Sandia Base / Los Alamos, New Mexico — 1948-1950

“Several sightings of green lights were made at Los Alamos. These usually occurred during the early part of the night, nine to eleven, and were usually in the Jemez Mountains.”

Incident summary

Between November 1948 and May 1950, the Office of Special Investigations 17th District logged 209+ unidentified-aerial-phenomenon reports concentrated over the U.S. nuclear-weapons handling sites in central New Mexico — Sandia Base, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Kirtland AFB, Holloman AFB, Albuquerque, and Alamogordo. Dr. Lincoln LaPaz, the University of New Mexico's lead meteoricist, was retained by the USAF and the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project to investigate. LaPaz concluded the green fireballs were not natural meteors. His Fourth (December 20, 1948), Sixth, and Seventh (May 23, 1950) Reports are declassified in PURSUE Release 02 as DOC-141 — a 116-page bundle including AFSWP correspondence, OSI sighting tables, and Fourth Army summaries.

Why this case matters

This incident is logged in the Pentagon's PURSUE catalog — the U.S. Department of War's rolling declassified UAP file release (Release 01 on 2026-05-08, Release 02 on 2026-05-22) — under identifier PURSUE-027. The originating agency is the United States Air Force; the case is currently classified SECRET//DECLASSIFIED and rated ANOMALOUS by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). UAP.WATCH mirrors the original record, adds a geographic and temporal index, and links every claim back to the canonical war.gov source.