◆ SpookStack

August 1, 197 FLYING DISCS The "Tacoma News Tribune" and through them the United Press put out a story that an army plane which was allegedly carrying parts of a disc which had struck a boat owned by Harold Dahl and Fred Chrisman had crashed on August 1, 1917, killing two Air Force Intelligence officers who were interviewing persons who were alleged to have seen flying discs. Harold A. Dahl and Fred Chrisman, when interviewed by Bureau Agents, advised in a signed statement on August 7, 1947, that in the early part of June, 197, they picked up some strange rock formations from a gravel pit on Mauri Island, Washington. They sent a cigar box of these formations to one Ray Palmer, editor of the Venture magazine in Evanston, Illinois and also editor of the Fantasy magazine in Chicago, Illinois. According to them they requested Palmer to make only a chemical analysis of the rock formations. Palmer then wrote asking for additional samples stating he had been unable to analyze the material. Dahl and Chrisman remarked that a few days after the flying disc stories appeared during the latter part of June, Palmer contacted them by telephone saying he would pay for an exclusive story if the materials they had sent him were fragments of a flying disc. Dahl said he wrote Palmer a letter in which he represented the material as being a part of a flying disc, and both Dahl and Chrisman admitted that this statement was entirely false. Dahl and Chrisman then received a call from one Kenneth Arnold of Boise, Idaho who requested them to meet him at the Winthrop Hotel in Tacoma on July 31, 1947. According to them Arnold called in army intelligence officers from Hamilton Field, California and one Captain Emil H. Smith of United Airlines of Seattle, Washington to attend this meeting. Dahl and Chrisman maintained they told the intelligence officers Captain Davidson, Lieutenant Brown, Kenneth Arnold and Emil H. Smith exactly how they got the rock formations and that they had no connection with any flying discs. Dahl and Chrisman stated that they then furnished some of the rock formation to the intelligence officers as samples. Captain Davidson and Lieutenant Brown left Tacoma, Washington in a B-25 to return to Hamilton Field, California about 2:30 A.M. August 1, 197, and were killed when their plane crashed at Kelso, Washington, after the left engine burned out an exhaust stack which in turn caught the left wing on fire which caused it to break off. The crew chief and each officer parachuted to safety. Ernie Vogel, an Associated Press wireman at Tacoma advised that two or three days after the flying disc story started he contacted Dahl to check the story COPIES DESTROYED 270 NOV 18 1964