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'Project Blue Book' Season 2 Episode 5: True story of Maury Island's flying saucers and the 'Men in Black'

Episode 5 'The Men in Black' sees Hynek practically kidnapped by the eponymous group of men to seek out the truth behind the Maury Island incident

Spoiler alert for 'Project Blue Book' Season 2 Episode 5 'The Men in Black'

In this week's episode of 'Project Blue Book' Season 2, the true story aspect arrives in the form of the Maury Island UFO sighting, which has been labeled as the 'dirtiest hoax in UFO history' by Captain Edward J Ruppelt, the man who penned the titular book the History show is based on.

Digging deeper within the pages of the real-life investigation undertaken by the US Air Force and Dr J Allen Hynek back in the 50s, the show takes us through the fictional Hynek (Aidan Gillen) and his partner Captain Michael Quinn's debacle over the authenticity of these flying saucer claims that local resident Earnest Reed claimed to have been attacked by on a usual day at the lake.

The true story of Maury Island's UFO sightings is, however, slightly different and a lot more scam-like.

Episode 5 'The Men in Black' sees Hynek practically kidnapped by the eponymous group of men to seek out the truth behind the Maury Island incident. The group hunts down a man called Earnest Reed who had claimed in the past that while on a regular day out on the lake, he had witnessed flying saucers that just zoomed past the sky without making a single sound.

The giant saucers allegedly had giant holes in the middle, which itself were bigger than the size of Reed's entire boat, and things were fine until mayhem stuck and suddenly, these saucers started pelting metallic shrapnel lit ablaze onto the surface underneath the ships — meaning the lake — and Reed's boat as well. The episode shows Reed suffering a wound on his arm due to the fiery pellets the saucer ejected, but in real life, the whole Maury Island incident was nothing but an elaborate hoax.

As reported, the most notorious hoax in the history of UFO hoaxes was carried out by the late Fred L Crisman told investigative writer Ray Palmers that he had actual physical evidence of a flying saucer. Palmer then passed the story on to Kenneth Arnold, a fellow writer of 'The Coming of the Saucers', who was also investigating reports of alien sightings in the Pacific Northwest.

In their interview with Crisman and his associate, Harold Dahl both lied claiming they are harbor patrolmen. Crisman claimed that Dahl had seen the doughnut-shaped craft hovering overhead as it went about dumping piles of slag on the beach of Maury Islan in Puget Sound. The very next day after their sighting, Crisman added that a mysterious man dressed in black had threatened Dahl, saying: "I know a great deal more about this experience of yours than you will want to believe."

When an excited Arnold informed an Army Air Force intelligence officer of this development, Lt Frank M Brown flew in with an associate and to everyone's disappointment, the debris turned out to be just plain old aluminum. But shockingly enough, while returning, Brown and his associate's flight caught fire and crashed, killing both officers on board, and even though Crisman subsequently confessed to making this whole story up, the legend of Maury Island is still a much talked about incident in the UFO history.

The reason is probably the incident's direct link with the concept of Men in Black, which according to the History show was originated by a former CIA agent who was part of a secret intelligence program, MK-Ultra. Following the atomic bombings of the World War II, the officer had left the program with a few others to seek out the truth behind these UFO sightings on their own and thus came to be the famous Men in Black, a staple in the aliens and UFOs genre of pop culture today.

'Project Blue Book' Season 2 airs on Tuesdays at 10 pm only on History.