Documents / Official release
This section of the FBI's 1947 flying disc file (62-HQ-83894) collects correspondence between FBI field offices and Army Air Forces intelligence. It includes a Portland prospector's claim to have seen disc objects near Mount Adams on June 24, 1947, an Air Force report on the August 1 crash near Kelso, Washington that killed investigators Davidson and Brown, and the Maury Island claims of Dahl and Crisman. Other items are an MIT analysis of cast iron fragments from New Hampshire, the A. C. Urie Twin Falls sighting, and the Bureau's decision to stop its disc investigations.
From the source:Release of 2026-05-08 Incident: N/A, N/A. The FBI's 62-HQ-83894 case file includes investigative records, eyewitness testimonies, and public reports concerning Unidentified Flying Objects and flying discs documented between June 1947 and July 1968. The records include high-profile incident accounts, photographic evidence from sites like Oak Ridge, TN, and technical proposals regarding potential propulsion systems. Additional topics include convention programs, researcher accounts, and extensive media coverage from the period. This file is partially posted on FBI vault with more redactions and some pages missing. Included here is the complete case file with several newly declassified pages and only minor redactions.
“Seattle”23 pages
. .,... . •... \,,- August 14, 1947 FLYING DISCS The 11 Tacoma News Tribune" and through them the United Press put out a story that an anny 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, 1947, 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, 1947, they picked up some strange rock formations from a gravel pit on Hauri 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 Pal'!ler 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 rem~rked that a few days after the flying disc stories appeared during the latter part of June1 Pa.lmer 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 Poise, Idaho who requested them to meet him at the Winthrop Hotel in Tacoma on July 31, 1947. According to them Arnold called in ar:ny 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 formati ons 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, Washineton in a B-25 to return to Hamilton Field, California about 2: 30 A.M. August 1 , 1947 , and were killed when t heir plane crashed at Kelso, Washington, after the l eft engine burqed 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 wire.man 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
Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 190 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.