Maury Island: What really Happened?

Deep in the summer of 1947, something happened in an east bay off Maury Island, Washington. It had all the ear marks of a trace UFO case, years before any other trace case and was in the same time frame of the most famous case of all. Roswell. Many UFO researchers have looked into it and most think it was a hoax, mainly for money and fame. At a time when I had a lot of time to investigate, and I live in the same area, I decided to tried to cover all the bases, to find out the truth.
As with most history, the truth lies buried between the lines.

The stories

The Coming of the Saucers

To start off right on this case we must start at the beginning. The original story. So here it is word for word from Arnolds book “The Coming of the Saucers."

“On June 21, 1947 in the afternoon about two o’clock I was patrolling the East Bay of Maury Island close in to the shore. This practically uninhabited island lies directly opposite Tacoma about three miles from mainland. This day the sea was rather rough and there were numerous low hanging clouds. I, as captain, was steering my patrol boat close to the shore of a bay on Maury Island. On board were two crewmen, my fifteen-year-old son and his dog.

As I looked up from the wheel on my boat I noticed six very large doughnut-shaped aircraft. I would judge they were at about 2,000 feet the water and almost directly overhead. At first glance I thought them to be balloons as they seemed to be stationary. However, upon further observance, five of these strange aircraft were circling very slowly around the sixth one which was stationary in the center of the formation. 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.

All on board our boat were watching these aircraft with a great deal of interest as they apparently had no motors, propellers , or any visible signs of propulsion, and to the best of our hearing they made no sound. In describing the aircraft I would say they were at least one hundred feet in diameter. Each had a hole in the center, approximately twenty-five feet in diameter. They were all a sort shell-like gold and silver color. Their surface seemed of metal and appeared to be burled because when the light shone on them through the clouds they were brilliant, not all one brilliance, but many brilliance’s, something like a Buick dashboard. All of the aircraft seemed to have large portholes equally spaced around the outside of their doughnut exterior. These portholes were from five to six feet in diameter and were round. They also appeared to have a dark, circular, continuous window on the inside and bottom of their doughnut shape as though it were an observation window.
All of us aboard the boat were afraid this center balloon was going to crash in the bay, and just a little while before it stopped lowering, we had pulled our boat over to the beach and got out with our harbor patrol camera. I took three or four photographs of these balloons.
The center balloon-like aircraft remained stationary at about five hundred feet from the water while the other five aircraft kept circling over it. After about five or six minutes one of the aircraft from the circling formation left its place in the formation and lowered itself down right next to the stationary aircraft. In fact, it appeared to touch it and stayed stationary next to the center aircraft as if it were giving some kind of assistance for about three or four minutes.

It was then we heard a dull thud, like an underground explosion or a thud similar to a man stamping his heel on damp ground. Immediately following this sound the center aircraft began spewing forth what seemed like thousands of newspapers from somewhere on the inside of its center. These newspapers, which turned out to be a white type of very light metal, fluttered to earth, most of them lighting in the bay. Then it seemed to hail on us, in the bay and over the beach, black or darker type of metal which looked similar to lava rock. We did not know if this metal was coming from the aircraft but assumed it was, as it fell at the same time the white type metal was falling. However, since these fragments were of a darker color, we did not observe them until they started hitting the beach and the bay. All of these latter fragments seemed hot, almost molten. When they hit the bay, steam rose from the water.

We ran for shelter under a cliff on the beach and behind logs to protect ourselves from the falling debris. In spite of our protection, my son’s arm was injured by one of the falling fragments and our dog was hit and killed. We buried the dog at sea on our return trip to Tacoma.
After this rain of metal seemed over, all of these strange aircraft lifted slowly and drifted out to the westward, which is out to sea. They rose and disappeared at a tremendous height. The center aircraft, which had spewed the debris, did not seem to be hindered in its flight and still remained in the center of the formation as they all rose and disappeared out to sea.
We tried to pick up several pieces of the metal or fragments and found them very hot -- in fact, I almost burned my fingers -- but after some of them had cooled we loaded a considerable number of the pieces aboard the boat. We also picked up some of the metal which had looked like falling newspapers.

My crew and I discussed this observance for awhile and I attempted to radio from my patrol boat back to my base. The static was so great it was impossible for me to reach my radio station. This I attributed to the presence of these aircraft, as my radio had been in perfect operating order and the weather would not have caused this amount of interference.
The wheelhouse on our boat had been hit by falling debris and damaged. We immediately started our engines and went directly to Tacoma, where my boy was given first aid at the hospital there. Upon reaching the dock I had to tell my superior officer how the boat had been damaged and why the dog had not returned with us. I related our experience to Fred L. Crisman, my superior officer. I could plainly see that he did not believe it and I guess I don’t blame him, but we gave him the camera with its film and fragments of metal we had loaded aboard as proof of our story. Fred L. Crisman decided he would at least go and investigate the beach where I judged at least twenty tons of debris had fallen.
I might add that these strange aircraft appeared completely round, but seemed a little squashed on the top and on the bottom as if you placed a large board on an inner tube and squashed it slightly. The film from our camera, developed showed these strange aircraft, but the negatives were covered with spots similar to a negative that has been close to an X-ray room before it was exposed except that the spots printed white instead of black as in the usual case.

This was the story that Harold A. Dahl related to me (Arnold) the evening of July 29, 1947 in Room 502 in the Winthrop Hotel in Tacoma, Washington.”

Arnold later said that the above was verbatim as he had and used one of the first portable recorders available. He also took movies of everything as he investigated.

When “Coming of the Saucers” was published in 1952 Arnold never said it was a hoax. Later in the book, after the crash of the B-25 Arnold met a Colonel Sanders from McCord AFB that took him to a Tacoma smelter, (must have been Asarco in Ruston) and tried to show him slag like the pieces from Dahl and Crisman. Arnold said they weren’t quite the same. They didn’t feel alike. This is a small thing but when Arnold tried to keep a piece, for an ashtray Sanders made him give it up. If it was just smelter slag then it should have been no big deal. Sanders wanted every piece, which he got from Arnold and Smith. He put them in the back of his car which is the last place they saw them. The way Sanders acted made Arnold see the incident and the debris as something important. In some ways it was like Roswell, for the same reasons. If the material is just a weather balloon then Marcels son should still have the small pieces he saved and if it is just slag from a local mill then Arnold and Smith should have their pieces.

I don’t know if the Air Force or other agency got to the lab in Chicago but the book does give a basic analyses of the slag Dahl had and a breakdown of Tacoma slag. They were not the same. The main thing being a lack of iron as used in steel milling.


Aug. 1947 Tacoma Times	Pictures	and sideline on the slag

Smiths story

For the FBI, E.J. Smith gave a disposition at the City-County building in Seattle. In it he mentioned the names of the others on board Dahls boat at the time of the incident. In my copy of the disposition the names are redacted out, so I will try to see if I can get a copy of it from the Seattle government. Although Smith was getting his information from Dahl and Crisman the disposition with all the names should be a help.

FBI files

The FBI investigated Dahl and Crisman. The reports they sent back had two basic stories, the one above and one in which Dahl and his son found the strange debris in a gravel pit on Maury Island. The FBI investigated the whole story as told by Arnold including the “mystery phone calls” to the local papers and the crash of the B-25 with the A-2 agents aboard.

The final thing in the report that seemed to some to make it being a hoax absolute ,was a stringer for a newspaper and informant for the FBI met with Dahl at his house. Dahls wife said “quit lying about this” and attacked him with a knife. Later researchers would take this as proof. But if you combine it with Dahls remarks about his family problems ,almost losing his job, lose of their son, his wives sickness, and plain bad luck. You can see how she might feel about the whole thing. I don’t think it proves anything as she was not there. If Dahls son or the crewmen said it never happened it would have been more meaningful.

Keels slant

John Keel wrote about it in a compilation of reports in the late seventies. He took Dahls story at face value but turned the last section, on the radiation spots on the film into his answer to what the “Aircraft” were. He thought that it was the government dumping nuclear material in the Sound.

The investigations:

When you investigate anything, to get to the truth you must cover all the ground. Talk to as many people as possible connected with it, even in minor ways, visit the site where the event occurred and just trace down every angle. When people read about it years later they will see the holes.
In this case we only have a few was to go. Most of the people involved are dead and many people believe it is a hoax.

Arnolds

Arnold was not an investigator, he was a private pilot that had not served in World War II. He seemed to know little of the military or intelligence. This may seem harsh but it will be more meaningful as we get deeper into the incident.

After tying down his plane Arnold called around Tacoma looking for a place to stay. As a lark he called the best place in town ,the Winthrop Hotel and was surprised to find a room in his name. For an investigator this should have set off alarms and he did try to talk to the clerk he had on the phone but the didn’t pursue it beyond that.

He called Dahl when he was situated in the hotel. Dahl said that he wanted to forget the whole thing, he had been having problems at work, he had almost lost his job, he nearly lost his son, and his wife was sick. Some how through a freak tide he had lost a log boom that meant allot of money to him. He blamed it all on coincidence but it had started after June 21 when the saw the objects. Arnold finally talked him into coming down for an interview, the one above.

He did get their statements as to what happened, but he failed to talk to the other crewmen or Dahls son. If he had met Dahls son, Charles he could have asked him about the claim of being hit and seen any wound. If there was none then the hoax would have been proven. He could have talked to the nurse or doctor that performed first aid and asked about the state of the people after the incident but he did not. The other crew are not even mentioned by name in anything I can find. If it was a hoax set up by Crisman or Dahl then the others would have known. If you want to find the truth you talk to everyone involved and see if the stories match. Usually they won’t be exact as everyone sees things differently. The other evidence could have been as simple as the Roster for who would be aboard the boat on the day of the incident, this was not seen either.

As Arnold was a pilot and had a plane at his disposal so he could have shown Dahl a map and asked him where the bay was that it had happened. Dahl should have been able to pinpoint it exactly. With a tide chart Arnold could have found a good time to go and flown out to the site himself. If there were twenty tons of anything it would have shown up on the beach. Arnold didn’t do this. He did go down to Dahls workplace but found the boat in disrepair so he didn’t go out with them. If you read the newspapers of the time you will find that pilots were actually going out and landing on beaches in the Sound to go claming. It is a puzzle to me why Arnold didn’t fly to the beach and check it out for himself.

My own

I began looking into this episode when I had some time to spare. At first I thought that the book I was thinking of would be called “The Summer of ‘47” as most of the incidents I was looking at took place in that time frame. It seems that the people looking into Roswell think that it was the only event in 1947, it wasn’t. Along with the Maury Island incident was a crash of something in the Tabacco Root Mountains of Montana. It was quashed the next day, like Roswell, by the pilots superior saying it was just “hanger talk”. Though there are reports of the military looking for something in the area the next day. An obscure one I found happened the day after Maury. Archie Eddes and his family saw something crash, with a blue flash, on the Moses Lake to Pasco road in eastern Washington. A month later he and a friend went searching for the crash site from an aircraft and found nothing. This event did appear in the local paper and got out as a paragraph on the newswire. No one at the time looked for any other witnesses who could have seen it or did a true systematic search for the crash site.

One of the things that seem to clench the Maury Island incident as a hoax was the debris themselves. The heavy dark matter looked like lava rock and the white metal appeared to be aluminum. Arnold said that this appeared to be normal aluminum scrap that could be found at any airport but he saw something somewhat funny , a square rivet. I think that rivet might help solve this mystery. The only pictures we have of the debris are , a picture of someone checking it out in a local paper and a very low res set of pictures from the FBI files on the affair. The newspaper picture looks like a lava rock but he FBI pictures are a bit strange as you can plainly see something that looks like webbing in the sample. This would not have been found in mill slag.

If twenty tons of whatever fell on the beach in 1947 would it still be there fifty years later. I went looking. I waited for a minus tide on the island and walked the beach for about three miles. From the southeast end to about the middle of the east coast. I found mounds that could have been it but as the exact spot was never really recorded I won’t know it I really found it. On the north end is an old light house and I have always wondered if they saw something on that cloudy, rainy day.

Looking into the incident you must also look into the lives of the people involved. I started in the Tacoma Library. It has a history section that has been added on over the years. Squirreled away in the back are many old phone books and city registers.

I found that from 1945 till 1947 Harold A. Dahl had lived in the same duplex. He worked at the Seattle-Tacoma Ship yard throughout the war, until the end of the war shutdown the yard. When Fred Lee Crisman came back they fell in together in a log salvage business. In this they helped the local Harbor Patrol Association. They were not true, official Harbor Patrol members but they did work for the Association. This seemed to be a sore point with some debunkers. If they weren’t really Harbor Patrol then they couldn’t be believed. It is just more misdirection from the skeptics.

An obit:

DAHL, HAROLD A (TRADER) (Died: Saturday, January 30, 1982) - Indexed in: 01 FEB 1982 C-12 - SURPLUS DEALER

Fred Crisman was flying fighters in the Pacific until the end. Somehow he seems to have been connected with the OSS in World War II also, it may have been in his Air Commando group. In a link to Palmer he sent a letter to his magazine saying he was hit by a Ray Gun in a cave in Burma. Somehow this was linked to the “Shaver Mystery” and the underground world of the Deros. This does seem very strange and some would say Fred is a few bricks shy of a load but in my investigations I found the Japanese were working on a Ray Gun in World War II. It was in development for a long time and tested on animals. The microwave energy caused numerous problems for the researchers. Offically it was never used but offically the A-bomb didn’t exist unitil it exploded above Hiroshima. When he got home they made him a liaison for Veteran Affairs. Fred ran for county coroner in 1945 but never won the seat.

More on Crisman:

From "Alien Agenda by Jim Marrs"

"According to CIA files, Crisman too was a member of the OSS during World War II , serving as a liaison officer with the British Royal Air Force. At the end of the war, Crisman, supposedly discharged from the military, entered a special OSS Internal Security School and was quietly transferred to the newly formed CIA (the CIA was chartered in 1947), where he operated as an "extended agent", primarily as an internal security specialist in "disruption" activities. The files show Crisman was involved in a highly classified subsection of Internal Security known as 1Sece, Easy Section, a disruption planning unit whose very existence was denied by the CIA The CIA documents detailed Crisman's activities over the years---including secret reports to the agency on military officers during the Korean War and company officials while working for Boeing in Seattle--but no mention of the Maury Island affair."

One of the things has bothered people looking into Maury Island is the lack of specifics about the incident.

1. Where did it happen?

"On June 21, 1947 in the afternoon about two o'clock I was patrolling the east bay of Maury Island close in to the shore."

And

"3. The following summarizes what was related by <redacted> to major Sander as to the substance of the interrogation by Lt. Brown and Capt. Davidson. That on 21 Jun 47 <redacted> was proceeding south of Maury Island in <redacted> boat."

The east bay of Maury Island? If you look at a map, there is no east bay. The two bays on Maury/Vashon are Quartermaster Harbor and Tramp Harbor. Tramp Harbor is midway up the island(s) and Quartermaster is between them on the south.

Since Dahl told B&D "south of Maury Island" but still in the east bay, it must be somewhere between Point Robinson and Piner Point. Two gravel pits exist in that area.

Here is a panoramic shot of the east side of Maury Island from Point Robinson down south to Piner Point. The touches of red in the green of the shoreline are the gravel pits.

As you can see the whole east side is a wide bay.

Here are a few pictures of the beach where it may have occured:


The Beach, a wideangle	The Beach	The Beach looking toward Quartermaster Harbot

Some slag found on the Beach	Rock with flat surface	Another angle

2. What was the name of the boat, and who owned it?

Thomas thinks he got correct info from another investigator, the boat was the "North Queen" and the Coast Guard made an error as they said it was registered to "Haldor Dahl". I am not sure if Haldor is a relative of Harold but Haldor is a boat-builder and the registration gives his correct address. If it was a typo then the address would have been Harold's.

In the Springer Report, he touches on it:

"3. The following summarizes what was related by <redacted> to major Sander as to the substance of the interrogation by Lt. Brown and Capt. Davidson. That on 21 Jun 47 <redacted> was proceeding south of Maury Island in <redacted> boat. Five flying discs came down out of the clouds and circled slowly around the bay, dropping to an estimated elevation of 500 feet. These discs appeared round and flattened similar to a deflated automobile innertube. They were judged by <redacted> to be approximately 100 feet across with a 25 foot opening in the center. The outside edge of the object had round portholes and the inner ring had square windows or portholes. The discs were silent and from his viewpoint he could see no means of propulsion. One of these discs appeared to falter and waver in the air, another of these aforementioned five discs dropped down close to the disc that appeared to waver and bumped it, dumping "tons" of the stuff as pictured in enclosure 6 and 7, on his boat, knocking off the handrail, horn, and generally damaging the boat to the extent of $200.00 and killing <redacted> dog.

AGENTS NOTE: This officer in the company of Major Sander, boarded the aforementioned boat where it was docked in the Tacoma harbor on 6 Aug 47. A hand rail was missing, but the area where the hand rail previously fastened had been painted over with several coats of paint and was streaked by the weather. The deck and rear of the cabin were of very thin construction and the cabin further had glass on the front and sides. It is this officers opinion that if any of the objects presented by <redacted> as samples of the material dropped by the flying disc had hit this boat, it would have certainly been necessary to replace the foredeck and cabin roof. These two areas were <something> heavily coated with several coats of paint and had deep weather cracks that would take several seasons to acquire.

<redacted> who owns the boat and operates a <redacted> evidently visited the area at Maury Island to check <redacted> story.

Here is Arnolds story on the boat:

We felt that Morello meant what he was saying. We thanked him kindly for letting us listen to the recorded interview, go Smithy’s car out of the garage across the street from the hotel and drove down to the pier where we were met by Crisman. We all walked out on the pier and down the stairway to Crisman’s boat. I took movies of the boat and of Captain Smith looking at the superstructure, then I went aboard the boat, too.

This was the boat that Crisman said the damage had happened to. It was kind of a grayish color, a very small type of partially enclosed inboard fishing boat. It in no wise looked like the harbor patrol boats that I had seen in pictures. After inspecting the boat we could see where some repairs had taken place, but nothing like the damage as described by either Fred Crisman or Dahl in the hotel room had led us to expect.

<A dialog on the pictures>

After inspecting the top surface and cabin of the boat Captain Smith and I went down to the engine room. A rather foreign looking gentleman of slight build was tinkering with something on the motor. He made the remark to Fred Crisman that the engine wouldn’t work. I know that I thought it was no wonder the engine wouldn’t start. It was a pretty junky looking affair and apparently ill taken care of. While Captain Smith was standing in the doorway, the mechanic took Crisman by the arm, pulled him to one side, and whispered to him.

So we don't know the name of the boat yet. I will keep looking.

3. Who were the other people on the boat?

One, his son Charles. May be still alive. Had another strange thing happen around the time of the incident. He "went missing" for a week. He was finally found in Lusk, Montana, with no recollection of how he got there or who he was. Arnold and others didn't see this as anything having to do with the incident. It needs to be investigated more.

Who were the two other crewmen. Arnold may have met them but didn't ask anything about the incident.

The next morning, July 31, Captain Smith and I were awakened by Crisman and Dahl. Their arms were loaded with the heavy lava rock fragments and Crisman had a number of pieces of the white metal that he said came from the aircraft that Harold Dahl told us about. Captain Smith and I were inspecting the fragments when Crisman broke in, saying that the men from their crews were down at a café waiting for breakfast.

We hurriedly dressed, locked the fragments in the room, left the hotel, got in our respective cars and drove to the lower section of town where there was a little workingman's café. There, seated at a large round table covered with an oilcloth were two or three brawny looking men. We could tell by the various greetings between these men, Crisman, and Dahl that they were associates in their salvage and harbor patrol work, presumably their crew members. Captain Smith and I were introduced and we took places around the table. We could smell the bacon frying and the hot cakes cooking in the kitchen. I remember it smelled mighty good.

These men seemed to be very friendly and appeared to have every confidence in their superior officers. We did not ask them to verify the stories of Crisman and Dahl. We felt they would if they had been asked as a number of references were made to the original sighting of Dahl on June 21 on Maury Island. No attempt to settle anything was made at breakfast. We all had healthy appetites and it was more or less a meeting of friendly exchange of words.

4.Where did Crisman and Dahl work?

This should be easy to find out, but I have tried and still seem to hit blank walls.

From Springer Report:

<Redacted> who owns the boat and operates a <redacted> evidently visited the area at Maury Island to check <redacted> story.

The above seems to say Crisman owned the business and the boat.

In the Report, he finds Crisman entered in the City Directory with telephone numbers for home and business.

A check of the Tacoma city directory was made on <redacted> which indicated his home was at <redacted>, telephone <redacted>, business address listed as <redacted>, telephone <redacted>

Here is what I found.

This is from the 1947 Tacoma City Directory. Fred L. Crisman has no business phone. Neither does Dahl. Where was Springer looking for this info? There is only one type of directory in the Tacoma Library now, maybe there were more then?

In looking for anything that might help, I just looked for lumber/logging companies in 1947. In the Aug 19, 1947 FBI report a (?)illwater Ave. was mentioned. As far as I can tell there is no (?)illwater Ave. in Tacoma. The closest I came to anything that looks like what Crisman and Dahl were doing is a company named the "Tidewater Log Patrol" on Marineview Drive owned by the Scott Family. Other logging companies kept there log pools there too. Were they working there?

From the Tacoma Public Library:

Owners were given the legal right to pursue logs onto private property. But chasing lost logs took time, and owners found it unprofitable to maintain search boats. So, in 1928, a group of them banded together to finance the Washington Log Patrol. Part of its assignment was to keep poachers from precipitating spills by sabotaging the boom-log pens that kept loose logs confined while under tow. But the patrol also retrieved floating and beached strays.

Complaints about piracy declined after the log patrol hit the water. Some observers attributed the drop to the plunge in log prices during the 1930s Depression.

With World War II, logs became valuable again, but manpower was short and wages were high. Log larceny continued to languish. The Patrol spent most of its time retrieving floaters or beached logs. With peace, demobilization and log prices still high, the Patrol activity increased.

Then someone noticed that Chapter 154 did not give mill owners exclusive rights to log patrol work. Private citizens could round up strays on their own and return them to the owners. Soon a dozen or more free-lance patrol boats were roaming Puget sound in search of runaway fir, hemlock and cedar. The going price for returned branded logs averaged $17.50 a thousand board feet.

Here is something more on log patrolling and log poaching:

Log patroling and log poaching

Conclusions:

Trying to reach conclusions about an incident that occurred 50 years ago is hard. You can look at the facts and try to make up you own mind. But new evidence or something that comes out of left field can wake it up too.

Dahl said in his accounting of the incident that he thought they were balloons. He said it four times. He only mentioned the “doughnut shape” twice. Other people discussing the event seem to only mention the “doughnut” or “inner-tube” and never seem to say anything about the “balloons.” If he was right and they were balloons what would it mean?

ETs don’t use balloons. So ETs are out. Why the mystery if they were just balloons? Thereby hangs a tale.

If you look at the other pages on my site you will see the Fugos or Japanese Balloon Bombs. They existed and were kept secret till almost the end of the War.

Reports:

The Reports below are from the Maury Island FBI/AAF Files. I will try to put the rest on when I have them scanned. I am also trying to track more info on Crisman and Dahl.