Lonnie Zamora incident

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Lonnie Zamora incident

1964 close encounter reported near Socorro, New Mexico

Template:Infobox UFO sighting

The Lonnie Zamora incident was a close encounter of the third kind reported on April 24, 1964 near Socorro, New Mexico, during which Socorro Police Sergeant Lonnie Zamora allegedly observed a landed shiny egg-shaped craft, two small coveralled occupants, and the craft's subsequent vertical ascent accompanied by a roaring blue-orange flame. The case was investigated by the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book and by astronomer J. Allen Hynek, who publicly endorsed Zamora's credibility and saw the sighting reclassified as "unknown" — one of the rare landed-craft reports Blue Book so designated. Physical traces at the site — four rectangular depressions, scorched greasewood, and a silicon-bearing residue on the rocks — were recovered and analyzed, and the craft's red emblem reportedly resembled an Arabic astrological sign for Venus.

Background

Lonnie Zamora (1933–2009) was a sergeant with the Socorro, New Mexico police department at the time of the incident and had served on the force for several years. The sighting occurred during a period of escalating public controversy over UFOs, shortly before NICAP published its congressional briefing The UFO Evidence and just as Donald Menzel's second debunking volume was being promoted by the Air Force. Socorro lies roughly fifty miles south of Albuquerque and within the broader airspace used by White Sands Missile Range and Holloman Air Force Base.

Incident

At approximately 17:45 local time on April 24, 1964, Socorro Police radio dispatcher Nep Lopez received a call from Sergeant Zamora reporting a possible motor-vehicle accident south of town; Zamora advised Lopez he would be "checking the car down in the arroyo." Zamora had broken off pursuit of a speeding vehicle after hearing a roar and seeing a flame in the southwestern sky — "possibly a 1/2 mile or a mile" distant — which he initially feared was an explosion at a local dynamite shack.

Driving up a gravel road onto the mesa, Zamora sighted a shiny object approximately 150–200 yards (140–180 m) to the south, which he at first took for an "overturned white car... up on radiator or on trunk." As he approached, he saw that the object was "like aluminum — it was whitish against the mesa background, but not chrome," shaped like the letter "O," and supported on legs. Zamora reported that two figures "in white coveralls" stood beside it; he described them as "normal in shape — but possibly they were small adults or large kids." One of the figures appeared to notice the approaching cruiser and gave what Zamora took to be a startled reaction.

Zamora radioed Lopez a second time, asking him to look out of the window to see if he could see the object; when pressed for description he said "it looks like a balloon," and requested that New Mexico State Police Sergeant M. S. Chavez meet him at the location. After losing line of sight on the object while descending a ridge, Zamora re-crested the hill to find the occupants gone. He approached to within about fifty feet of the craft when a blue and orange flame erupted from its underside accompanied by a loud roar; believing it was about to explode, he ran approximately one hundred feet, dropped to the ground behind his cruiser, and watched the object rise, hover about fifteen feet above the ground, then move off with an "up-and-down motion" as the roar faded to a whine and then to silence. On the craft's side Zamora reported a red insignia — described as a vertical arrow with a horizontal bar beneath it — set within a shield-like outline.

When Sergeant Chavez arrived, Zamora led him to smoldering brush, four shallow depressions in the desert floor, and burned patches of grass, all consistent with a small object having briefly rested on legs.

Investigation

The case was assigned Project Blue Book number 8766 and investigated jointly by AFOSI agents, the FBI, and Blue Book's scientific consultant J. Allen Hynek. Hynek spoke publicly to the press that Zamora's report was "no hoax, nor an experimental aircraft," and his national statements are credited with prompting the Air Force to ultimately evaluate the sighting as an "unknown." Blue Book retained the case in its permanent files as unresolved.

NICAP investigator Ray Stanford located at least thirteen additional witnesses who reported seeing or hearing the object, and later published his full investigation as Socorro "Saucer" in a Pentagon Pantry (1976). Among the trace evidence, a metallic residue was recovered from rocks at the landing site; analysis identified the material as silicon, a substance Keel noted as recurring at multiple alleged UFO landing sites.

Zamora, reluctant to speak with federal investigators, initially asked to be left alone with a priest before giving his detailed statement — a reaction UFO researcher Jacques Vallée classified as characteristic of high-strangeness (category 5) close encounters. Vallée also noted that the red emblem Zamora sighted on the craft's hull corresponded, "unmistakably," to a symbol for Venus found in a medieval Arabic astrological manuscript shown to him at Stanford University, suggesting unresolved symbolic overlap between contemporary close-encounter reports and pre-modern iconographic traditions.

Prosaic explanations

Several conventional explanations have been proposed. UFO skeptic Steuart Campbell argued that everything Zamora saw was "almost certainly" a mirage of the star Canopus. Amanda Kooser and others have suggested Zamora witnessed a clandestine test of a lunar landing device by personnel from the nearby White Sands Missile Range. Skeptic Robert Sheaffer proposed the incident was a hoax perpetrated by students at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (New Mexico Tech), and then-president of New Mexico Tech Stirling Colgate later concurred, describing the alleged object as "a candle in a balloon. Not sophisticated." Skeptic Philip J. Klass, who visited Socorro several years later, contended the entire episode was a conspiracy engineered by the municipal government to promote tourism. David Thomas, writing for the New Mexicans for Science and Reason, also presented a prosaic reconstruction of the sighting.

Aftermath

In 1966 the president of the Socorro County Chamber of Commerce, Paul Ridings, proposed developing the alleged landing site for tourism; stone walkways, steps descending from the mesa, and a rock path encircling the purported touchdown point were subsequently constructed, albeit approximately a quarter mile from the actual site due to local rumors that the original location was contaminated by radioactivity. In 2012 Socorro city officials Ravi Bhasker and Pat Salome commissioned local artist Erika Burleigh to paint a commemorative mural on a spillway facing Park Street. Lonnie Zamora died in Socorro on November 2, 2009, at age 76, having given few public interviews in the intervening decades.

The case has remained a fixture of ufological literature because of the convergence of a trained law-enforcement witness, corroborating physical traces, Hynek's public defense of Zamora's credibility, and Blue Book's "unknown" disposition — factors that distinguish it from most single-witness reports of the period.

See also

References

Sources

Further reading

External links

Close-up UFO sightings (list) with multiple civilian witnesses (list)vte
Cases
Chiles-Whitted UFO encounter · Disappearance of Frederick Valentich · Falcon Lake Incident · Lonnie Zamora incident · Manises UFO incident · Shag Harbour incident · Trans-en-Provence case · Val Johnson incident
Category (nested under UFO sightings)