In 1943 Davis was a sergeant in the United States Army Corps of Engineers, stationed in Hamadan to work on the Persian Corridor between Khorramshahr and Qazvin. According to Davis, during this assignment he befriended a local driver named Badi, and his father Abas-Abas, who claimed to have visited Noah's Ark atop the mountain near their village. Around 1 July, Abas-Abas invited Davis to join them in one such visit, saying that enough snow and ice had melted to partially expose the ship. Upon reaching "Doomsday Point," Davis said he saw the Ark, which "first appeared as a huge rock formation covered by fog." It was lying in a cove lake, within a canyon below his position, and broken into two portions. Abas-Abas claimed that the Ark had been whole in his youth, and had only broken apart within his lifetime.