The Socorro Landing
April 24, 1964
Lonnie Zamora was chasing a speeding car on the edge of Socorro, New Mexico, late in the afternoon of 24 April 1964 when a roar and a flash of flame made him break off the chase. What he said he saw next became one of the very few cases the US Air Force's UFO project never explained.
What people reported
A CIA history article based on a 1966 report by Hector Quintanilla, the last head of Project Blue Book, retells Zamora's account. Fearing a dynamite shack had exploded, he drove up a gravel road and saw a shiny object, about the size of a car and shaped like an oval, in a gully 150 to 200 yards away, with what he took at first for two people in white nearby. Wikipedia gives the same date and says he radioed the police dispatcher at about 5:45 pm to report a possible accident.
When he approached on foot, the CIA account says, a loud roar began and a blue-and-orange flame came from beneath the object. He saw a red insignia on its side, ran, fell, and looked back to see it rise and speed away to the southwest, low over the desert, until it disappeared.
What investigators found
Investigators took Zamora seriously. According to the CIA article, Quintanilla's team was convinced he was telling the truth but, despite a thorough investigation, could not identify any aircraft or other source. The case stayed on the books as 'unidentified', one of 701 such cases out of 12,618 sightings the Air Force recorded between 1947 and 1969, the article says. The Black Vault's collection of Blue Book documents reproduces the case file.
Others have offered explanations. Wikipedia lists a test of a lunar-lander-type craft at nearby White Sands Missile Range and a prank by students at New Mexico Tech, though neither has been confirmed.
Legacy
Socorro is unusual because the main witness was a police officer whose account investigators found credible, and because physical traces (burn marks and indentations) were reported at the site. It is still regularly cited as one of the strongest unexplained cases from the Blue Book era.