Maury Island incident
A boatman claimed six doughnut-shaped craft dropped slag over Maury Island, three days before Kenneth Arnold's sighting.
1947 CE · 47.37, -122.46 · status: hoax
The account
Harold Dahl said one of the objects dumped debris on 21 June 1947, which Fred Crisman said he collected; Dahl also told of a 'man in black' warning him off. Two Army Air Forces officers who took samples died when their B-25 crashed on the flight home.
The sceptical view
Project Blue Book's Edward Ruppelt called it 'the dirtiest hoax in UFO history', and even believers widely regard it as a hoax.
The researched reading
A confessed hoax, using smelter slag, that became famous because two officers died in an unrelated crash and because it seeded the "men in black" legend.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A hoax or fabrication | 90% | Dahl and Crisman later admitted to Army investigators that the rocks were ordinary slag and the story was made up to sell to a magazine; Ruppelt called it the dirtiest hoax in UFO history. |
| A known natural phenomenon | 3% | The "debris" matched slag of the kind produced by the nearby Tacoma smelter. |
| Something known, misidentified | 2% | If anything was seen, ordinary aircraft or clouds may have started the tale. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 2% | The tellers themselves undermined the story. |
| Perception, memory or mind | 1% | The details are inventive rather than perceptual. |
| A poorly understood natural phenomenon | 1% | Nothing points to an unusual natural event. |
| Secret human technology | 1% | The B-25 crash that killed two investigators was an engine fire, not sabotage. |
Official position: Army intelligence and Project Blue Book judged it a hoax; even most ufologists agree.
How the account grew
Harold Dahl's 1947 story of six doughnut-shaped craft dropping slag over Puget Sound was investigated by Kenneth Arnold and two Army Air Forces officers who died in a crash on the way home. The FBI and later Ruppelt called it a hoax, yet the tale was retold as an early 'men in black' story and folded into the Majestic 12 papers.
| Year | Who | Added |
|---|---|---|
| 1947 | Harold Dahl, interviewed by Kenneth Arnold | Six doughnut-shaped craft over Maury Island on 21 June; one spews light white metal and lava-like slag that breaks a worker's arm and kills a dog; a man in a dark suit tells Dahl not to talk. |
| 1947 | Fred Crisman; Arnold and Capt. E. J. Smith | Crisman says he recovered debris and saw a craft; the 'white metal' he shows Arnold and Smith looks mundane and does not match Dahl's description. |
| 1947 | FBI | After two investigating officers die when their B-25 crashes near Kelso on 1 August, the FBI finds the claims false and notes the men hoped to sell the story to a Chicago magazine. (dropped: The debris story is treated as a hoax.) |
| 1956 | Edward J. Ruppelt, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects | Calls it 'the dirtiest hoax in the UFO history' and says prosecution was considered and dropped. (dropped: The argument that no prosecution means the story was true.) |
| 1956 | Gray Barker, They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers | The incident is cited in the book that helped popularise the 'men in black'. (dropped: The FBI hoax finding is set aside; the later Majestic 12 papers, judged fake, even make the fragments reactor parts handed to the CIA.) |
| 2017 | Washington State Senate; Des Moines, Washington | A Senate resolution marks the 70th anniversary; the town later holds an annual 'Men in Black' celebration. |
Connections in the atlas
- The Maury Island "saucer debris" story
- Fred Johnson's Mount Adams discs
- Kenneth Arnold
- Edward J. Ruppelt
- Edward J. Ruppelt
- Kenneth Arnold sighting
- Project Blue Book closes