Lonnie Zamora incident

Location of Socorro in the Middle Rio Grande Basin, New Mexico

The Lonnie Zamora incident was an alleged UFO sighting that occurred on April 24, 1964 near Socorro, New Mexico when 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. Zamora's claims were subject to attention from news media, UFO investigators and UFO organizations, and the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book listed the case as "unknown". Conventional explanations of Zamora's claims include a lunar lander test by White Sands Missile Range and a hoax by New Mexico Tech students.

Incident

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.^[1]^[2]

Zamora's claims

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". Zamora claimed to have briefly observed two people in white overalls beside the object, who he later described as "normal in shape—but possibly they were small adults or large kids." Zamora claimed to hear a roar and see a blue and orange flame under the object which then rose and quickly moved away.^[3]

Investigations and explanations

Zamora's claims were investigated by Project Blue Book and ufologists, and have been reported in the popular press.^[4] Several explanations have been presented. UFO skeptic Steuart Campbell has suggested that everything seen and heard by Zamora and fellow witnesses was "almost certainly" a mirage of the star Canopus.^[5] It has also been suggested Zamora witnessed the testing of a lunar landing device by personnel from the White Sands Missile Range, despite a federal investigation of the incident failing to reach any explanation.^[6] Skeptic Robert Sheaffer suggested that the incident was a hoax perpetrated by students at New Mexico Tech.^[7] 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. Not sophisticated."^[8] Skeptic Philip J. Klass, who visited Socorro several years after the incident, claimed that the entire event was part of a conspiracy plot by the municipal government to increase tourism.^[9]

Aftermath

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. However these were built approximately a quarter mile from the actual site of Zamora’s alleged sighting due to local rumors that the original site was contaminated by radioactivity.^[10] In 2012 Socorro city officials Ravi Bhasker and Pat Salome commissioned local artist Erika Burleigh to paint a mural on a spillway facing Park Street to commemorate Zamora's alleged UFO sighting.^[11] Zamora became so tired of the subject that he eventually avoided both ufologists and the Air Force, taking a job managing a gasoline station. He died on November 2, 2009, in Socorro from a heart attack; he was 76 years old.^[12]

References

^ Harden, Paul. "The 1964 Socorro UFO Incident" (PDF). Socorro County Historical Society. Socorro County Historical Society. Retrieved January 11, 2023.
^ US Air Force - Project Blue Book. "1964 04 8699462 CanyonFerryReservoir Montana". Internet Archives. The Internet Archive. p. 36. Retrieved January 11, 2023.
^ Project Blue Book case number 8766 at the Wayback Machine (archived April 9, 2018)
^ Thomas, David. "A Different Angle on the Socorro UFO of 1964". New Mexicans for Science and Reason. New Mexicans for Science and Reason. Retrieved November 17, 2020.
^ Campbell, Steuart. (1994). The UFO Mystery Solved. Explicit Books. pp. 130–131. ISBN 0952151200
^ Kooser, Amanda (April 18, 2012). "Investigating New Mexico's less-famous UFO landing". cnet. CNET. Retrieved November 17, 2020.
^ Sheaffer, Robert. "Famous Socorro 'UFO Landing' a Student Prank?" (PDF). skepticalinquirer.org. Skeptical Inquirer Magazine - March/April 2010. Retrieved February 18, 2023.
^ Dunning, Brian. "Lonnie Zamora and the Socorro UFO". Skeptoid. Skeptoid Media, Inc. Retrieved November 17, 2020.
^ Posner, Gary P. (1999). "Extraterrestrials May Be Out There: But He Says They're Not Here". www.skeptic.com. The Skeptic Society. Skeptic magazine volume 7, number 4. Archived from the original on October 27, 2023. Retrieved February 18, 2023.
^ Harden, Paul (August 2, 2008). "The 1964 Socorro UFO incident: The UFO landing site south of Soccoro, New Mexico" (PDF). El Defensor Chieftain. Retrieved January 10, 2019.
^ Burleigh, Erika. "Erika Burleigh's Murals". Burleigh Corrosion Consultants. Retrieved November 5, 2018.
^ "Obituary for ZAMORA". Albuquerque Journal. November 5, 2009. Retrieved December 18, 2022.