Today it is difficult to find a person who does not know what a UFO is. Hundreds of books, thousands of stories, essays and reviews have been written about unidentified flying objects, and the number of their observations has long exceeded one hundred thousandth. The beginning of a wide discussion and study of the problem of flying saucers was laid in the summer of 1947, when the famous Roswell incident occurred. Today this accident of an alien ship is described in many books and articles, it was discussed at conferences of ufologists. But one of the most famous sequels of the "incident" was the Socorro case.
Jet helicopter
On April 24, 1964, Police Sergeant Lonnie Zamora of Socorro, New Mexico was chasing a traffic offender's car. Suddenly, off the side of the freeway, a policeman noticed a flash of flame. It was accompanied by an unusual sound - something between a whistle and a roar.
Turning onto the road leading to the forest, the policeman saw something strange. Against the background of the surrounding hills, an aircraft was maneuvering, enveloped in streams of blue-orange flame. The dimensions at this distance were poorly determined, but it was clearly visible that the apparatus, similar to a silvery drop with chassis lines at the bottom, 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 of the hill, froze on the opposite slope. Before Zamora, a striking picture opened up. A hundred meters from him, the "jet helicopter" was landing. When the apparatus touched the ground with its supports, the whistle turned into
bass hum and fell silent. While Zamora was getting out of the car, he missed the moment when a couple of figures in silver overalls appeared next to the "helicopter".
Suddenly, a light white smoke appeared from under the apparatus, and sharp sounds were heard, reminiscent of the exhaust of a powerful diesel engine. Then from the bottom of the "helicopter" a column of blue fire erupted, reminding Zamora of the flame of a gas-welding torch. "Diesel exhaust" turned into a menacing roar, and the policeman, remembering army lessons, threw himself on the ground, covering his head with his hands. Gradually, the roar of the flame turned into a "creaking screech", and, raising his head, Zamora saw the "helicopter" flying several meters above the ground in a straight line. The sound of the machine's engine changed its tone again and began to resemble periodic "explosions of firecrackers over the ear." The movement of the "helicopter" accelerated, and the explosions and roar were replaced by "creak and howl". The device slowly gained height and, almost hitting the roof of the nearest warehouse, rushed in the southwest direction …
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Zamora immediately called his immediate superior, Sergeant Chavez, by radio.
Inspection of the scene
In the place 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 along the tops of an elongated rhombus. Four dark spots of soot could also be seen on the ground. Subsequently, the same ufologists clarified that three traces of the "UFO exhaust" were located closer to the center of the imaginary rhombus, and one fat blot went beyond its borders. When the police examined the traces of UFOs, there was still smoke near the bushes, but the ground and traces of soot seemed cold. There was a strong smell from the "UFO exhaust", but it did not resemble the smell of automobile or aviation fuel.
Back at the police station, the sergeants met FBI agent Burns, who was investigating some complicated federal case. After Zamora's story, he began to call up familiar aviation experts, and soon Captain Holder from the nearby secret White Sands aerospace test site joined the police.
Everyone immediately went to the scene. There, Agent Burns, together with Captain Holder, began to carry out all sorts of measurements, draw up a plan of the area, sketched the traces of the "legs" and "exhaust" of the UFO. 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 parking", carried out by professionals, gave its results. It turned out that along with the traces of the device itself, traces of strange shoes without heels with a smooth sole are noticeable in several places. In addition, Holder noticed that the indentations from the "UFO props" are not entirely symmetrical and one hole is deeper and slightly to the side. He immediately expressed his opinion, which later entered the inspection report, that the apparatus was damaged and made an emergency landing.
Throughout the night, Burns and Holder talked on the phone with experts and their superiors, and in the morning the first visitors from the FBI and the Pentagon began to arrive at the scene. After an emergency morning news release, Socorro was overrun by an army of journalists and ufologists.
Meanwhile, Zamora and Chavez were summoned to the FBI headquarters to give detailed testimony to the commission of inquiry. It was here that they were amazed to hear the accusations of declassifying the secret lunar module from the upcoming Apollo mission.
Ufological investigation
When the passions around the "Socorra UFO" subsided somewhat, the well-known specialist and consultant of the US Air Force Joseph Allen Hynek (1910-1986) took up the investigation of the "UFO incident". Professor Hynek interviewed many people who were near the "UFO landing", but found only one indirect witness to the events. The owner of a gas station at the exit of the town along Highway 85, a certain Opelgrinder, recalled that on that day, no later than 6 pm, he had a few phrases with an extremely excited client. An unidentified man in a suit with a tie, resembling a traveling salesman, worried, said that he had just been blown off the road by a strange helicopter that had smoked his entire car. The "traveling salesman" car was indeed covered with some kind of dirty spots with such an unpleasant smell that the rag with which he wiped the windshield,immediately had to be thrown away.
Over the past 50 years, many versions of the Socorro events have been expressed. Thus, the famous journalist, engineer and ufologist Philip Julian Klass (1919-2005), who was deservedly called the ufological Sherlock Holmes, proposed the "plasma" UFO hypothesis. According to her, the object observed by Sergeant Zamora was a "cold plasmoid". Humanoids in silver coveralls were also plasma, capable of leaving depressions in the ground. After criticism of physicists, who pointed out the impossibility of the existence of such "plasmoids" in the earth's atmosphere, Klass proposed a different version. In it, the main organizer of the "UFO phenomenon" was … the mayor of Socorro. Being also a banker, he got into difficult financial circumstances and decided to improve his affairs at the expense of the flow of tourists. To do this, with the help of his fellow officers from the White Sands training ground, the mayor-banker somehow organized a powerful fiery flash. Klass backed up his reasoning with facts: after the start of the "ufological fever", the city's budget really received substantial filling.
The equally famous UFO researcher, American astrophysicist Donald Howard Menzel (1901-1976), having studied all the available materials on the occasion in Socorro, decided to take 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 group of teenagers who exceeded the speed. According to Men-zel, young fans of fast driving decided to play the sergeant in revenge 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, possibly using ordinary Chinese fireworks, which greatly frightened the sergeant. Having studied this version,Professor Hynek found out in detail the meteorological situation on April 24 and, building a wind rose, proved that at five o'clock in the afternoon the balloon could not fly to the southeast, like a UFO in Zamora's testimony, but would rush to the northwest.
Declassified documents
What actually could have happened 50 years ago on the outskirts of Socorro?
Let us recall that it was in those years that the “lunar race” full of drama took place, in which NASA at all costs tried to get ahead of the Soviet Union. 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 started, which was limited 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 our satellite 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 that tests of the descent vehicle began in terrestrial conditions at the White Sands test site.
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 technological control, it can be seen that in order to reduce the aerodynamic air resistance and protect the instruments (both from the air environment and from prying eyes), the lunar module platform was sometimes covered with a protective screen. The shape of this additional hull was very reminiscent of the same oval object seen by Sergeant Zamora …