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Maury Island UFO Incident (1947): Hoax, Leaks, and the Men in Black
On June 21, 1947, Harold Dahl reported six UFOs near Maury Island with a slag fragment supposedly killing his dog and injuring his son; a tall man in a black suit allegedly warned him not to discuss it, Dahl brought the tale to Fred Crisman, who sent slag samples to Chicago where Ray Palmer circulated them, while Kenneth Arnold became entangled with Crisman, Dahl, and army intelligence officers at a Tacoma hotel meeting from which details leaked to the press; two Army Air Corps investigators, Captain William L. Davidson and Lieutenant Frank M. Brown, later perished in a crash near Kelso, Washington, with two survivors identified as Elmer L. Taft and Woodrow D. Matthews; an anonymous caller and Captain E. H. Smith of United Airlines fed sensational leaks to multiple newspapers, photographs Dahl claimed to have taken were reportedly lost or never produced, the FBI concluded the case was likely a hoax (a view echoed by Project Blue Book head Edward Ruppelt), though some UFO researchers still regard it as significant or unresolved and some speculate it was used to distract attention from other concealed issues.
