The incident was said to have occurred on June 21, 1947. Harold A. Dahl, a log salvager on Maury Island (situated in Puget Sound between Tacoma and Seattle) who helped the local Harbor Patrol Association, was out on the bay with his son, dog, and two crewmen. He saw six large, metallic, doughnut-shaped aircraft, about one hundred feet in diameter and two thousand feet overhead. Five objects circled around one that seemed to be in trouble and losing altitude. Dahl heard no sound, and saw no motors, propellers, or means of propulsion. The objects had large, round portholes on the outside and a dark, continuous, “observation” window toward the bottom and inside. As Dahl took three or four photographs, one craft moved toward the center, apparently to help the troubled craft. A dull explosion followed, and the troubled craft ejected a stream of light metal which “seemed like thousands of newspapers,” then ejected a heavier and darker type of metal, similar to lava rock. After this, the craft lifted slowly and drifted out over the Pacific Ocean, disappearing from sight. Dahl said the heavy material damaged his boat, killed his dog, and injured the arm of his son, requiring a trip to the hospital. He described the event to a man he described as his supervisor, Fred L. Crisman, estimating that twenty tons of material had fallen.
Actually, Fred Crisman was an intelligence agent, formerly of the OSS and soon to be of the CIA, who specialized in internal “disruption” activities. This fact was unknown for many years, then suspected, then finally proven with the discovery of certain CIA documents. More on that in a moment.
Dahl also claimed that the next morning an ordinary-looking man in a black suit arrived at his house and invited him to breakfast. This was not as unusual as it might seem. Many lumber buyers called on people in Dahl’s business to buy salvaged logs. Dahl followed him to a diner, ordered breakfast, and listened in astonishment as the man related Dahl’s entire experience from the day before, all in precise detail. “What I have said is proof to you,” said the man, “that I know a great deal more about this experience of yours than you will want to believe.” He warned Dahl not to discuss the experience. Dahl considered the man to be a crackpot and mailed some fragments to Raymond Palmer, a Chicago publisher of the paranormal.
Around July 22, 1947, Palmer wrote to Kenneth Arnold, mentioning the Maury Island case, and asked whether Arnold would look into it and send back some fragments. Arnold did not think Palmer was especially “cranked up.” He had merely asked Arnold to check into it during one of his routine flights to the area. On July 25, two representatives of military intelligence of the Fourth Air Force, Lt. Frank M. Brown and Capt. William Davidson, visited Arnold, and told him to contact them “if anything of an unusual nature” came to his attention. Despite his growing interest, Arnold wavered on Maury Island until Palmer wired him two hundred dollars through Western Union on the twenty-seventh. It should be remembered that army intelligence was then using Western Union as part of Operation Shamrock.
On Tuesday, July 29, 1947, Arnold took off from a private cow pasture in Boise, headed for Tacoma. Only his wife knew of his exact plans. A few of his friends knew he was going but not when, and he did not file a flight plan. En route, he had another, lesser known, UFO sighting, of about twenty small objects moving at a “terrific rate of speed.” Arnold took movie pictures of them, which turned out poorly, then landed at La Grande Airfield, Oregon, where he phoned aviation editor Dave Johnson about the sighting, and mentioned it to some Eastern Air Lines crew members. By dusk, he reached Tacoma and phoned around for a room. He assumed this would be difficult, as Tacoma’s housing shortage made hotel rooms scarce. When he called the city’s most prominent hotel, the Winthrop, he learned to his surprise that a room and bath were already reserved for “Kenneth Arnold.” Who had known about his arrival, he wondered, and how?
