Alien debris? Nah -- expert says it's just a rock
Sunday, May 27, 2007 11:16 PM PDT
By Leslie Slape
Printable version
E-mail this articleMysterious debris collected earlier this year at the fatal 1947 B-25 crash site near Rose Valley appears to be either old lava or a chunk of a meteorite, a Seattle scientist has concluded.
"I'm not a geologist, but this looks like old lava or maybe ancient mud to me, because it's all full of little gas pockets, and gas pockets have crystals coating the inner walls," University of Washington chemistry department researcher Bill Beaty said in a video posted on the Seattle Museum of the Mysteries Web site.
"If it's got little crystal incrustations, then at one point it had to be deeply buried."
The Army Air Force bomber crashed Aug. 1, 1947, at Goble Creek, on land currently owned by James Greear.
The pilots, Capt. William Davidson and Lt. Frank Brown, remained with the plane and were killed. A third aviator was injured when his parachute collapsed, and the fourth escaped unscathed.
The Army maintained strict secrecy after the crash, according to newspaper reports. The Army said the plane carried "classified material." The material was rumored to be debris from "flying saucers" seen over Maury Island earlier that year.
The Seattle museum's owners visited the site with Greear in April and collected airplane parts and the debris that Beaty analyzed.
Since The Daily News published a story on April 19, the museum's Web site has been updated with a facsimile of the Aug. 1, 1947, edition of The Daily News that reported the crash. The Daily News photo accompanying the 1947 story, which was shot before the military arrived, is the only photo available of the crash, the museum's curators said on the site.
In an Aug. 3, 1947, story in the Vallejo Times-Herald, Army Major George Sanders said, "No one was allowed to take pictures of the wreckage until the material had been removed and returned to McChord."
On the Web: http://www.seattlechatclub.org/Arnold.html .
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