Maury Island, Washington
47°22′N, 122°26′W — Puget Sound, King County, Washington — small island connected to Vashon Island by an isthmus
What's documented
Maury Island is a small island in Puget Sound now connected to Vashon Island by a man-made isthmus built in 1916. On 21 June 1947 — three days before Kenneth Arnold's Mount Rainier sighting — harbor patrolman Harold Dahl reported that six "doughnut-shaped craft" appeared above his boat in Puget Sound and that one released a hot slag-like material that killed his dog and burned his son. The incident is conventionally dated as the first documented case in the modern UFO era and the origin of "Men in Black" folklore.
Notable & intriguing
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On 22 June 1947 — the morning after the alleged sighting — Harold Dahl reported being visited at his Tacoma home by a man in a black suit driving a 1947 Buick, who described the previous day's events in detail and warned Dahl to remain silent 'for the safety of his family.' This is the founding incident of the 'Men in Black' folklore.
Dahl statement to investigator Kenneth Arnold, July 1947; Bender, 'Flying Saucers and the Three Men' (1962)
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On 1 August 1947, the Army Air Force B-25 (serial 44-29126) carrying Maury Island samples from McChord Field to Hamilton Field crashed near Kelso, Washington, killing intelligence officers Capt. William L. Davidson and 1st Lt. Frank M. Brown — the two AAF officers investigating the case. The slag samples were destroyed in the crash.
Tacoma Times, 2 August 1947; Air Force accident report 44-29126
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Project Sign declared the Maury Island case a hoax on 3 August 1947. Dahl's partner Fred Crisman — who is named in Jim Garrison's investigation of the JFK assassination two decades later — refused to retract.
Air Materiel Command intelligence report, 3 August 1947 (declassified 1976); Garrison's subpoena of Crisman, 21 November 1968
Public-record imagery
