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A MYSTERY WRAPPED IN A STRANGE BLACK ROCK: Is chunk from outer space or just a piece of poppycock? By Casey McNerthney: reporter for the PI
Unidentified flying disks. Secret military missions. Government cover-ups.
As the story Philip Lipson and Charlette LeFevre have been researching for years has almost all the elements of a made-for-TV movie.
As the story goes, a government employee swore he saw flying saucers three days after a Tacoma man said similar UFOs spewed metal and lava onto his boat. There was even a man in black.
Experience life on Puget Sound - Uforc research |
 Shows location of: K. Arnold's sighting, Kelso crash site and Maury Island located on Puget Sound, Washington |
A witness later recanted his statement - some say out of fear - after a military plane supposedly transporting classified debris exploded into flames.
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But it's the black chunk of rock they keep locked in a glass case that may be their best clue, and a scientist may test the rock.
UFO: Sighting strange aircraft was just beginning of story
Officially, the story is poppycock. The government dismissed it as such decades ago.
DAMAGING DEBRIS: On June 21, 1947, Harold Dahl was salvaging logs near the shore of Maury Island. Dahl said that at 2:pm he saw six doughnut-shaped aircraft, about 100 feet in diameter.
He said five of the metallic aircraft, which did not appear to have signs of propulsion, circled above one, which dropped to about 500 feet and spewed what he thought was 20- tons of metal; and molten rock.
Dahl reported to co-worker Fred Crisman that the failing debris injured his 15-year-old son., killed their dog and damaged the boat's wheelhouse.
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Three days later, U.S. Forest Service employee Kenneth Arnold said he saw nine similar flying saucers between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams. The Associated Press published Arnold's claims that when one of the aircraft dipped, the others did, too.
The day after Dahl's sighting, a man in a black suit arrived at his Tacoma home in a black 1947 Buick, Dahl said later . Books by UFO historians say the man threatened Dahl, saying that if he cared about his family, he'd never speak of the incident again.
He spoke of it at least one more time in July 1947, when he met with Arnold in a secret meeting in Room 502 of Tacoma's Winthrop Hotel. Arnold wrote about the meeting in his 1952 book, and said they were also joined by United Airlines pilot Capt. E.J. Smith - another who claimed to see the disks - as well as Air Force Lt. Frank M. Brown and Capt. William L. Davidson.
Smith told the Idaho Statesman that Brown and Davidson were given six pieces of "metal or lava."
The chunks were loaded onto a B-25 bomber at McChord Field to be shipped to a California militasry base, according to the now-defunct Tacoma Times.
B-25 CRASH
It was still dark in the early morning of Aug. 1, 1947, when a fire erupted in the left engine of the B -25.Longview police officers reported watching the B-52 circle over Longview and Kelso, leaving a streak of smoke behind the burning motor.
When attempts to extinguish the fire failed, two other crew members - Sgt. Elmer L. Taft and Tech Sgt. Woodrow D. Matthews - parachuted to safety . Brown and Davidson, who some believe knew there were UFO parts on the plane, stayed with the bomber.
The B-25 crashed into the base of three alder trees. Brown and Davidson's mangled bodies were thrown clear.
On August 3, 1947, an Associated Press report said the men died investigating flying saucers.
BLACK CHUNK
Kelso resident James Greear heard about the crash 10 years ago and had made several attempts to find clues. He found almost nothing in the woods until earlier this month, when Bob Davenport, now 75, was 15 at the time of the crash and one of the first people to rush to the wreckage<*snip*>
"You can tell it's been liquid because it's full of bubbles," said Bill Beaty, a research engineer in the University of Washington's Chemistry Department. He plans to have a colleague analyze the chunk this week.
"We have to look at the bedrock in the hill and see what's there," he said. "If it looks like that, then it's probably the same.
"If this is totally different than the bedrock there, then this will be very interesting."
RARELY SPOKE OF SIGHTING
Though popular among conspiracy theorists, Dahl's claim that a UFO spewed debris onto his boat is likely to remain folklore."I didn't know anything about it until 2003 when a man from Sacrament sent me about 50 pages of research about it," said Dahl's 76-year-old daughter, Louis Bakotich of Aberdeen. Though Arnold insisted his sighting was real, Dahl rarely spoke of his sighting after 1947, and often said it was a hoax when he did. Charles Dahl, who was supposedly injured by the falling debris, didn't confirm the injuries before his death, his sister said.
The Army and Air Force have repeatedly denied that UFO fragments were on the B-25 flight. An August 1947 document, said to be from J. Edgar Hoover, states that the story of the B-25 having flying disc fragments was a hoax.
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References:
PI Librarian Lytton Smith and researcher Marsha Milroy contributed to the story.
A MYSTERY WRAPPED IN A STRANGE BLACK ROCK: Is chunk from outer space or just a piece of poppycock? By Casey McNerthney: reporter for the Post Intelligencer (PI) Seattle Washington USA Monday April 23, 2007 Copyright Seattle Post Intelligencer a Hearst newspaper. Published with permission. WEBSITE: http://www.seattlepi.com