MAURY ISLAND
Maury Island, 21 June 1947. Harold Dahl's slag story. Arnold asked to look. Capt. Davidson and Lt. Brown collect fragments, take off in a B-25. 1 August, crash near Kelso. Two dead. Story dirty.
122°26'00 W
1. Public Record
Maury Island, Puget Sound, 21 June 1947. Harold Dahl, harbour man, later says a doughnut-shaped object sheds slag onto his boat. His son and a dog are on board in the usual telling. The dog dies. Dahl tells Fred Crisman. Kenneth Arnold, already famous from the 24 June sighting over Rainier, is asked to look. Two Army intelligence officers, Capt. William Davidson and Lt. Frank Brown, fly up from California, collect fragments, and take off again in a B-25. On 1 August 1947 the aircraft comes down near Kelso. Both men die. The official line is an engine fire and a failed extinguisher. The slag becomes the argument.
Ray Palmer pushes the story in print. The FBI and the Air Force spend the rest of the year calling it a hoax with a dead-aircrew problem attached. Crisman later walks through other rooms in American weirdness and does this case no favours. Dahl recedes. The harbour does not give the object back. The two officers stay dead.
A boat. A slag. A B-25 that should have been a routine hop.
Davidson and Brown fly out with fragments. On 1 August the aircraft comes down near Kelso.
2. Date of Incident
Claimed dump 21 June 1947. Arnold involvement late June into July. Crash 1 August 1947.
3. Location
Maury Island, Washington. Approximate 47°22 N 122°26 W. Crash near Kelso.
4. Official Narrative
Air Force and FBI treat the island story as a hoax. Official narrative of the B-25 is mechanical failure. No public finding that the slag brought the aircraft down.
5. Witness Layer
Dahl. Crisman. Arnold. Davidson and Brown, who do not get to finish their report. Later Palmer readers.
A doughnut-shaped object sheds slag onto his boat.
The official line is an engine fire and a failed extinguisher.
6. Recovery Logistics
Fragments collected and then lost with the aircraft or in later handling. No type specimen in a clean chain.
7. Assessment
Two things can sit on one page. Dahl's doughnut may be paper. Davidson and Brown are not. They went north for a harbour story and died on the way home with whatever they had put in the bay. A hoax that still kills two intelligence officers is not a closed joke.
Crisman's later life is a stain, not a disproof of the crash. This folder files the island as dirty and the Kelso afternoon as hard. Do not tidy one with the other.
8. Materials & Remains
Period press. Crash record. Slag claims without a clean tray. Two dead officers.
9. Key Personnel
Harold Dahl : The boat.
Fred Crisman : The amplifier.
Capt. William Davidson / Lt. Frank Brown : The B-25.
10. Aftermath
The first great American saucer summer keeps this harbour as a bad taste. Palmer sells copies. The families bury two men who had gone to look at rocks.
11. Current Archive Status
Status: Jun 1947 slag. B-25 1 Aug. Two dead. Story dirty.
Confidence: High that Davidson and Brown died in that B-25. Low that the slag is what Dahl said it was. Low that the official engine-fire line is the whole of the aircraft.
Filing note
A harbour boat, a doughnut in the telling, a dog that does not come back, two officers packing rocks into a bomber, an extinguisher that does not work over Kelso.
They went north for fragments. The fragments did not need to be genuine for the afternoon to be fatal.