The Socorro Landing
A police officer chasing a speeding car saw a flame in the sky, drove toward it, and found an egg-shaped craft on legs with two small figures beside it. It rose with a roar and left burn marks and landing impressions that were photographed within hours.
- Date
- 24 April 1964
- Place
- Socorro, New Mexico, USA
- Witnesses
- Officer Lonnie Zamora
- Status
- Unresolved
What happened
Late on the afternoon of 24 April 1964, Socorro police officer Lonnie Zamora broke off a pursuit when he heard a roar and saw a bluish-orange flame descending behind a hill south of town, near a dynamite shack. Fearing an explosion, he drove up a rough track and, cresting the rise, saw a shiny object about 150 feet away that he first took for an overturned car. Beside it stood two figures in white coveralls, about the size of children or small adults, one of whom seemed to start when it saw his car.
Zamora radioed the sheriff's office and walked toward the object. It was smooth, whitish, egg-shaped, resting on legs, with a red insignia on its side. As he approached it emitted a roar and flame from beneath, and he ran, losing his glasses, and dropped behind his car. The object rose, went silent, and moved off over the mountains at speed. A second officer, Sergeant Sam Chavez, arrived within minutes to find Zamora pale and the brush still burning.
The evidence
Four wedge-shaped depressions in the ground, arranged in an uneven quadrilateral, and several burned patches of brush were photographed and measured by police and, the next day, by Army and FBI personnel. The Air Force's Project Blue Book investigated at length. Its chief scientific consultant, J. Allen Hynek, interviewed Zamora and found him a sober and reliable witness, and Blue Book left the case unidentified.
The figures were never described in detail; Zamora saw them for seconds at a distance and would not speculate on what they were. The Atlas therefore links no species to the case.
Aftermath
Socorro is often called the best-documented landing case in the American record because of the physical traces, the immediate corroboration, and the standing of the witness, who disliked the attention and rarely spoke about the event afterward. Zamora died in 2009 without changing his account.
Explanations
Proposed explanations include a hoax by New Mexico Tech students, favoured by Hynek's colleague Stirling Colgate, who was the college president; a test of a lunar lander or a Surveyor-type vehicle from nearby White Sands, which records do not support; and a misperceived hot-air or research balloon. None fits all the details, and no explanation has gained general acceptance. The case remains officially unidentified.
Sources
- Lonnie Zamora incident
- J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience (1972) Find on Amazon
Book links go to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate, XenoAtlas earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you. Every book the Atlas cites is shelved in the Reading Room.