Kenneth Arnold's sighting

Army Will Explain Crash of Plane Carrying Saucer

Army officials have kept up the flying saucer suspense with an annoucement they will clear up the mystery surrounding a bomber which crashed last week while supposedly carrying disc fragments. The army announcement said additional facts about the bomber crash near Kelso, Washington, will be made public by midweek.

An army spokesman says testimony of one more person is all that's needed before the army can make a complete public report.

The mystery came to light Saturday when the United Press at Tacoma, Washington, received an anonymous telephone call. The caller reported that two army intelligence officers were en route from a Washington state airport to Hamilton field in San Francisco with pieces of a flying saucer. The plane crashed at Kelso, killing both officers.

Army spokesmen say the men had gone to Tacoma to interview Kenneth Arnold, the man who first saw a saucer, and Capt. E. J. Smith -- the transport pilot who followed nine discs on July 4.

Later a Boise, Idaho, newspaper quoted Smith as saying he gave the officers six pieces of metal or lava which may have been a part of a crashed disc. He reportedly said the fragments were obtained from Harold Dahl and Fred Crisman of Tacoma, who said the pieces had struck their boat.

However in Tacoma, Dahl denies he gave Arnold, Smith, or the two army officers any parts of a flying disc. He exhibited a pasteboard box full of roughly square metallic objects which he said he picked up on a beach just before the saucer craze swept the country. He says that if fragments came from an aerial saucer, he doesn't know anything about it.