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This U.S. Air Force Project Blue Book case file, hosted by The Black Vault, covers a fireball seen on 9 December 1965 over Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Canada, and concludes it was a meteor. It holds memos on calls about Acme, Pennsylvania, where a search from the Oakdale Radar Site found nothing, plus letters from witnesses and a photographer. It also includes a Sky and Telescope article on the Great Lakes fireball and letters identifying material found in Lapeer County as chaff.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
# Great Lakes Fireball
The train of the December 9th fireball, approximately 45 seconds after it was first sighted by Richard P. Champine from about two miles east of Pontiac, Michigan. He had been driving south along Interstate 75 when there was a flash in the sky at an altitude of about 30 degrees. The fireball traveled toward the east, ending at an elevation of 25 degrees. It lasted about one second. Although when first seen the fireball appeared to be fading, it ended with a burst of light.
Standing on the shoulder of the road, Mr. Champine took this picture with a 4-by-5-inch camera and a 127-mm. lens. It is the first of a series of four, the others being taken at 55, 70, and 80 seconds after his first observation. In the last picture the train is strongly curved in the middle.
LATE on the afternoon of December 9, 1965, a fireball that must have been brighter than the full moon streaked across the sky near the Great Lakes. Though the brilliant light lasted only a few seconds, the meteor left a smoke train that remained visible for at least 20 minutes.
The fireball's path through the atmosphere appears to have been steep, probably over the southern Michigan Peninsula for the most part. This track terminated near the western end of Lake Erie. It is possible that the fireball dropped meteorites, but because its trajectory is not yet well known, it is not clear whether they fell on land or into the water.
locate any possible meteoritic mass. An astronomer close to the scene was Von Del Chamberlain of the Abrams Planetarium, East Lansing, Michigan. In response to his requests for information, more than 100 persons sent him reports. He writes:
dard time). The duration of the meteor was about four seconds, and it was described as a brilliant light which took on a reddish hue at the end of its path. Color estimates indicate that it changed rapidly from white to orange.
"The fireball occurred at about 21:44 Universal time (4:44 p.m. Eastern stan-
Two factors contribute to this uncertainty of the fireball's path through the atmosphere. Since the time was near sunset, there were no star fields against which the fireball could be plotted. Also, the brief duration and short path in the sky hampered attempts to fix its direction over the ground.
"The brightness must have been on the order of magnitude -15 for an observer located in southeastern Michigan. The fireball burst into one large and several smaller fragments before it disappeared.
"Several thunderous, resounding, and rumbling booms were heard in the Detroit area, $ 2 \frac{1}{2} $ to five minutes later, depending on the location of the observer. A seismograph at Willow Run Airport (about 25 miles southwest of Detroit) recorded the shock.
actively study
"One observer in Michigan had just finished taking sunset pictures and had turned toward the southeast when the fireball appeared. He quickly took two color pictures of the train and cloud.
"Preparations are under way for Canadian scientists and myself to begin serious attempts to locate the region of a possible fall of meteorites."
By chance, G. W. Wetherill, a geophysics and geology professor at the University of California at Los Angeles had already planned a business trip east. He started three days earlier, in order to interview people who had seen the fire ball.
"On December 12th I arrived at Cleveland, rented a car, and drove west talk to people at Elyria, Ohio. Later the day I visited the Federal Aeronaut Administration flight control center Oberlin, Ohio, to see if they had any useful information. They did, and throu Mr. Hatton of this facility I was give a copy of 23 reports by aircraft pilots
"The first report was received at 4 p.m. EST from American Airlines Fl 180, which was about 20 miles west Peck, Michigan (some 65 miles north
The path of the fireball extended roughly from northwest to southeast, passing well south of Pontiac and Detroit, Michigan, and ending in or near the western part of Lake Erje. Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 37 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.