Something strange happened in the desert near Socorro NM, on a spring night 42 years ago, and a State Police officer was there to report it. It has become known as the Zamora UFO Incident, named for officer Lonnie Zamora. While not as publicized as the legendary Roswell Incident, this UFO landing made national headlines at the time sparking intrigue and speculation ever since. Experts who investigated the case have no doubt that he saw what he said he saw. But after years of harassment and ridicule, Zamora, now 73 and living in Socorro, vowed in 1994 never to speak of the incident again. On April 24, 1964, Zamora chased a speeding vehicle southeast of Socorro. “Up about the time I came to this little road, I heard a loud roar…a blast,” Zamora told a radio station in one of his many interviews in the following days. Sticking his head out the window, he saw what he described as a flying egg about the size of a car. Zamora also saw what looked like two people wearing white coveralls standing outside the mystery craft, and it appeared to be lifting off. “I went up close, about 200 feet from it and got out of the car when it started making noise and the flame under it,” he told his radio host. “I got scared and started running back. “Ii radioed for help from the car.”

These days, Zamora doesn't like to talk about what happened, but his report was taken very seriously at the time. The State Police and the U.S. Air Force launched an investigation setting off a frenzy of speculation about the mystery object and whether Zamora had an out-of-this world close encounter. Whatever happened on that Friday night in 1964 is considered one of the most credible alleged UFO incidents in history. Not only was the witness credible--a police officer--there was actual physical evidence: a half-burned bush, imprints in the area where the legs sat, shoe prints. “I think the policeman was sincere when he thought he saw something strange.” said Dave Thomas of New Mexicans for Science and Reason. “I don't think it came all the way from outer space.”

View: Full Article | Source: KRQE News

The obvous thing to do to test a Lunar lander that will be subject to a vacuum and 1/6th the Earth's gravity is to test it in a desert by the side of the freeway.

I've only heard of this case briefly but wow, this should have been considered closed 20 years ago.


A car sized object with a blast and flames coming out from the bottom in the desert recently before the Apollo missions took place. Come on people.

I agree with smallpackage, this case should have been closed decades ago.
If it wasn't a lunar lander prototype it was probably an Air Force experiment
of some kind.

Well this is interesting considering the date of the SERPO exchange. There was a previous article on Serpo that a visit and exchange of some of our people with One Eben. (The name of ther people) Vist www.serpo.org for more information on what it is about, its some of the most convincing things based on the freedom of information act releasing things slowly.

Well, what do we have against him? I'll belive it.

Sorry but lets get this right... There was nothing particularly secret about the LEM. I do not see the NASA *testing* the LEM out on the desert with just a *couple* of blokes in white suits in attendance, We are talking of millions of dollars of investment with *just a couple of white suits* involved in a major testing programme?

Sorry but i just dont buy that. Why would the Air Force launch an investigation into a NASA programme when all they had to do was make a single phone call?? Why didn't NASA ,post 67, come out and say..*Oh that was us* and kill any specualtion?

Are we really to believe that NASA went from a sleek *Hi tec* egg looking object, that if memory serves me right, burned fuel that produced a blue flame to something that looked like it was built from meccano by a commitee of children and used a traditional fuel that burned orange.??


That's not to say it wasn't some secret test, but to say it was one of a lunar landing tests is an argument shot so full of holes it couldn't float in a dried up waterhole.

Given the *cause celebre* status of the Zamora incident ,and the time passed , if it was indeed a NASA dry run, how come the skeptics haven't managed to find a single shred of evidence to support the NASA theory.? Their abscence from the whole debate speaks volumes about how , in actual fact, the Zamora incident still has some legs in the pantheon of the truly unexplained.

It is no use at all to just say... OH well it was i around the time of NASA tests in an area they might have been using. You could just as easily turn it round and say.. Well using a ship that looks like somthing NASA might develop would be the perfect cover to study what was happening at close hand?

So what you're saying it we should consider the possibility of a somewhat futuristic egg shaped object with a rocket engine with two humans in white suits to be extraterrestrials?
If it was a secret government craft, do you really think the government is going to come out and end speculation after the incident? of course not.
About the Air Force launching an investigation; they could have released that report to act as if there was actually an unidentified craft to cover for the government craft under testing.
He was 200 feet away. That distance in the dark could make the lunar lander appear to be more rounded than it really was.

theres only one problem. zamora said that after it lifted off, and shut down its "jet engines", it hovered. unless nasa has the technology to allows us to defy gravity without blades and rockets, this case is still very open.

What im saying is this.... It follows the pattern established in the 19th century that someone always appears one step ahead of us in terms of *hardware*. It is like it is a game of one upmanship and has been been since UFO reports began in the modren age circa 1850.

They almost always appear to be that little bit ahead of us. It was controllable *airships* when we only had balloons. It was aircraft that could fly in conditions we were grounded in in the 1920s.. It was *rockets* in the 1930s and in post war it has been a whole panoply of technology that is ahead of the game.

The fact is Zamora saw a craft that was *beyond the capabilities* of known science at the time he had his encounter. The LEM project was not secret, ,in actual fact ,in the propganda war with the USSR ,NASA was all too willing to show exactly what was going on. I ,as a child ,watched endless bulletins on TV about the latest designs , the latest ideas. So from that point of view the NASA test argument simply doesn't hold water.

The Zamora incident followed the classic UFO sighting category of fitting into the *just ahead of us* in appearance.

The theory of the everything is a govenrment project , by your own logic, has to be extended back to pre WW2 times.. A time when the USA secret service consisted of about 40 men and dog and had a budget of about 10 bucks a year. So they were flying the ariships?? They were flying aircraft over scandinavia in the 1920s??? they were flying rockets allover sweden in the 1903s??


Not one person has ever come forward to make any sort of claim as to being responsible for any of those incidents. There are no secret papers ever showed up to suggest any government was involved in them either,

Fact is , if I were some *other race* , who could just as easily be extra dimensional as they are extra terrestrial, and wanted to keep tabs on us, appearing to be just slighlty ahead of the game , technology wise, is the perfect cover for studying mankind because it is then easy for governments to say nothing and let others claim they are nothing more than secret government tests.

I can say all this having spoken privately to someone in the military who ,not only had the highest levels of security clearance ,but, actually took an active interest in the subject at the bequest of the govenrment. They told me face to face that *Some of the sightings reported during my tenure of command were craft not made by any government of this earth*. When i asked him about secret govermnet tests he smiled and simply said *i refer you to my previous statement*.

Now maybe he was feeding me B/S, but i know my body language, and his demeanour was not that of a person being deliberaetly dupilicitous.

Could be the only way they no how to explain something they have not seen before .what I'm saying is you normally look at what you no works when explaining something

good point!!! i believe you hit the nail on the head eggman. good post