Maury Island UFO Incident

[aeon]

http://philipcoppens.com/maury_isle.html

http://thechurchofufology.blogspot.com/ ... ohano.html


https://borderlandsciences.org/journal/ ... izona.html

http://shavertron.com/portals1.html

****
Letter from Eldon K. Everett, published in Flying Saucers from Other Worlds Magazine, November 1957, p85

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?40141

Dear Ray,

I'd like to dare you to publish the REAL Maury Island story. Living in Tacoma, I attempted to investigate that thing right after it happened, and the things I found out would blow the lid off a number of so-called "saucer experts"! Among the questions that might be answered are: What was done with the corpse of the dog that was killed by the fragments of the crashing saucer? Why was a detachment of army troops sent to the island in secret, ringing the explosion area with barbed wire, and chasing investigators (myself included) away from the island? Why were all files of the Tacoma papers seized and held for a short time afterward? Why was the Keyhoe paperback taken from the newsstands by govt. order in Tacoma, and why did the army send men to all 2d hand bookstores to buy up used copies of same?

What was the REAL reason for the Tacoma Times going out of business after some 20 years of leadership in the Tacoma area against all rival papers? What was in the bottle which a young boy claimed had been dropped into Hoodlum Lake from a Saucer? Why did this strange liquid explode violently upon human contact?

The TRUTH about the Saucer Invasion of Tacoma so far outstrips the fiction that it would definitely endanger the sanity of any unstable person who might happen across I, but if you have the inside info which you claim to have, I DARE you to publish it!
Eldon K. Everett

Saucers over Puget Sound by Eldon K. Everett, from Flying Saucers from Other Worlds Magazine, July-August 1958, p53-58

First of all, I want to make a couple of things clear.
This will not be a complete catalogue and discussion of UFO phenomena in the Pacific Northwest. Such information is available from a number of sources; best of all, perhaps, being Elliot Rockmore's original saucer reports (to which I contributed).
Instead, it is a record of my experiences in saucer investigation from 1948 to early 1954. Due to a particular chain of circumstances beginning with threats on my life and culminating in the death of my mother under mysterious circumstances, I chose to discontinue my investigations in 1954 and leave Washington state for several months. Since then, I have not been actively engaged in any such research, and my original findings have never been released to the public until now.

Even now, I'm not telling all I know. I'm including only material that I feel can be corroborated by newspaper reports and other public information. Recently I've been deluged by literature and letters from almost a hundred UFO groups on three continents, and frankly, I've come away with the impression that somebody opened the gate at the funny farm, and all the inmates joined UFO clubs.

Still, enough of these letters seem to be from sincerely interested individuals to convince me that I should tell some of what I know.
What are my qualifications as a saucer investigator? Well, earlier in life I did a lot of things. I've been a political campaign manager, a movie projectionist, a theater manager, a radio announcer and actor, a disk-jockey, a newspaper-advertising salesman, and a bartender. Then I went into the aircraft industry, first as an aircraft mechanic. For the better part of 1957, I worked in the Engineering Division of the Boeing Airplane Company doing top-secret work on the records of flight-test instrumentation for the B-52 Bombers and the BOMARC guided missiles.

Late in the year, for reasons that will become clear later in this article, the U.S. Air Force refused to grant me a high-level security clearance, and the company I worked for transferred me to a less strategic position.
So, as you can see, I know enough about flying objects, unidentified or otherwise, to evaluate many reports of saucer sightings.

In 1947, I was living in a small farming town in Washington State. Kenneth Arnold's report of sighting the saucers over Mount Rainier, therefore, interested me not only as a long-time science fan, but because of the locale of the incident itself.
I followed later reports of such phenomena with great interest, including the Maury Island incident, but it wasn't until 1948 that I began any serious investigation.

Even then, around a year after the incident, interest in saucer phenomena in the Puget Sound region was at fever pitch. At the time I moved into Tacoma, the story was on everyone's lips, due to the fact that the Tacoma Times, in business for nearly 40 years, had suddenly gone out of business without warning.

The then current story, as I heard it from a number of independent sources, went something like this: One day in June, 1947, a Harbor Patrol boat was cruising off Maury Island in Puget Sound. One of the men aboard saw a group of doughnut-shaped objects (the number varied) hovering over the island's coast. They seemed to be trying to help one of the objects that appeared to be in trouble, about to crash. The sailor called other members of the crew, including the captain's small son, up on deck, where they all stood at the rail, watching. Then, the object fell toward the ground and there was a tremendous explosion. After the flash had faded from their eyes, the crew discovered that the other objects had vanished. Fragments from the explosion rained upon the deck. The little boy's dog was struck by one of the red-hot fragments and killed, while the boy himself suffered a severe burn on one of his arms.

The Patrol Boat returned to port quickly in Tacoma. A doctor was called for the boy and the authorities were notified.
For the next few weeks, the patrolmen were plagued by mysterious telephone calls, cautioning them to keep their mouths shut about what they'd seen. The offices of the Tacoma Times, which had given extensive coverage to the incident, were also plagued with telephone calls, and even visited by mysterious individuals who cautioned them to lay off the story.
Two of the patrolmen had in their possession fragments they had picked up from the ship's deck. These had been confiscated by the Air Force and were to be flown from McChord Air Force Base in Washington to Hamilton Air Force Base in California.

The plane in which the fragments were carried took off all right, but it never reached Hamilton. It crashed mysteriously at Kelso, Washington, and the two crewmen aboard were killed. It was also said that a search of the wreckage had failed to produce the fragments, and that the Air Force had roped off the section of Maury Island where the saucer had crashed and had an armed guard around the area.
This was the story, or perhaps I should say, the legend, as I heard it a little over a year after it happened.

During the next year, while saucer sightings were filling the news, both in Washington State and elsewhere, I undertook a thorough investigation of this incident, aided by Clarence J. Sevdy, Jr., and hindered by almost everything imaginable.
With the publication of Donald E. Keyhoe's article in True magazine, and later his book, The Flying Saucers are Real, the U.S. Government seemed to clamp down on the area. I DID discover some errors in the previously-recounted Maury Island legend at that time, though.

The two "patrolmen" most concerned with the matter had already left the Puget Sound area and all inquiries met with the same reply: "Whereabouts Unknown." And it was not a patrol boat, belonging to the Harbor Patrol, but a small fishing boat.
Sevdy and I set about to make a trip to Maury Island early in 1950 to visit the site of the crash. Maury Island is a fairly good-sized piece of land, with several radio transmitters located along it.

We intended to charter or rent a boat to make the trip, but investigation soon proved that we were not alone in this intention. People seemed to be coming from all over the U.S. to visit the spot, and all of them met with the same response.
The "crash" area was fenced off with barbed wire, and uniformed guards were still patrolling the area armed with rifles. In the light of the Air Force's later claim that the entire matter was a hoax, this is hard to explain.
Many of the people formerly employed by the Tacoma Times had left the area to take employment elsewhere. This was another obstacle in the investigation, but having checked elsewhere, we felt it absolutely necessary to investigate this part of the story.
Over a period of weeks, we visited the Tacoma Public Library and checked their files of the Times, trying to verify the reports. This turned up some positive results, inasmuch as the information regarding the newspaper's part in the Maury Island story seemed to check out.

Then something very peculiar happened.
For several weeks, we were refused admittance to the Times files. Friends who requested to see the bound volumes of the paper for the months in question were also refused.
Eventually the files were opened up again, and this is the rumor that went around: When the Times had folded, its presses and equipment were sold to a newspaper in Oregon. The story was that the representatives of the USAF had seized the files, removed certain pages (NOT pages containing saucer reports), had new sheets printed by the Oregon paper, rebound the files, and returned them to the library.
We checked the files again, but obviously we couldn't collate anything but the saucer reports. A young fellow working as a page in the reference department of the library told us that he had heard that the information which had interested the USAF had concerned a number of mysterious fatal accidents in the area during the period of the Maury Island story.

After the Keyhoe pocketbook had been on the stands for several months, one of our friends who was operating a newsstand informed us of a VERY peculiar development in the matter.
It appeared that an amazing number of copies were being sold to Air Force members from the nearby McChord Field. They were buying them regularly in lots of three and four at a time. Inquiries at local second-hand stores brought out the fact that uniformed Air Force officers were also buying up second-hand copies of the book in small lots.
Routine investigation on our part proved this to be true. Air Force members were to be seen regularly at most of the city's newsstands, surreptitiously buying copies of Keyhoe's book. After a few months, it became nearly impossible to procure a copy in the area. Second-hand copies changed hands for as much as a dollar a copy.

Late in the summer of 1950, I was taking a walk during the early afternoon. Looking up into a cloudless blue sky, I saw what appeared to be a silver disk, hovering over the city. It appeared to be at some 3,000 feet elevation, and perhaps the size of an F-86. The object hovered for about 90 seconds, then rose into the air, silently, at tremendous speed, and disappeared. Censorship was so tight at this time that no report of the sighting ever appeared in the newspapers of the area.
Shortly thereafter, I left Tacoma and moved to Puyallup, a small town about 12 miles away. Sevdy and I kept up our work but the wraps were down pretty tight and for a year and a half we turned up very little information.
Then in the Spring of 1952, sightings in the area began again, "Meteors" and "fireballs" were seen over Seattle, and I moved back into Tacoma.
Sevdy and I, now joined by a third investigator, Ivars M. Skuja, a Latvian student, set to work in earnest. There was apparently a systematic attempt by certain anonymous groups in the area to discredit saucers in toto.

Among those reported in the local press: a Margret Harman, of Yakima, who got front page notice when she came to Tacoma carrying a large, deflated balloon labeled "genuine grade AA flying saucers" ... and a W.B. Monroe, who found a "saucer" in his front yard which he described as "a rubber balloon about four feet in diameter covered with a sheet of paper and heavy metal foil ... pointed at the top and reinforced with struts like those of a kite." In this case, it is very interesting to note that there had been a large number of sightings in the days preceding Monroe's "balloon", and officials at McChord Air Force Base said: "the objects were undoubtedly balloons of one sort or another."
Again and again throughout 1952, although hampered by a newspaper strike and unofficial censorship in other communication media, we encountered sighting after sighting. "Flying saucers" were seen and reported to newspapers by such people as Fire Chief Harold Fisk; Frank Evans, director of Civil Defense; Maj. N.A. Vosburg, director of Intelligence at McChord Air Base (who commented: "this is the height of the meteor season" and who declined to say whether or not two air force jets had been dispatched to chase an UFO); Max Bice, of radio station KTNT; Detective Geo. P. Johnson; Special Officer H. C. Toy of the U.S. Cushman Indian Hospital; and a lady who reported seeing a "snake of fire" in the sky.

McChord Air Force Base used every means at their control to discourage this rash of reports. Vosburg admitted that over 200 saucer reports had been received at the offices of the 25th Air Division in July, 1952, but disclaimed them all, saying that they were ALL meteor sightings. U.S. Meteorologists guardedly mentioned "inversions".
All through this period, silvery disks raced overhead, mysterious explosions shook the city and broke windows, and oddly-colored lights flashed through the night, but the Air Force remained adamant: "No Flying Saucers!"
In the early autumn of the year, while on my way to a conference with Sevdy, I heard the roar of a jet in the morning sky. I looked up to see a silvery disk, with a triangular dark section in its trailing edge, flash by at approximately 600 m.p.h.; close behind, and apparently gaining, was an Air Force pursuit plane. I watched the chase for about four seconds as they crossed my range of vision from left to right across the horizon at a height of approximately 5500 feet. When the jet put on an added burst of speed trying to close in on the object, the saucer flashed upward into the sky and disappeared. The jet cruised around for about ten minutes, and then sped back toward McChord Air Base.
Sevdy's family owned a 4-story building in the city, and a rented a 3d floor apartment. Together, Sevdy, Skuja, and I ran a sort of boiler-room operation, listening to the radio all night long, checking the newspapers, corresponding with other saucer investigators, and making dozens of phone calls to people whose names appeared in saucer stories in the local papers, checking the facts given in the printed reports.

Shortly after this phase of our operation was begun, we discovered that the building was under surveillance 24 hours a day. Strange automobiles parked outside during both night and day, and their drivers never left the cars. When one car would leave, another would pull up in to take up the watch.

Inasmuch as these people did not interfere with our operations, we took no action.
Late at night, the Sevdy family (on the 1st floor) began to be disturbed by strangers prowling around the grounds, and fussing at the windows. In one event, Sevdy, Skuja, myself and some visiting friends chased one of these individuals under a house, and trailed him on hands and knees with a flashlight. He broke away and we lost him in an alley.

By Spring of 1953, there was another rash of sightings, most of them at night and of "fireballs". Over a period of 60 days or so, our investigation team spent many fruitless nights looking with small telescopes for these objects. On several occasions we DID see glowing objects in the sky. Always, the next day, we were rewarded with seeing reports in the Tacoma Tribune of numerous independent reports of these objects.
During this period, the air force was in feverish activity. Jets and recon aircraft roared through the sky night and day. And there was another funny thing...
The skies were red.

For weeks, the skies were red over Puget Sound. An opalescent glow, tinted reddish-pink, filled the night skies. No one we could find could recall this condition having existed in the area before 1953, and I have not seen it since.
The cause of this phenomenon is still unknown, but in my own opinion (and opinion ONLY, I stress) is that the United States Armed Forces were conducting experiments to determine the mass of Unidentified Flying Objects by spreading a reddish gas over the area in order to check on any trails left by these objects.
One evening we discovered a very interesting story in the Tribune. It concerned a strange substance which had been spread on the streets in Tacoma. It was whitish, almost invisible; but when stepped on, it exploded with a loud noise.
In following days, a young junior high school student was arrested by Tacoma Police Department for coating the sidewalks with this substance. It gave the local papers a field day.

According to the boy, he had been playing near a desolate swamp known in the area as Hoodlum Lake, and seen a disc-shape silver aircraft drop down to within a few hundred feet of the surface of the swamp. As he watched, trembling, an object was dropped from the craft into the water, and the ship rose soundlessly into the air.
Fishing the object out with a stick, he found it to be a container, of a strange whitish substance, similar in texture to polyethylene, and containing a liquid. Being an amateur scientist, he took the bottle home, and experimenting, discovered its explosive properties. As a joke, he smeared it on the sidewalk.
We investigated, and came to know him quite well. In fact, he aided us in later investigations, although never becoming too active in the group. The police confiscated the bottle and its whereabouts is now unknown. Although the papers gave this incident a humorous treatment, the boy stuck to his story when we questioned him later.
I have not given his name, as he is now a fugitive from justice, along with his brother (who was in no way involved in this), on an unlikely charge made by the federal government.

One night, after making important sightings of bright lights in the sky, the plague of mysterious telephone calls began at our headquarters. It was usually the same line, "We've seen you making observations of our craft. Stop it or you'll be sorry!" Most of the time it was one of two female voices making the anonymous call, and on one occasion, the woman requested me by name to come on the phone. Sevdy called me down from the third floor, and the voice warned me to stop my investigations, or my life would be in danger.
For various reasons, we decided to disband, in the main, our "boiler-room", and spread out over the city. Our general headquarters were to be in the Sevdy family building, with Skuja monitoring radio broadcasts from his own home, and with me handling our files and correspondence five miles away in the suburb of South Tacoma.

It was now late in 1953.
In South Tacoma, I met Frank. That was the only name he ever gave me, and for reasons to be made clear, I didn't inquire further.
Frank was a wiry little man in his mid-'30s. He had formerly been an air force officer, but I didn't know what he was doing for a living at the time he contacted me.

More than anything else, Frank was scared.
He came to the South Tacoma house at about 8:00 p.m. on a very windy, stormy night. He said my mother had mentioned my interest in saucers in the restaurant where she worked as a waitress. I invited him in.
Frank visited me on several occasions, always at night. He disappeared between the visits once for a period of several months, returning sporting a full beard. He confided that he had gone back into the Idaho Hills, and was hiding out there. We drove back to his brother's home, where he picked up a suitcase of clothes, and then he left again for Idaho. I never saw him again.

He had reason to be afraid. There is very little of what he confided to me that I can reveal. Most of it isn't corroborable, and much of it could make things uncomfortable for me if I were to reveal it.
Among other things, Frank had been on hand the night that the Maury Island fragments had been "loaded" aboard the B-25 at McChord Field. According to his information, the AF had received mysterious warnings before the flight of what would happen, and he swore that the fragments HAD NOT BEEN ABOARD THAT PLANE. He was unable to say what had been done with them, but he had seen them the day before the flight and described them as looking like the kind of slag that was to be found near the Montana Copper Smelters where he had once worked.
On one visit, he had seen my collection of science-fiction magazines and confided to me that he had read them thoroughly back in the '40's when the "Shaver mystery" was current. We discussed SM at some length, and he guardedly told me he believed that Shaver was correct and that he (Frank) was certain that there were several underground entrances in the Tacoma area, including one in the sub-basement of one of the city's most important buildings.

During my tenure at the South Tacoma house, I was a witness to a spectacular "UFO" display. A strange reddish light appeared in the night sky over the area, hovered there for several minutes, and then exploded with a tremendous noise, rattling windows for blocks around. I discovered the facts behind this UFO hoax in 1956 by sheer accident. I was at a radio ham gab-fest, and one of the hams confided that he had perpetrated the entire incident with an army surplus balloon, a red safety-light, and several sticks of dynamite.

My mother had volunteered from time to time for secretarial duties in our organization, and had been present at a number of our conferences. She had also talked on several occasions with the mysterious "Frank". Her contribution was negligible, but her interest in outré phenomena was very strong.
She was certainly not an angel, being (among other things) an alcoholic, and my family ties were never too strong. She had (over a period of years) been arrested for drunkenness on several occasions, so I wasn't too surprised, when, in February, 1954, her fifth marriage broke up, and she was arrested one night for disorderly conduct.
What was a shock was that she died that night in her jail cell under extremely peculiar circumstances. The Tacoma police told me the next day that they weren't sure what had happened to her, but that she had been confined with three other women, all of whom were too scared to tell what had happened.
The official verdict was that she had strangled herself.
I was unemployed and staying with an aunt. Once again I received telephone communication from the same mysterious individuals. I was warned that I and my associates would get the same as my mother if we didn't drop our investigations then and there.
With a hasty goodbye to my friends late one night, I packed my bag and accepted a ride to California.

Late in 1954, when I felt things might have cooled off, I left Santa Cruz and returned to Tacoma. After a discussion with Sevdy and Skuja, we all decided to close our investigations and destroy our records, and we turned to other pursuits.
Since that time, I've kept my nose clean of UFOs. Nevertheless, applications for Civil Service jobs have been refused or indefinitely postponed, and the afore-mentioned security clearance trouble with the Air Force has arisen.
I'm beginning to think it may be time to reopen our boiler-room. Somebody's covering up!
Ray Palmer’s Response to Eldon K. Everett’s Article:

WE PICK UP MR. EVERETT’S GAUNTLET:
First, let us say that Mr. Everett is not unknown to us: for many years we have known of him as a science fiction fan, and a member of what is popularly known as “fandom”, largely because of what they termed the “smearing of science fiction’s reputation” by the inclusion of the now famous Shaver Mystery. As part of the campaign against the Mystery, “fandom” conducted a boycott; requested your editor’s dismissal in personal visits to Mr. William B. Ziff, my then employer; wrote vitriolic articles in their fan magazines; began a barrage of hoaxes designed to gain publication, then to be exposed as hoaxes so as to cast doubt on the legitimate phases of the Shaver Mystery; circulated reports that your editor was insane, had been found in his basement clutching a magnet in one hand, piece of coal in the other and screaming wildly that the deros were after him; criticized every story in the magazines as trash (no matter how good) in order to get me relieved of my editorship; and many other things hardly of a gentlemanly or honest nature. Some of them, in fact, came under the heading of despicable. Thus, it is entirely possible that this present article by Mr. Everett is a clever hoax, an outright falsehood.

In spite of that, we are inclined to consider it legitimate, but our acceptance of it is somewhat reserved. In the event that it is false, we wish to stress that it contains an enormous amount of truth, and some of it we are puzzled to account for, because it would have been extremely difficult for Mr. Everett to secure it, and impossible to imagine.
All right, then. The Puget Sound story, the Maury Island incident, was true. It involved, as investigation progressed, a series of deaths. The box of fragments loaded into the command car, with the personal help of Kenneth Arnold, were NOT placed aboard the B-25 by Davidson and Brown, but were abandoned as worthless, because that’s exactly what they were.

They were nothing but slag from the Tacoma Smelter, and Kenneth Arnold KNEW it when felt of them in the dark. They were NOT like the actual fragments of the saucer, all of which were confiscated, except fragments in your editor’s possession. Later, most of these fragments, planted by your editor in a file where an intelligence officer was given the chance to observe them, were promptly stolen that same night, proving their importance.

Velma Brown, the wife of one of the men killed in this plane, has never been directly informed by the Air Force that her husband's death was entirely explained, and she herself suspects hat it was not an accident.

It is certainly true that Brown and Davidson suddenly learned the truth, that they were involved in something being investigated by higher authorities than they were, and were ordered to "get out" and forget the whole thing.

It is also true that Brown and Davidson had ample time to escape from their plane, while only one motor was on fire. Yet they chose to ride the plane for eleven minutes to their deaths. Why? Most logically, because it was an extremely valuable plane. No one will ever know.
It is true that the boat shown Arnold and Smith was NOT a harbor patrol boat, but an unseaworthy tub, and that the damage to it and the repairs were faked (by Crisman?) The idea was to convince Arnold and Smith that the boat story was untrue, and the damage could not possibly have been caused as claimed. The REAL boat was not seen by Arnold and Smith. Yes, there is a hoax in the Maury Island incident, and it is Mr. Crisman’s hoax. Even the Air Force, in its Project Bluebook report labeled the Maury Island incident as a hoax, and it is positively true that the whole incident was first reported by Mr. Crisman.

Mr. Crisman was not pioneering, however, in his hoax. He had, several years before, claimed an encounter with Shaver’s deros in a Burma cave, and claimed a “hole the size of a dime burned in my arm by a ray”. He further warned your editor “for God’s sake, drop the whole thing. You don’t know what you are getting into!”
Later, he phoned from a south-western state using another name, and asked for $500.00 to buy camera equipment with which to descend into yet another cave and bring back “positive photographic proof of the mech in Shaver’s stories, too huge to be moved.”

This Maury Island story cannot be extricated from its involvement with the Shaver Mystery. They are one and the same.

The saucers do not come from outer space and Maury Island proves it.
The actual saucer fragments, and the Tacoma slag, were analyzed by the same agencies. One was found to be slag, the other cannot be explained by any metallurgist. Like the pure tin found in South America, it does not exist naturally on the Earth, nor can it be duplicated. The mystery ingredient is calcium; its purpose is for protection against radioactive material; it is an absolute necessity at heights of 600 miles or more.
Lastly, Mr. Everett, why not tell everything “Frank” told you? If you aren’t hoaxing us in this article, you can prove it by telling us. If you wish it to be in confidence, we guarantee it. We will only tell our readers that you have proved yourself, which should be enough. We have no desire to place you in a position of terror – and there was terror on Maury Island.

A hypnotic terror that almost brought death to Kenneth Arnold himself, even though your editor “called the shot” over the phone the previous night! When a man can predict a plane accident, his is not just “shooting in the dark”. He knows something!
If you know it, how about backing yourself up? Why are you afraid to tell everything you know? A man is killed only to seal his lips. Once the story is out, he’s safe. Why take a chance, especially since you’ve dropped enough hints to make you a target, if Shaver is right!
Incidentally, we’ve received a letter, after all these years, from Fred Crisman. All we have to say is: “Come on, Fred, is that the best you can do?”
And Mr. Everett, your suspicion that “someone’s covering up” is the understatement of the year! How about you?

Flying Saucers, August 1960, letter from Brian Murphy

Mr. Palmer:

I have just finished reviewing one of your back issues, Dec. 1958 to be exact. In it is an interesting story about Mr. Edward Ruppelt and his book "The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects." From what I gather, you choose a book (factual) to pick on, make up your own quotes on it, weave them into a convincing story against a REAL seeker of the truth, and them blow them out with a lot of other hot air in your magazine (?)
I used to be a sort of fan of yours. I believed that you through your magazine were bringing out facts which would wake up Americans as to what was actually happening around them. But brother, let me tell you my ideas of your altruism have sure changed. I can only deduct two possible reasons for your actions. 1). You’re out to make a fast buck along and in the same boat with the Hollywood slander type magazines; or 2). You are trying to escape reality; if the saucers are not there, you will put them there, so what, it will forward the illusions of Ray Palmer. You are always talking about the truth; how can you possibly deny what you yourself write and lie about? If Ruppelt is a liar (which I doubt) you are by far the 15th power of his deception.

Now I will return to what I was originally saying. I saw these quotes and thought for the fun of it I would see if they were in my book. Not one was! My book was published in 1956 in the U.S.A. by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York. I received it through the Science Fiction Book Club. This of course leads to three possibilities: 1) The little men in dark suits are at work. 2) You’re a liar. 3) I’m a liar. You would no doubt prefer the latter or the first one. Probably the third, however, because it would be more believable to the gullible readers of your magazine. In the first place, number one appeals to me for its mystery, and who can say what is what? The second however is more believable to me since little men in dark suits would be arrested by big men in dark suits known by some unmentionable strata of society as the “Feds,” if they tampered with mail in the leather bag of the pony express.
Just one more grievance before I close. Pioneer V is now about 4,000,000 miles out and is still read “loud and clear.” It didn’t divide into atoms yet, did it, Ray?

Brian Murphy,
65 Franklin Street,
Lewiston, Maine.

Ray Palmer’s response:

If you get your book from the Science Fiction Book Club, maybe it is actually a fiction book – because it sure isn’t like mine! Every quote that I made is in the book, and a little researching will reveal them to you! When Ruppelt talks of me (and when he refers to the Chicago publisher – or editor – he is talking about me) who should know better than I whether he lies or not! I say he lies. Positively and completely lies. Since he wasn’t actually on the scene, and did not interview any of the people who were, maybe his “lie” is simply ignorance, or he has been lied to! One thing is certain – the statements made about my activities and Ken Arnold’s activities, and everybody else concerned at Tacoma, are just not true. I insist that they are not. I KNOW they are not. This Maury Island affair happened to ME. I sent Ken Arnold there to find out the truth. I have a complete report on Soundscriber records sent to me by Ken.

I talked to Dahl and Crisman and Captain Smith over the phone that fatal night. I KNOW what each man said--and it disagrees 100% with what Ruppelt says SECOND HAND in his book. He got his information from Wright Patterson files to which he either had access or was furnished. If he THINKS he told the truth in his book HE was lied to! The point is, I’ve taken it upon myself to defend myself, and it doesn’t help when people like you up and decide with no evidence whatever that I’m a liar – especially when you claim to have a book which MUST be different from the one I have, or else you did not do more than SCAN it for the quotes which are undeniably there!

Did you know Ruppelt’s book has now been reissued, in many different countries simultaneously in many translations, as well as in this country, in NEW AND REVISED EDITION which entirely reverses his conclusions in the original book? Why was this done? Not to make money, because this is one publisher who KNOWS that the project CANNOT be a financial success. It is an insane project, business-wise, and therefore must be some sort of a project, and I believe I can safely say it is a BRAINWASHING type of project designed to further bury the honest investigator (I venture to mention myself first in line here, so make what you will of that bit of ego!) under a landslide of publicity that reaches everywhere, whereas our little magazine reaches hardly anywhere, and then thousands of copies mysteriously disappear!

You don’t know that 5000 copies of the February issue went aboard a truck, apparently, and have yet to come off it! You don’t know that the whole shipment to Oakland, California (750 copies) was neither delivered to the distributor (who himself cannot now be located – and we tried, because he owes us over a thousand dollars!) nor returned to us, in spite of the fact that each parcel carries a request for return if undeliverable, and guarantees return postage! Lots of little things, like this, and each one costs us money we can ill afford. It doesn’t take much to break a little guy like me, and end the publication of FLYING SAUCERS. Except for one thing – we have ANOTHER JOB which supports us, and when FLYING SAUCERS goes broke, as it does periodically, we merely “lend” it more money (which we know we’ll never get back!).

[aeon]

When you say we are out to make a fast buck, all we can say is that something is sure slowing it down! Since the December issue, it has actually back-pedaled like mad. Those are some “fast” bucks we’ll never catch up with again! One consolation – we lost so much that we haven’t any income-tax to pay! Hurrah!

Yes, there is a lot of “factual” material in the Ruppelt book. It is there just in the fashion Hitler used to practice and boast about “tell a lie big enough, and surround it with a lot of little facts, and the world will swallow it!” Ruppelt reports faithfully on hundreds of cases (all negative insofar as flying saucer proof is concerned), and then hangs the big lie on them. What he reports about Maury Island, the most important flying saucer story of all time is a BIG LIE. That incident cost five men their lives, almost cost Ken's, and you wouldn't believe what it did to me! It was the one thing that proved to me, for all time, just how true the flying saucer fact is, and how vital to all humanity it is!
As for you, I suggest you read Ruppelt’s book again, this time more carefully. The quotes I made are there – word for word! – Rap.

The Maury Island Affair Was No Hoax by Brinsley Le Poer Trench (Flying Saucers, January 1963)
The title of this article is a pretty positive statement. It is in direct contradiction to what Authority has given as its official opinion. Project Saucer, a predecessor to Project Bluebook, official USAF body investigating reports of unidentified flying objects, declared the Maury Island affair to be a hoax. However, two events which occurred respectively in 1955 and 1961, would seem to cast very strong doubt upon that view, and point to a deliberate “cover up”.

Let us briefly recapitulate what happened at this lonely place on June 21, 1947, three days before Kenneth Arnold’s sighting which triggered off press publicity in a big way for flying saucers.

Harold A Dahl, a harbor patrolman was out on his boat on the easy bay of Maury Island, near Tacoma, Washington, with a crew of two men and his son. Dahl’s dog was also in the boat. Suddenly, Dahl, who was at the wheel, noticed “... six very large doughnut-shaped aircraft. I would judge they were about 2,000 ft. above the water and almost directly overhead. At first glance I thought them to be balloons as they seemed to be stationary. However, upon further observation, five of these strange aircraft were circling very slowly around the sixth one which was stationary in the center of the formation. It appeared to me that the center aircraft was in some kind of trouble as it was losing altitude fairly rapidly. The other aircraft stayed at a distance of about two hundred feet above the center one as if they were following the center one down. The center aircraft came to rest almost directly overhead at about five hundred feet above the water.

“All on board our boat were watching these aircraft with a great deal of interest as they apparently had no motors, propellers, or any visible signs of propulsion, and to the best of our hearing they made no sound. In describing the aircraft I would say they were at least one hundred feet in diameter. Each had a hole in the center, approximately twenty-five feet in diameter. They were all a sort of shell-like gold and sliver color. Their surface seemed of metal and appeared to be burled, because when the light shone on them through the clouds they were brilliant, not all one brilliance, but many brilliances, something like a Buick dashboard...”
Dahl had managed to maneuver his boat close in to the shore. He was able to take some photographs of the objeccts. Suddenly, there was a dull boom and the center object disgorged a large quantity of white light metal pieces. This was followed by what seemed to Dahl and his companions a hail of blacker metal, which had a similar appearance to lava rock. Dahl’s son had his arm injured by one of the falling fragments and another piece killed his dog. The pieces appeared to be hot for when they hit the bay, steam rose from the water.

When this extraordinary deluge of metal ceased, all six of the “aircraft” rose and drifted out to sea. The center object, which had not dropped the metal, did not seem in any way disturbed and remained in the center as the group moved away.
Dahl stated that his boat had been damaged by the falling fragments. The crew managed to return in it to Tacoma, where Dahl reported the incident to Fred L. Crisman, his immediate chief. The latter thought Dahl and the others had been on a drinking spree. He did not, at first, believe their story. However, Dahl gave Crisman his camera with its load of film, and some of the pieces of metal, as proof. According to Dahl, “The film from our camera, developed, showed these strange aircraft, but the negatives were covered with spots similar to a negative that has been close to an x-ray room before it has been exposed except the spots printed white instead of black as in the usual case.”

Early the next morning something strange happened to Dahl. One of those rather frightening things that seem to come the way of people who know too much about certain aspects of flying saucers. A man, dressed in black, called at his home, and invited him out to breakfast. Dahl was used to lumber buyers calling on him early and, at first, thought nothing unusual about his visitor. That is, until over the breakfast table, the man described in full detail everything that had occurred to Dahl and his crew the day before. It was quite uncanny. The man in black told Dahl that if he valued his own welfare and that of his family, then he should not discuss his experiences with anyone.

Early that morning, too, Crisman went over to Maury Island and found all the debris, exactly as Dahl had reported. Then, according to Crisman, “while I stood looking at the fragments, holding a few pieces in my hand, one of the same kind of aircraft that Harold described to me came right out of a large cumulus cloud and made a wide circle of the little bay.”

All these events were related to Kenneth Arnold who had flown to Tacoma to investigate the affair at the request of Ray Palmer. Arnold sent for United Airlines pilot Captain E. J. Smith, to come and join him. Captain Smith had also seen a gaggle of saucers from his airliner soon after Arnold’s own sighting. The two pilots continued the investigation together from the Winthrop Hotel in Tacoma. After a while, they decided to bring in two military intelligence officers, Captain William Davidson and Lieutenant Frank Brown. Both Arnold and Smith had been interrogated by these officers after their own sightings, and had a regard for their capabilities.

Dahl and Crisman were both agreeable to this step, but the strange affair took on a new slant when the intelligence officers arrived at the Winthrop Hotel. Dahl and Crisman gave the impression of making the whole business appear a hoax. The result was that Davidson and Brown suddenly threw in their hand, and decided to fly back to California in their B-25 bomber.
Just before the two officers left, Crisman drove up in a great hurry with a load of fragments. Arnold, who felt them, considered that they did not seem to be quite the same as the fragments he had in his possession at the hotel. However, Crisman’s load was transferred to the intelligence officers’ vehicle, and went with them to be eventually loaded onto the bomber. Half an hour after take-off, the B-25 crashed near Kelso, Washington. Davidson and Brown were both killed.

Subsequently, another intelligence officer, a Major Sander, interviewed both Arnold and Smith in Tacoma. Later, he took them both in his car to the beach at Maury Island, and pronounced the fragments alleged to have fallen there as nothing but ordinary slag. Nevertheless, he made sure of taking away with him all the pieces that Arnold had at the hotel for analysis.
Those are the main facts of this fantastic case. First, Dahl’s description of the objects as “aircraft”. This should be borne in mind and, I think, is a factor in Dahl’s favor. The second point is that he described the objects as doughnut-shaped. Now this is very important and it is on this description that I think the whole matter hinges!

Neither Arnold nor Smith described their objects as doughnut-shaped. They were discs. Arnold’s were, I understand, more crescent-shaped. Since 1947, the bulk of the sightings have been disc or saucer-shaped, although there have been plenty of others thrown in for good measure – triangular, star, oval, tadpole, delta and cigar-shaped, among others.

Doughnut-shaped objects have been rare, but they have been seen and photographed. In fact, Project Bluebook has since given them an actual code name, “Donut Lab”!

The point I am making is that from Arnold’s sighting onwards – for a very long time – those who reported seeing what are termed “flying saucers” did not report doughnut-shaped ones. (At least, we have not been told of any of this nature.) Therefore, if Dahl and Crisman were concocting a hoax (quite apart from subsequently making it appear to be one), why did they pick on doughnuts? If you or I were going to perpetrate a flying saucer hoax at that time (and the time is so important), would we pick on such a shape? I hardly think so.
Furthermore, if you or I did by such longs odds pick on doughnuts for our hoax on June 21, 1947, we would think it incredible that a doughnut-shaped UFO was photographed over New York almost eight years later, and was identical in size and characteristics.

On Sunday, May 15, 1955, Warren Siegmond saw for a period of about one minute and a half, an unidentified flying object over Union Square, New York City. This important sighting was fully described in Flying Saucer Review (July-August, 1955). It was a beautiful day and so, quite naturally, Mr. Siegmond was taking seom pictures with a small reflex-type camera of Miss Jeannine Bouillier, of the French Government Tourist Office.
Suddenly, Miss Bouillier pointed up to the sky behind her friend, exclaiming, “Quick, take a look at that!”

Mr. Siegmond turned and looked in the direction she had indicated. There, was an enormous circular object, radiating like an immense ball of fire. Siegmond said he had never seen anything like it before in his life. It was a tremendous size. He started taking pictures. The object had no wings, tail or markings. It made no sound.

“... It didn’t seem to know what gravity was. If it did know it certainly wasn’t respecting it. ...” Siegmond declared. He managed to get several shots of the object, one of which clearly showing its doughnut shape is reproduced here.

The World Telegram broke the news of this sighting with a big front page story. The Telephoto Service of the United Press sent the photos to every part of the world. Mr. Siegmond showed the pictures to the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations. They examined the negatives and agreed that he had seen something.
Another extremely well authenticated sighting of a doughnut shaped object occurred as recently as September 21, 1961. Two Boeing 707s encountered a large UFO over the Pacific. One was a B.O.A.C. aircraft, with Captain R. F. Griffin in command, and the other was a Pan American ship. Both captains radioed to FAA towers at Wake Island and Honolulu reports on the enormous space ship they had seen.
Captain Griffin’s B.O.A.C. aircraft was flying at 37,000 feet when the UFO showed up. “Suddenly we saw this bright ring in the sky, about 50 degrees up.” He described the object was round, with clearly defined edges, and pointed out that it had “a very clear hole” in the center.

The Pan American skipper confirmed Captain Griffin’s report. Captain Griffin added that the UFO was travelling in their direction but at a much greater speed and that it went over the horizon in seven minutes. The object must have been enormous to have been seen in such detail at such an altitude!

Surely, these two remarkable sightings of doughnut-shaped UFOs over New York in 1955 and over the Pacific last year, go a long way to establishing that the Maury Island one was no hoax in June, 1947.
I repeat the all important question: if Dahl was carrying out a hoax, is it likely that he would have picked on doughnut-shaped saucers at that time? Remember, saucers were only just beginning to get publicity and no doughnut ones had been publicized.
The intriguing question as to why Dahl and Crisman, when confronted with Davidson and Brown, appeared to make the whole affair at Maury Island out to be a hoax, is indeed, quite another matter. Maybe the gentleman in a dark suit who invited Dahl out to breakfast can answer that one. What do you think?

Letter from Kenneth Larson, Flying Saucers, December 1967
Dear Ray Palmer:
Your advertisements for Arnold’s “Coming of the Saucers” mentions the 1947 Maury Island UFOs.
Why don’t you mention the UFO sightings over Maury Island during April-May, 1967?

Kenneth Larson,
112 West Fifth Street,
Los Angeles, California 90013

June 4 – Seattle, Washington.... The sheriff’s office has investigated numerous reports of UFOs in the Vashon Island area the past 2 months. Deputy Sheriff T.C. Allman, asked about the investigation, said it began after several reports that livestock had been frightened at night. These complaints began to tie in with reports of UFOs ... “About 15 responsible persons have seen the UFOs, he added.” The Deputy, stationed on Vashon, said he and his wife saw a UFO Friday night. The first sighting he knows of occurred April 7 ... Allman said he and his wife were returning to their home on the island’s west side about midnight Friday when they saw the UFO about a mile away over Kitsap County.

They watched it with binoculars ... “It was blurry,” Allman said. “It was circular and looked like a magnesium flare but it didn’t descend and it didn’t go out.” Allman, a pilot, said he was sure it was not a conventional aircraft ... Most of the sightings have been reported in the Maury Island and Burton areas. (NOTE: (BY UAPRO) Maury Island was the scene of much UFO activity in 1947 including the classic Maury Island Hoax Mystery.) “The animals have just gone completely crazy,” Allman said. “Horses, cows, dogs and ducks have been running around.” The disturbed animals have been in the areas where the UFOs have been reported. One witness told Allman he saw an object 30 to 40 ft. long with a light beam running to a bright object nearby. Most of the sightings over Vashon itself have been reported as being over RADIO station towers and a NIKE MISSILE site.

Flying Saucers, December 1967, Editorial:
In this issue you will find a description of the flying saucer convention [organised by James W. Moseley] in New York. Doubtless there are other descriptions. But one thing should be evident – in any event of this kind, based on something so mysterious as flying saucers, there will be an enormous variety of interests and an equal variation in the attendees themselves. When the convention was first conceived, your editor agreed to attend. Kenneth Arnold was also to be a guest and speaker. Quite a bit of discussion has arisen as to why neither of us appeared, even after publicity had been issued stating that we would be there. To set things straight, in the case of your editor, it was simply a matter of a business situation that came up unexpectedly. But when this was added to the absence of Mr. Arnold, it seemed that a 'plot' was hatching somewhere.

Your editor received a phone call from New York, in which he was asked directly if there was any “special” reason why important personages were “boycotting” the convention. Actually there was no boycott. There was just the unavoidable unexpected development.
It is true, however, that there is a certain element of saucer fans who can see something significant in everything that happens. The premise of “suppression”, or “censorship” or “secrecy” or “secret service agents” always seems to come up. Actually none of this is worth considering, except for one peculiar facet your editor would like to take up now. It is a facet that has always been extremely puzzling, and may tie in with another article in this issue, which mentions the “fake” air force officer who shows up to “scramble” things.
If it had not been for the fact this editor has experienced this several times, we would shrug if off as pure imagination. Impersonating an air force officer, a secret service agent, an FBI man, is a serious offense, and it is not likely that it would be committed in such a trivial matter as flying saucers, which “do not constitute a menace to national security, and present no evidence that interplanetary ships are visiting the planet” (to remind you of the official air force attitude).

There is one point we’d like to make before we go into the mystery that has always puzzled us: the New York convention, although attended by thousands, and featuring notables such as the star of Star Trek, John Nebel, etc., barely broke even financially. Almost all flying saucer conventions, forums, meetings, conclaves, etc., lose money. The speaking circuit is rarely profitable; and even in the case of such persistent flying saucer lecturers as Wayne Aho, the all too frequent result is a shortage of bus fare to make it back home. If anyone is considering touring the country as a UFO speaker and continue to do so for years [sic], it would seem to this editor that he had better be well subsidized by the CIA, or some such organization, unless he wishes to share the slim pickings of those well-meaning gentlemen currently making the rounds. They were at New York. They got about $100.00 each for the trip, some of them coming across the continent to speak. They simply cannot make a living this way. Yet they continue, year in and year out. HOW?

Recently, August 12, there was a Midwest UFO Convention in Omaha, Nebraska. One of the principles was Wayne Aho, who has been speaking on UFOs for at least ten years. Another was Frank Stranges. But the thing that intrigues your editor is how the convention came about in the first place. It seems that a 'Mr. Crisman' called Mr. Aho, and said he wanted him to speak at a convention in Omaha, which was 'all arranged'. This turned out to be so, but nobody today seems to know who arranged what. Apparently Mr. Crisman did, but he never showed up in Omaha, particularly at the convention, and presumably before it.

The strange thing seems to be that affairs of this type seem continually to be “arranged” in this mysterious manner. But in this case, the mystery is even greater, because anybody who has read your editor’s current book (now on the newsstands) called “The Real UFO Invasion”, will realize that all this revolved about a man named Crisman, who did fantastic things without rhyme or reason, unless he really arranged the whole thing.
We have often wondered what happened to Mr. Crisman. Is the Omaha convention's 'Crisman' the same Crisman, and is he still at it? If so, WHY? There we have the real mystery that confronts your editor every time he finds himself approaching a public appearance such as the New York convention. Outside of a gathering in Kalamazoo, Michigan, quite a few years ago, your editor has persistently steered clear of attending or speaking at such functions. But this time we decided to go, just to see for ourselves if this “mystery facet” would be a part of the proceedings. Unfortunately, business interfered, and apparently there was no such facet.

Today your editor received a letter which seemed innocuous enough, but it contained a rather unexpected “facet” – briefly, could it have been possible that the convention in New York was planned for only one reason, to get Kenneth Arnold and Ray Palmer on the same platform, in a position neither had ever occupied before, facing a barrage of questions that would have to be answered as Kenneth Arnold and your editor would refuse to answer other than truthfully?

A couple of months before the convention, and after it had been planned, a New York writer received a commission to do a UFO article for a national magazine, in which the whole thing would be treated seriously and matter-of-factly. No hocus pocus. That writer sent me a list of questions (such as would have been asked at the convention), and your editor did not answer. The persistent writer then phoned, and asked the questions. When we had answered him as we would on a public platform, his assignment had been destroyed. There was simply nothing to write about! Because the one vital fact that must come out in any honest discussion of flying saucers is simply this: nobody knows what the flying saucers are, and nobody can prove a thing! One thing is true – UFO exist. Too many people see them. None of them know what it is they see. They are forced to call them “unidentified”.

Until we approach this problem from that viewpoint we will not solve anything. We will, instead, be surrounded with people who are either on the “way out” kick, or are on the “writer of sensational articles for national sensation magazines” side of the fence. In either case, you will get a distorted picture. The hyper-imaginative person will really clobber any reasonable attempt to discover the truth, and will succeed in turning serious-minded investigators away. The sensation writer will always write with a view toward making even the serious investigator out to be a crackpot. Take just one of the questions asked your editor by the New York writer: “Do you really believe that Kenneth Arnold was hypnotized by a CIA agent into deliberately crashing his plane on takeoff?” If you say yes, you are damned, if you say no, you are damned too. Either answer labels you as someone incapable of truly serious and scientific investigation. Another question: “Do you really believe the flying saucers come from the Earth? Possibly from that hollow Earth you advocate?” The answer to the first part of the question, if yes, poses the problem of why you believe this, and where then do they come from, because the Earth has no areas where such things could originate that is not already as familiar as the palm of your hand. Then if you say that a hollow Earth is not beyond the realm of possibility, you are automatically out on your ear. Also, you are “guilty” of “advocating” a hollow Earth. You did no such things. It is like asking if you are STILL beating your wife. You can’t answer yes or no, because you never did beat your wife.

Here we may have the answer to the mysterious support such things as UFO conventions get from mystery men like Crisman, and how enough people show up to pay the speaker’s bus fare home, or somehow he has a supply of income he doesn’t make by working. I have seen UFO speakers make a circuit which proved to be a very serious losing proposition, and wind up still going strong, with all their bills paid. Naturally none of these individuals succeed in equating their poor attendance (paid) with their following affluence, and their persistence in continuing with a program that would be disastrous to a speaker on any other subject! If Billy Graham spoke to 47 persons in Madison Square Garden, neither he nor the Garden would ever repeat the performance. Yet, UFO speakers do exactly that, and go on blithely for years. HOW?
No, we don’t think flying saucer conventions are sabotaged in some mysterious manner, by causing key speakers to fail to put in an appearance. We think it may be the other way around. They would be impossible without the mystery “Crismans” who “arranged” the Omaha convention without ever putting in an appearance.

There really is no point to your editor speaking on flying saucers, because if you ask him point blank if he “believes” in them, he will have to tell you no. He doesn’t even know what they are! He has seen UFOs, and cannot identify them. He knows many people see them. He thinks it very important that a thing so persistent must be investigated thoroughly, and solved if humanly possible. But he is beginning to think that all efforts to get him on a platform where a “Romney” sort of slip of the tongue can forever put him in the “nut” classification, are to put one more “serious investigator” out of commission. Let’s get it straight, we did not boycott the New York convention, but events since then have made us wonder if the sponsors of the affair weren’t “tricked” into it for a reason only a “Crisman” could explain.
Your editor would like to see an International Conclave, by invitation only, with closed sessions, so that no publicity facet could destroy its effectiveness. But it will never happen, because of the simple fact that there ARE UFO, and SOMEBODY doesn’t want us to find out WHAT they are! – Rap.

Flying Saucers, March 1970, letter from Milton Northdurft:
Dear Friend Ray:

I have just read your book, The Real UFO Invasion, and I think a few of my comments might be interesting to you.
First, perhaps you will remember that Ray Doermann of Clarence, Iowa, Bob Gardner of San Francisco and I, when I lived in Maquoketa, Iowa, visited you and stayed all night in your home, meeting Dick Shaver while there. The friendship between myself and Ray Doermann has persisted all these years. We exchange UFO (and other) books, and generally try to keep up on world events.
Naturally, I wanted to buy him a book as soon as I had read 50 pages and saw what it was. But do you think I could find another copy? I had purchased the ONLY one in Sioux City, and we have at least five or six large bookstores and newsstands that handle paperbacks. Not one of them had it. It was as though that one copy had been “teleported” there for my use. Or else, the rest were picked up, as my six copies of the magazine were separated from the wrapper in Maquoketa (the time you lost several thousand copies all over the United States and answered my letter to that effect when I had lost my copies).

Most of these newsstands deal with Olson News, Inc., 1205 Nebraska, but even they did not have any copies when I went there to see if they had picked them up. They do not even handle anything from Greenleaf Classics, Inc. of San Diego. (The fact that this was published through a company on the West Coast, when you have your own publishing plant, seemed strange to me too.)
I see you are still looking to find out who Crisman is. You said you thought you knew but required more evidence (page 161). This brings me to the real purpose of this letter.

About August 8 or 9 (1967) I got a call from Wayne Aho, who you may recognize as a UFO lecturer. In fact, the only time I know of that you ever attended a UFO convention was when I was there too, in Kalamazoo, when Wayne Aho was the master of ceremonies. Otis Carr and his cohort was there too. Wayne Aho continually claims to have been in Intelligence during World War II, and I think this might be significant in light of further information I received while with Wayne this time.
He wanted me to come to Omaha on Saturday, August 12 (1967) when there was to be the "first Midwest UFO Convention" and he wanted me to publicize this in Sioux City, which I did, through radio, television and newspaper. I got two boys in their teens (who had both had experiences with UFO here) and we went down to Omaha on the 12th. It took about 45 minutes after we got to Omaha just to find the location, and then we learned that there was not a public meeting until evening, and the people sponsoring the meeting had not left word about where to locate them! This took another two of three hours of telephoning, and this is amazing when we had two other names, besides Wayne’s that we could call in a town the size of Omaha (after all, this isn’t as big as Chicago!)
We finally located Wayne Aho and other 'big names' that were supposed to be with him and spent another three hours in a very small apartment visiting.

Wayne made quite a point of showing me a letter he had received from a Mr. Crisman, stating that he, Mr. Crisman, wanted them to come and have this convention in Omaha, and that he had it all arranged for them. They traveled all the way from Seattle to be there a few days early, only to find that someone had 'gotten cold feet' or lacked initiative to go ahead (which I can hardly believe, because the 'doctor', T. Edward Beckham of 2503 N. 16th. was quite an enterprising individual and gave me the impression of operating rather smoothly, having some solid people on which he could depend when things actually got under at 8:00 p.m. that evening, with Frank Stranges speaking).

But Crisman never showed up! He told Aho in the letter, which I read several times, that he would definitely be there. Then at the last minute "he had sickness that prevented his being there". 'Dr.' Beckham, when I finally met him, informed me that Crisman had a PhD. in psychology (sic!) and was quite an outstanding individual on the West Coast. I believe he had met him, but I’m not sure, but at least he had believed him to be a very intelligent person from whatever contacts he had had with him. (It is possible, of course, to receive such impressions by mail – and who knows WHO mailed the letters?) I wish I had asked for a photostatic copy of that letter, so I could at least have had the signature on file, but it never occurred to me at the time. It rather seems that the first name was 'Lee' rather than “Fred”. I had forgotten Crisman’s first name, so did not pay enough attention to that, but I never forgot the name Crisman after reading your book the very first time you printed it. (Incidentally, Kenneth Arnold gave me the very first copy of Fate magazine, when I visited him in Boise the first time, so I have had that deeply engraved for a long time!)

Perhaps you have heard of Wayne Aho’s experience on the Mohave Desert, near Giant Rock – which I think was a psychic experience. (It is also amazing to me that Wayne came DIRECTLY from that experience many years ago to the station wagon of a personal friend of mine, formerly of Maquoketa, Iowa, who was parked at the edge of the desert for one of Van Tassel’s conventions.) Wayne now has some sort of strange feeling about being the one to have “the first Midwest UFO Convention” at Omaha, when his war experiences centered around the “Omaha Beachhead”! But HE NEVER GOT TO MEET CRISMAN, who responsible for getting him there!
These experiences never would have happened if I had not had the persistence of Kenneth Arnold. Let me mention another, which happened as a result of my staying around ALL DAY, even there was no convention in the daytime. (We had driven 100 miles to be there, and I wasn’t going to go home empty-handed!)

After leaving Wayne Aho, Clo Dirroll and Lenore Croft, we went to the TV station to meet this “Dr.” Beckham and “Dr.” Frank Stranges, the latter of whom I knew. We just missed them, so we drove out to where the convention was to be held and they had just left there. We decided to eat at a steak house nearby. The first booth was occupied by Frank Stranges and this stranger who was facing me! He looked very puzzled when I walked directly toward them, and almost a bit resentful at first that I would presume to come and disturb them at their meal. When he learned that Frank and I knew each other, he warmed up gradually and we sat and ate with them. I sincerely meant to get my own check and so were the two boys planning to pay for their own, and we were all surprised that this stranger would grab the checks and pay for them all. Stranger than Stranges!

Beckham was busy getting all details completed before the program started at 8:00 p.m., he got the boys to help tend the books for Dr. Stranges, and I ended up saying a few words on the program before Stranges took over. The rest were not on the program until the next day. The attendance made the whole thing worthwhile (they thought).
We ended up with Aho and Croft coming to Sioux City the next Wednesday and Thursday, which the two teenagers arranged (!) since I was to be out of town Monday and Tuesday.

Just last week I received a strange phone call, supposedly from Omaha, about “a call that had come to me from a T. Edward Beckham around August 8, 1967”, and the telephone company (sic!) wanted to know whether I had his address, because their statements evidently were not being received. Well, it was Aho who had called, but it must have been from Beckham’s phone. There were two strange things about this call. First, it was a man calling who claimed to be a representative of the telephone company, and all calls of this nature I have ever received were from women employees; and second, he hadn’t thought to look in his own telephone book for Dr. Beckham’s address! I asked him to give me the address he had, and it was four blocks away from the address at it finally turned out to be. But I did not give him the address. I asked him how it was listed in the Omaha phone book, and he said, “Oh, that’s right, it would be there, wouldn’t it?” and then he looked it up and got this address himself, which was four blocks away, on the same street, from the address he had first given me. Now, where did they get the first address? And since when does a telephone employee forget to look in his own book first to check an address?

Another strange phone call came to me almost a year ago from a woman representing the telephone company. She was in Wisconsin, calling about a phone call made to my home from Crown Point, Indiana a month or two before, also made by a UFO lecturer who was coming here – Mel Noel. His statements also were not being received. Mel Noel is giving lectures on “his experiences while in the Air Force, when their mission was to photograph saucers, which they had done on several occasions but had never seen the result of their work.” Now he goes much further than before, and tells about the representative from Costa Rica in southern California, who told him about a professor in Mexico who has a brother at a secret saucer base in South America, maintained by peoples from many nationalities, and having secret communications with ships from Mars. Mel has visited Mexico many times, he says, and has taken many people down there, none of whom can break down the story as they hear it. He lists important people, Barry Goldwater among them, on his list of investigators.
I have wondered whether that phone call was one of the many attempts to find out who Mel Noel is, for that is not his real name. They gave me the name of the company for which he works (which I have forgotten), but he uses his real name in connection with that commercial enterprise!

I might say that in the last year and a half we have had MUCH UFO activity near here, at least three actual landings, some of which blew out tower lights and affecting other equipment at several radio stations within a few hundred yards of the “ships”. Another one was on the pavement in front of one of these boys I later took to the Omaha convention. Two of them had been hovering (and signalling each other) right over the house of this particular boy four hours before it had landed in front of his car! Both his mother and brother saw the two earlier in the evening. For some reason Sioux City has gotten a lot of special attention in the last year and a half (quite a number of other incidents besides the ones I have related here.)
We had breakfast with Gray Barker in his home town in August, and he tells me, as I remember it, that neither you nor Arnold showed up at the New York Convention, although plenty of money was offered to pay all expenses. I remember Ken telling me how “rigged” the TV show was, the time he and Keyhoe were to be on together, and that he then refused to go. I suppose some similar reason prompted your change of mind on the N.Y. Convention.

Milton Northdurft,
2100 S. Cypress,
Sioux City, Iowa 51106

Flying Saucers September 1971, anonymous letter:
Dear Ray:

Recently I got out your publication, “The Coming of the Saucers” and read through it again. I just wanted to call your attention to a couple of things that came to mind when I was reading through it.
On page 64 in the second paragraph it is mentioned that the cause of the fire in the left engine was due to the loss of an exhaust collector ring. I am very familiar with B-25's and know that they did not have exhaust collector rings. Each cylinder had an individual short exhaust stack. These short stacks did quite often come off in flight, but this never caused any problem.

I served during World War II for almost four years and was caught in the Korean Emergency for 21 months of active duty (stateside). During the last few months of active duty in 1952 I was with a unit that used B-25's. These B-25's had all been brought up to date with all the latest modifications and they still had short stacks as during World War II. To the best of my knowledge there never was a B-25 with an exhaust collector ring during the period the book covers.

Enclosed is a picture that I cut out of Trade-A-Plane Service showing a B-25. The 'bumps' around the back of the engine cowl house the short exhaust stacks.

The other thing I want to comment on was probably written in your words rather than the words of Arnold. I refer to Arnold’s forced landing on page 83. Start with line 8 counting from the bottom of the page. It states that Arnold dove the airplane straight at the ground when the engine quit. I rather doubt that these were Arnold’s actual words describing the forced landing.
Proper technique in a single engine aircraft when taking off is to climb out at a speed higher than the normal glide speed. Then if the engine fails you simply lower the nose immediately to establish a glide at the proper glide speed.

Airplanes can be climbed at speeds equal to or below their glide speeds but, if you have an engine failure at such speeds it means you will be near or at stall speed before you can get the nose lowered enough to increase your speed to a safe speed. Regardless, from an altitude of around fifty feet you would never dive straight for the ground as you would most likely hit the ground before you could get the nose back up to a level flight altitude or landing altitude. In the case of Arnold’s aircraft a landing (touch-down) altitude would be a nose high altitude due to it having a tailwheel rather than a nosewheel. I could go into this in a lot more detail, but I’m not trying to give a flying lesson here.

I assume that what really happened in the case of Arnold’s forced landing was that he was climbing out at a fairly low air speed when the engine quit, lowered the nose, but mushed into the runway in a hard landing due to insufficient air speed.
In case you are wondering about my qualifications to make these comments – I’ve been flying since I was fifteen years old (1935) and have been flying commercially since 1946. Practically my whole life has been in aviation. I have a total of 12,500 pilot hours and 4000 hours of this time is flight instructing. I’ve done charter and cargo flying, Alaska bush flying, contract flying for government agencies, aerobatic flying and test flying (one year production test flying and six years experimental test flying). Most of my experimental test flying has been in multi-engine aircraft. I am rated in land and sea single and multi-engine aircraft.

Perhaps the things I commented on were called to your attention when the book was first published but, if they weren’t, then I may have brought up something you didn’t know. I refer in particular to that bit about the exhaust collector ring.
This letter is intended for you personally and not for publication. How-ever [sic], I have no objections if you want to comment on the letter or use parts of it in your publications. I just don’t want my name and address appearing in your publications. I have my own personal reasons for not wanting publicity of any sort.

Anonymous.

Ray Palmer’s reply:

Thanks for the information. As for the explanation for the crash, I still prefer to believe the (hearsay) testimony of one of the (now missing) hitchhikers who said the plane was fired upon by a P-51. You are right about the Arnold crash – Arnold merely lowered the nose to try to get going again, but it was too late. The main thing is that there is evidence that Arnold was obeying a post-hypnotic command to turn off the motor after take-off. I do indeed understand your reasons for wanting to be anonymous! – Rap.


Bibliography

Anonymous. Letter to Ray Palmer. Flying Saucers: Mysteries of the Space Age 74 (September 1971): 36-7.
Arnold, Kenneth. “The REAL Flying Saucer.” Other Worlds: Science Stories 16 (January 1952): 75-92.
Arnold, Kenneth. “How It All Began.” In Curtis G. Fuller, ed. Proceedings of the First International UFO Congress, 17-29. New York: Warner Books, 1980.

Arnold, Kenneth, and Ray Palmer. The Coming of the Saucers: A Documentary Report on Sky Objects That Have Mystified the World. Boise, ID, and Amherst, WI: The Authors, 1952.

Bloecher, Ted. Report on the UFO Wave of 1947. Washington, DC: The Author, 1967.
Everett, Eldon K. Letter to Ray Palmer. Flying Saucers from Other Worlds 3 (November 1957): 85.
Everett, Eldon K. “Saucers over Puget Sound.” Flying Saucers from Other Worlds 6 (July-August 1958): 53-60.
Keel, John A. “Kenneth Arnold and the F.B.I. (From Documents Obtained by Peter Gersten and CAUS).” Flying Saucer Review 32,5 (August 1987): 2-12.

Larson, Kenneth. Letter to Ray Palmer. Flying Saucers: Mysteries of the Space Age 55 (December 1967): 41.
Murphy, Brian. Letter to Ray Palmer. Flying Saucers: The Magazine of Space Conquest 16 (August 1960): 46-47.
Northdurft, Milton. Letter to Ray Palmer. Flying Saucers: Mysteries of the Space Age 68 (March 1970):35-38.
Palmer, Ray. “Edward J. Ruppelt and the ‘Smear Technique.’” Flying Saucers: The Magazine of Space Conquest 7 (October 1958): 30.
Palmer, Ray. “The Truth About the Book, ‘The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects,’ by Edward J. Ruppelt, Former Head of the United States Air Force Project Bluebook, Otherwise Known as the Project to Investigate the Mystery of the Flying Saucers. Flying Saucers: The Magazine of Space Conquest 8 (December 1958): 35-42, 56.

Palmer, Ray. “Editorial.” Flying Saucers: Mysteries of the Space Age 55 (December 1967).
Project “Saucer.” Washington, DC: National Military Establishment Office of Publication Information, April 27, 1949.
Taurasi, James V. “The Story of Science Fiction’s Editors.” Other Worlds: Science Stories 19 (June 1952): 67-78.
Trench, Brinsley Le Poer. “The Maury Island Affair Was No Hoax.” Flying Saucers: Mysteries of the Space Age 29 (January 1963): 16-21.

[aeon]