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Case · C-020

Socorro: Officer Lonnie Zamora and the object resting in the desert

Socorro, New Mexico · United States · Apr 24, 1964

On land Police Physical traces

Unexplained

What happened
Shortly before 6 p.m., while chasing a car south of town, Officer Lonnie Zamora heard a loud roar and saw a flame; in a hollow he noticed a whitish oval object and, beside it, two small figures in white coveralls, then the object rose with a rumble and a blue and orange flame and moved away. The officers who rushed to the scene found four shallow imprints and burned bushes, and the military took soil samples. Investigations were carried out by the Army at White Sands, the Air Force with Hynek, and an FBI agent from Albuquerque who, according to the Bureau's documents, merely served as liaison with the military.
Proposed explanation
Project Blue Book classified it as unidentified. Hypotheses proposed later, none proven: a prank by New Mexico Tech students (Robert Sheaffer, with the support of the institute's then-president Stirling Colgate), a local staged hoax (Philip Klass), a mirage of the star Canopus (Steuart Campbell) or the test of an experimental vehicle similar to a lunar module.
Official investigation
U.S. Air Force (Project Blue Book, J. Allen Hynek), Army (White Sands Missile Range), FBI (Albuquerque), New Mexico State Police
Words of the document
This is the best-documented case on record

Official documents

  1. FBI records on the Socorro, New Mexico incident – teletypes, airtel and memorandum, April–May 1964 (FOIPA 1474900) · FBI (FOIA release to The Black Vault, 2020) · 1964
  2. The Investigation of UFO's (Hector Quintanilla Jr.), approvato per il rilascio il 22 settembre 1993 · CIA – CIA Historical Review Program (author: the head of Project Blue Book) · Sep 22, 1993

Sources

  1. Wikipedia – Lonnie Zamora incident (other)
  2. Paul Harden, “The 1964 Socorro UFO Incident” (El Defensor Chieftain / Socorro County Historical Society, 2008) (analysis)
  3. The Black Vault – the FBI documents on the Socorro landing (other)

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