pul9503.27a
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 01:00:56 -0500
From: Germannvh
Subject: The Arnold Chronology, Part 4/4 --

The Arnold Chronology, Part 4/4 --

UFOSearch Columbia, Missouri 65203

Aug 2 - Crisman interrupts this conversation from time to time.
Palmer says that maybe enough is enough. He warns Arnold not to
carry any of the fragments in his plane. Palmer then says that
if he or Smith want to keep any of the metal they should mail
fragments of it to themselves or to him. Palmer advises Arnold
not to let Smith take any fragments, if possible.

Then Crisman talks to Palmer and verifies that the plane has gone
down. Palmer later tells Arnold that he recognized Crisman's
voice as one he had heard several times before on mysterious long
distance calls. Crisman had sent Palmer a letter saying he had
been "rayed" by the "underground men." He had also warned Palmer
to "lay off" the Shaver Mysteries. Arnold was very suspicious of
Crisman by now. Crisman had told Arnold that he knew of Palmer
through "Venture Magazine." But Arnold knew there was no such
magazine but Palmer's company was called "Venture Publishing."

The United Press building was right across the street from the
hotel. That's where Ted Morello worked. Morello had an interview
with one of the two men who had jumped from the B-25, a soldier
"hitching" a ride. About 25 minutes after take-off the left
engine caught fire. Lt. Brown came back and ordered the soldier
to jump, all but throwing him out of the plane. The bomber then
continued to the south, on fire, all the while the soldier
floated down on his parachute. Only one other parachute was
seen.

Later that morning Smith and Arnold go down to the docks with
Crisman to look at the boat. It is not the same boat, nothing
about it is right. The engine does not start. Arnold is by now
totally disgusted with the whole affair. He and Smith go back to
the hotel not knowing what to think. The phone soon rings. It
is Ted Morello who says his mysterious informer is predicting
things.

The mystery voice says that Captain Smith will be called to
Wright Field on the fifth of August, 1947, that Kenneth Arnold's
plane has been shot at on numerous occasions, that Captain
Smith's airliner has been shot at on several occasions, that the
B-25 bomber had been shot down by a 20mm cannon, that a recent
crash at La Guardia had been caused by the gust locks being left
on to sabotage it and that the crash in Denmarck that had killed
singer Grace Moore had been sabotaged also. Arnold later found
out that the gust lock cause for the La Guardia crash was true.
Captain Smith was never called to Wright Field, or so he said.

Arnold later learned that there was no distress call from the
B-25 and that no one could figure out why Brown and Davidson did
not bail out of the plane. The bomber fell near Kelso,
Washington.

Arnold, in distress, calls his brother long distance and asks him
to take their mother out into her yard and tell her that he,
Arnold, felt in extreme danger. Arnold could not explain why he
had done this and is ashamed to have done it. It seems senseless.
But Arnold indicates he needed some help and knew that his mother
would pray for him. He makes a similiar call to his wife and she
becomes very worried as well. Arnold fears phone, room bugs.

Tacoma Times, August 2, 1947, headline: "Sabotage Hinted In
Crash Of Army Bomber At Kelso." Written by Paul Lance. Stated
that a mysterious informer had told The Times that the plane had
been shot down or sabotaged to prevent "flying disc" material
from being transported to Hamilton Field. Two enlisted men,
Sergeant Elmer L. Taff and Technician Fourth Grade Woodrow D.
Mathews parachuted. Plane was carrying "classified material."
Paul Lance would die quite mysteriously soon after this affair
ended.

Arnold takes this paper upstairs, shows it to Smith. He now says
he is even more scared. They try to call Crisman and Dahl. No
answer from either. They finally find Dahl in a movie theatre
where they knew he spent a lot of his time. Dahl says Crisman
had called him earlier and said he was leaving town.

Just then Morello calls and tells Arnold that the mysterious
voice had just told him that Crisman had boarded an Army bomber
for Alaska that very afternoon. Arnold becomes worried about
Dahl, whom he still thinks of as a more or less "innocent"
bystander. Arnold knows that he and Smith were almost the last
people to see Davidson and Brown alive and that the police or
military intelligence would be on the scene any minute. Dahl
seems to be resigned and goes back to his movie, saying he would
be at the theater in case he is needed.

Arnold and Smith go to see Ted Morello at his office. He tells
the two men that the B-25 of Davidson and Brown was under armed
guard every minute it was in Tacoma. He says, "You are involved
in something it is beyond our power here to find anything about.
Get out of town until this blows over. I don't want to see
anything happen to you fellows if I can help it." Morello tells
them of a UPI story concerning Dick Rankin, the famous pilot.
Rankin had said that Davidson and Brown were hot on the trail of
something and that he (Rankin) thought was endangering their
lives. The press release was made by Rankin with the intention
of warning Brown and Davidson, Morello said.

Dick Rankin was a world famous pilot reputed to have
"extrasensory perception." He had once had a dream that there
was something wrong with the tail of his plane. He refused to
fly until it was checked. When the fabric was removed several
control wires were in fact damaged. Arnold says that he had a
lot of respect for any opinion of Rankin due to his skill as a
pilot. Smith and Arnold go back to their hotel room and wait for
the police or whomever. The phone rings several times and they
talk to David Johnson in Idaho and to The Chicago Tribune.

Aug 3 - The waiting continues. Nothing happens. They now have
nothing but several dozen "fragments" still scattered around
their hotel room. Crisman is gone. Davidson and Brown are dead.
Morello is telling them to get out of town. Their room is
bugged. Dahl comes by early in the afternoon and does not say
much. Arnold calls the airport and inquires after his plane.
They still expect the military to contact them. Smith says he
has to get back to his airline soon or lose his position. Morale
has fallen to an all-time low. Arnold says that, yes, all of
this did happen.

Aug 4 - Bright and Clear. Arnold photographs Maury Island which
is now visible out of his hotel window. At 9 o'clock Smith and
Arnold meet Dahl and his secretary at a cafe for breakfast.
Smith makes a phone call, comes back and says he will be gone for
an hour. Tells Arnold to go back to the hotel and wait. Arnold
very upset to be left alone. Waits hours. At 2 o'clock Smith
brings a Major Sander of A-2, Army Intelligence, McChord Field.
Arnold tells him the whole story. The major says this could be a
hoax. He says that the B-25 crash was just what it appeared to
be, an accident. Arnold disagrees but is relieved to have the
Major take the case. They could all go home now.

Major Sander picks up the fragments in the hotel room, including
one Arnold had put in his pocket as a souvenier. Sander says he
doesn't want to leave any fragments behind even though they are
fake. He asks for and gets Arnold's fragment. He wraps them up
in a hotel towel and puts them into his car. It is a civilian
car. Sander then takes Arnold and Smith out to a smelting
company. There are piles of stuff that look similiar to what
Crisman and Dahl have shown Smith and Arnold.

But when they get close Arnold realizes that the stuff in the
piles looks like what Crisman had given Brown and Davidson, not
like what had just been taken from the hotel room. Sander will
not let Smith and Arnold compare the stuff in his car to the slag
on the ground. Sander drives the two men back to their hotel and
leaves. Arnold realizes on the way back that the smelter was a
long way off the beaten track and had many piles of metal.
Sander had driven right to the one that had metal similiar to
that in question. Something is screwy. But Arnold is by now glad
to be out of it.

Smith and Arnold check out of the hotel. Arnold wants to say
goodbye to Dahl, who said he would be working at his secretary's
house that day. The two men drive over there. The house is
empty, the screen door ajar and there are cobwebs across the main
entrance. The windows and door knobs were the same as Arnold
remembers but the house looked as though it had not been lived in
for months. Arnold feels as if a bucket of cold ice-water has
been dumped on him. He gets panicky. He thought things like
this only happened in dreams. Could he have had a visit to
Dreamland?

The house was empty, with dirt, dust and cobwebs everywhere.
There was a severe housing shortage in Tacoma at this time and
neither Smith nor Arnold could imagine how any house could stay
vacant three months in that area. Harold Dahl has disappeared.
Even the phone company would not admit his existance to Arnold
even though he (Arnold) had looked the man's number up in the
phone book the day he got to his hotel.

Smith drives Arnold to the airport where they inspect his plane.
It is OK. It was going to be a four-hour flight to Boise and he
would get there about dark. At Pendleton, Oregon, Arnold stops
and gets gas, never straying far from his plane. After filling
up he rolls out to the runway, checks the tower and then begins
to take off. At fifty feet his engine stops cold. By a miracle
he gets the plane down, breaking a wing and one landing gear but
not injuring himself. His fuel switch had been turned off, how
Arnold has no idea.

Thus comes to an end the strage saga of Kenneth Arnold and the
Maury Island mystery. As you can see, it was a lot more than met
the eye. The situation is one of extreme wierdness and many
questions remain unanswered:

1) How did the hotel room get reserved for Arnold, at the most
expensive place in town? This took some money, something those
with unaccountable funding seem to have in quantity. And it
struck Arnold funny that he got so famous so fast.

2) Notice the reference to "newspaper-thick" metal, as at
Roswell. Last summer (1994) the Air Force released a report on
the Roswell business. In that report it was stated that General
Vandenberg was NOT investigating the Roswell business at the
beginning of July, 1947. No, he was investigating a UFO event
that took him to Washington state! Most interesting.

3) Arnold never did find out about about the injured boy or the
dog that was killed. Most disappointing.

4) The business with the house of the "secretary" is most
strange. Whomever to set that place up had some money and once
again, who has all sorts of money for all sorts of odd things?

5) And what about the strange actions of Captain Smith, who
seemed to know Crisman and kept disappearing with him for long
periods? Crisman now known with certainty to have been some sort
of agent for someone, military intelligence or OSS/CIG/CIA/FBI.

6) Why did Lt. Brown refuse to take Arnold's call on base? This
is most strange and hints at competing military investigations of
the Maury Island affair and of UFOs in general. Why else would
he be worried about a bug on HIS phone or being overheard. Could
it have been that he and Davidson were investigating something
they were not supposed to be investigating?

7) Why didn't the two officers bail out of the plane when they
had every chance to do so? What could they have been carrying
that was so important they would risk their lives to get that
plane down intact? Could it have been something not known to
their nominal superiors, something they had found or been given
in Tacoma? And why did those looking into the crash never get in
touch with Arnold or Smith? All of this is most suspicious.

8) Who was Ted Morello, whose office just happened to be across
the street from Arnold's mysterious hotel room? We know now that
many "journalists" work for intelligence agencies. For instance,
Richard Helms worked for UPI in Europe in the 1930s and a UPI
bureau chief in Chile helped IT&T get rid of Allende in the early
1970s. Morello looks to us like an agent of some sort.

9) Who was this "Major Sander?" He seemed to know a lot about
slag heaps in the Seattle/Tacoma area and have a real interest in
hoax material. Was Smith gone so much of the time with Crisman
and Sander because they were together cooking up the cover story
that would be used to discredit Arnold? We think it's possible.

There is no doubt, the UFO business was very, very strange in
several ways right from the very beginning. There was strong
military and intelligence community interest right from the start
and the implication is that these entities were in competition
for the same scarce information. There were also bizarre psychic
or paranormal elements to the UFO business right from day one.
The Maury Island affair and the original Arnold sighting were
much, much more than just a nuts-and-bolts apparition. In its
own way these two incidents were just as out and out strange as
anything occuring today. Plus ca change. . .

In the final analysis a lot of people people were interested in
what Kenneth Arnold was doing in the summer of 1947--and they
had a lot of money at their disposal. On top of that two men died
taking part. And swirling around these incidents were rumors of
aliens interacting with mankind, rumors that have "resonances"
for those of us interested in "UFOs" today. This theme will be
developed further in later segments of this series.

End, Part 4/4.