Project Blue Book Case File
Canada, March 1948 - Incident Number: 116March 1948
Summary
On March 14, 1948, near Moose Factory in Northern Ontario, Canada, a witness employed by the Hudson's Bay Company saw a bright blue ball of flame streak across the sky. The object was about the size of a football and appeared to be falling apart as it descended. It exploded and lit up the entire area brighter than daylight. After the explosion, a streak of orange light shot upward from the spot where the ball had vanished, and it too disappeared within a second. No one heard any sound.
The sighting was part of a larger event that night. About 145 miles south in Cochrane, Ontario, several citizens reported seeing what they believed was a meteor around 11:40 p.m. EST the same evening. One witness in Cochrane, Mrs. Charles Giles, described the object as plunging downward like a spent rocket and said it was roughly the size of a full moon.
The U.S. Air Force's initial assessment, noted on the case cover sheet, concluded that the incident "can certainly be ascribed to the fall of a bright meteor, or fireball." When Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the Air Force's scientific consultant, compiled his evaluation of the case for the Project Grudge report (the successor investigation to Project Blue Book's predecessor), he classified Incident 116 among cases with "high probability" of having an astronomical explanation, meaning a natural phenomenon like a meteor.
The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives, spanning 6 pages.
Reported location
Canada, March 1948 - Incident Number: 116
Date of incident
March 1948
State / country
? / XX
Page count
6 scanned pages
USAF evaluation
unknown
Microfilm
T1206, Roll 2