Doughnut-shaped UFO. Harold Dahl, Fred Crisman and others. One of the craft, which seemed to be experiencing some kind of mechanical difficulty, showered some light-colored metallic flakes and hot slaglike material over the boat of Harold Dahl, Fred Crisman . Two officers, Captain William Davidson and Lieutenant Frank M. Brown, arrived from Hamilton Air Force Base, California to investigate their claims. The slag like material was found to be slag from a local smelting plant. A B-25 aircraft for the return flight to Hamilton Air Force Base with a box containing the slaglike material which Crisman had given officers, the aircraft engine burst into flames and the plane crashed 30 minutes after take off. Some UFOlogist believe that Maury Island was a conspiracy involving either U.S. or Soviet intelligence agencies. Dahl allegedly disapeared after the incident. Crisman was later subpoenaed to testify against Clay Shaw accused of having conspired to murder John F. Kennedy but was found innocent and freed. Because of his alleged involvement in the Kennedy assassination, it was rumored that Crisman was either a member of the CIA or had been engaged in undercover activity in the field of industrial warfare.
One of the most famous cases in the American literature on UFOs, the Maury Island incident now is widely regarded as a hoax. The case supposedly occured on June 21, 1947 (although the date is uncertain), and involved one Harold Dahl and his teenage son, as well as two other crewmen on a boat in Pudget Sound near Maury Island, in the vicinity of Tacoma, Washington.
Dahl reported sighting six toroidal, or doughnut-shaped, UFOs at an estimated altitude of about 2,000 feet. The objects were said to be about 100 feet in diameter, with an opening about 25 feet wide in their centers. They had a metallic luster, and what looked like portholes. One of the objects appeared to be having difficulty staying aloft.
The witnesses said an explosion occurred, and the apparently malfunctioning UFO discharged flakes of metal, followed by hot lumps of slag. These lumps alledgedly injured the young Dahl and killed his dog, who had accompanied the expedition. The UFOs then departed.
Only three days after the June 21 sighting, Kenneth Arnold reported seeing several UFOs in flight near Mount Rainier, in the sighting that gave rise to the expression "flying saucers." At the request of science fiction writer Ray Palmer, Arnold investigated the Maury Island incident with the assistance of two military intelligence specialists. Arnold met with Dahl, who said he had been contacted by one of the "men in black," mysterious and intimidating presences who were said to shadow and harass UFO witnesses in the early days of the UFO phenomenon in the United States. Dahl reportedly showed Arnold a chunk of the Maury Island UFO's ejecta, which resembled volcanic rock.
The military intelligence specialists seemed unimpressed by Dahl's story and his alleged evidence, but they took away the material anyway and loaded it on a military plane for transport. The two intelligence specialists then took off on the same plane but were killed when the aircraft exploded several minutes after leaving the ground.
The second pilot spotted then spotted what he took to be a balloon, but a closer view showed it to be saucer-shaped - 'like a doughnut without a hole'.