Multiple blinking and moving lights — Camp Hood Q-Area (Mar 6–8 and Mar 17 1949)
Multiple nocturnal lights of varying shapes and colors were observed by military security personnel in and around the 'Q Area' (nuclear weapons storage facility) at Camp Hood, Texas on the nights of 6–8 March and 17 March 1949, and possibly additional nights through 24 March. Objects included blinking lights, a basketball-sized pale blue flash, an oblong pale blue-white light traveling from N74°E, an orange roundish head with an orange trail ~100 feet long, and a teardrop-shaped light making a perfect arc before disappearing. Fourth Army G-2 concluded through surveying instrument measurements that the objects formed a rough circle around the Q-Area perimeter. No exhaust, noise, or identifiable source was found despite alert-force and investigative searches.
“"AT CAMP HOOD, it was determined that this type of phenomena, hitherto unreported from the Camp Hood Area, has the same general characteristics of the phenomena observed during the past several months at Sandia Base … none of the observers had been instructed to look for or report any sort of atmospheric phenomena. All stated without equivocation that they had never before seen anything resembling the reported phenomena." Fourth Army: "the 'lights' form a rough circle about the 'Q' Area."”
Extensively documented across three separate Fourth Army G-2 Summaries of Information (dated 6 March, 16–18 March, and 24 March 1949) plus an overlay map included in the file. Witnesses were military security personnel using surveying instruments (theodolites) to record azimuth and elevation data. Presence at a nuclear weapons storage facility (Q-Area) is noted explicitly as a concern by multiple reports. Trip flares were investigated as an explanation and ruled unlikely by ordnance check. Objects range from stationary flashes to moving trajectories. OCR of the detailed per-observer reports is moderately noisy but sufficient to extract key characteristics. The 17 March 1949 event was separately observed by Captain McCullough (Assistant G-2) using tank-mounted sights with dual observers providing triangulated coordinates.