Goose Bay, Labrador, October 1948 - Incident Number: [ILLEGIBLE]October 1948

On the evening of November 1, 1948, radar operators at Goose Bay, Labrador, detected an unidentified blip on their scope. The object appeared on radar at 9:45 p.m., approximately 3 3/4 miles northeast of the station. According to the radar operator, the object was too small to be an aircraft and too large to be a bird.

The radar blip traveled in a relatively straight line across the scope, moving at an estimated speed of about 60 miles per hour. It traveled roughly 4 miles in just over 4 minutes before disappearing from the 7 1/2 mile range scope. The wind that evening was from the west at 5 to 10 miles per hour. Two GCA operators (ground-controlled approach, a type of radar system used to guide aircraft) witnessed the target on their scope.

However, the investigation uncovered significant mathematical problems with the original sighting report. When Air Force personnel plotted the object's reported starting point, direction of travel, and disappearance point on a map, the geometry did not work out. The coordinates reported by the operators could not all be correct at the same time. Additionally, the reported speed and distance traveled would have made the object disappear from the radar scope before it reached the bearings where it was said to have vanished. These discrepancies were noted by the Newfoundland Base Command in January 1949.

The file indicates that one possibility examined early on was that the object might have been a weather balloon, or rawinsonde (a device used to measure atmospheric conditions), though investigators found this unlikely given the object's movement against the wind. No definitive conclusion about the object's identity appears in this 17-page case file, which is held by the National Archives.