The Maury Island UFO Incident: The Story behind the Air Force’s first military plane crash (2 page)

I would personally like to salute Davidson and Brown as the tragic
heroes of the story, as those two intrepid airmen were the first UFO
investigators for the 4th Air Force headquartered at Hamilton Field,
California. Twenty years later I was one of the last UFO investigators
for the Fourth Air Force, serving as Base UFO Project Officer at
Kingsley Field, Oregon, from the Autumn of 1967 to the end of 1969,
when the U.S. Air Force discontinued Project Blue Book.
It was
during that time that I became interested in the colorful career of Fred
Lee Crisman, one of the principal characters in the Maury Island story,
and I have continued that interest ever since.
When I met Charlette
LeFevre and Philip Lipson in 2007, I found them to be enthusiastic
researchers who were energetically pursuing and impartially sifting
through the facts about the Maury Island incident. This book is the
result of their efforts. It presents new evidence and new analysis, and
every reader will find it intriguing and informative.

Larry Haapanen, Ph.D.
Lewiston, Idaho
January 10, 2013

Early June
- Dahl and Crisman stated that in the early part of June
they sent a publisher, Ray Palmer some rock formations they found on
Maury Island.
(FBI Seattle Report, August 7, 1947)

2:00 pm off Maury Island
The story goes, Harold Dahl was
patrolling the East bay of Maury Island close in to the shore in Puget
Sound Washington.
“I as captain was steering my patrol boat. On board were two
crewmen, my fifteen year old son, and his dog
.”
Dahl claimed to have
witnessed six doughnut shaped aircraft about 2000 feet above the
water. Five of these aircraft were circling around the sixth one, which
was stationary.
“It appeared to me that the center aircraft was in some kind of trouble
as it was losing altitude fairly rapidly. The other aircraft stayed at a
distance of about two hundred feet above the center one as if they
were following the center one down. The center aircraft came to rest
almost directly overhead at about five hundred feet above the water.”
COS p.31

The aircraft had no motors or propellers and made no sound.
The
aircraft were about 100 feet in diameter. Each had a hole in the center
about 25 feet in diameter. They were “shell like gold and silver” color.
Dahl would explain that they saw no motors, or any visible sightings of
propulsion and to the best of their hearing made no sound.
The
surface appeared to be burled metal and was brilliant like “a Buick
dashboard” All of the aircraft seemed to have large five to six feet
round portholes equally spaced around the outside of their donut
exterior.
The craft also appeared to have dark, circular continuous
window on the inside and bottom of the craft. Dahl said he took three
or four photographs. The center aircraft began spewing forth what
seemed like thousands of newspapers from somewhere on the inside of
its center. These newspapers, which were later described as a white
type of very light metal, fluttered to earth, most of them lighting in the
bay. The white metal was followed by tons of hot black lava-like rock
into the water, which created steam upon hitting the water. The falling
slag is said to have wounded Dahl’s son Charles and killed his dog.
Charles was taken to a local hospital in Tacoma for first aid and the
dog’s body was buried at sea on their return trip.

Dahl tried to pick up several pieces of the metal and found them
very hot. Dahl and the crewmen loaded a number of pieces of the
metal and newspaper type slag aboard the boat.
The wheelhouse on
the boat was reported damaged.

Later that day Dahl related his experience to his supervisor Fred
Crisman who he called his “superior officer.”
Crisman said he would
investigate the beach.
Dahl judged that at least twenty tons of the
debris had fallen in the water and on the beach at Maury Island.

Note:
There is a discrepancy between Kenneth Arnold’s timeline and
the FBI files.
This book follows the FBI timelines as they had
additional statements from other persons.

7:00 am
- Harold Dahl claimed
to have been paid a visit at his
home with what we would call
a “Man-in-Black...”
The man
“wore a black suit, was of
medium height.” He had been
driving a new “1947 Buick
sedan.”
The man invited him
to a nook breakfast cafe in the
“uptown section” of Tacoma
and began to relate in “great
detail” the experience that

Harold and his crew had seen as if he had been there himself.
The
man made strong not-so-veiled threats and told Dahl he and his crew
“had made an observation that shouldn’t have happened” and that “if
he loved his family and didn’t want anything to happen to his general
welfare, he would not discuss his experience.”
Dahl would later relate
he didn’t put much stock in what this fellow said and didn’t intend to
keep his experience a secret later discussing the event with other
seamen at the pier.
Crisman claimed to have gone out to Maury Island, seen the bizarre
white and black material, and collected samples himself. Crisman also
claimed to have seen one of the disks himself come out of a cloudbank.

3:00 pm
Kenneth Arnold, a pilot who ran a fire equipment business
took off from Chehalis Washington on a “clear as crystal” day on his
way to Yakima. Arnold would state he wasn’t in the air more than two
or three minutes when he saw a bright flash catch his attention.
He
next observed over the North face of Mt Rainier “a chain of nine
peculiar looking aircraft flying from North to South” at approximately
9,500 ft. for over two and a half minutes. Arnold assumed they were at
first were jet planes but would change his mind when he estimated
their speed between Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams at 1,200mph.
Arnold
was extremely curious, as he had never seen planes fly so close to the
mountaintops and aircraft
with
no
tails.
Arnold observed this
formation dipping and changing their course slightly but essentially
keeping the same elevation in a formation similar to that of a flock of
geese “in a diagonal chain like line.”

As the formation approached Mt. Rainier, Arnold was able to
observe the disk outlines against the snow quite plainly and estimated
the chain of disks to be five miles long. With the disks at about twenty
to twenty - five miles from Arnold and at the same elevation, Arnold
had a clear line of sight to the UFOs.

Arnold would later relate the reason he was flying near Mt. Rainier
is he had been looking for a downed C-46 Marine Transport plane that
went missing Dec. 10, 1946.
It is believed that the C-46 Marine
Transport plane crashed on Mt. Rainier with 32 men aboard and there
was a $5,000 reward for finding the wreck. Eventually it was found
July 21
^st
, 1947. The Marine transport would be later mentioned by a
mysterious informant as having been sabotaged.
Arnold would also write in his first accounting of this sighting that he
openly invited an investigation by the Army and the FBI “as to the
authenticity of my story or a mental and physical evaluation as to my
capabilities, I received no interest from these two important protective
forces of our country until two weeks after my observation.”
I Did See
The Flying Disks.
Fate Magazine, Vol. 1, #1.1948.

Frank Ryman sighting.
US
Coast
Guardsman
Frank
Ryman of Seattle had a UFO
sighting and his resulting photo
of
a UFO would
catch
the
attention
of
news and
later
Kenneth
Arnold
and
Capt.
E.J.Smith.

“Yeoman Frank Ryman, off
duty from his job with Coast
Guard public relations, said he
saw a shiny disc flying across the Seattle skies. Ryman rushed
into his home in Lake City Washington, at that time outside the
Seattle city limits in King County.

“I grabbed my Speed Graphic (press camera) and field glasses
and ran back outside,” the 26-year-old told the Seattle P-I. “The
disc came over about 9,000 or 10,000 feet.
It was flashing
brilliant silver in the sun.
The picture, he said, was taken while the disc was directly
overhead. He used Super-XX film, a 1/50 shutter speed with an
f 22 lens opening.

“There was no noise,” he said, adding he watched it with
binoculars. “No sound of engines. And I am positive there were
no wings or fins in sight. It definitely was not a plane.”

After spotting the object and talking with neighbors, Ryman called the
Post-Intelligencer and rushed to the newspaper’s darkroom at Sixth
Avenue and Wall Street.

“Enlarged many times the disc showed up clearly as a slightly blurred
whitish object,” the newspaper’s account read.”
-McNerthney, Casey
.
UFO frenzy was sparked here 65 years ago;
Seattle PI, June 27, 2012

National wire photo of Captain
E.J. Smith, Kenneth Arnold, and
First
Officer Ralph Stevens
reviewing Ryman’s photo, July
5, 1947

Arnold
first
met
Capt.
E.J.
Smith
regarding Smith’s own
sighting
on
July
4th.
Locating
the
Seattle

offices of the International News Service in Seattle after landing at
Boeing field, Arnold was escorted into a room where Capt. Smith and
his co-pilot Ralph Stevens were reviewing a UFO photo taken by
Frank Ryman.
Capt. Smith and Ralph Stevens had taken off from
Boise in their DC-3 and had observed nine disks flying in a loose
formation.
They called stewardess Martie Morrow to the cockpit and
she saw them also. The pilots and stewardess observed the formation
for over ten
minutes as the formation
seemed to
take off
at
tremendous speed and observed at one point where three of the disks
clustered together and the fourth flying some distance away.