For days after the second fatal crash of a Boeing Co. 737 Max last year, one nation after another halted flights on the beleaguered jetliner.

But officials in the U.S. held out, saying they needed hard evidence linking the two disasters to a common cause before grounding Boeing’s best-selling jet. Early on the third day, that evidence arrived from Boeing itself.

One of the manufacturer’s top safety officials called the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s chief of safety, Ali Bahrami, on the morning of March 13, 2019, according to documents released by investigators for the U.S. House of Representatives that reveal undisclosed details on the jet’s grounding.