On 24 April 1964, according to In Plain Sight, police officer Lonnie Zamora was pursuing a speeding car through the desert near New Mexico Socorro when he broke off after seeing a flaming object in the sky and went to investigate.1 Zamora later recalled coming upon an egg- or Tic Tac-shaped object with a metallic white surface and spindly white landing gear standing in a nearby arroyo.2 The same published account describes a shiny, whitish, aluminium-coloured craft resting in a dry creek bed, with two small figures in white coveralls standing beside it,3 which rose off the ground as Zamora approached, its side marked with red lettering.4 Zamora was the principal witness at the landing site.5
Ground indentations and charred bushes were later found at the site,6 and independent witnesses in the area reported seeing an egg-shaped craft or a bluish flame at around the same time as Zamora’s sighting.7 Raymond E. Fowler, who investigated the case, said the ground marks were accompanied by scorched areas, still-burning greasewood and a melted, calcined bottle.8 Investigators from Kirtland Air Force Base measured radioactivity at the site in April 1964, where a bush had been burned.9 Fowler also said investigators found a ton of weight on each landing-gear pad mark, measured with a penetrometer,10 and that the centre of gravity implied by the object’s quadruped landing gear lay directly over the first burn mark.11
William T. Powers, a United States Air Force (USAF) astronomer, helped investigate the landing,12 and the USAF itself investigated the encounter,13 as did the United States Army14 and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).15 J. Allen Hynek also travelled to Socorro to investigate.16 The object was seen or heard by around 13 people in total.17 A policeman approached to within about 4.6 metres of the object before it began making noises and a blue plasma-like flame emerged from its underside,18 at which point he retreated about 15 metres and dropped to the ground.19 He then watched the object climb away slowly, the blue plasma rising with it until it passed out of sight;20 it emitted a high-pitched whine followed by a low-pitched whine before falling silent,21 and his police radio would not work again until the object was gone.22
Zamora also recalled seeing two figures dressed in white uniforms standing near the object,23 who dashed aboard it as soon as they noticed him.24 He said the object showed no visible means of propulsion but rose from the ground with a roar, spewing blue-orange flames and scorching the vegetation beneath it.25 Luis Elizondo has written that the craft took off from the desert floor with a loud roar and a blast of blue flame,26 that Zamora ran up a ravine to escape for fear it might explode,27 and that once the craft reached a certain height it flew away silently.28
According to Imminent: Inside the Pentagon’s Hunt for UFOs, Zamora saw markings or an insignia on the side of the egg-shaped object.29 Jacques Vallée wrote that Zamora described a peculiar red sign on the object, a vertical arrow with a horizontal bar underneath, for which no explanation was found at the time,30 and that Zamora had seen an egg-shaped object with two small men standing near it.31 The object bore a representation of the Arabic astrological sign for Venus.32 A friend of Vallée’s at Stanford, shown a description of the symbol, matched it to a medieval Arabic text listing signs for the major planets, identifying it as the sign for Venus.33 The USAF warned Zamora not to share knowledge of the markings with civilians.34
Zamora said that a highway patrolman also saw a white object with two small occupants during the wider episode,35 and that he himself first asked to be left alone with a priest before agreeing to report the sighting to authorities.36 According to Imminent: Inside the Pentagon’s Hunt for UFOs, other witnesses in the region reported an egg-shaped object streaking across the landscape before or after Zamora’s encounter,37 and one witness in a nearby town described a bizarre object resembling a white butane tank landing on his family’s property at night, frightening the family’s horses before it streaked away.38 Within days, the story appeared in newspapers and on radio and television broadcasts across the United States.39 Zamora himself never tried to profit from the encounter and did not seek out media attention.40