A Baseball-sized Light Skimming Ivy Gap Road at Camp Hood

At 21:20 on 27 April 1949 two enlisted men of C Company, 42nd Armored Infantry Battalion, were on guard at Observation Post No. 1 in the Killeen Base area of Camp Hood. They saw a dull violet light the size of a half-dollar 10 to 12 feet away and 6 or 7 feet off the ground. It blinked on and off at regular intervals. It moved west down the road and passed through the fork of a tree, in sight for 50 to 60 seconds.

Fifteen minutes later Lt Howard Kitterman of the 6th Tank Battalion was in a command-and-reconnaissance car on Ivy Gap Road with Pfc Leslie Lochart, Pvt Clement DeAmicis and Pvt Joseph P. Landry. A bright white light about the size of a baseball came at them from about 200 yards at a "terrific rate of speed". Behind it was a cone-shaped "affair" 3 or 4 inches long. It held 6 or 7 feet above the ground and swung through a 180-degree arc. About 50 yards from them it went out, 30 to 40 seconds after they first saw it. There was no sound, no smell and no trail, and there were no flights at the time.

What is on the record

The Army logged the two lights as Incidents 18 and 19, and Capt. H. W. McCulloch interviewed the witnesses. The Project 10073 record card in the Blue Book file concludes "Other (BIRDS)". Its one-line summary describes only the violet light at the observation post. The Army file gives no explanation for either light, and nothing evaluates the white light on Ivy Gap Road.

The catalogues pull the other way. NICAP lists the night as a Blue Book unknown under the blinking violet object. Eberhart's chronology lists it too, but gives 21:25 and 60 to 70 mph for the cone light where the file says 21:35 and "terrific" speed. The file is followed here.

Why it sits where it does

L4 · OFFICIAL RECORD — a released government record names who saw it. Kitterman, Lochart, DeAmicis and Landry are named, and the two guards are identified by unit. The archive has no testimony from the men beyond the Army's own pages. That rating is about provenance, not about what the light was. What came down Ivy Gap Road that night is not resolved here.