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Project Blue Book Socorro file

The Black Vault · 167 pages · text by GLM-OCR

This Black Vault release compiles 1964 newspaper and wire service clippings plus a Project Blue Book summary on the Socorro, New Mexico sighting by policeman Lonnie Zamora on April 24, 1964, when an egg-shaped object left four depressions and burned brush. It covers J. Allen Hynek's site visit, APRO and NICAP comment, and related New Mexico reports at La Madera, Edgewood and Albuquerque. The Air Force summary reports that soil and brush analysis found no radiation or propellant, and the case remained open.

  • p. 33 …GORDON COOPER, CMDR. ALAN SHEPARD JR., AND DONALD SLAYTON. (NO PICKUP)
  • p. 105 …March 9 issue has a story "Film Studios Praise Cooperation Here in Film on UFO's…

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

An inspection of the scene Saturday morning showed the object had landed astride a narrow, rock-strewn dry wash in the gully. Officers earlier had circled with stones the four places where the legs of the object had touched earth. The holes were shallow, about a foot long by six inches wide. They did not appear to have been made by an object striking the earth with great force, but by an object of considerable weight settling to earth at slow speed and not moving after touching the ground.

The two legs of the object that Zamora saw probably were about 2½ feet long.

It was about 12 feet from one landing hole to the other on the west side and 15 feet between the two on the east side. The width probably was nine o more feet. The clumps of green grass and two greasewood bushes seemed to have been seared all at once by an extremely hot flame. There were also broken branches on one greasewood.

The two round depressions were four and five inches in diameter, respectively.

The cause of the landing of the object, like its identity and its source, remain unanswered. Was the landing in the secluded, little frequented gully for a test or caused by momentary mechanical diffulty?

After Capt. Holder was ap praised of the UFO occurrence, he made a report of it to the proper agencies at WSMR. Investigation of the incident will be conducted by designated government agen ces.

By Sunday afternoon hundreds of curious persons had trampled the scene and there was virtually no evidence left of the landing marks.

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Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 167 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.