The Ball That Zig-zagged over North Bay for 8 Minutes 43 Seconds

Warrant Officer W. J. Yeo was a master telecommunications technician at RCAF Station North Bay, and he knew guided missiles. Sergeant D. V. Crandell was an instrument technician. On the night of 1 January 1952 the two men watched a reddish-orange ball move over the field. They judged it "probably outside the earth's atmosphere". It seemed to travel at supersonic speed roughly parallel to the earth, "zig-zagging and climbing and diving without a sound". They timed it at 8 minutes 43 seconds.

Yeo was clear about what it was not. It was no aircraft, he said, and no balloon or meteor either.

What is on the record

The account sits in Project Blue Book's file on a later North Bay sighting, of 12 April 1952, held as Unknown 1108. It survives there as press clippings from the Ottawa Journal and the North Bay papers along with the RCAF airmen's statements. The RCAF released the statements as credible but unofficial. Peter Millman, the Dominion astrophysicist, said a meteor lasts seconds, so this could not have been one.

There is no Blue Book evaluation of the New Year sighting. The file's record card covers the April case only. Eberhart gives the time as 22:54, citing the North Bay Nugget of 15 April 1952. Hatch's database lists "2 orange saucers zigzag", and Johnson's calendar cites a clipping of 16 April.

Why it sits where it does

L4 · OFFICIAL RECORD — a released government record names who saw it. Their own statements and the press identify two men: Yeo and Crandell. No account from either man exists in the archive outside those pages. The level reflects the sourcing, not the sky. What the two technicians timed over North Bay is not resolved here.