The Best UFO Case Ever?

Introduction

Like no other UFO story before it, the Socorro incident managed to convince a whole generation of people that UFOs were not merely mystery objects flying around our skies, but that they ware probably piloted by denizens from another world. The Socorro case was by no means the first claim of an apparent encounter with extraterrestrials. Such stories had circulated for at least a half century. But until policeman Lonnie Zamora's sighting made the news in 1964, all other accounts of meetings with the space people came from witnesses of dubious credibility and reputation. And their stories where laughable.

Zamora's story was different. He was a policeman, a highly credible witness. So with the case, the widespread feeling — even among UFO believers — that there was something absurd, if not ludicrous, about humanoids, simply crumbled. From this point on, the diminutive pilots associated with the landings of mysterious objects called UFOs were irrevocably tied into the phenomenon.

The Event

On the afternoon of 24 Friday, the sky over Socorro (Nouveau-Mexique) was clear and sunny with just a few scattered clouds. The wind was blowing hard, however, and the law itself was hard after a speeder in a black Chevrolet. Lonnie Zamora, a police officer in Socorro, was driving police car No. 2, a white 1964 Pontiac, and chasing the offender at 5:45 that Friday afternoon when suddenly he heard a rorar and saw a flame in the sky. Thinking that a dynamite shack in the area might have blown up, Zamora wisely decided to abandon the chase and headed instead toward the mystery flame.

Wearing green singlasses over a pair of prescription glasses, Zamora watched the flame descend slowly as he continued driving. The flame had a blue and orange color and was shaped like a funnel. It was twice as wide at the bottom than on the top and four times as high as ti was wide. Zamora could not see the very bottom of the flame, however, as it continued down behind a hill.

The noise Zamora heard was a distinct roar, not a blast or a jet sound. As he drove with his windows rolled down on the rough gravel road leading up to the dynamite shack, the noise from the flame changed from a high frequency to a low frequency over a periode of about 10 seconds.

During this time Zamora had considerable trouble driving up the steep, rough hill. The wheels of his car kept skidding on the loose gravel and rock, and he twice had to back up and try again. By the third attempt, he no longer noticed the flame or the noise, but he did finally make it up the 60-foot-long hill.

Once at the top, Zamora traveled westward slowly on the gravel road but noted nothing for about March 1965 à 20 Monday.

Looking around for the dynamite shack, whose exact location he could not recall, he suddenly noticed a shiny object to the south about 800 feet away. He stopped the car immediately and observed the scene for a few seconds.

At first the shiny object up ahead looked to Zamora like a car turned upside down. Seeing two people in white overalls close to the object, he suspected that it had been turned over by some kids. The "car" looked white against the moss background and the two figures appeared normal to Zamora, who assumed they were either small adults or large kids. They were about one third the size of the object, or about four to four-and-a-half feet tall. One of them then turned in Zamora's firection and seemed startled.

Hoping to be of assistance, Zamora started driving toward them quickly. On his way, he radioed the sheriff's office that he had found a possible accident and would be out of his car, checking out the situation in the arroyo, a dry shallow gully. While still talking on the radio, he stopped his car about a 100 feet from the "over-turned car." As he started to open his door, Zamora dropped his mike, which he picked up and replaced in the slot before getting out of the car. As this happened, Zamora heard two or three loud "thumps," a second or less apart. It was as if someone had opened and slammed closed a car door.

Even before he turned to the scene, Zamora heard the roar again, which became louder as it rose from a low to a high tone. At the same time, he saw the flame under the object, which he finally realized was not a car at all. The object was rising straight up slowly, emitting from the middle of its underside a light blue flame, the bottom of which was orange in color. The flame seemed to be kicking up dust in the immediate area but there was no smoke.

From a distance of about 800 feet Zamora got a good clear look at the object. It was egg-shaped and aluminium-colored. It had no doors, windows, or other features except some markings in red. These insignia-like markings measured about two and one half feet wide in the middle of the object. When the object was about three feet off the ground, Zamora noticed that it seemed to have "legs" on the bottom that were slanted outward toward the ground.

As the roar increased, Zamora thought the object might blow up, so he turned away and, in a panic, ran back toward his car. At one point, as he looked back at the object, he bumped his leg on the back fender of his car, fell to the ground, and lost his glasses. He immediately got up, however, and kept running toward the edge of the hill. As he glanced back he noticed that the object had risen completely out of the gully and was now in the air at the same level as his police car.

He was so scared of the rorar that he intended to continue running down the hill, but when he got there the roar stopped and he heard a sharp whine that lasted maybe a second. Zamora then ducked just over the hill, turned toward the ground, and covered his face with his arms. In the silence that followed, however, he decided to look up and when he did, saw the object going away in a southeasterly direction. It traveled in a straight line, about 10-to-15 feet above the ground, clearing the eight-foot-tall dynamite shack by about three feet.

Zamora then ran back to his car, keeping an eye on the object as it rose up and headed off cross country, silently and without a flame. He picked up his eyeglasses, but left his sunglasses on the ground, and hot into the car. He immediately radioed Ned Lopez, the police radio operator, and told him to "look out the window, to see if he could see an object." What is it, asked Lopez? "It looks like a balloon," replied Zamora, who could still see the object as he spoke to Lopez. It seemed to lift up slowly and to "get small" in the distance very quickly. After just clearing Box Canyon or Six Mile Canyon Mountain, it just disappeared.

Zamora then gave directions to Lopez and Sergeant M. Samuel Chavez, a New Mexico State Tropper, on how to find him. As he waited, he got out his pen and drew a sketch of the insignia he had seen on the object. What he drew was a half circle over an arrow that pointed up from a straight line base. (There is some suspicion that Zamora's drawing was later "changed" by the US Army investigator and that Zamora originally described the insignia as "an inverted 'V' with three parallel lines underneath.") Zamora then went down to where the object had been and saw the brush burning in several places. At that time he heard Sgt. Chavez calling him on the police radio in his car and asking for his location. So Zamora returned to his vehicle and told Chavez to look straight ahead — he was standing right there.

That Same Day in New York

At 24 Friday, 10 AM — about 10 hours before the Socorro event — Gary Wilcox, a farmer living in Tioga City, New York, saw a craft that very much resembles the one seen in Socorro, as well as two similar figures who were dresed almost identically. Wilcox described seeing a shiny object in the woods. As he approached it, he saw a 20-foot long, egg-shaped object hovering two feet above the ground. When Wilcox began to examine the object, he was confronted by two beings, each about four feet tall and wearing silvery white outfits that covered their heads. The stocky figures were carrying trays of soil.

One of the beings approached Wilcox and began talking to him in English. They spoke for two hours about such subjects as air pollution, space probes, agricultural methods, and the fact that the beings claimed to be from Mars. The Martians told Wilcox not to tell anyone about his experience, then entered their ship, which emitted an idling sound as it took off.

Wilcox realized how absurd his story was and thought someone was playing a prank on him. He then called his mother to tell her what had happened, and eventually the story got out. In the days that followed, various people came to interview Wilcox, including the sheriff, two federal agents, UFO investigators, and newspaper reporters. They all found Wilcox an extremely reticent subject; certainly no one would accuse him of being a publicity seeker. Wilcox did not hear about the Socorro event until a week later when his father showed him a newspaper clipping about it.

The Investigation

Minutes after the encounter, the investigation of the Socorro incident began. Through both coincidence and circumstance, it would be one of the most heavily investigated UFO incidents in history.

Sergeant Chavez of the New Mexico State Police pulled up in his car just moments after Lonnie Zamora had seen the object disappear in the distance. Chavez took one look at Zamora who was pale and sweating, and said: You look like you've seen the devil. Zamora replied: Maybe I have. When Zamora briefed the trooper on what had happened, Chavez was skeptical. Later he surreptitiously looked into Zamora's car to search for tools that might have been used to produce the landing marks they would discover. He found nothing to incriminate Zamora, however.

When Zamora and Chavez first walked down the arroyo where Zamora had seen the object, they found burn marks here and there. Smoke appeared to be coming from one burnt bush, but there were no flames or coals. Chavez noted that the burned bush was in the center of four wedge shaped imprints. Chavez then broke a limb from the bush but it was cold to the touch. The four impressions on the ground had apparently been made by the legs of whatever it was that had landed there.

Minutes later, State Policeman Ted V. Jordan, Undersheriff James Luckie, and cattle inspector Robert White, who had overheard the police radio traffic, all arrived and examined the site. Jordan took photographs. At 7 PM Chavez and Zamora left for the State Police office. When they arrived, Zamora spoke to FBI agent J. Arthur Byrnes, Jr., who happened to be in the office on other business and had heard about the incident over police radio.

Byrnes immediately contacted the executive officer at White Sands Proving Grounds who in turn contacted Army Captain Richard T. Holder, the senior military officer in the immediate area. Holder arrived at the station 20 minutes later, and both he and Byrnes interviewed Zamora. Later they visited the site along with several Socorro police officers. Then, after returning to the police station, Holder called in some military police, who roped off the site that very evening and, using flashlights, took measurements and collected samples. At one o'clock in the morning Holder completed his report on the incident. Still later that morning Holder would receive a call from a colonel in the war room of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon who wanted to be briefed on the incident over the scrambler.

The Air Force then began its investigation. Major Hector V. Quintanilla, who had been the director of Project Blue Book for the US Air Force for just a year when the Socorro case occurred, admitted that all hell broke loose when the story it the newspapers on le lendemain. Reporters began calling Quintanilla early at home, so he left for this office immediately to direct the investigation. When he got there the telephones were ringing, ringing, ringing, he recalls; he had a dozen calls waiting for him. But he answered none of them. The first thing he wanted to do was reach Major William Connor, the UFO investigating officer at Kirkland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico, 55 miles from Socorro. Though Conner was inexperienced, Sgt. David Moody, who was Quintanilla's chief analyst, just happened to be on temporary duty at Kirkland.

It took hours to get the Air Force investigation under way. A Geiger counter had to found and the base photographer had to be located. Moody and Conner finally managed to check the site for radioactivity two days after the event, but the results were negative. They were also unable to locate any radar track of the object's passage. In addition, Moody and Conner obtained copies of Holder's preliminary investigation as well as the photographs that Undersheriff Jordan had taken.

Soil samples taken from the scene on the evening of la veille were analyzed by the Air Force Materials Laboratory. A spectrographic analysis completed on the Tuesday, May 19, 1964 revealed no foreign materials in the soil that would indicate the presence of a propellant. Nor did the lab find any significant differences in composition between the control and site samples. The lab concluded that there had been no foreign residue at the site.

The news media pressed the Air Force Information Office for a response but, noted Quintanilla, there was nothing from which we could draw a definite conclusion or a decent evaluation. Quintanilla had no idea what Zamora saw, but he was determined to find out what it was. He decided to send Blue Book's scientific consultant, Northwestern University astronomer J. Allen Hynek, to Kirkland to help with the investigation.

Meanwhile, on -Sunday, April 26, 1964, Jim and Coral Lorenzen of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization in Tucson had arrived to conduct their own investigation. They found that the impressions made by the legs of the object measured 8 by 12 feet in area. The impressions were wedge-shaped and 3-to-4 inches deep. They also reported four circular depressions, about four-and-one-half inches in diameter and approximately three inches deep; they assumed these were made by the ladder the figures must have used to get in and out of the craft. Four other prints with a little crescent shape in the middle were found where the two figures stood; these were thought to be their footprints.

28 Tuesday saw the arrival of Ray Stanford, representing the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, a private but high-profile UFO group based in Washington, DC. Stanford, a psychic who had seen UFOs many times himself, also interviewed Zamora, visited the site, and collected what appeared to be metallic scrapings from a rock in one of the depressions in the soil where the object had landed. A subsequent analysis by scientists at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland revealed that the material was simply silica — just sand. But Stanford insists that the scientist doing the analysis initially told him that the scrapings were a zinc-iron alloy unlike any known on Earth and indicated that the Socorro object could have been an extraterrestrial craft.

Many people investigated the Socorro incident, but probably no one did a more thorough job of it than Ray Stanford, whose Socorro Saucer in a Pentagon Pantry (Blueapple Books, Austin, Texas, 1976) was the one and only book published on the Socorro incident. Despite its thoroughness, however, Stanford's investigation is heavily colored by a near-paranoid attitude, which was widespread at the time, about Air Force UFO secrecy. Stanford was convinced that the authorities had tried to cover-up their involvement in the Socorro case and conceal the evidence and its implications. Indeed, FBI agent Arthur Byrnes requested that his name not be mentioned as a participant in the Socorro investigation. Byrnes had also asked Zamora not to mention having seen the two figures associated with the object. And Army Captain Holder suggested to Zamora that he not mention the symbol he saw on the side of the craft to anyone except official investigators.

Later, Stanford learned through James McDonald, a senior atmospheric physicist at the University of Arizona, that a radiological chemist with the Public Health Service in Las Vegas had analyzed materials gathered at Socorro, including some vitrified sand that had been collected at the landing site. But it seems that Air Force personnel took all the chemist's notes and materials and told her not to talk about it any more. The Air Force had also taken (and never returned) the photographs of the landing site that State Patrolman Ted Jordan had taken minutes after the object's departure; the reason the film was never returned to Jordan? The film was ruined, apparently irradiated.

By the time astronomer Hynek arrived in Socorro for the Air Force, there was little he could do to add to the investigative effort that had already been carried out. Zamora re-enacted the entire episode for Hynek, who also wandered far from the actual scene of the incident in search of similar "landing marks" in the area but found none. "The marks themselves were only two or three inches deep, sandy, clayed and hard-packed, and they appeared to be scooped out, as though a heavy mechanical device had slid rather gently into position." Hynek personally observed some of the greasewood bushes that had been charred in the immediate vicinity of the incident.

Hynek decided to focus his attention on the character and relationships of the people involved, and Zamora in particular. He hoped to invalidate Zamora's testimony somehow, but that effort failed. "It is my opinion," Hynek concluded, "that a real, physical event occurred on the outskirts of Socorro that afternoon..."

Quintanilla meanwhile did his own checking. He called the Holloman Air Force Base Balloon Control Center in New Mexico to check on ballon activity in the area at the time of the incident. He and his secretary Marilyn Beumer Stancombe, called all the weather stations and Air Force bases in New Mexico for the release of weather balloons. They also looked into the possibility of helicopter activity, as well as government and private aircraft flights in the state that may have provided an explanation for the Zamora sightings.

But everything came up negative. There had been no unidentified helicopter, balloon, or aircraft in the area, and the radar installations at Holloman and Albuquerque had observed no unusual blips, though the radar site closest to Socorro, the Holloman Moving Target Indicator Radar, had been shut down that day at 4 in the afternoon. Desperate, Quintanilla even called the reconnaissance division at the Pentagon and the Immigration Service. Finally, at wit's end, he decided to check with the White House Command Post. But that also proved to be a dead end — a General informed Quintanilla that the only activity they had in the area was some flights of the U-2, America's premier high-altitude spy plane at the time.

After days of checking one thing or another, Quintanilla finally received Hynek's report on Socorro. But it added "practically nothing" to the report that Connor and Moody had submitted. In fact, Quintanilla was furious at Hynek for adding "more flame to the fire" at his press conferences on the matter. "I was determined to solve the case come hell or high water," Quintanilla noted. But Quintanilla, like Hynek, was convinced that an actual physical craft had been present. The question was: was it extraterrestrial or man-made?

Quintanilla suspected that the solution to the case lay in a hangar at Holloman Air Force Base. After pulling some strings at the Pentagon, Quintanilla flew out to Holloman himself to interview the Base Commander at length. During his four day visit Quintanilla spoke to everyone and searched the base from one end to another. He even spent another day with the down-range controllers at White Sands Missile Range. But in the end he left dejected, convinced that the answer to the Socorro mystery did not lie at Holloman after all.

On his way back to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, Quintanilla came upon another potential solution to the Socorro mystery. Could Zamora have seen a prototype of the lunar landing module being tested in the field? As soon as he got back, he requested briefings on the subject, as research on the lunar lander for the Apollo moon program was being conducted right there at Wright Patterson. He spent a lot of time pursuing this angle, and for good reason. It was an excellent guess.

In late 1962 NASA had selected Grumman to build this crucial piece of hardware for America's race to the Moon. The contract was signed on 14 Monday and Grumman spent the first three months establishing a practical external shape for the vehicle. Much attention was focused on guessing what the surface of the Moon would be like and how to design for a safe landing. The designers realized that they did not need an aerodynamic streamlined vehicle, as would be needed in the Earth's atmosphere. Since the craft was to operate solely in the vacuum of space, it could be as ungainly looking as was necessary. Like the Socorro craft, it would be a two-man vehicle.

NASA decided that the lander's propulsion systems would be tested at White Sands. They also expected to flight test the lunar module in New Mexico, according to a NASA history of the program. But over the years, the design of the lunar lander changed considerably and in the end Grumman came up with a huge, spidery-legged bug quite unlike what Zamora saw in New Mexico in l'année suivante.

In his quest, Quintanilla even wrote to all the companies involved with lunar lander research in the field, but all their answers came back negative. No lunar lander was operational in April of 1964.

In the end, Quintanilla, forced to pronounce judgment on the case, labeled it "Unidentified." He did this although he felt that many essential elements of the case were missing, "intangible elements that were impossible to check." Writing in a journal called Studies in Intelligence in 1966, Quintanilla did not for a minute doubt Zamora's reliability: "He is a serious police officer, a pillar of his church, and a man well versed in recognizing airborne vehicles in his area. He is puzzled by what he saw, and frankly, so are we. THis is the best-documented case on record, and still we have been unable, in spite of thorough investigation, to find the vehicle or other stimulus that scared Zamora to the point of panic."

Corroborating Witnesses

Determined as it was to explain away the case, the Air Force never tried very hard to find other witnesses to the Socorro event. But others apparently did see Zamora's object, including two men from Dubuque, Iowa whose testimony, however, later proved dubious. On the evening of the incident, the police radio dispatcher recieved three reports from locals who claimed to have seen a blue flame of light in the area, but he failed to enter their names in the log. An Albuquerque TV station reportedly received a call just before 5:30 from a caller who claimed to have seen an egg-shaped UFO traveling south toward Socorro. But again the caller's name was not recorded. Two women on the south side of Socorro claimed to have heard the roaring sound associated with the object, but they never saw the object itself.

Two days after the incident, Opel Grinder, the manager of the Whitting Brothers Service Station, came forward with a fascinating, though unsubstantiated story. Grinder said that a group of tourists — a man, his wife and three boys — had stopped at the station late that afternoon and remarked that "aircraft fly low to the ground around here." When Grinder said there were many helicopters in the area, the tourist commented: "It was a funny looking helicopter, if that's what is was." The object had flown over their car, apparently heading right for the gully where Zamora had encountered the object. The man even commented that he had seen a police car — probably Zamora's — heading up the hill. But the man never came forward to identify himself once Zamora's sighting made the news.

Years later still other witnesses came forward. Robert Dusenberry, who worked for Socorro Electric Corporation, claimed to have seen the object's departure along with two other men while they were driving by the "landing site" on that day. And several hours after the incident a master sergeant at the nearby Stallion Range Station of the White Sands Missile Range spotted a blue glow in the sky. As the glow intensified, the engine of his car died and its electrical system failed. But after the glow faded, he was able to start his car again. The glow had appeared in the southwest, just the direction the object was headed toward when Zamora lost sight of it.

The Sole Cry of Hoax

Only one person in Socorro actually thought that Zamora had fabricated the whole story and that dubious honor belongs to Felix Phillips. Phillips lived close to the landing site and was at home with his wife at the time of the incident. They lived so close, in fact — just a thousand feet away — that Phillips believed he should have heard the loud roar that Zamora had reported, especially since Zamora claimed to have heard it from 4,000 feet away over the sound of his own speeding police car. Although Phillips had several windows of their home open that afternoon, neither he nor his wife had heard any such sound.

Phillips was the only person to regard Zamora as a hoaxer. But Hynek found the charge unacceptable. Phillips was directly downwind from the gully, states Hynek's official memo on the incident, there was a very strong southwest wind blowing, and the gully is on the opposite side of the hill from where Phillips was listening. This, of course, can make a tremendous difference in the ability to hear.

In all the years, no other suggestion of a hoax would ever emerge. It's shameful to pick on anyone as honest as Lonnie Zamora, says investigator Ray Stanford today. "This man is as honest as the day is long."

Theories and Explanations

Everyone believed that Zamora had seen something. But what was it? Despite the Air Force's own conclusion, the skeptics, like Donald Menzel, an astronomer at Harvard University and the leading UFO debunker of the time, thought someone had pulled a prank on Zamora. Menzel's elaborate scenario involved high school kids using a balloon and various chemicals to "get" back at Zamora for one reason or another. Years later, however, Menzel had changed his mind: perhaps, he thought, Zamora had seen a "dust devil."

Initially, Philip Klass, a writer for Aviation Week and Space Technology, thought that Zamora had seen a plasma phenomenon related to the nearby high-voltage transmission lines. But he too changed his mind years later, and came to believe that Zamora had conspired with the mayor, who owned the property on which the incident took place, to make up the UFO story and attract tourists. If they did, it failed.

Most people in Socorro thought the object Zamora had seen was probably a secret experimental device. UFO investigator Jacques Vallée thought so, too. It was the insignia that Zamora had seen on the object which made him suspicious.

The Insignia: What Could It Be?

Perhaps the most intriguing facet of Zamora's sighting is the insignia he clearly remembers seeing on the mysterious egg-shaped object. It's quite rare for UFO reports to contain description of any kinds of markings at all on the craft. Indeed, such markings are a particular feature of man-made aircraft for one purpose — identification. In theory, if we could match the markings that Zamora saw on the UFO with a known insignia, we should be able to determine the nature of the craft.

Zamora's description of the markings on the object reminded J. Allen Hynek of a typical cattle brand, but oviously what Zamora had seen was no cow. Jacques Vallée, who was working closely with Hynek at Northwestern University back in 1964, thought the insignia looked very much like the logo of Astropower, a subsidiary of the Douglas Aircraft Corporation. He had found the logo in an ad in a special computer issue of the Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers dated January 1961. The insignia made Vallée suspicious. He had never heard of a genuine report of a saucer with an insignia painted on the side. This led him to wonder of the Socorro craft could be a military prototype of some kind. Like Quintanilla, Vallée also suspected it might be a lunar lander prototype.

Up, Up, and Away!

Larry Robinson thinks he knows what Lonnie Zamora saw that long ago day. Sometime between 1965 à February 1967, Robinson, now an engineer at Indiana University, remembers seeing a magazine article about a multi-state series of hot-air ballon flights. A map with the story showed the ballon landing points. One anecdote told of an amusing adventure along the way: The balloon had an encounter with a lawman who they thought was going to shoot it out with them, recalls Robinson. The balloon freaked him out. They later found out he thought he was seeing a spaceship. Unfortunately, Robinson has not been able to locate this article.

Then in le mois suivant Robinson bought the Look magazine special issue on flying saucers and, for the first time, read the account of the Socorro sighting. The name Socorro was familiar to him because he had recently seen it on the map published with the magazine article.

In June 1968 Robinson saw for the first time the markings that Zamora had seen on the craft and immediatetly recalled an ad he had seen in another magazine back in 1963 or 1964 that showed a balloon belonging to, or sponsored by, the International Paper corporation. Their logo was a circle with an arrow made of the letters "I" and "P" pointing up. But he discounted a balloon explanation for the Socorro sighting because he did not know at the time that balloons could be so noisy.

Then one day in the summer of 1976 Robinson heard his dog bark and a loud roar outdoors. When he went out into his yard, he saw a round object about 200 feet up. It was a manned hot-air ballon owned by a local winery. The ballon roared again and he saw a flame come from the burner that provided lift. When Robinson reread the Socorro account in February of 1996, everything fell into place.

All of the observed effects tally nicely with what the balloon does, concludes Robinson, who notes that these hot-air sport balloons were only a couple of years old in 1964. When the ballon landed, the pilots shut down the burner pilot for safety. They probably had the flat triangular platform used before 1966. As it landed, il left three marks. The crew then set up a stand or heled the mouth ring to hold the envelope mouth open. In doing so they probably made the fourth mark and the footprints. They then relit the burner (i.e; the thumps Zamora heard) and refilled the envelope. The burner blasts sideways during refilling until the enveloppe lifts. This process probably set fire to the brush. With a possibly deranged cop hiding behind things, maybe ready to shoot it out with them, they beat a hasty retreat into the sky.

Robinson believes the markings Zamora saw on the object was the International Paper Corporation's logo and that the object was one of their balloons. But a check with International Paper's headquarters in Rye, New York failed to bear out this hypothesis. The International Paper logo that does indeed look like what Zamora saw was not used by the company until 1968, four years after the Socorro incident. And it was not red, as Zamora described.

I think I know what happened, replies Robinson. In balloon racing, the emblems on balloons must be readable from a distance to identify the balloon. The previous logo for International Paper would not suffice at all to identify a balloon to the officials. So the new logo may have had it's start here. Or someone else had a similar logo.

Or could the balloon have been a secret military project? An article by Peter Stekel on balloon pioneer Don Piccard notes: 'During his years at Raven (Industries), between 1962 à 1964, Piccard devoted his energy to marketing the Vulcoon, one-man thermal balloons. Stressing his lack of security clearance at the time, Piccard says he worked strictly on sport balloons and had no contact with any of Raven's military contracts... Reflecting back to those days at Raven, Piccard thinks the company's sport ballon division was a cover-up for the military applications of ballooning. "The sport ballon program, which was not believed in by the Raven Industry management, was strictly getting this crazy guy who liked to fly in balloons and make cover. So, when one of these other balloons went down, it would just look like a sport balloonist." When the Navy terminated its contract with Raven, the sport balloon program died too. That was in 1964.

A Design with "Legs"

It is possible to deduce some information about the Socorro craft from the depression it left behind in the desert ravine. The object left behind four "landing pad" marks in an asymmetric arrangement. Three of the four marks were a couple of inches deep in the center with a mound of dirt two inches high pushed up away from center of each equilateral pad mark; the fourth mark was only one inch deep and ill-defined. It has been estimated that you would need the gentle settling of at least a ton to produce each of the pad marks left in the type of desert soil. The vehicle itself, then, could have weighed anywhere from 4 to 10 tons.

Most peculiar, however, is the arrangement of the four "landing pad" marks on the ground. The marks suggest a quadrilateral figure with the distance between pad marks ranging from 9 feet 7-and-a-half inches, to 13 feet 2-and-a-half inches. Significantly, when lines are drawn from opposite pad marks, they cross in the center at 90-degree angles. A careful engineering analysis by William T. Powers in 1968 showed that the various measurements are internally consistent. Furthermore, Powers showed that if the center of gravity of the object was directly over the center burn mark, then equal weight would be supported at each midpoint of the lines drawn between the four landing pads — assuming the linkage among the "legs" was flexible.

We must conclude," wrote Powers in Flying Saucer Review, "that everything argues in favour that a vehicle landed near Socorro, on four pads." Powers was surprised to find that the landing pads seemed to have been placed "to serve the convenience of those using the vehicle (the footprints, and presumably the door, are located next to the mark that appears most 'misplaced') rather than according to a compulsive attachment to symmetry..." And, it does so, Powers noted with considerable astonishment, "without sacrificing any requirements for good engineering."

Insight into Lonnie Zamora

At the time of the incident, Lonnie Zamora was 31 years old, a stocky, bespectacled, 10-year-plus veteran of the Socorro, New Mexico, police force. No one has ever doubted that he did indeed see something on that fateful day of Friday, April 24, 1964. And everyone has always had the highest praise for Zamora. To his supervisor, Police Chief Polo Pineda, Zamora was "a good guy," an expression that covers a lot of ground among police officers. Dr. Lincoln La Paz, who was director of the Institute of Meteoritics at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque at the time, had known Patrolman Zamora for 15 years. To La Paz, Zamora was an honest and reliable man. Sergeant Sam Chavez of the State Police, had the highest regard for Zamora's reliability and unquestionned integrity. He knew Zamora as a sober man who was dedicated to his work. And, supposedly, as if drinks had anything to do with it, the last drink Zamora had prior to the incident was two or three beers more than a month earlier.

Lonnie Zamora's true name is Dionicio Zamora. He was born in Magdalena, New Mexico, on Thursday, September 7, 1933. At the age of 17, he joined the New Mexico National Guard and servied for 24 years. Though he never saw combat, he did help suppress some prison riots in the 1980s. Zamora joined the Socorro Police department as a part-time officer in 1951 and became full time at the age of 21.

It seems that one of hte most significant UFO incidents of all time would change a man forever. Had this incident changed Zamora? I decided to find out. Locating Zamora was easy enough. He still lived in the same town. His phone number was the same and it was more that a quarter century ago. And at the age of 66 was still a working man. But he was very reluctant to talk to me.

At first he attempted to dissuade me. I don't even remember it now, he said. It don't do interviews anymore. But he was too kind and gentle a man to insist and answered my questions anyway, however briefly. Zamora came accross as utterly sincere, though clearly he is still as bewildered by the incident today as he was then, 35 years earlier.

I began the brief interview with a question about the length of the encounter. The litterature claims that less than two minutes elapsed between the time Zamora first saw the flame and the object's subsequent disappearance in the distance. But this seemed to me like an impossibly brief period of time to encompass the event, including his three attempts to get his police car up the hill. So I asked him if he remembered how long his sighting had lasted: Yes, I remember. Oh, I'd say it was about six or seven minutes.

When you realized that the object was not an overturned car, what did you then think it was?

I don't know. I didn't think nothing. I just ran, I didn't... I didn't... I was so scared, I didn't think.

What was it that scared about it?

The noise. The appareance of the object.

What are your current thoughts about what happened back then, 35 years ago?

I don't know. I don't think about it very much. I don't go there. I don't talk about that no more. But people are still calling me up about it.

Did this incident have a big affect on your life?

It didn't affect my life at all. It's just something that happened and I just wen on from there.

Hiw king were you with the police department?

Fifteen years total. But just for two years after the incident and then I quit. I got transferred to landfill, you know, filling in land. I'm still doing it today."

Has the town of Socorro changed since the incident?

No, not at all. It's still a little town, nothing much.

What do you think it was that you saw that day in 1964?

I still don't know. It was nothing from here though. It's something from some other place, I guess. I don't think it was a secret project or nothing like that."

But the two figures you saw standing by the object, they looked pretty normal didn't they?

I didn't see no figures. I just thought I did from way back up the road there. I didn't actually saw them. I thought I saw some coveralls there, but actually I didn't see them n1Two hours after the incident, when Zamora was first questioned about his sighting by FBI agent Byrnes, Zamora was told that it would be better if he didn't mention seeing the two small figures in white, because no one would believe him. More than three decades later, Zamora still had a hard time admitting to strangers that he had indeed seen these figures. Or had he?.

Did you ever figure out what those markins were on the object?

No, I haven't figured it out. Nobody has, I guess.

One person has recently tried to explain your sighting by saying that there was a hot-air balloon race at the tome, and that what you saw was one of the balloons making a brief stop. What do you think of this idea?

People have said all sort of things. At that time, everybody knew what it was. Everybody had an explanation. They said it was a 'pogo' n2a vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, it was a hot air balloon, that it was a vortex, you know, one of those funnels that come down. They've said a lot of things, but I know what I saw. And it wasn't any of those things.

Have you seen anything else like it since?

No.

Do you believe in extraterrestrial life?

I don't know. Maybe. I saw something, but I don't know what it was.

What does your wife think about all this?

She thinks I'm crazy. [Laughs]

All wives say that about their husbands, though.

That's true. [Laughs]

Conclusion

The Socorro incident stands as one of the most remarkable UFO cases of all time. Extensively investigated and thoroughly analyzed by some of the best minds of the time, the case is, notably, Blue Book's only unexplained case involving a landed craft and its occupants.

There are several factors that elevate this case above most UFO sightings. The primary witness was a policeman and a highly trustworthy individual. A number of secondary witnesses also claim to have observed one aspect or another of the event, which occurred notably at close range in broad daylight. But perhaps most important, the event left behind physical evidence, holes in the ground and charred bushes, that were highly suggestive of a physical object having been present at the claimed landing spot. Another factor that casts this case in such a favorable light is what happened immediately after the sighting itself. No sooner had the object disappeared from sight than the first in a long series of investigations began.

In sum, there is little doubt in anyone's mind that a real object was involved. But what was it? Many people were convinced that it was a secret military weapon or NASA device which made an brief emergency landing. But despite going through the highest channels, Blue Book director Quintanilla was never able to confirm such a possibility. And certainly, even if the secret had been kept from him, we would certainly expect to know what it was by now, more than a querter of a century later. But nothing like it has ever emerged from the black vaults of the Pentagon.

Could it simply have been a hot-air ballon making a momentary pit stop, as Indiana engineer Larry Robinson suggests? Possibly. After all, as Robinson correctly points out, Zamora himself said it looked "like a balloon." But there are several factors that strongly mitigate against such an explanation. Zamora saw no basket, gondola, or platform under the balloon, no ropes either, and the flames that he saw came from the bottom of the object, not the middle, and they fired downward. Moreover, Zamora clearly panicked at the sight of this object; in his 13 years as a police officer he had never seen anything like it. Robinson insists the modern hot-air balloon was only two years old at the time of the sighting and that people were not yet familiar with the roar and flame of this new technology. No wonder Zamora was surprised. But if it was a ballon, how could it leave landing marks in the desert as if it were a 4- to 10-ton craft? Robinson thinks the impact of a balloon with a metal platform would have been sufficient to create these indentations. After all, he reminds us, the figures left footprints, too. "Were they overweight?" he asks.

But one would think that such a mundane explanation would have been thoroughly investigated at the time. Had there been just the slightest chance that it was a balloon, Blue Book would certainly have jumped on it as their explanation. After all, Quintanilla was desperate for a solution. How could he — and everyone else — have missed something so simple? On the other hand, if Robinson is correct, who would think to ask a company that makes carboard boxes if they had a balloon in the area? While the balloon explanation is not impossible, it is highly unlikely. But perhaps not as unlikely as an extraterrestrial craft.

Could it have been a craft from another world? The number of UFO sightings doubled in the month of 1964, and this sighting seemed to be a prologue to the start of the 1960s UFO "flap." But if it was an extraterrestrial vehicle why then did it appear to be so "human" a craft? Loud roaring noises and bright flames are the exception rather than the rule in UFO reports. No, if it was from another world, if it was from another world, it must have been from our own — from our future perhaps. It's not clear, however, why a time machine would have to make so much noise and spit out such a huge flame.

The truth is we just don't know what Zamora saw that day in a Socorro ravine. Perhaps one day there will be an answer. But 35 years later, that day clearly has still not come.