Part 4 (1/2)

When the lieutenant colonel from the Fourth Air Force made his widely publicized denunciation of saucer believers he specifically ton, area

The report of the investigation of this incident, the Maury Island Mystery, was one of the most detailed reports of the early UFO era

The report that we had in our files had been pieced together by Air Force Intelligence and other agencies because the two intelligence officers who started the investigation couldn't finish it They were dead

For the Air Force the story started on July 31, 1947, when Lieutenant Frank Brown, an intelligence agent at Ha-distance phone call The caller was a man whoated an earlier UFO sighting, and he had a hot lead on another UFO incident

He had just talked to two Tacoma Harbor patrolmen One of them had seen six UFO's hover over his patrol boat and spew out chunks of odd metal Simpson had soood to Lieutenant Brown, so he reported it to his chief His chief OK'd a trip and within an hour Lieutenant Brown and Captain Davidson were flying to Tacoma in an Air Force B-25 When they arrived they met Simpson and an airline pilot friend of his in Simpson's hotel room After the usual round of introductions Simpson told Brown and Davidson that he had received a letter froate this case The publisher had paid hietting too hot, Simpson wanted the military to take over

Simpson went on to say that he had heard about the experience off Maury Island but that he wanted Brown and Davidson to hear it firsthand He had called the two harbor patrolmen and they were on their way to the hotel They arrived and they told their story

I'll call these two h these aren't their real names In June 1947, Jackson said, his crew, his son, and the son's dog were on his patrol boat patrolling near Maury Island, an island in Puget Sound, about 3 ray day, with a solid cloud deck down at about 2,500 feet Suddenly everyone on the boat noticed six ”doughnut-shaped” objects, just under the clouds, headed toward the boat They came closer and closer, and when they were about 500 feet over the boat they stopped

One of the doughnut-shaped objects see around it They were close, and everybody got a good look The UFO's were about 100 feet in dia about 25 feet in diameter They were a silver color and e portholes around the edge

As the five UFO's circled the sixth, Jackson recalled, one of them came in and appeared to make contact with the disabled craft The two objects an to separate

While this was going on, Jackson was taking photos Just as they began to separate, there was a dull ”thud” and the next second the UFO began to spew out sheets of very lightto the water, the UFO began to throw out a harder, rocklike material Some of it landed on the beach of Maury Island Jackson took his crew and headed toward the beach of Maury Island, but not before the boat was da killed As they reached the island they looked up and saw that the UFO's were leaving the area at high speed

The harbor patrolman went on to tell how he scooped up several chunks of the metal from the beach and boarded the patrol boat He tried to use his radio to summon aid, but for some unusual reason the interference was so bad he couldn't even call the three miles to his headquarters in Tacoot first aid for his son and then reported to his superior officer, Richards, who, Jackson added to his story, didn't believe the tale He didn't believe it until he went out to the island himself and saw thea et what he'd seen

Later that same day the photos were developed They showed the six objects, but the filed, as if the film had been exposed to some kind of radiation

Then Simpson told about his brush with mysterious callers He said that Jackson was not alone as far as mysterious callers were concerned, the Taco calls fro on in Simpson's hotel room This was a very curious situation because no one except Simpson, the airline pilot, and the two harbor patrolhly searched for hidden microphones

That is the way the story stood a few hours after Lieutenant Brown and Captain Davidson arrived in Taco Jackson and Richards a few questions, the two intelligence agents left, reluctant even to take any of the fragments As some writers who have since written about this incident have said, Brown and Davidson see more about them The two officers went to McChord AFB, near Tacoma, where their B-25 was parked, held a conference with the intelligence officer at McChord, and took off for their hoood idea as to the identity of the UFO's Fortunately they told the McChord intelligence officer what they had determined from their interview

In a few hours the two officers were dead The B-25 crashed near Kelso, Washi+ngton The crew chief and a passenger had parachuted to safety The newspapers hinted that the airplane was sabotaged and that it was carrying highly classified material Authorities at McChord AFB confir classified material

In a few days the newspaper publicity on the crash died down, and the Maury Island Mystery was never publicly solved

Later reports say that the two harbor patrolmen mysteriously disappeared soon after the fatal crash

They should have disappeared, into Puget Sound The whole Maury Island Mystery was a hoax The first, possibly the second-best, and the dirtiest hoax in the UFO history One passage in the detailed official report of the Maury Island Mystery says:

Both ------ (the two harbor patrol to do with flying saucers The whole thing was a hoax They had sent in the rock fragazine publisher]

as a joke ------ One of the patrol that the rock could have been part of a flying saucer He had said the rock ca saucer because that's what ------ [the publisher] wanted him to say

The publisher, mentioned above, who, one of the two hoaxers said, wanted hi saucer, is the saate the case

The report goes on to explain more details of the incident Neither one of the two men could ever produce the photos They ”et which, was the mysterious informer who called the newspapers to report the conversations that were going on in the hotel room Jackson's mysterious visitor didn't exist Neither of the men was a harbor patrolman, they merely owned a couple of beat-up old boats that they used to salvage floating luet Sound The airplane crash was one of those unfortunate things An engine caught on fire, burned off, and just before the two pilots could get out, the wing and tail tore off,it impossible for them to escape The two dead officers fro for their short interview and hesitancy in bothering to take the ”fragments” They confirence officer at McChord

It had already been established, through an inforht, slag The classified material on the B-25 was a file of reports the two officers offered to take back to Ha to do with the Maury Island Mystery, or better, the Maury Island Hoax

Simpson and his airline pilot friend weren't told about the hoax for one reason As soon as it was discovered that they had been ”taken,”

thoroughly, and were not a party to the hoax, no one wanted to embarrass them

The hting to the hilt, pointing out as their main preovernment never openly exposed or prosecuted either of the two hoaxers This is a logical preation of the Maury Island Hoax was that the govern theto the two men, that the hoax was a harmless joke that had mushroomed, and that the loss of two lives and a B-25 could not be directly blamed on the two men The story wasn't even printed because at the tih in this case the press knew about it, the facts were classed as evidence By the time the facts were released they were yesterday's news And nothing is deader than yesterday's news