Most people, when talking about the 1947 UFO crash incident, immediately think of Roswell. But just a few days before the Roswell event, another mysterious UFO crash had already occurred on Maury Island in Washington State on the US West Coast—and the truth is even more perplexing.

📍 Location	📅 Date	🔍 Category
Maury Island, Puget Sound, Washington, USA	1947-06-21	UFO Crash / Hoax Debated

On June 21, 1947, 32-year-old Coast Guardsman Harold Dahl was on patrol in the waters near Maury Island when he suddenly spotted six large “doughnut-shaped” flying objects in the sky. He said they had a metallic sheen and hovered at about 600 meters altitude. Then one of them suddenly dropped debris—a large amount of extremely light metal shavings and rock-like substances fell onto the beach.

Dahl took several photos, but he said he was later warned by a “man in a black suit”—the man in black told him not to talk about it, or he and his family would “meet with an accident.” Even stranger, Dahl said his son and dog, who were with him at the time, went missing for a day, but Dahl only remembered seeing them afterward.

Dahl and his business partner Fred Crisman went to meet the famous UFO researcher Kenneth Arnold—the same Arnold who had become known earlier that month for sighting a UFO near Mount Rainier. Arnold was very interested in this incident and even went to the scene to investigate, collecting some debris for analysis.

What were the analysis results? Some reports said the debris was ordinary slag and minerals—i.e., man-made garbage. Arnold and his pilot friend Dave Johnson were later threatened because of this incident.

In mid-July 1947, the US Air Force officially launched an investigation. Air Force intelligence officers eventually concluded that this incident might be a hoax. But—the description of those “doughnut-shaped spacecraft” was strikingly similar to later UFO sighting reports from around the world. The most eerie part of the whole affair is that Dahl’s original photos and footage have all “gone missing” and have never been made public.

Although many UFO researchers consider Maury Island a hoax, some believe the truth was deliberately covered up—especially considering the event occurred before Roswell, and the government may have wanted to handle it quietly to avoid excessive media attention.

📚 Sources

• Arnold, K. “The Maury Island Investigation” (1947), Personal notes
• Air Force Intelligence Report, “Maury Island Incident” (1947)
• Clark, J. “The UFO Encyclopedia” (1998), Omnigraphics