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This Project Blue Book file on the Socorro, New Mexico sighting of 24 April 1964 compiles an Air Force record card and a large set of press clippings. The clippings cover policeman Lonnie Zamora's report of an egg-shaped object with four landing marks and scorched brush, plus J. Allen Hynek's investigation and follow-up reports from La Madera, Edgewood and elsewhere. An Air Force summary says soil and brush analysis found no foreign material, radiation or propellant, that the case remains open, and that later related sightings were explained or found to be hoaxes.
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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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