Maury Island, Washington

47°22′N, 122°26′W

Puget Sound, King County, Washington — small island connected to Vashon Island by an isthmus

[from the public record]

47.3667, -122.4333 · view on OpenStreetMap →

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

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)
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
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 items already documented about this subject. Folklore is labelled. Sources cited where the specificity warrants it.

Suggested watching

Unsolved Mysteries — Maury Island (1996) episode

dir. various · various · 12m segment

Brief but useful reconstruction of the June 21 1947 Harold Dahl incident in Puget Sound, the slag samples, and the August B-25 crash that killed Captain Davidson and Lt. Brown carrying the material.

the case rarely gets standalone treatment

Public-record imagery

Maury Island, Puget Sound — the small island connected to Vashon by a man-made isthmus. Wikipedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Mark Yasuda · 2022

Maury Island, Puget Sound. On 21 June 1947 — three days before Kenneth Arnold's Mount Rainier sighting — Harold Dahl claimed six 'donut-shaped' craft dropped slag onto his boat near here. Two USAAF investigators died in a B-25 crash while transporting the alleged debris. Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Mark Yasuda · 2022

Houses on George Edwards Road, Maury Island. The Maury Island incident is generally classified as a hoax — Fred Crisman and Harold Dahl reportedly admitted it — but the B-25 deaths of Captain Davidson and Lieutenant Brown are documented fact. Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Joe Mabel · 2009

Maury and Vashon Islands and Tacoma from the air. The 31 July 1947 B-25 crash that killed Captain William Davidson and Lieutenant Frank Brown of A-2 intelligence — both transporting the alleged Maury Island debris — happened en route from McChord Field to Hamilton Field, California. Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Joe Mabel · 2010

Referenced in the codex

2. The Operators, Several Kinds A field guide to the menagerie. Stewards, Technicians, Watchers, and the question of the Apkallu. With an argument that the operator-side has been a coalition, not a monolith, the whole time.