Camp Hood, TexasJuly 1949

On the evening of July 11, 1949, a sergeant with the 42nd Armored Infantry Battalion at Camp Hood, Texas, saw something unusual streak across the sky. He was lying in a prone position near his half-track when a bright object caught his attention. It appeared twice as large as the evening star and glowed a pale red color, somewhat like tracer ammunition but much brighter. The object looked roughly ball-shaped, though not a perfect circle.

The sergeant watched the object for only two seconds as it moved from east-northeast to south-southwest across the sky at an altitude of about 4,000 feet above the tree line. It traveled in a straight path and vanished suddenly and completely, disappearing as fast as if someone had flicked off a flashlight. There was no sound, no trail, and no effect on the clouds. The night was clear with a nearly full moon.

The Air Force interviewed the sergeant four days later, on July 16. The officer conducting the investigation noted that the sergeant had average intelligence for a noncommissioned officer of his rank. No photographs were taken, no physical evidence was recovered, and no signed statement was obtained. The file contains no weather station data, no radar observations from the area (no radar was operating nearby), and no information about aircraft or testing devices that might have been in the vicinity at the time.

The Air Force concluded that the object was a meteor. The case file does not elaborate on the reasoning behind this determination. The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives across 6 pages.