Maury Island incident: the flying-disc story the FBI recorded as a fabricated hoax (1947)
Harold Dahl claimed six doughnut-shaped objects dropped debris on his boat near Maury Island on 21 June 1947. The FBI concluded the story was built up to sell material to a magazine; Dahl and Fred Crisman admitted in a signed statement that the fragments came from a gravel pit.
- Case number
- TU-1947-900001
- Date
- 21 June 1947
- Location
- Maury Island, Puget Sound, Washington, USA
- Coordinates
- 47.377° N, 122.430° W
- Shape
- disc
- Colour
- Unknown
- Witnesses
- 4
- Status
- explained
Case summary
Harold Dahl said that about two o'clock on the afternoon of 21 June 1947 he was steering a boat in the east bay of Maury Island with two crewmen and his fifteen-year-old son aboard; looking up from the wheel he saw six large doughnut-shaped objects, one of which, he claimed, shed material that damaged the boat, broke a crewman's arm and killed the dog. Records differ on whether five or six objects were reported. Dahl also said a man in a dark suit later told him not to speak of it — the account that fed the later 'men in black' mythology.
The story became public only after Kenneth Arnold's 24 June sighting. Magazine editor Raymond Palmer paid Arnold to investigate, and on 31 July 1947 Arnold and United Airlines captain Emil Smith met Dahl and Fred Crisman at Tacoma's Winthrop Hotel with Army Air Forces intelligence officers Captain William L. Davidson and Lieutenant Frank M. Brown; the two officers left with a box of fragments. Their B-25 crashed near Kelso on 1 August and both died; the Army attributed the loss to an engine fire, and later rumours of sabotage were not substantiated.
The FBI opened an inquiry and closed it as a hoax. In signed statements of 7 August 1947 Dahl and Crisman said the material came from a gravel pit on Maury Island and that calling it part of a disc was 'entirely false'; the Air Force case summary records that the samples were very similar to slag from a nearby foundry and that the case 'is considered a hoax'.
Nearby strategic sites
- Naval Base Kitsap (Bangor Trident Base) — 45 km away