In the quiet desert of Socorro, New Mexico, a police officer's routine pursuit turned into one of the most credible UFO encounters in American history. On April 24, 1964, Officer Lonnie Zamora was chasing a speeding car through the outskirts of town when a sudden blue cone-shaped flame streaked across the sky. Believing it might be a crashing plane, and worried about the dynamite shack that stood in the direction of its descent, he let the speeder go and turned toward where he thought the object had gone down. What he found defied everything he knew.
Resting on the sand was an elliptical craft, tilted downward on one end as if it were in trouble. Near it stood two figures no taller than a four-foot creosote bush. One was standing beside the bush and appeared startled when it noticed him. Zamora drove closer for a better look, then stopped and stepped out of his patrol car. In that instant he heard a metallic hatch close, followed by a deafening blast as the craft's engine came roaring back to life. A burst of blue flame shot from beneath it, instantly slicing a creosote bush in half as the craft lifted off the ground. When it reached about twenty feet in the air, the roar faded into a high-pitched whine that grew louder and sharper as it accelerated, the pitch rising until it vanished into the sky.
Socorro UFO! Not of This Earth dives deep into that unforgettable day, exposing the investigation that followed, the evidence that still defies explanation, and the government's uneasy dance between secrecy and revelation. Working closely with the original NICAP investigator, the late Ray Stanford, authors Tony Angiola and Ben Moss reveal never-before-seen photographs of the actual craft that landed on that fateful day. Drawing on years of research, fieldwork, and declassified documents, they uncover startling new connections between Socorro, Project Blue Book, and other high-level UFO cases of the 1960s.
Step inside the mind of a small-town officer who never sought fame and became an unwilling witness to something beyond comprehension. Through eyewitness testimony, scientific analysis, and expert interviews, this book explores not only what happened, but why this case remains a cornerstone of modern UFO research.
The Socorro incident was real. The evidence was physical. And six decades later, the truth still challenges everything we think we know about our skies.
