Page 30 - Pierce County Lawyer - September October 2025

six large “donut-shaped objects” appeared and then hovered over
them at two thousand feet.
One of the objects made a loud noise, dropped to 500 feet, and
began spewing debris out of its center. In Dahl’s words:
It began spewing a white lightweight metal and a black or darker
type metal which looked like lava rock. When they hit the bay,
steam rose from the water. We ran for the shelter under a cliff on
the beach and behind logs to protect ourselves from the falling
debris. In spite of our precaution, my son's arm was injured by
one of the falling fragments and our dog was hit and killed. After
this metal rain ended, these strange aircraft lifted slowly and then
rose and disappeared.
Dahl returned to Tacoma, took his son to the hospital, and told
his supervisor, Fred Crisman, how a UFO had killed his dog
and damaged the boat. He said he took photos with a camera
and collected debris that had fallen on the boat and on Maury
Island which he gave to Chrisman.
The Tacoma Affair
"Before I came to Tacoma, I was sure I had
heard everything" –Kenneth Arnold
In his book
The Coming
of the Saucers,
Arnold devotes
one entire
chapter to his
investigation
of the Maury
Island Incident
at the request of
Ray Palmer, the
owner of FATE
Magazine. The
Tacoma Affair
began when
he touched
down at Barry's
Airport "on the
mudflats."
Barry gassed my
airplane and
stored it for the
night. I called
all the hotels in
town looking
for a room but
Barry's wife
told me that
getting a room in Tacoma was difficult and the housing shortage
was acute. Finally, as a last resort, I called The Winthrop not
expecting to find a room there as it was the largest and most
prominent hotel in Tacoma. I was shocked when the clerk said,
Yes, Mr. Arnold, we have a room and bath for you.
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Once Arnold settled into his room, he used an old detective
trick to find Dahl—he looked in the Tacoma phone book and
gave him a call. Although Dahl sounded very reluctant to get
involved, after some coaxing, he finally agreed to meet Arnold
in Room 502 at the Winthrop.
When he showed up, Dahl’s frame nearly filled the doorway.
Despite his imposing appearance, Dahl seemed nervous and
scared and wanted Arnold to just go home and forget the whole
thing because, in his words, “this flying saucer business is the
most complicated thing you ever got mixed up in."
The Original Man In Black
According to Dahl, the morning after the Maury Island UFO
incident, before it had been reported to anyone but Chrisman,
a man in a black suit appeared at his home and invited him to
breakfast. Initially, Arnold thought he must be a salvage broker
looking to buy logs. But the suit did not fit that occupation and
the person wearing it was driving an expensive new Buick. The
man in black took Dahl to a café in “uptown Tacoma,” away
from the mudflats where salvage workers and brokers usually
congregated.
Once they sat down, the man told Dahl exactly what he had
seen the day before on Maury Island as if he had been there
himself and then offered some advice:
If you love your family and do not want anything
to happen to them, then do not discuss your
experience with anyone.
Since then, Dahl explained to Arnold, he had been suffering
one crisis after another. He almost got fired from his job, his
wife got sick, his boat broke down, and he lost a $3500 log
boom that had mysteriously broken free of its mooring and
disappeared in the night.4
4 $3500 in 1947 would have purchasing power equal to $50,000 today, assuming an
average inflation rate of 3.49% per year over 78 years.