The Socorro Incident

The FBI Investigated a UFO Landing and Wrote It All Down

On April 24, 1964, a police officer in Socorro, New Mexico chased a speeding car south of town and ended up having one of the most thoroughly documented close encounters in American history. Within hours, the FBI was on scene. Within weeks, they had produced an official investigative memorandum describing physical evidence, witness testimony, and an object that none of them could explain.

The document is FBI file 62-HQ-83894, serial 438, dated May 8, 1964. It is not a secondhand summary or a press release. It is Special Agent D. Arthur Byrnes, Jr.’s own report, written from direct observation of the landing site and face-to-face interview with the witness. It was released in May 2026 as part of the Department of War’s historic declassification of UAP files under the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE), and is available for download directly from war.gov/UFO. This is the FBI’s own file on a UFO landing.

The Witness

Lonnie Zamora was a Socorro police officer with an unremarkable record in the best possible sense. FBI Special Agent Byrnes had known him personally for five years and wrote in the report:

“It may be noted that it has been the observation of Agent Byrnes that Officer Zamora, known intimately for approximately five years, is well regarded as a sober, industrious, and conscientious officer and not given to fantasy.”

When Byrnes arrived at the scene, he found Zamora “perfectly sober and somewhat agitated over his experience.” This is not how the FBI describes someone making things up. The Bureau chose those words deliberately.

What Happened

Zamora was pursuing a speeding vehicle shortly before 6:00 PM when he heard a roar and saw a flame in the sky to the southwest. He abandoned the pursuit and drove toward the source, bouncing over rough ground toward a gravel quarry area about a mile southwest of Socorro.

As he crested a small hill, he saw what he initially thought was an overturned car. Two figures in what appeared to be white coveralls stood near it. One appeared to startle and jump. Then Zamora realized it was not a car at all.

The object was egg-shaped, aluminum-white, and approximately the size of a sedan. A loud roar came from it, and a blue flame, described as “sort of like the flame from a blow torch,” shot from the bottom. The flame was narrower at the bottom than at the top and tilted slightly. As the roar intensified, Zamora ducked behind his patrol car, hitting his head and losing his glasses.

He ran north, putting the car between himself and the object, glancing back as he went. The object rose to about twenty to twenty-five feet in roughly six seconds, still directly over the spot where it had been sitting. Then the roar stopped. In its place, Zamora heard “a sharp tone whine from high tone to low tone.” He looked up and saw the object moving away to the southwest, picking up speed until it disappeared in the distance.

The Insignia

Zamora reported seeing an insignia on the side of the object, approximately two and a half feet high by two feet wide, positioned in the center. He described it as resembling a vertical bracket or arrow with a horizontal bar. This detail became one of the most scrutinized elements of the report, as it suggested the object was marked with some form of identification, implying it belonged to someone.

The Physical Evidence

This is where the Socorro case separates itself from nearly every other UFO report of the era. Agent Byrnes arrived at the site within roughly thirty minutes of the incident and documented physical evidence with the specificity you would expect from a trained federal investigator:

• Four rectangular depressions in the rough, sandy ground, each approximately 16 by 6 inches and about 2 inches deep. The depressions were regular in shape, angled inward from a center line, with earth pushed to the far side as if made by landing gear.
• Three burned patches of clumped grass inside the rectangle formed by the four depressions. Other clumps of grass in the immediate area were undisturbed, suggesting the burns were localized and not the result of a grass fire or natural cause.
• One additional burn area outside the four depressions.
• Three circular marks in the sandy earth, approximately 4 inches in diameter and about one-eighth of an inch deep, “as if a jar lid had gently been pushed into the sand.”

No other footprints, vehicle tracks, or evidence of human presence were found at the site. No houses or inhabited dwellings were within sight. Whatever had been on that patch of ground, it had left physical traces and departed.

The Response

The chain of events itself speaks to how seriously this was taken. Zamora radioed the sheriff’s office immediately. The radio operator relayed the call to New Mexico State Police Sergeant M. S. Chavez, who was in the building with FBI Special Agent Byrnes. Byrnes finished his business and drove to the scene, arriving within roughly thirty minutes of the incident.

At the site, Byrnes found Zamora, Undersheriff Jim Luckie, Sergeant Chavez, and Officer Ted Jordan already assembled. Multiple law enforcement officers, including a federal agent, were on scene within the hour. This was not a lone witness wandering in days later. This was an active response to an active call.

The case was subsequently transferred to the Air Force’s Project Blue Book for formal investigation. Air Force investigators arrived the following day, interviewed Zamora extensively, photographed the site, and took soil and plant samples. Project Blue Book’s official conclusion listed the case as “unidentified,” one of roughly 700 cases in their files that defied explanation.

Why It Matters

The Socorro incident occupies a unique position in UFO history for several reasons:

• The witness was vetted by the FBI. Byrnes did not just interview Zamora; he had known him for five years and explicitly vouched for his character in an official Bureau document. This is not anonymous testimony or a decades-later recollection. It is a named federal agent personally attesting to the credibility of a named police officer.
• Physical evidence was documented within thirty minutes. Byrnes arrived fast enough to see the depressions and burns before weather, curiosity seekers, or time could degrade them. He measured them. He described them in precise terms. The Air Force photographed them the next day.
• Multiple witnesses responded in real time. While only Zamora saw the object itself, the law enforcement response was immediate and documented. The radio logs exist. The chain of custody on the evidence is traceable.
• The FBI wrote it down. The Bureau did not dismiss this. They did not file it under prank calls. They produced a formal memorandum, complete with witness assessment, physical evidence description, and scene documentation. The fact that this document exists in FBI files at all tells you how seriously they took it.

J. Allen Hynek, the Air Force’s own astronomical consultant for Project Blue Book, investigated Socorro personally and called it one of the most puzzling cases in the Air Force files. Army Captain Hector Quintanilla, who headed Blue Book at the time, also visited the site. Neither could explain it.

Lonnie Zamora never profited from his experience. He never wrote a book, never went on the lecture circuit, never changed his story. He remained a police officer in Socorro. When asked about it years later, he still maintained he had seen exactly what he reported.

The FBI believed him enough to write it all down. And now, sixty-two years later, we can read what they wrote.

Source: FBI File 62-HQ-83894, Serial 438. Department of War PURSUE release, Document ID 34. war.gov/UFO