Hamilton AFB smelled a hoax, accounting for their short interview and hesitancy in bothering to take the “fragments.”  They confirmed their convictions when they talked to the intelligence officer at McChord.  It had already been established, through an informer, that the fragments were what Brown and Davidson thought, slag.  The classified material on the B-25 was a file of reports the two officers offered to take back to Hamilton and had nothing to do with the Maury Island Mystery, or better, the Maury Island Hoax.

Simpson and his airline pilot friend weren’t told about the hoax for one reason.  As soon as it was discovered that they had been “taken,” thoroughly, and were not a party to the hoax, no one wanted to embarrass them.

The majority of the writers of saucer lore have played this sighting to the hilt, pointing out as their main premise the fact that the story must be true because the government never openly exposed or prosecuted either of the two hoaxers.  This is a logical premise, but a false one.  The reason for the thorough investigation of the Maury Island Hoax was that the government had thought seriously of prosecuting the men.  At the last minute it was decided, after talking to the two men, that the hoax was a harmless joke that had mushroomed, and that the loss of two lives and a B-25 could not be directly blamed on the two men.  The story wasn’t even printed because at the time of the incident, even though in this case the press knew about it, the facts were classed as evidence.  By the time the facts were released they were yesterday’s news.  And nothing is deader than yesterday’s news.

As 1947 drew to a close, the Air Force’s Project Sign had outgrown its initial panic and had settled down to a routine operation.  Every intelligence report dealing with the Germans’ World War II aeronautical research had been studied to find out if the Russians could have developed any of the late German designs into flying saucers.  Aerodynamicists at ATIC and at Wright Field’s Aircraft Laboratory computed the maximum performance that could be expected from the German designs.  The designers of the aircraft themselves were contacted.  “Could the Russians develop a flying saucer from their designs?” The answer was, “No, there was no conceivable way any aircraft could perform that would match the reported maneuvers of the UFO’s.”  The Air Force’s Aeromedical Laboratory concurred.  If the aircraft could be built, the human body couldn’t stand the violent maneuvers that were reported.  The aircraft-structures people seconded this, no material known could stand the loads of the reported maneuvers and heat of the high speeds.

Still convinced that the UFO’s were real objects, the people at ATIC began to change their thinking.  Those who were convinced that the UFO’s were of Soviet origin now began to eye outer space, not because there was any evidence that the UFO’s did come from outer space but because they were convinced that UFO’s existed and only some unknown race with a highly developed state of technology could build such vehicles.  As far as the effect on the human body was concerned, why couldn’t these people, whoever they might be, stand these horrible maneuver forces?  Why judge them by earthly standards?  I found a memo to this effect was in the old Project Sign files.