Project Blue Book Case File
Camp Hood, TexasMay 1949
Summary
On the evening of May 6, 1949, a lieutenant at Camp Hood, Texas, watched an unusual glowing object for fifty minutes. The object appeared about the size of a half dollar at first, then shrank to the size of a quarter. It glowed pink, then green, and seemed to spin constantly as it moved. The officer watched it with his naked eye, through field glasses, and through an BC Scope (an early optical sighting device used by the military). The object stayed roughly one thousand yards away and moved slowly back and forth between west and north, covering perhaps three hundred to four hundred yards in each direction.
The object began at an altitude of about one thousand two hundred feet and gradually lowered to around four hundred forty feet. It never made any sound or left a trail. No clouds were visible in the clear sky. The officer noted that the object was brighter than any star in the night sky. Over the course of the sighting, it simply faded from view and grew smaller until it disappeared.
The observation was formally reported through Fourth Army headquarters at Fort Sam Houston and forwarded to Air Materiel Command at Wright Patterson Air Force Base on May 17, 1949. The Air Force recorded the case as incident number 328 and classified it as unidentified. The case file does not contain a formal conclusion or explanation for what the officer observed.
The full case file is reproduced below as held by the National Archives and consists of 7 pages.
Reported location
Camp Hood, Texas
Date of incident
May 1949
State / country
TX / US
Page count
7 scanned pages
USAF evaluation
unidentified
Microfilm
T1206, Roll 5