The Lonnie Zamora incident was an alleged UFO sighting that occurred on April 24, 1964, near Socorro, New Mexico. Socorro police officer Lonnie Zamora claimed he saw two people beside a shiny object that later rose into the air accompanied by a roaring blue and orange flame.
The Air Force's Project Blue Book listed the case as "unknown". Zamora's claims were investigated by Project Blue Book and ufologists, and have been reported in the popular press.
On April 24, 1964, at approximately 17:45, Socorro Police radio dispatcher Nep Lopez received a radio call from Sergeant Lonnie Zamora reporting a possible motor vehicle accident. Zamora advised Lopez that he would be “checking the car down in the arroyo".
Shortly after, Lopez received another radio call from Zamora asking Lopez to look out of the window, to see if he could see an object. When Lopez asked Zamora to describe it, Zamora said "it looks like a balloon” and requested New Mexico State Police Sergeant Chavez meet him at his location.
When Chavez arrived, he asked Zamora what the trouble was. Zamora led him to examine some burning brush. When other police officers arrived they noted patches of smoldering grass and brush.
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Zamora told authorities he was pursuing a speeding car south of Socorro, New Mexico when he "heard a roar and saw a flame in the sky to southwest some distance away-possibly a 1/2 mile or a mile." Believing a local dynamite shack might have exploded, Zamora said he discontinued the pursuit and investigated the potential explosion.
Zamora claimed to have observed a shiny object, "to south about 150 to 200 yards (450 to 600 ft; 140 to 180 m)", that he initially believed to be an "overturned white car ... up on radiator or on trunk". The object was "like aluminum-it was whitish against the mesa background, but not chrome", and shaped like the letter "O".
According to Lonnie, there were red markings on the hull; a vertical arrow with a horizontal line beneath it and a crescent-shaped line above it. Lonnie tried to radio police headquarters but was not able to break through the heavy static.
“I saw this flame come up from underneath it, then I ran back behind the car, and it went up two, 20, 30 feet up in the air. It just stayed there for a while. And then, finally, it just took off slowly to the west. At first, you know, after I got to my senses, I said, ‘Did I see it or didn’t I, you know?
“I could tell that Lonnie was excited and probably scared. Lonnie Zamora, he’s a very dependable, honest type of person.
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“We found some indentation on the ground where this thing had landed and the marks into the ground were 9 inches deep, 8 inches long, and 9 inches wide. I started looking for tracks, human tracks, but the only thing I found were impressions on the ground that were made by a perfect circle. But I found no human tracks.
Army officials at the nearby White Sands Missile Range sent Captain Richard T.
“My first impression was that it was something from the range that needed possible help. You know, first aid, attention, or at best, security.
“Everything we saw seemed to support the story that officer Zamora recounted. After their investigation, the Air Force agreed that Lonnie saw something, but they insisted that it must have been a secret military aircraft.
“They never were able to find any such evidence that any such thing was being tested at the time. And, in fact, even today, not an iota of evidence has emerged to support that claim. Nonetheless, the Air Force line on the case is that this is a credible witness.
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Lonnie Zamora UFO Explained
Air Force officials brought in Dr. J. Allen Hynek, a respected astronomer and consultant on Project Bluebook, the Air Force’s official study of the UFO phenomenon. Dr. Hynek found the physical evidence convincing.
“Dr. Hynek was enormously impressed by Lonnie Zamora. He thought there was virtually no possibility of a hoax. He expressed huge disdain for the Bluebook handling of the report. How do we explain what Lonnie Zamora saw?
“If they want to believe me, good.
Several explanations have been presented. Skeptic Robert Sheaffer suggested that the incident was a hoax perpetrated by students at New Mexico Tech. Then-president of New Mexico Tech Stirling Colgate supported this theory, and wrote that the object observed by Zamora was: "A candle in a balloon.
In 1966 the president of the Socorro County's Chamber of Commerce, Paul Ridings, proposed developing the site of Zamora’s claimed UFO encounter to make it more accessible to tourists. Consequently stone walkways and steps were built into the arroyo from the mesa top, with a rock walkway circling the supposed landing site that included some wooden benches.
The White Sands Missile Range is a military testing area operated by the Army, originally established as the White Sands Proving Ground on July 9, 1945. The first atomic bomb (code named Trinity) was test detonated there on July 16, 1945.
On Feb. 17, 1959, Jack Hembree was a captain at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Hembree worked on the Redstone missile project. The PGM-11 Redstone was the first large American ballistic missile. It was in active service with the Army in West Germany from June 1958 to June 1964. At White Sands, Hembree was the launch pad and control safety officer.
Hembree was up at sunrise that morning to inspect the site and to begin the fueling process. The launch was several hours off.
He was standing near the launch tower, which was near the guided missile. The launch tower was on railroad tracks and could be moved.
“All of a sudden I saw this huge bright object and, of course, it was not supposed to be there.”"What I first thought was that it was a fireball. It was a globe-looking thing. But it wasn’t flaming.
“It was very, very bright and you could see through it."He saw three globes that moved as if connected. Each was about 30 feet in diameter.
“They were low, at my eye level. You could see through them. It seems to me there was a pause."The globes, which he estimated were about 150 feet away, departed in unison at a high rate of speed and moved over the other test launch sites on the grounds and quickly flew out of sight.
“The whole thing had to have taken place in 30 to 40 seconds.”
He immediately told others in the blockhouse, many of who were sleeping at the time he saw it."They said, 'Oh yeah, what have you been drinking?"
“My best theory when it happened was that it somehow was a reflection caused by the sun but then it couldn't have been because it was right around sunrise and the sun wasn't even up."Then he thought perhaps the UFO was a Cold War espionage craft created by the Soviet Union."But that did not make any sense," he says.
According to the New York Times, "The government still has no explanation for nearly all of the scores of unidentified aerial phenomena reported over almost two decades and investigated by a Pentagon task force."
A total of 143 reports gathered since 2004 remain unexplained ... Of those, 21 reports of unknown phenomena, involving 18 episodes, possibly demonstrate technological capabilities that are unknown to the United States: objects moving without observable propulsion or with rapid acceleration that is believed to be beyond the capabilities of Russia, China or other terrestrial nations."
"There is no evidence that any of the episodes involve secret American weapons programs, unknown technology from Russia or China or extraterrestrial visitations. But the government report did not rule out those explanations."
"But when you rule everything else out, what's left?"
Map of White Sands Missile Range