The article below was published in the newspaper The Galveston Daily News, Galveston, Texas, USA, on pages 1 and 5, on August 3, 1947.
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 2. (AP) A Fourth Air Force officer at nearby Hamilton Field said tonight that two officers killed in a plane crash near Kelso, Wash., yesterday had gone north to talk with Kenneth Arnold, Boise businessman-pilot who first reported seeing "flying saucers" last June.
Brig. Gen. Ned Schramm, chief of staff, Fourth Air Force, said:
"Arnold had contacted our people, saying he might have something to tell them. I don't know what he told them."
Capt. William L. Davidson, San Francisco, and Lt. Frank M. Brown, Vallejo, Cal., killed in the crash, were intelligence officers at Hamilton Field. Their plane was en route from McChord Field, Tacoma, to Hamilton Field when it crashed near Kelso early Friday.
Schramm said he knew nothing about reports the plane was carrying "classified," or secret material. "As far as I know, the plane was supposed to come in here empty," he said, "and there wasn't a single, military, secret thing about it."
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BOISE, Idaho, Aug. 2. (AP) -- The Idaho statesman tonight said Capt. E. H. Smith of United Airlines told the newspaper he had given the pilot and copilot killed in an army bomber crash yesterday six pieces of "metal or lava" to take back to Hamilton Field, Cal., for inspection.
The statesman said Smith telephoned from Tacoma, Wash., where the B-25 bomber took off yesterday shortly before it crashed at Kelso, Wash., killing Capt. William L. Davidson of San Francisco and Lt. Frank M. Brown, of Vallejo, Cal., intelligence officers.
Smith, the statesman added, had gone to Tacoma with Kenneth Arnold, Boise business man and pilot who in June turned in the first report of seeing a so called "flying disk."
The two men were investigating a report that a disk or some object had struck a boat belonging to Harold Dahl and Fred L. Crisman in that city. Arnold told the statesman the two boat-owners had salvaged pieces of "metal or lava" from the accident.
Smith did not identify the pieces, the statesman said, but told the newspaper he had given them to the two army officers. He added that he did not know where the pieces are at present.
To: Kenneth Arnold or Newspapers 1940-1949.