- The San Francisco Chronicle Sunday, August 3, 1947
-
- Plane Crash Linked to Flying Disc Inquiry
-
- Two Army Air Force Intelligence officers from the Bay
Area, killed early Friday when their B-25 bomber crashed into a hillside
near Kelso, Wash., were on a mission apparently connected with flying discs.
-
- Brigadier General Ned Schramm chief of staff, Fourth
Air Force, said at Hamilton Field the two officers had been in the north
to talk with Kenneth Arnold, pilot.
-
- Arnold was the man who first reported seeing the flying
discs last June 25.
-
- "Arnold had contacted our people," Schramm
said, "saying he might have something interesting to tell them. I
don't know what he told them."
-
- PILOT PRESENT
-
- The dead officers were Capt. William
L. Davidson, 587 Twentyfourth avenue, and First Lieutenant Frank M. Brown,
21 Sunset street, Vallejo.
-
- Although the Army did not mention
CaptainE. H. Smith, United Airlines pilot who chased nine discs on July
4, he apparently was present when the Army officers talked to Arnold.
-
- The Idaho Statesmen of Boise, according
to Associated Press, said last night that Smith phoned in Tacoma, where
the conference was held, and said he had given the dead officers six pieces
of "metal or lava" to take back to Hamilton Field for inspection.
-
- Smith the Statesmen added, had gone
to Tacoma with Arnold in connection with an investigation of a report that
a disc or some object had struck a boat in that area and that the two boat
owners had salvaged pieces of the "metal or lava" from the accident.
-
- CLASSIFIED MATERIAL
-
- This was in keeping by the United
Press that the plane was carrying fragments of what might have been a disc
aboard at ther time of the crash The fragments were identified as "classified
material"-an Army term for restricted or secret.
-
- The plane was enroute from McChord to Hamilton Field.
-
- However, Major George Sanders, public information officer
at McChord, denied that the "classified material" was pieces
of a flying disc.
-
- "The 'material' was merely personnel records,"
he said.
-
- McChord officials, however allowed no one to take pictures
of the wreckage until the 'material' had been removed and returned to McChord
field.
-
- Maurice Roddy, aviation editor of The Chicago Times
reporting on the explosion which wrecked the boat, said it took place June
24 on Murray Island, off the Washington coast.
-
- "The explosion came to the attention of Raymond
Palmer, Chicago magazine writer, who began an investigation," Roddy
said.
-
- "The explosion took place the same day Arnold reported
sighting the first of the flying discs."
-
- "Palmer commisioned Arnold to go from Boise to Murray
Island, and he did so."
-
- "He obtained photographs, interviews with all persons
in the area at the time and specimens of what Palmer described as a 'lava
oxide metal.'"
-
- "The specimens were analyzed by University of Chicago
scientists. They identified the stuff
|
|
 |
