On April 24, 1964, on the outskirts of the New Mexican town of Socorro, an hour's drive south of Albuquerque, Police Sergeant Lonnie Zamora was bored on routine duty. There were still two hours left until the end of the shift, and he was even delighted when a blue Chevrolet appeared from around the corner, squeaking tires.
Marking the time -17: 45, Zamora rushed in his police "Ford" after the violator of the speed limit. The chase began along federal highway number 85. Suddenly, off the side of the highway, a policeman noticed a flash of flame out of the corner of his eye, accompanied by a hissing roar …
CHRONICLE OF THE ACCIDENT
Leaving black streaks of rubber on the asphalt, Zamora stopped with a squeal of brakes. With regret watching the rapidly retreating intruder, Zamora began to look for the source of the unusual noise. Looking at the warehouses surrounding the road, he suddenly thought that something like a warehouse with miners' sticks of dynamite had exploded nearby.
Turning at an intersection leading into a lane, the policeman saw something strange behind the parting warehouse walls. Against the background of the surrounding hills, an unusual aircraft maneuvered, enveloped in streams of orange-blue flame. It was difficult to determine the dimensions at such a distance, but it was clearly seen that the apparatus, similar to a silvery drop with a stilt chassis in the lower part, was slowly descending on a narrow cone of smokeless flame. Not more than a minute passed, and the strange "jet helicopter", as the Zamora apparatus christened to itself, disappeared behind the nearest hill.
The police car turned onto a dirt road and, having overcome the ridge, froze on the opposite slope. A striking picture opened up in front of Zamora: a hundred meters away, the "jet helicopter" was landing. When the device touched the ground with its supports, the whistle turned into a bass hum and fell silent. While Zamora got out of the car, he missed the moment when a pair of human figures in what looked like silver overalls appeared next to the "helicopter".
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There was nothing unusual about them from afar, and the policeman reasonably judged that he had witnessed an accident of some kind of experimental apparatus. Zamora rushed to the radiotelephone and began calling for help. Communication was poor and it took quite a long time to negotiate with the authorities. By the time he returned to the site, the "helicopter pilots" had already disappeared.
Sergeant Chavez did not understand much from the confused testimony of Zamora, who called the UFO either a jet helicopter, then a rocket, or, for some reason, a flying car.
With a wave of his hand at Zamora, who had fallen into a stupor from experiences, the sergeant ordered to inspect the scene. Where the policeman saw the "helicopter", four deep angular dents were found on the ground. Subsequently, ufologists found out that these UFO tracks were located at the vertices of a quadrangle, as if consisting of two isosceles triangles with a common base. Four dark spots of soot could also be seen on the ground.
Back at the police station, the sergeants met FBI agent Burns, who was investigating some complicated federal case. He began to ring up familiar aviation experts, and soon Captain Holder from the nearby secret White Sands aerospace test site joined the police.
All those present immediately went to the scene. There, Agent Berne, together with Captain Holder-rom, began to carry out all sorts of metric measurements, including drawing up a plan of the area, sketching traces from "legs" and "exhaust" of UFOs. In addition, Holder and Chávez took many photographs. Subsequently, some of them ended up in the police dossier, and others in the materials of the FBI and Air Force intelligence investigations. A thorough inspection of the UFO site by professionals yielded results.
It turned out that along with the traces of the device itself, in several places, human traces from strange shoes without heels with a smooth sole are noticeable. In addition, Holder noticed that the indentations from the UFO "props" are not completely symmetrical and one hole is deeper and lies somewhat to the side. He immediately expressed his opinion, which later entered the inspection report, that the apparatus was damaged and made an emergency landing.
INVESTIGATION OF UFOLOGISTS
When the passions around the Socorra UFO subsided somewhat, the well-known specialist and consultant of the US Air Force, Joseph Allen Hynek, took up the investigation of the UFO incident. He reconstructed and timed every step of Zamora on April 24 and, in general, did not find any significant contradictions with the prevailing version of events.
Professor Hynek went to great lengths to translate Zamora's story from subjective to objective. To do this, he interviewed many potential witnesses who were near the UFO landing, but found only one indirect mention. The owner of a gas station outside the town on Highway 85, a certain Opelgrinder, recalled that on that day, no later than six in the afternoon, he had a few phrases with a very excited client.
An unidentified man in a suit with a tie, resembling a salesman or a clerk, very worried, said that he was just about to be blown off the road by a strange helicopter that had smoked his entire car. The salesman's car was indeed covered with some kind of dirty stains with such an unpleasant odor that the rag he used to wipe the windshield was immediately thrown away.
Subsequently, the authors of the Blue Book UFO project added another phrase, quoted by Heine-kom as being heard by Opelgrinder from a traveling salesman: “Having flown over me, the“helicopter”rushed to the nearby hills, and a minute later a police car rushed there, howling like a siren.
The famous UFO researcher, American astrophysicist Donald Howard Menzel, having studied all the available materials on the occasion in Socorro, decided to go the simplest way. He suggested that the incident was staged by urban youth, with whom Zamora was in constant conflict over traffic violations. In fact, at the beginning of the UFO incident, he was chasing a fuppa of teenagers who exceeded the speed. According to Menzel, young fans of fast driving decided to play the sergeant in retaliation for the constant fines.
After provoking a pursuit, they directed the police officer in the desired direction, and then launched a balloon made of cardboard and foil filled with hydrogen. At some point, the balloon was detonated, perhaps using ordinary Chinese fireworks, which really scared the sergeant. Having investigated this version, Professor Hynek found out in detail the meteorological situation on April 24 and, having built a wind rose, proved that at five o'clock in the afternoon the balloon could not fly to the southeast, like a UFO in the testimony of Zamora, but would rush to the northwest …
VERSION
What actually could have happened fifty years ago on the outskirts of Socorro? Let us recall that it was in those years that the "moon race" full of drama took place, in which HACA at all costs tried to get ahead of the Soviet cosmonautics. The stakes were so high that the Apollo lunar mission developed with significant flaws. So, four years after the incident in Socorro, the first Apollo 8 expedition to the moon was launched, which was forced to confine itself to only flying around the night star.
It turned out that, despite numerous tests and improvements, the lunar module was still not ready, and the first test flight to the Moon had to be carried out without a landing compartment. Meanwhile, today many documents of the lunar mission have been declassified, from which it is clear that it was in 1964 at the White Sands test site that tests of the descent vehicle began in terrestrial conditions.
The flights of the lunar module were made at different distances and sometimes reached several kilometers. From the declassified test reports of the US Air Force Technology Directorate, it can be seen that sometimes to reduce the aerodynamic air resistance and protect the instruments (both from the air environment and from prying eyes), the lunar module platform was covered with a protective screen. The shape of this additional body was very reminiscent of the same oval object once seen by Sergeant Zamora …
Oleg FEYG