Expedition Unknown in Socorro

 

The other day I stumbled into an episode of Expedition Unknown that was investigating the Socorro UFO landing of April 1964. I would have ignored it, except it seemed to suggest that the UFO was, in fact, terrestrially based, meaning it was a misidentification of something made on Earth. The investigators were impressed with the idea that the UFO was a lunar landing being tested at the White Sands Missile Ranch at the time and they produced a document showing those tests.

The problem was that the times didn’t match. The sighting, by Police Officer Lonnie Zamora, was about 6 p.m. on a Friday night. The document suggested the testing much earlier in the day. You can see that for yourself here:

 

On Friday, April 24, the date of the sighting, the testing of the surveyor was between 7:45 a.m. and 11:45 a.m., which means the testing was finished about six hours before Zamora saw a craft. I will also point out that the testing was over the White Sands Missile Range which is south of Socorro. There is no evidence that the testing was delayed or that the surveyor strayed off the range. To suggest a delay or the off-range trouble is pure speculation.

For the tests on April 27, these are irrelevant. All it demonstrates is that there were scheduled tests on the range and there were no corresponding UFO sightings.

There were mentions of the landing gear impressions that Zamora found. These were documented by the military that night. Captain Richard Holder requested assistance from the military police to first guard the site and later to make measurements about the landing traces. That documentation appears in the Project Blue Book file. The illustration shows an asymmetrical landing gear, which, I believe is the result of the terrain, meaning that the uneven surface gives the impression of asymmetry. If it had been a flat surface, then the landing gear would have been symmetrical.

The surveyor landing gear is asymmetrical. On its longest dimension, it is just over 31 feet. The landing impressions, on the longest dimension is just under 15 feet. The overall pattern does not match that of the surveyor.

Site survey conducted on the night of the sighting. From the Blue Book files.

Here is the problem. There are various models of the surveyor and there is no indication which was being tested in New Mexico. There might be a surveyor that has landing gear that more closely matches that of the markings found by Zamora.

In a point that isn’t all that important, they suggest they might have found a corporate logo that matches that seen symbol by Zamora. They said, during the program, that Zamora had drawn the symbol from memory, implying a passage of time. But, according to Zamora, he made the drawing within minutes of the UFO taking off and that drawing is available in the Blue Book file. It does not resemble the corporate logo very closely, though the investigators in the show were impressed by it.

In the Blue Book file, there is another corporate logo that more closely matches that which Zamora saw. It is not an exact match and it does stretch credulity to claim it does, but it is closer than the one shown on the program.

Finally, they displayed an illustration, drawn by Dave Thomas, that shows an OH-13 helicopter used to suspend the surveyor under it. This contraption might be what Zamora saw, except that he never mentioned a hovering helicopter.

On the show the two investigators pointed out that there was a two-man crew in the helicopter and Zamora had reported seeing two beings on the ground. I can think of no scenario in which both pilots would leave the helicopter with the blades turning and the engine running. One would remain behind, which is another reason to reject this theory.

At the end of the segment, it seemed that all agreed, that is the two investigators and Dave Thomas, that the Socorro sighting have been solved. The surveyor straying off the Missile Range, held aloft by a helicopter, was what Zamora saw. Well, of course, I wasn’t convinced, which set off this investigation.

As noted, the landing gear impressions don’t match, the range times for testing the surveyor don’t match, the theory that the object was a surveyor carried by a helicopter doesn’t come close to the description offered by Zamora, and the corporate logo isn’t a match. In other words, there were too many unanswered questions.

My first step was to look all this up on Dave Thomas’ website which can be found here:

www.nmsr.org/socorro.htm

It’s clear from that website that the solution for the case isn’t quite as solid as presented. According to Thomas:

Of course, this new evidence is far from conclusive (emphasis added). A lot has happened since 1964, and it's difficult to reconstruct events from that long ago, especially events with strong implications. Was it a college prank? A hoax? A balloon? An alien craft from another world? Perhaps we'll never really know. Gildenberg is confident that William of Occam, of Occam's Razor fame, would think kindly of the Surveyor explanation, especially over some of the other contenders.

I reached out to Dave Thomas for his impressions, rather than just relying on that had been broadcast and what was found on his website. He responded, telling me:

I would describe the WSMR Surveyor log Duke Gildenberg found as at least tantalizing evidence.

It's my understanding that there might have been more than two people involved, two to stand in for astronauts controlling Surveyor rocket jets, and one or maybe two pilots for the helicopter itself, which was required because of Earth's 6x gravity.

It would have been a strange looking device, indeed. Of course, it's not 100 percent Surveyor or the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM). There are former Tech students swearing by the playing with dynamite explanation, and then there are locals like Ron and Dorothy Landoll, who heard a fresh description of the craft from a police colleague of Zamora's, and later realized its similarity to the LEM when it was publicized in 1965. When I interviewed Stirling Colgate about his report of a student-led hoax, he unfortunately couldn't recall anything about that incident, and has passed away since.

While we don't know for sure what Zamora saw, I think he honestly did see something strange that day. I don't think it was extraterrestrials, however, that would require much stronger evidence to get me onboard.

Please note the language used here. There are qualifications in it, and in a discussion such as this, we all use qualifications. Nothing is written in the absolute, rather there is a suggestion that an extraterrestrial explanation is not the likely solution and given that we have only witness observation and landing traces, that is understandable. To be fair, to reach the extraterrestrial should require more concrete evidence. However, none of the other solutions offered, and over the years there have been several, have been proven.

I will note here, that Thomas interviewed Stirling Colgate, who, in other communications, didn’t seem to support the idea of a student hoax, which had also been offered as the solution. I draw attention to that here, only because Thomas mentioned it without any prompting from me.

In the end, we’re left with a sighting that is unexplained. I have covered parts of this in the past, and it is reported in great detail in Encounter in the Desert, which is about the Zamora sighting.

For those who wish more information, just type Socorro into the search engine for a listing of articles. For those who wish a little help, see:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/07/socorro-new-mexico-and-lonnie-zamora.html

This contains a list of other relevant articles as well as being a good synopsis of the investigation.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Ben Moss and the Socorro UFO Landing

Ben Moss was the guest this week. We talked about his book on the Socorro UFO landing case, and our investigations into it. My book about Socorro, Encounter in the Desert, came out in 2018 and Ben’s, Not of this World: The Socorro Landing with Humanoids, is available from Ben by writing bmoss6@verizon.net for an autographed copy. You can listen to the interview here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/41803533

The one point of disagreement was about the symbol that Police Officer Lonnie

Ben Moss

Zamora reported. While the credibility of the case does not hang in the balance, it is an interesting point. Very few UFOs are reported to have any symbols on them and the situation that created the discrepancy provides some insight into UFO investigation, at least in the 1960s. For those interested, you can read some of my comments and an FBI document about which is the correct symbol in my book and take a look at these postings:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2019/10/chasing-references-socorro-edition.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/09/treasure-quest-socorro-and-zamora-symbol.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/11/a-final-analysis-of-socorro-symbol.html

https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/fbi-files-on-the-socorro-ufo-landing-april-24-1964/

We also discussed the Project Blue Book investigation into the landing case and what Lieutenant Colonel Hector Quintanilla had to say about it. Upon his retirement from the Air Force, he wrote a book about his experiences investigating UFOs. Although there are many cases in the Blue Book files in which witnesses reported some sort of entity, there are only three in which the cases weren’t written off as some sort of psychological problem. Of those three, the Socorro landing is the best.

Briefly, we talked about the claims that the case was a hoax. Like Ben, I don’t believe that a strong argument can be made for the hoax theory, though there are those who believe otherwise. I have explored those claims here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2009/10/lonnie-zamora-socorro-ufo-and-new.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2012/08/tony-bragalia-and-socorro-landing.html

We did mention an article in the MUFON Journal that Don Burleson had written. You can read it here:

http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/MUFON/Journals/2008/November_2008.pdf

All this should give you some insight into this important UFO case. We have moved it from a single witness event into one in which there were multiple witnesses. The trouble is that those witnesses entered the arena and left without providing all the testimony necessary to elevate the status. Socorro was a missed opportunity, but given the time of the report, it is not surprising that more wasn’t done.

Next week, I’ll be talking with Colonel Richard Weaver about his official investigation into the Roswell case for the Air Force in the mid-1990s. He too, has written a book about it, and it does provide some very interesting insights into that investigation. If you have questions, append them here and I’ll get them asked. 

Chasing References - Socorro Edition

As many of you know, especially those who visit here regularly, I sometimes chase footnotes because it provides, well, a different perspective on some UFO reports. Finding the footnotes to chase isn’t all that easy and it is usually the result of researching another aspect of the UFO field. Sometimes, however, it can be a single reference in a book or article that triggers a question or two.

Such is the case of an article in the September 2019 issue of The MUFON Journal. Yes, I touched on this in the report on my interview with Don Burleson, and I don’t mean to target him here, but there is a point that needs to be made. As noted, you can hear our discussion in the last half of the October 9 interview.

The statement in question, the one that caught my attention, and frankly the attention of some others, said:

April 24, 1964, when Socorro policeman Lonnie Zamora saw an egg-shaped, whitish object down in a gully and observed a red symbol on its surface. As investigator Ray Stanford discovered, authorities soon published an altered version of the symbol in order to guard against copycat reports, but area military pilots would have been given a classified briefing to warn them to be on the lookout for any airborne craft bearing the insignia the way Zamora had really seen it, an inverted V with three horizonal lines through its middle. Clearly the Socorro object and the Holloman object were somehow related, though I [Don Burleson] infer from various details that the Holloman object was probably larger.

The problem here is that there are errors in the thinking and speculation that is presented almost as if it is fact. The first real problem is the claim that the correct symbol is the inverted V with the three lines through it. This is the information supplied by Ben Moss, Tony Angiola and Ray Stanford. The trouble here is that

Zamora's sketch of the symbol made moments
after the object took off.

Zamora drew the correct symbol, that is an arc over an arrow with a line under it on two occasions. As the object departed, he drew the symbol on a scrap of paper and that scrap can be found in the Project Blue Book files. He signed that illustration.

On the evening of April 24, Zamora was interviewed by Captain Richard Holder of the Army and Arthur Byrnes of the FBI.  They suggested that Zamora not reveal the symbol to others to eliminate copycats, but he did draw it for them and he signed that image as well. This was what I think of as the umbrella symbol.

Zamora's drawing of the craft and the symbol
signed by him.

During the initial investigation, other military officers were involved during the investigation and they too, filed reports. In those documents, the umbrella symbol is identified as the true symbol.

Interestingly, Ray Stanford who was on the scene within days sent a letter to Richard Hall of NICAP in May 1964, a week or two after he had been to Socorro. In that letter he not only identified the true symbol as the umbrella symbol, but wrote that the inverted V with the three lines through it was the fake. Ten years later, when Stanford published his book, he had switched the symbols, now claiming that the inverted V was the true symbol.

Zamora had an illustration made of the craft that he had seen. The Socorro mayor thought it might be a good idea. The artist was Rick Baca. Under Zamora’s direction, the umbrella symbol was placed on that drawing.

The "Umbrella" symbol and the
inverted V with the lines through it,
as well as a couple of other variations.

Both Ben Moss and Tony Angiola believed that there had been a “secret” Socorro file that was separate from that found in the official files. All these official files entered the public domain when the Blue Book files were declassified in 1976. These unofficial “secret” files were obtained from Rob Mercer. The Socorro file was 200 pages that duplicated most of what was in the official file. In that unofficial file were two cards that held the inverted V. It is clear from the context that these cards were based on newspaper articles that were released in 1964. Ben Moss and Tony Angiola believed that this was the true symbol because it was in that file.

Carmon Marano, who was the last officer assigned to Blue Book, who had the responsibility of closing down the office after Lieutenant Colonel Hector Quintanilla had moved on to a new assignment, said that the information obtained by Rob Mercer was a document put together by those in the Blue Book office to show to reporters and others who were there to do research. You can listen to my interview with Rob Mercer here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/11/x-zone-broadcast-network-rob-mercer.html

In other words, it wasn’t an “official” document and it wasn’t a classified file about the Socorro landing. It was a briefing document for those without security clearances or who were civilians who had been granted access to the Project Blue Book files.

Rick Baca's drawing of the Zamora craft with the
"Umbrella" symbol added under Zamora's guidance.

What this means is that a suggestion that military pilots had been given a classified briefing containing the inverted V symbol, is in error because that is not the correct symbol. I can think of no reason that such a briefing would even take place. The pilots didn’t need to know what the symbol looked like. If they encountered an alien craft and saw a symbol, they could report that. If it doesn’t match that seen by Zamora, well, it just didn’t match. We can assume here that the military pilots wouldn’t be inventing a tale of seeing an object when they did not.

However, if you’ve told them what to look for, then you have contaminated the operation. You’ve told the pilots what they should see, and that means that they might just see what you told them to see. In other words, the classified briefing has defeated the purpose set out for it.

If you read the wording in The MUFON Journal paragraph carefully, you’ll notice the qualifiers. It said, “…area military pilots would have been given a classified briefing…” I asked Don Burleson for the source of this information. What I learned, from him, is that this was speculation based on what he believed would have happened. The real point is that no such briefing was given. It was pure speculation.

Here’s the problem with this. Someone else, writing a book about UFOs or an article about the Socorro sighting, might quote this particular paragraph, giving

the source as The MUFON Journal article. But there is no ultimate source for the information. The discussion of the symbol is flat out wrong and the classified briefing never happened. We follow it to this point and we can go no farther.

Although I don’t discuss the “classified briefing,” in Encounter in the Desert, my recent book on Socorro, I do discuss, at length, the whole sad tale of the true symbol seen by Lonnie Zamora. Much of that has also been discussed on the blog. You can read about that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/09/x-zone-broadcast-network-ben-mosstony.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/11/a-final-analysis-of-socorro-symbol.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=Lonnie+Zamora+symbol

In the future, as others research this case, I hope that they’ll find this as well. They’ll then know that there is a problem with that information. Maybe they’ll think twice about including it, or, if the do, they’ll qualify so that their readers will understand what has happened.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Don Burleson

This week I spoke with Don Burleson, the State Director of New Mexico for MUFON. We talked about the Levelland UFO sightings and the sheriff’s role in that investigation. Don mentioned his interview with the late sheriff’s daughter, which

Dr. Don Burleson

produced some new information. She suggested that her father had seen more than just a red streak in the distance and that the Air Force had strongly suggested that the sheriff not talk about what he had seen. I noted that I had found a newspaper article from 1957 that supported the idea that the sheriff had seen more than had been reported by the Air Force investigator on the case. You can listen to the Don Burleson interview here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/19428012

We also talked about the symbol that Lonnie Zamora saw on the side the landed craft in Socorro in April 1964. This part of the discussion was important because of a claim that Don had published in The MUFON Journal about a secret briefing given to Air Force fighter pilots in 1964. For those interested in the great symbol debate, you can read about it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/09/x-zone-broadcast-network-ben-mosstony.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/11/a-final-analysis-of-socorro-symbol.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=Lonnie+Zamora+symbol

Finally, we talked about the alleged landing at Holloman Air Force Base in late April 1964. Don had an affidavit from a man who was the son of the base commander at the time that suggested the landing was real. Interestingly, I discussed this in my book about Socorro, Encounter in the Desert, which provided a slightly different perspective (yes, I said that on purpose) about that landing. I also discuss the symbol controversy at length as well. You can find the book here:

https://www.amazon.com/Encounter-Desert-Alien-Contact-Socorro/dp/1632651130/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3P02O8BF8NPNX&keywords=encounter+in+the+desert&qid=1570725103&sprefix=Encounter+in+the+%2Caps%2C175&sr=8-1

Next week, I’ll talk with Jim Penniston of the Rendlesham Forest encounter. If you have questions for him, submit them through the comments section here, and I’ll try to get them asked during the interview.

Treasure Quest and the San Roman Document

Brian Bell, who visits here with some regularity, and who often provides information and leads that are less than helpful, came through this last time. He suggested that the inverted V with the three lines through it was an old alchemy symbol. He provided a number of references, and sure enough, that symbol did appear, through rarely, on various charts. It represents amalgam, which is made up of mercury and another element.

The Inverted V with the three lines through it in the second row, second column.

The problem for us here, is that the inverted V sometimes is shown with four lines through it. This is also called amalgam. The four-line version is also part of the “Fire” element.

But this post actually goes beyond just this symbol. The San Roman Document, which is the alleged source of information about the Sacambaya treasure, has three symbols on it. So far, in the Treasure Quest search for that treasure, no one has bothered to tell us what the symbols mean, or if they are of importance.

The San Ramon Document with the three alchemy symbols on it.

The inverted V with the three circles, one at the apex, and one each on the legs, is also an alchemy symbol. It represents alcohol, or ethyl alcohol. I don’t know what the relevance to the treasure would be, but that symbol is clearly represented, and isn’t all that rare.

The third symbol which is a pyramid of balls, is the alchemy symbol for gravel. There is a variation of it with a cross at the top, which also represents gravel. And there is another variation in which it is called sand. Like the inverted V with four bars, this symbol is also associated with fire.

The San Roman Document is in Latin and I haven’t even tried to translate the parts we see on the screen. I just wonder if there isn’t something more hidden in it that might provide clues. I don’t believe what they have is an original, but, according to C. H. Prodgers, they have a copy of the original. We don’t know how accurate it might be.

Just one more thing. For those interested in UFOs, I have to wonder how a symbol from alchemy could end up on a craft from another world. If the inverted V is the correct symbol, then this is an amazing coincidence. If the inverted V is the correct symbol, then to me, this argues against an alien visitation. The coincidence is just too big for us to ignore.

And, I have to wonder if they inverted V is the correct symbol if there isn't some hidden meaning in using it in the hoax. If the Socorro landing was a hoax, then the clue to solving this might be in the symbol used... If that is the correct symbol.

Treasure Quest, Socorro, and the Zamora Symbol

I was watching Treasure Quest when they flashed the document that supposedly launched several expeditions into the Sacambaya region of Bolivia. I really wasn’t paying much attention because, well, we’re in the first couple of episodes where nothing much will happen. On the document were a couple of symbols. One of them I recognized.

Now, we go back to last year when I was working on a book about the UFO landing near Socorro, New Mexico. On the craft, as described by Socorro policeman Lonnie Zamora, was a strange symbol. I’m not going

into the controversy about the “real” symbol. I’m just going to concentrate on the one that was released to the press of an inverted “V” with three lines through it.

The alleged symbol seen on the Socorro spacecraft.

Friends, such as my pal Rich Reynolds, have searched for the symbol in various locations, documents, libraries, and archives, without finding a duplicate. But now, I’ve found one.

I don’t know if there is any significance to this. I don’t know what the symbol on the Treasure Quest document represents. I just happened to notice that the symbols were the same and found it odd

Symbol seen on the Sacambaya Document.

that this symbol is found on a document that was supposedly created a couple of hundred years ago matching one that was allegedly painted on the side of a spacecraft seen in New Mexico in 1964.

This is probably just a coincidence. The world is filed with coincidences. I just found it interesting and wondered if there was a connection…

For those interested in the Socorro landing and the trouble with the symbol, all that is outlined in the book Encounter in the Desert. Yes, I wrote it, but the chapter on the symbol explains the situation. While I believe the real symbol on the side of the craft was different than that originally reported, the real point is that someone came up with the inverted V with the three lines through it, and I just wondered where he got that idea. Is there some sort of terrestrial connection between that seen on that document and that Zamora had seen?

For those interested in more detail about the Socorro symbol controversy, see:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-socorro-symbol-resolved.html