either sent it to Ray Palmer
, science fiction writer and editor of Amazing Science Fiction
, or sent it to a friend at the University of Chicago
who failed to identify the material and then sent it on to Ray Palmer. While the "rock formation" was being passed around in Chicago, the famous sighting by Kenneth Arnold took place at Mount Rainier in Washington state. Palmer contacted Arnold and asked him to investigate the incident for the story Arnold was writing for one of Palmer's publications (the FBI report states Palmer was the editor of the magazines Venture and Fantacy [sic, given as "Fantasy" elsewhere in the report] at this time, although both Venture Science Fiction Magazine
and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction first appeared long after the incident. Palmer inaugurated the first issue of Fate magazine in January, 1948 with a cover featuring flying disks and the article he paid Kenneth Arnold to write ).
Arnold flew from Boise, Idaho, to Tacoma and met with Crisman, Dahl and at least three military intelligence officers at the Winthrop Hotel there. During the meetings over several days, an unknown person (the FBI agent who wrote up the main report on the incident believed Crisman was the most likely suspect) began leaking details of the UFO sighting at Maury Island, the meeting in the hotel room and details of the conversation there to reporters at the Tacoma Times and at United Press, the latter reporter also working for Tacoma News Tribune
. The anonymous caller also contacted the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
and the Boise Statesman.
The two United States Army Air Corps
investigating officers who arrived at Arnold's request, Captain William L. Davidson and Lietuenant Frank M. Brown of Army A-2 Intelligence, decided to fly back to Hamilton Field the same day they arrived in Tacoma after interviewing Crisman in the hotel room. Dahl had decided to leave, citing possible danger to himself if the story got out, presumably because of the warning he received from the man in black
previously. The two intelligence officers said they had to return to Hamilton Field in California quickly because the next day was Air Force Day, when the Air Force officially became a new service branch distinct from the Navy, Marines and Army. As the investigators were preparing to leave, Crisman produced samples of the "rock formation" from his automobile and gave it to the investigators to take back to California. The plane carrying the two investigators and the slag crashed near Kelso, Washington
, shortly after leaving Tacoma, killing both men. In April 2007 it was reported that the crash site had been rediscovered and some material recovered, although the initial military investigation did recover exhibits and remove the bodies. The FBI report notes that investigators from McChord Field near Tacoma had investigated the wreckage and were convinced there was no sabotage involved. The FBI report further mentions that two other people on board the airplane survived by parachuting from the airplane after it lost its left wing and the tail section due to a fire in the left engine. One of the survivors was named as a member of the flight crew and the other was referred to as "a hitch-hiker." The Seattle Post-Intelligencer identified them as Sergeant Elmer L. Taft and Technical Sergeant Woodrow D. Matthews. Initially the Air Force denied the men had been carrying a secret cargo, but in later years admitted that they had been officially investigating the Dahl report.
Crisman alerted Arnold of the crash early the next twenty mornings and Dahl and Crisman returned to the hotel to discuss the situation with Arnold. Arnold had invited another person, accidentally identified in the FOI copy of the FBI report as a Mr. Smith of Seattle (probably Captain E. H. Smith (elsewhere E. J. Smith) of United Airlines, identified in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer article under External links below), to Tacoma to attend the UFO conference, and this informant related to the FBI field agent that a Mr. Lantz (elsewhere identified as Paul Lance) of the Tacoma Times contacted Arnold at the hotel and informed him of the leaks, including information that the Army intelligence officers had been shot down in the B-25 airplane over Kelso by 20 mm cannon, and that a Marine airplane whose wreck that had allegedly been found earlier at Mt. Rainier had also been shot down with the same weapon. The anonymous caller claimed knowledge of on-going investigations by military intelligence. He was not identified but claimed to be a switchboard operator. Mr. Smith informed the FBI the switchboard operator at the Winthrop Hotel in Tacoma was not a male. The anonymous caller also said he was not interested in providing a scoop to any certain media outlet but wanted the news "to get back to New Jersey."
Asked to produce the photographs he had made of the UFOs over Maury Island, Dahl and the group left the hotel and went to Dahl's automobile parked outside. Dahl then claimed the photographs had disappeared from his glove compartment. Initially he had said the photographs didn't turn out and were marred by white spots that appeared on them. He didn't change his story and the group knew the photographs were of poor quality. Later UFOlogists revisited the issue of the photographs with Crisman, prompting the claim some copies had survived, but UFOlogists were unable to acquire this piece of evidence.
The ad hoc group in Tacoma in 1947 also decided to sail to Maury Island. This plan failed when the boat failed to start. Asked where the UFO had damaged the boats, Crisman pointed to the windshield, the klaaxon and a light. Smith told the FBI there were signs of recent repair to these parts.
Alarmed by the deaths, Dahl disappeared, although the FBI report mentions his son, allegedly injured by the slag from the malfunctioning UFO, had run away from home to Montana for some reason. The anonymous caller informed the press that one of the two witnesses would shortly be sent to Alaska. Crisman, a WWII veteran, was recalled to service hastily and sent to Alaska (A UFO was spotted northwest of Bethel, Alaska
on August 4 by Captain Jack Peck and copilot Vince Daly from a Douglas DC-3 they operated for Al Jones flying service and was reported to the headquarters of the Fourth Air Force in Hamilton, California and the Air Defense Command commander at Mitchell Field in New York.), then posted to Greenland (Thule Air Force Base figures in Milton William Cooper
's "Behold a Pale Horse" as a Majestic 12
/Operation Majority control terminus). Arnold found himself unable to complete the story for Palmer. Samples of the slag provided to Arnold and Palmer also allegedly went missing. Arnold was allegedly advised by Ted Morello of the United Press: "You're involved in something that is beyond our power here to find out anything about... Get out of this town until whatever it is blows over.".
Arnold decided to fly home. He stopped for fuel in Pendleton, Oregon
, and shortly after taking off again, his engine froze in mid-air. He managed to land the plane safely despite the emergency.
Paul Lance of the Tacoma Times died within two weeks of undetermined causes. United Press stringer Ted Morello moved to New York and until his death due to a stroke on September 15, 2007, at the age of 88, was a well-respected newspaper correspondent to the United Nations.
Some believe that the famous case of another allegedly disabled UFO, the Roswell UFO incident
, took place about 12 days after Dahl's sighting, although various dates circulate among Roswell investigators and the chronology is less certain than that for the Maury Island Incident.
The story of the mysterious crash of the B-25 and the death of the two men investigating the "disk case" who allegedly had a "top-secret cargo" or even "saucer parts" was carried by the wire services and published by newspapers locally and nationally.
Albert K. Bender later seized on Dahl's story, and printed it in his newsletter. In 1953, Bender claimed three men in black visited him, and warned him to stop his UFO research, which he did for a decade, closing down his International Flying Saucer Bureau. In 1963 Bender published his story, *Flying Saucers and the Three Men*, placing him beyond the pale of even the UFO research community because of his claims about men in black
.
Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt
, chief of Project Blue Book
in the early 1950s, wrote that he was convinced that the entire sighting story was a hoax. The initial FBI field report concluded the story was a hoax as well.
In the FBI report the anonymous caller mentioned an incident involving a United Airlines pilot and his co-pilot flying over Montana and coming under fire.
United Airlines pilot E. H. Smith, the likely identity of the main informant in the FBI report and a key figure in the meetings at the Winthrop Hotel in Tacoma, was named as witnessing a UFO event over Boise several weeks prior (on July 4, according to the FBI report) to the crash of the B-25 near Kelso, Washington, according to an Associated Press
dispatch with the dateline of San Francisco, August 2, "2 Flyers died in Crash on 'Disc' Mission" (see Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "Is strange rock from UFO or just a piece of poppycock?", April 25, 2007, under External links below). In the FBI report on the Maury Island Incident, Mr. Smith reports he made contact with people he knew inside military intelligence during the meetings with Arnold, Dahl, Crisman and others in Tacoma. Smith reported a meeting between Arnold, him and an unnamed military intelligence figure without Dahl or Crisman present. In subsequent accounts by Arnold a Major Sanders is mentioned as present at the hotel with Crisman. Mr. Smith reported he, his contact from military intelligence and Arnold went to an unidentified Tacoma slag mill to compare the "rock formation" Dahl had collected and provided with generic slag from a smelter, and found they were very alike.
and the Roswell incident. It contains elements that became embedded in UFOlogy
until now, including men in black
, what appeared to be a government cover up, mysterious disappearance of physical evidence, mysterious disappearances of eyewitnesses (Dahl and Crisman), mysterious deaths and inexplicable situations. Dahl claimed the mysterious dark man driving the black 1947 Buick who visited him retold the events on the boat as if he had been there, although Dahl himself hadn't related the story publicly at that point. Dahl began denying the story only after the two Army Air intelligence officers died in the B-25 crash. Dahl and Crisman told the FBI investigator they had concocted the story at the urging of Ray Palmer who wanted the mysterious rock formation to have originated on an alien saucer. They claimed to be playing along with Palmer who wanted a story to publish, and yet the FBI agent also notes that Dahl and Crisman were "obviously" not telling all they knew and were attempting to cover something up.
Because Crisman was named in the Garrison case on the Kennedy assassination as a friend of the main suspect, Clay Shaw, he has become a useful figure for UFOlogists arguing in favor of the Majestic 12
conspiracy, which also involves military intelligence, UFOs and the Kennedy assassination. Crisman's automobile was allegedly strafed with bullets less than two weeks before he was subpoenaed to testify by Garrison in 1968. Crisman was accused of being one of the three tramps at Dealy Plaza the day Kennedy was assassinated at the Select Committee on Assassinations of the 95th Congress although he was reportedly at his post as a school teacher in Tacoma at the time of the shooting. When in December 1978 the House Select Committee on Assassinations summoned Stanley Peerboom, the principal at Rainer High School, to produce Crisman's employment records from the time, Peerboom confirmed Crisman's presence that day and provided documentation demonstrating no substitute teacher had been called in. Crisman eventually became a popular radio talk show personality known as John Gold on KAYE radio in Puyallup, Washington, before running for public office in Tacoma, inspired as he said to fight for the right of Gypsies. When his political faction was forced out of city government, the departing mayor named him to a post on the Tacoma Library Board and he died without fanfare in 1975.
Ray Palmer did publish the story of Kenneth Arnold's sighting on Mount Rainier, and is considered the father of modern UFOs because of this and other stories and cover artwork he featured in the publications he edited. Palmer has a prior connection with at least one person involved in the Maury Island Incident: he published a series of stories known as the Shaver mysteries, to which Fred Crisman began contributing in the mid-1940s, before the flying saucer sightings. Later Palmer and Arnold co-authored the book "The Coming of the Saucers."
The Maury Island Incident and Kenneth Arnold's sighting ushered in an era or epidemic of flying saucer sightings that gained major momentum during the early 1950s. Edward R. Murrow
interviewed Arnold for national radio in 1947. Radio, the major medium of the day, took to the reports of flying saucers with enthusiasm, primed back in 1938 by The War of the Worlds
on Orson Welles
' Mercury Theater on the Air. Hollywood Star Playhouse dramatized a saucer encounter in the story "The Tenth Planet," alien invasions and abductions became common fare and even hosts of mainstream programs such as Superman
began cracking jokes about them ("I don't believe this flying saucer business at all. Why I just read a report that 20 percent of commercial pilots have never even seen them!" one host quipped).
While the radio drama shows went wild with Venusian embassies and Martian invasions, WOR
radio's late-night talk show host Long John Nebel
popularized the real-life theme on his program "Partyline" in New York, which was heard as far west as Chicago and across the Eastern seaboard into Canada, with guests such as George Adamski
, the first "contactee", a term Nebel coined, and numerous other guests, including Ray Palmer, Isaac Asimov
and L. Sprague de Camp
. Nebel's show featured the gamut of positions on flying saucers, hosting the most obvious frauds as well as the most ironclad skeptics.
The flying saucer craze quickly broke out of the late night time slot and went mainstream in a host of Hollywood treatments and on the radio serials. Entertaining Comics treated the topic in both its pulp and scientific aspects, publishing an entire issue of Weird Science-Fantasy
(issue 26, carried over from the "Flying Saucer Report" comprising most of issue 25) dedicated to factual accounts of sightings around the country and especially over Washington, D.C., and called on Congress to undertake hearings into the "flying saucer invasion." The new medium of television was accompanied from its very birth by the extraterrestrial flying disc stories.
Confronted on the one side with credible testimony by reliable witnesses and even military personnel with top secret security clearances on the one side and clamor in the public media on the other side, some U.S. military organizations undertook studies to determine the nature of and possible threat posed by the UFOs. Many wondered whether the UFOs were extraterrestrial or whether they were a new Soviet espionage method, and the public and intelligence communities noted the tendency of UFOs to appear over military bases during the early years of the Cold War
. One of the earliest investigations was Project Twinkle associated with sightings of green fireballs
by scientists and staff with the post-WWII Manhattan Project
and at Sandia National Laboratories
in the American Southwest. Project Grudge
soon followed, which in turn was replaced by Project Bluebook.
Unidentified flying object
A term originally coined by the military, an unidentified flying object is an unusual apparent anomaly in the sky that is not readily identifiable to the observer as any known object...
encounter incident
Close encounter
In ufology, a close encounter is an event in which a person witnesses an unidentified flying object. This terminology and the system of classification behind it was started by astronomer and UFO researcher J. Allen Hynek, and was first suggested in his 1972 book The UFO Experience: A Scientific...
, which allegedly took place in June 1947, three days before the famous sighting by Kenneth Arnold
Kenneth Arnold
Kenneth A. Arnold was an American aviator and businessman. He is best-known for making what is generally considered the first widely reported unidentified flying object sighting in the United States, after claiming to have seen nine unusual objects flying in a chain near Mount Rainier, Washington...
, widely considered the original encounter with flying saucers. It is also one of the earliest reported instances of an alleged encounter with so-called Men in Black
Men in Black
Men in Black , in American popular culture and in UFO conspiracy theories, are men dressed in black suits who claim to be government agents who harass or threaten UFO witnesses to keep them quiet about what they have seen. It is sometimes implied that they may be aliens themselves...
. Opinions remain divided on whether the case was a genuine flying saucer sighting, a hoax
Hoax
A hoax is a deliberately fabricated falsehood made to masquerade as truth. It is distinguishable from errors in observation or judgment, or rumors, urban legends, pseudosciences or April Fools' Day events that are passed along in good faith by believers or as jokes.-Definition:The British...
or an attempt to cover up
Cover-up
A cover-up is an attempt, whether successful or not, to conceal evidence of wrong-doing, error, incompetence or other embarrassing information...
the leak of an advanced, classified aerospace project.
Background
The incident took place shortly after June 21, 1947. On that date, seaman Harold A. Dahl, out scavenging for drifting logs, claimed to have seen six UFOs near Maury IslandMaury Island
Maury Island is a small island in Puget Sound in the U.S. state of Washington. It is connected to Vashon Island by an isthmus built by the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Before construction of the isthmus, the island was connected to Vashon only during low tide. The island is rural with...
(which is now a peninsula of Vashon Island
Vashon Island
Vashon is a census-designated place in King County, Washington, United States. It covers an island alternately called Vashon Island or Vashon-Maury Island, the largest island in Puget Sound south of Admiralty Inlet. The population was 10,624 at the 2010 census. At , it is about 60 percent larger...
, in Puget Sound
Puget Sound
Puget Sound is a sound in the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected marine waterways and basins, with one major and one minor connection to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Pacific Ocean — Admiralty Inlet being the major connection and...
, near Tacoma
Tacoma, Washington
Tacoma is a mid-sized urban port city and the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. The city is on Washington's Puget Sound, southwest of Seattle, northeast of the state capital, Olympia, and northwest of Mount Rainier National Park. The population was 198,397, according to...
, Washington, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
; Maury Island is located directly across a narrow section of Puget Sound
Puget Sound
Puget Sound is a sound in the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected marine waterways and basins, with one major and one minor connection to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Pacific Ocean — Admiralty Inlet being the major connection and...
from Sea-Tac International Airport and Boeing Field
Boeing Field
Boeing Field, officially King County International Airport , is a two-runway airport owned and run by King County, Washington, USA. In promotional literature, the airport is frequently referred to as KCIA, but this is not the airport identifier. The airport has some passenger service, but is mostly...
). Dahl, his son Charles, an unnamed hand and Dahl's dog were on the boat. Dahl reported seeing four, five or six (the initial FBI report says four or five) "doughnut-shaped objects" flying in formation over the area where his boat was. He said he could see blue sky through the holes in the center of the discs, and that there appeared to be port holes lining the inside of the ring. One of the craft appeared to be malfunctioning, Dahl reported, and another craft edged up to it, then retreated. At this point the troubled craft began ejecting objects through the inner port holes. Slag
Slag
Slag is a partially vitreous by-product of smelting ore to separate the metal fraction from the unwanted fraction. It can usually be considered to be a mixture of metal oxides and silicon dioxide. However, slags can contain metal sulfides and metal atoms in the elemental form...
-like material began hitting the boat and damaged the windshield, the wheel house and a light fixture, and killed his dog on the deck. He said his son was also slightly injured by falling debris. Dahl claimed to have taken a number of photographs of the UFOs, and recovered some type of slag
Slag
Slag is a partially vitreous by-product of smelting ore to separate the metal fraction from the unwanted fraction. It can usually be considered to be a mixture of metal oxides and silicon dioxide. However, slags can contain metal sulfides and metal atoms in the elemental form...
ejected from the craft that malfunctioned. Dahl also recovered samples of sheaves of lightweight white sheets of metal that fluttered like "newspapers" out from the inner ring of the troubled UFO to the ground.
The next morning, Dahl reported a man arrived at his home and invited him to breakfast at a nearby diner
Diner
A diner, also spelled dinor in western Pennsylvania is a prefabricated restaurant building characteristic of North America, especially in the Midwest, in New York City, in Pennsylvania and in New Jersey, and in other areas of the Northeastern United States, although examples can be found throughout...
; Dahl accepted the invitation. He described the man as wearing a black suit and driving a new 1947 Buick
Buick
Buick is a premium brand of General Motors . Buick models are sold in the United States, Canada, Mexico, China, Taiwan, and Israel, with China being its largest market. Buick holds the distinction as the oldest active American make...
; Dahl assumed he was a military
Military
A military is an organization authorized by its greater society to use lethal force, usually including use of weapons, in defending its country by combating actual or perceived threats. The military may have additional functions of use to its greater society, such as advancing a political agenda e.g...
or government representative. Dahl claimed the man told him details of the UFO sighting while they ate, though Dahl had not related his account publicly. The man also allegedly gave Dahl a non-specific warning which Dahl took as a threat that his family might be harmed if he related details of the sighting.
Some confusion and debate over Dahl's statements have occurred. Dahl would later claim the UFO sighting was a hoax, but has also claimed the sighting was accurate, but he had claimed it was a hoax to avoid bringing harm to his family.
Investigation
In spite of the threat, Dahl had reported the incident to his employee at his sawmill operation, Fred CrismanFred Crisman
Fred Crisman was a writer, educator, broadcaster and self-described "disruption agent" from Tacoma, Washington known for claims of paranormal events and 20th century conspiracies.- Early life :...
, who had long claimed to have experience with unusual phenomena (and who was later alleged to be linked to the John F. Kennedy assassination
John F. Kennedy assassination
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas...
) and who also was the owner, or co-owner, of the boat used by Dahl. Crisman and Dahl also had a joint-venture to retrieve drifting logs from Puget Sound as a source of raw lumber. Crisman sailed to the island the following day and said he spotted a craft briefly, but it went behind a cloud. He gathered more of the slag which he found littering the beach area. He then sent a sample to Chicago with a request it be tested. According to the FBI report, Crisman either sent it to Ray Palmer
Raymond A. Palmer
Raymond Arthur Palmer was the influential editor of Amazing Stories from 1938 through 1949, when he left publisher Ziff-Davis to publish and edit Fate Magazine, and eventually many other magazines and books through his own publishing houses, including Amherst Press and Palmer Publications...
, science fiction writer and editor of Amazing Science Fiction
Amazing Stories
Amazing Stories was an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction...
, or sent it to a friend at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
who failed to identify the material and then sent it on to Ray Palmer. While the "rock formation" was being passed around in Chicago, the famous sighting by Kenneth Arnold took place at Mount Rainier in Washington state. Palmer contacted Arnold and asked him to investigate the incident for the story Arnold was writing for one of Palmer's publications (the FBI report states Palmer was the editor of the magazines Venture and Fantacy [sic, given as "Fantasy" elsewhere in the report] at this time, although both Venture Science Fiction Magazine
Venture Science Fiction Magazine
Venture Science Fiction was an American digest-size science fiction magazine, first published from 1957 to 1958, and revived for a brief run in 1969 and 1970. Ten issues were published of the 1950s version, with another six in the second run. It was founded in both instances as a companion to The...
and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction first appeared long after the incident. Palmer inaugurated the first issue of Fate magazine in January, 1948 with a cover featuring flying disks and the article he paid Kenneth Arnold to write ).
Arnold flew from Boise, Idaho, to Tacoma and met with Crisman, Dahl and at least three military intelligence officers at the Winthrop Hotel there. During the meetings over several days, an unknown person (the FBI agent who wrote up the main report on the incident believed Crisman was the most likely suspect) began leaking details of the UFO sighting at Maury Island, the meeting in the hotel room and details of the conversation there to reporters at the Tacoma Times and at United Press, the latter reporter also working for Tacoma News Tribune
Tacoma News Tribune
The News Tribune is a daily newspaper in Tacoma, Washington, in the United States.-History:It can trace its origins back to the founding of the weekly Tacoma Ledger by R.F. Radabaugh in 1880. The next year, H.C. Patrick founded The News, another weekly. Both papers became dailies in 1883. In 1898,...
. The anonymous caller also contacted the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is an online newspaper and former print newspaper covering Seattle, Washington, United States, and the surrounding metropolitan area...
and the Boise Statesman.
The two United States Army Air Corps
United States Army Air Corps
The United States Army Air Corps was a forerunner of the United States Air Force. Renamed from the Air Service on 2 July 1926, it was part of the United States Army and the predecessor of the United States Army Air Forces , established in 1941...
investigating officers who arrived at Arnold's request, Captain William L. Davidson and Lietuenant Frank M. Brown of Army A-2 Intelligence, decided to fly back to Hamilton Field the same day they arrived in Tacoma after interviewing Crisman in the hotel room. Dahl had decided to leave, citing possible danger to himself if the story got out, presumably because of the warning he received from the man in black
Men in Black
Men in Black , in American popular culture and in UFO conspiracy theories, are men dressed in black suits who claim to be government agents who harass or threaten UFO witnesses to keep them quiet about what they have seen. It is sometimes implied that they may be aliens themselves...
previously. The two intelligence officers said they had to return to Hamilton Field in California quickly because the next day was Air Force Day, when the Air Force officially became a new service branch distinct from the Navy, Marines and Army. As the investigators were preparing to leave, Crisman produced samples of the "rock formation" from his automobile and gave it to the investigators to take back to California. The plane carrying the two investigators and the slag crashed near Kelso, Washington
Kelso, Washington
Kelso is a city in southwest Washington State, United States, and is the county seat of Cowlitz County. At the 2010 census, the population was 11,925. Kelso is part of the Longview, Washington Metropolitan Statistical Area, which has a population of 102,410. Kelso shares its long western border...
, shortly after leaving Tacoma, killing both men. In April 2007 it was reported that the crash site had been rediscovered and some material recovered, although the initial military investigation did recover exhibits and remove the bodies. The FBI report notes that investigators from McChord Field near Tacoma had investigated the wreckage and were convinced there was no sabotage involved. The FBI report further mentions that two other people on board the airplane survived by parachuting from the airplane after it lost its left wing and the tail section due to a fire in the left engine. One of the survivors was named as a member of the flight crew and the other was referred to as "a hitch-hiker." The Seattle Post-Intelligencer identified them as Sergeant Elmer L. Taft and Technical Sergeant Woodrow D. Matthews. Initially the Air Force denied the men had been carrying a secret cargo, but in later years admitted that they had been officially investigating the Dahl report.
Crisman alerted Arnold of the crash early the next twenty mornings and Dahl and Crisman returned to the hotel to discuss the situation with Arnold. Arnold had invited another person, accidentally identified in the FOI copy of the FBI report as a Mr. Smith of Seattle (probably Captain E. H. Smith (elsewhere E. J. Smith) of United Airlines, identified in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer article under External links below), to Tacoma to attend the UFO conference, and this informant related to the FBI field agent that a Mr. Lantz (elsewhere identified as Paul Lance) of the Tacoma Times contacted Arnold at the hotel and informed him of the leaks, including information that the Army intelligence officers had been shot down in the B-25 airplane over Kelso by 20 mm cannon, and that a Marine airplane whose wreck that had allegedly been found earlier at Mt. Rainier had also been shot down with the same weapon. The anonymous caller claimed knowledge of on-going investigations by military intelligence. He was not identified but claimed to be a switchboard operator. Mr. Smith informed the FBI the switchboard operator at the Winthrop Hotel in Tacoma was not a male. The anonymous caller also said he was not interested in providing a scoop to any certain media outlet but wanted the news "to get back to New Jersey."
Asked to produce the photographs he had made of the UFOs over Maury Island, Dahl and the group left the hotel and went to Dahl's automobile parked outside. Dahl then claimed the photographs had disappeared from his glove compartment. Initially he had said the photographs didn't turn out and were marred by white spots that appeared on them. He didn't change his story and the group knew the photographs were of poor quality. Later UFOlogists revisited the issue of the photographs with Crisman, prompting the claim some copies had survived, but UFOlogists were unable to acquire this piece of evidence.
The ad hoc group in Tacoma in 1947 also decided to sail to Maury Island. This plan failed when the boat failed to start. Asked where the UFO had damaged the boats, Crisman pointed to the windshield, the klaaxon and a light. Smith told the FBI there were signs of recent repair to these parts.
Alarmed by the deaths, Dahl disappeared, although the FBI report mentions his son, allegedly injured by the slag from the malfunctioning UFO, had run away from home to Montana for some reason. The anonymous caller informed the press that one of the two witnesses would shortly be sent to Alaska. Crisman, a WWII veteran, was recalled to service hastily and sent to Alaska (A UFO was spotted northwest of Bethel, Alaska
Bethel, Alaska
Bethel is a city located near the west coast of the U.S. state of Alaska, west of Anchorage. Accessible only by air and river, Bethel is the main port on the Kuskokwim River and is an administrative and transportation hub for the 56 villages in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.Bethel is the largest...
on August 4 by Captain Jack Peck and copilot Vince Daly from a Douglas DC-3 they operated for Al Jones flying service and was reported to the headquarters of the Fourth Air Force in Hamilton, California and the Air Defense Command commander at Mitchell Field in New York.), then posted to Greenland (Thule Air Force Base figures in Milton William Cooper
Milton William Cooper
Milton William Cooper was an American writer, shortwave broadcaster, conspiracy theorist, and political activist.-Biography:...
's "Behold a Pale Horse" as a Majestic 12
Majestic 12
Majestic 12 is the alleged code name of a secret committee of scientists, military leaders, and government officials, supposedly formed in 1947 by an executive order of U.S. President Harry S. Truman...
/Operation Majority control terminus). Arnold found himself unable to complete the story for Palmer. Samples of the slag provided to Arnold and Palmer also allegedly went missing. Arnold was allegedly advised by Ted Morello of the United Press: "You're involved in something that is beyond our power here to find out anything about... Get out of this town until whatever it is blows over.".
Arnold decided to fly home. He stopped for fuel in Pendleton, Oregon
Pendleton, Oregon
Pendleton is a city in Umatilla County, Oregon, United States. Pendleton was named in 1868 by the county commissioners for George H. Pendleton, Democratic candidate for Vice-President in the 1864 presidential campaign. The population was 16,612 at the 2010 census...
, and shortly after taking off again, his engine froze in mid-air. He managed to land the plane safely despite the emergency.
Paul Lance of the Tacoma Times died within two weeks of undetermined causes. United Press stringer Ted Morello moved to New York and until his death due to a stroke on September 15, 2007, at the age of 88, was a well-respected newspaper correspondent to the United Nations.
Some believe that the famous case of another allegedly disabled UFO, the Roswell UFO incident
Roswell UFO incident
The Roswell UFO Incident was the recovery of an object that crashed in the general vicinity of Roswell, New Mexico, in June or July 1947, allegedly an extra-terrestrial spacecraft and its alien occupants. Since the late 1970s the incident has been the subject of intense controversy and of...
, took place about 12 days after Dahl's sighting, although various dates circulate among Roswell investigators and the chronology is less certain than that for the Maury Island Incident.
The story of the mysterious crash of the B-25 and the death of the two men investigating the "disk case" who allegedly had a "top-secret cargo" or even "saucer parts" was carried by the wire services and published by newspapers locally and nationally.
Albert K. Bender later seized on Dahl's story, and printed it in his newsletter. In 1953, Bender claimed three men in black visited him, and warned him to stop his UFO research, which he did for a decade, closing down his International Flying Saucer Bureau. In 1963 Bender published his story, *Flying Saucers and the Three Men*, placing him beyond the pale of even the UFO research community because of his claims about men in black
Men in Black
Men in Black , in American popular culture and in UFO conspiracy theories, are men dressed in black suits who claim to be government agents who harass or threaten UFO witnesses to keep them quiet about what they have seen. It is sometimes implied that they may be aliens themselves...
.
Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt
Edward J. Ruppelt
Edward J. Ruppelt was a United States Air Force officer probably best-known for his involvement in Project Blue Book, a formal governmental study of unidentified flying objects...
, chief of Project Blue Book
Project Blue Book
Project Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of unidentified flying objects conducted by the United States Air Force. Started in 1952, it was the second revival of such a study...
in the early 1950s, wrote that he was convinced that the entire sighting story was a hoax. The initial FBI field report concluded the story was a hoax as well.
In the FBI report the anonymous caller mentioned an incident involving a United Airlines pilot and his co-pilot flying over Montana and coming under fire.
United Airlines pilot E. H. Smith, the likely identity of the main informant in the FBI report and a key figure in the meetings at the Winthrop Hotel in Tacoma, was named as witnessing a UFO event over Boise several weeks prior (on July 4, according to the FBI report) to the crash of the B-25 near Kelso, Washington, according to an Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
dispatch with the dateline of San Francisco, August 2, "2 Flyers died in Crash on 'Disc' Mission" (see Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "Is strange rock from UFO or just a piece of poppycock?", April 25, 2007, under External links below). In the FBI report on the Maury Island Incident, Mr. Smith reports he made contact with people he knew inside military intelligence during the meetings with Arnold, Dahl, Crisman and others in Tacoma. Smith reported a meeting between Arnold, him and an unnamed military intelligence figure without Dahl or Crisman present. In subsequent accounts by Arnold a Major Sanders is mentioned as present at the hotel with Crisman. Mr. Smith reported he, his contact from military intelligence and Arnold went to an unidentified Tacoma slag mill to compare the "rock formation" Dahl had collected and provided with generic slag from a smelter, and found they were very alike.
Aftermath
This event took place at the very beginning of the modern phase of UFO sightings, usually connected with Kenneth Arnold's report from Mount RainierMount Rainier
Mount Rainier is a massive stratovolcano located southeast of Seattle in the state of Washington, United States. It is the most topographically prominent mountain in the contiguous United States and the Cascade Volcanic Arc, with a summit elevation of . Mt. Rainier is considered one of the most...
and the Roswell incident. It contains elements that became embedded in UFOlogy
Ufology
Ufology is a neologism coined to describe the collective efforts of those who study reports and associated evidence of unidentified flying objects . UFOs have been subject to various investigations over the years by governments, independent groups, and scientists...
until now, including men in black
Men in Black
Men in Black , in American popular culture and in UFO conspiracy theories, are men dressed in black suits who claim to be government agents who harass or threaten UFO witnesses to keep them quiet about what they have seen. It is sometimes implied that they may be aliens themselves...
, what appeared to be a government cover up, mysterious disappearance of physical evidence, mysterious disappearances of eyewitnesses (Dahl and Crisman), mysterious deaths and inexplicable situations. Dahl claimed the mysterious dark man driving the black 1947 Buick who visited him retold the events on the boat as if he had been there, although Dahl himself hadn't related the story publicly at that point. Dahl began denying the story only after the two Army Air intelligence officers died in the B-25 crash. Dahl and Crisman told the FBI investigator they had concocted the story at the urging of Ray Palmer who wanted the mysterious rock formation to have originated on an alien saucer. They claimed to be playing along with Palmer who wanted a story to publish, and yet the FBI agent also notes that Dahl and Crisman were "obviously" not telling all they knew and were attempting to cover something up.
Because Crisman was named in the Garrison case on the Kennedy assassination as a friend of the main suspect, Clay Shaw, he has become a useful figure for UFOlogists arguing in favor of the Majestic 12
Majestic 12
Majestic 12 is the alleged code name of a secret committee of scientists, military leaders, and government officials, supposedly formed in 1947 by an executive order of U.S. President Harry S. Truman...
conspiracy, which also involves military intelligence, UFOs and the Kennedy assassination. Crisman's automobile was allegedly strafed with bullets less than two weeks before he was subpoenaed to testify by Garrison in 1968. Crisman was accused of being one of the three tramps at Dealy Plaza the day Kennedy was assassinated at the Select Committee on Assassinations of the 95th Congress although he was reportedly at his post as a school teacher in Tacoma at the time of the shooting. When in December 1978 the House Select Committee on Assassinations summoned Stanley Peerboom, the principal at Rainer High School, to produce Crisman's employment records from the time, Peerboom confirmed Crisman's presence that day and provided documentation demonstrating no substitute teacher had been called in. Crisman eventually became a popular radio talk show personality known as John Gold on KAYE radio in Puyallup, Washington, before running for public office in Tacoma, inspired as he said to fight for the right of Gypsies. When his political faction was forced out of city government, the departing mayor named him to a post on the Tacoma Library Board and he died without fanfare in 1975.
Ray Palmer did publish the story of Kenneth Arnold's sighting on Mount Rainier, and is considered the father of modern UFOs because of this and other stories and cover artwork he featured in the publications he edited. Palmer has a prior connection with at least one person involved in the Maury Island Incident: he published a series of stories known as the Shaver mysteries, to which Fred Crisman began contributing in the mid-1940s, before the flying saucer sightings. Later Palmer and Arnold co-authored the book "The Coming of the Saucers."
The Maury Island Incident and Kenneth Arnold's sighting ushered in an era or epidemic of flying saucer sightings that gained major momentum during the early 1950s. Edward R. Murrow
Edward R. Murrow
Edward Roscoe Murrow, KBE was an American broadcast journalist. He first came to prominence with a series of radio news broadcasts during World War II, which were followed by millions of listeners in the United States and Canada.Fellow journalists Eric Sevareid, Ed Bliss, and Alexander Kendrick...
interviewed Arnold for national radio in 1947. Radio, the major medium of the day, took to the reports of flying saucers with enthusiasm, primed back in 1938 by The War of the Worlds
The War of the Worlds
The War of the Worlds is an 1898 science fiction novel written by H. G. Wells.The War of the Worlds may also refer to:- Radio broadcasts :* The War of the Worlds , the 1938 radio broadcast by Orson Welles...
on Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
' Mercury Theater on the Air. Hollywood Star Playhouse dramatized a saucer encounter in the story "The Tenth Planet," alien invasions and abductions became common fare and even hosts of mainstream programs such as Superman
Superman
Superman is a fictional comic book superhero appearing in publications by DC Comics, widely considered to be an American cultural icon. Created by American writer Jerry Siegel and Canadian-born American artist Joe Shuster in 1932 while both were living in Cleveland, Ohio, and sold to Detective...
began cracking jokes about them ("I don't believe this flying saucer business at all. Why I just read a report that 20 percent of commercial pilots have never even seen them!" one host quipped).
While the radio drama shows went wild with Venusian embassies and Martian invasions, WOR
WOR (AM)
WOR is a class A , AM radio station located in New York, New York, U.S., operating on 710 kHz. The station has a talk format and has been owned by Buckley Broadcasting since 1987, after the station was sold by RKO. The station has conservative, or right-of-center hosts.Its call letters have no...
radio's late-night talk show host Long John Nebel
Long John Nebel
Long John Nebel was an influential New York City talk radio show host.From the mid 1950s until his death in 1978, Nebel was a hugely popular all-night radio host, with millions of regular listeners and what Donald Bain described as "a fanatically loyal following" to his syndicated program, which...
popularized the real-life theme on his program "Partyline" in New York, which was heard as far west as Chicago and across the Eastern seaboard into Canada, with guests such as George Adamski
George Adamski
George Adamski was a Polish-born American citizen who became widely known in ufology circles, and to some degree in popular culture, after he claimed to have photographed ships from other planets, met with friendly Nordic alien "Space Brothers", and to have taken flights with them...
, the first "contactee", a term Nebel coined, and numerous other guests, including Ray Palmer, Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000...
and L. Sprague de Camp
L. Sprague de Camp
Lyon Sprague de Camp was an American author of science fiction and fantasy books, non-fiction and biography. In a writing career spanning 60 years, he wrote over 100 books, including novels and notable works of non-fiction, including biographies of other important fantasy authors...
. Nebel's show featured the gamut of positions on flying saucers, hosting the most obvious frauds as well as the most ironclad skeptics.
The flying saucer craze quickly broke out of the late night time slot and went mainstream in a host of Hollywood treatments and on the radio serials. Entertaining Comics treated the topic in both its pulp and scientific aspects, publishing an entire issue of Weird Science-Fantasy
Weird Science-Fantasy
Weird Science-Fantasy was a science fiction anthology comic that was part of the EC Comics line in the early 1950s. Over a 14-month span, the comic ran for seven issues, starting in March 1954 with issue #23 and ending with issue #29 in May/June 1955....
(issue 26, carried over from the "Flying Saucer Report" comprising most of issue 25) dedicated to factual accounts of sightings around the country and especially over Washington, D.C., and called on Congress to undertake hearings into the "flying saucer invasion." The new medium of television was accompanied from its very birth by the extraterrestrial flying disc stories.
Confronted on the one side with credible testimony by reliable witnesses and even military personnel with top secret security clearances on the one side and clamor in the public media on the other side, some U.S. military organizations undertook studies to determine the nature of and possible threat posed by the UFOs. Many wondered whether the UFOs were extraterrestrial or whether they were a new Soviet espionage method, and the public and intelligence communities noted the tendency of UFOs to appear over military bases during the early years of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
. One of the earliest investigations was Project Twinkle associated with sightings of green fireballs
Green Fireballs
Green fireballs are a type of unidentified flying object which have been sighted in the sky since the late 1940s . Early sightings primarily occurred in the southwestern United States, particularly in New Mexico...
by scientists and staff with the post-WWII Manhattan Project
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army...
and at Sandia National Laboratories
Sandia National Laboratories
The Sandia National Laboratories, managed and operated by the Sandia Corporation , are two major United States Department of Energy research and development national laboratories....
in the American Southwest. Project Grudge
Project Grudge
Project Grudge was a short-lived project by the U.S. Air Force to investigate unidentified flying objects . Grudge succeeded Project Sign in February, 1949, and was then followed by Project Blue Book. The project formally ended in December 1949, but actually continued on in a very minimal capacity...
soon followed, which in turn was replaced by Project Bluebook.
See also
- Fred CrismanFred CrismanFred Crisman was a writer, educator, broadcaster and self-described "disruption agent" from Tacoma, Washington known for claims of paranormal events and 20th century conspiracies.- Early life :...
- Kenneth ArnoldKenneth ArnoldKenneth A. Arnold was an American aviator and businessman. He is best-known for making what is generally considered the first widely reported unidentified flying object sighting in the United States, after claiming to have seen nine unusual objects flying in a chain near Mount Rainier, Washington...
- Raymond A. PalmerRaymond A. PalmerRaymond Arthur Palmer was the influential editor of Amazing Stories from 1938 through 1949, when he left publisher Ziff-Davis to publish and edit Fate Magazine, and eventually many other magazines and books through his own publishing houses, including Amherst Press and Palmer Publications...
- Roswell UFO incidentRoswell UFO incidentThe Roswell UFO Incident was the recovery of an object that crashed in the general vicinity of Roswell, New Mexico, in June or July 1947, allegedly an extra-terrestrial spacecraft and its alien occupants. Since the late 1970s the incident has been the subject of intense controversy and of...
- Men in BlackMen in BlackMen in Black , in American popular culture and in UFO conspiracy theories, are men dressed in black suits who claim to be government agents who harass or threaten UFO witnesses to keep them quiet about what they have seen. It is sometimes implied that they may be aliens themselves...
- Flying saucerFlying saucerA flying saucer is a type of unidentified flying object sometimes believed to be of alien origin with a disc or saucer-shaped body, usually described as silver or metallic, occasionally reported as covered with running lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly either...
- UFOs
- Shaver Mystery
- BoeingBoeingThe Boeing Company is an American multinational aerospace and defense corporation, founded in 1916 by William E. Boeing in Seattle, Washington. Boeing has expanded over the years, merging with McDonnell Douglas in 1997. Boeing Corporate headquarters has been in Chicago, Illinois since 2001...
- List of UFO sightings
External links
- background check on Crisman by Department of Energy, includes extensive FBI fieldwork on the Maury Island Incident and circumstances surrounding it
- Before Roswell (Maury Island)
- maury island ufo: fred crisman and covert infiltration of ufology, by Kenn ThomasKenn ThomasKenn Thomas is a conspiracy theorist, writer, university library archivist, and editor & publisher of Steamshovel Press, a parapolitical conspiracy magazine...
- The Maury Island UFO, by Kenn ThomasKenn ThomasKenn Thomas is a conspiracy theorist, writer, university library archivist, and editor & publisher of Steamshovel Press, a parapolitical conspiracy magazine...
in Fate, September 2006 - Kenneth Arnold's 1947 Sighting Maury Island Sighting and the Kelso Crash