Famous Socorro landing case a hoax?

reply to post by fls13


No, course i have no idea about Zamora;s account. I doubt I've reread it more than 40-50- times, in various books and on various web sites. What's more i didn't email the people who made the British documentary on UFOs and ask them why, when so much of the film was so well done, when they made a CGI recreation of the Zamora incident, they made the ship look totally unlike the one Zamora actually reported..

Of course I am perfectly willing to accept that bunch of hick mining students managed to build VTOL craft that could fly slowly and then accelerate to quite some speed just because of some scrap of paper that has been around for umpteen years anyway.

The onus here is on the fakers to come forward and explain exactly how, they faked such a sophisticated design at a time when AVRO were building the most * expensive lawnmower in the world*

Which leads me to conclude.. cheap publicity stunt, perpetrated by yet more wannabes on the UFO gravy train.

Originally posted by FireMoon
Of course I am perfectly willing to accept that bunch of hick mining students managed to build VTOL craft that could fly slowly and then accelerate to quite some speed just because of some scrap of paper that has been around for umpteen years anyway.

Quite some speed huh? How fast is that exactly? VTOL craft? That really would have been something if college engineering students could have built that . . . only they didn't.

reply to post by fls13


Just for you... driect quotes from the man himself..

Object was starting to go straight up--slowly up. Object slowly rose stright up

and...
I looked up, and I saw the object going away from me. It did not come any closer to me. It appeared to go in straight line and at same height--possibly 10 to 15 feet from ground, and it cleared the dynamite shack by about three feet. Shack about eight feet high. Object was travelling very fast. It seemed to rise up, and take off immediately across country.

Originally posted by FireMoon
reply to post by fls13

 

Just for you... driect quotes from the man himself..

Object was starting to go straight up--slowly up. Object slowly rose stright up

and...
I looked up, and I saw the object going away from me. It did not come any closer to me. It appeared to go in straight line and at same height--possibly 10 to 15 feet from ground, and it cleared the dynamite shack by about three feet. Shack about eight feet high. Object was travelling very fast. It seemed to rise up, and take off immediately across country.

Did this happen before or after Zamora fell down and lost his glasses?

Some fireworks, some fused sand seeded at the site, a balloon and some spacemen disappearing behind a hill sloping down and away from the witness. All simple enough to hoax.

You mean his sunglasses?

I quote from wikipedia...
According to reconstructions of the event from Zamora's account, the time was probably no more than 20 seconds from when the object went to silent operation, rapidly accelerated, and then faded from view near Box Canyon, a distance of about 6 miles (9.7 km). Assuming constant acceleration, these numbers can be used to estimate the object's acceleration, average speed, and final speed. The acceleration would be given by 2d/t^2, where d is the distance of 6 miles (9.7 km) or about 9600 meters, and t is the time of 20 seconds. The final speed would be 2d/t and the average speed d/2. This works out to a final speed of 2160 miles/hour, an average speed of 1080 miles/hour, and an acceleration of 48 meters/sec^2, or almost 5 times Earth gravity of 9.8 meters/sec^2.

reply to post by FireMoon
There's nothing about 20 seconds in his official report:

www.theufochronicles.com...

Object was traveling very fast. It seemed to rise up, and take off immediately across country. I ran back to my car and as I ran back, I kept an eye on the object. I picked up my glasses (I left the sun glasses on ground), got into the car, and radioed to Nep Lopez, radio operator, to "look out of the window, to see if you could see an object." He asked what is it? I answered "It looks like a balloon." I don't know if he saw it. If Nep looked out of his window, which faces north, he couldn't have seen it. I did not tell him at the moment which window to look out of.

As I was calling Nep, I could still see the object. The object seemed to lift up slowly, and to "get small" in the distance very fast. It seemed to just clear the Box Canyon or Six Mile Canyon Mountain. It disappeared as it went over the mountain. It had no flame whatsoever as it was traveling over the ground, and no smoke or noise.

When I let go of a balloon it appears to get small in the distance very fast, that's what he says in the report.

So who exactly came up with 20 seconds and how did they come up with it? If it's just a guess then any of us can guess at a number.

Originally posted by FireMoon
Assuming constant acceleration, these numbers can be used to estimate the object's acceleration, average speed, and final speed. The acceleration would be given by 2d/t^2, where d is the distance of 6 miles (9.7 km) or about 9600 meters, and t is the time of 20 seconds. The final speed would be 2d/t and the average speed d/2. This works out to a final speed of 2160 miles/hour, an average speed of 1080 miles/hour, and an acceleration of 48 meters/sec^2, or almost 5 times Earth gravity of 9.8 meters/sec^2.

There is absolutely no way that the vehicle reached a top speed of almost Mach 3. That is just laughable. If it reached a top wind-aided speed of 50 mph, I would be surprised . . . and impressed.

From Zamoras statement toBlue book.... ?

Can't tell how long [I] saw object second time (the "close" time), possibly 20 seconds-

And as you are basing a whole argument on totally unsubstantiated evidence from anonymous people.. think it is only fair we throw this titbit into the ring as well..

From Ray Stanford's book

A family of five tourists from Colorado headed north also saw the oval object as it approached Socorro at a very low altitude, going east to west just south of town. It passed directly over their car only a few feet above it. After the encounter, the tourists stopped for gas in Socorro. Their identity was never discovered, but the story was learned from the service station operator, Opal Grinder, who signed an affidavit in 1967. According to Grinder, the husband told him "Your aircraft sure fly low around here!" and that the object almost took the roof off their car. The man thought it was in trouble since it came down west of the highways instead of the nearby airport. He saw the police car headed up the hill towards it, he thought to render assistance. (Stanford, p. 16)


[edit on 3-10-2009 by FireMoon]

Originally posted by FireMoon
And as you are basing a whole argument on totally unsubstantiated evidence from anonymous people.. think it is only fair we throw this titbit into the ring as well..

Allow me to re-introduce the anonymous sources involved in the prank scenario:

Linus Pauling-2 time Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry and Peace.

Stirling Colgate-president of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (New Mexico Tech) and made many contributions in physics education and astrophysics.

Frank T. Etscorn-Dr. Etscorn kindly replied: The stories I told were pretty much the stock stories that had been going around campus for years regarding Tech student involvement in the incident. I bet most NMTech "old timers" would agree that the whole thing had an air of "Tech Prank" -- the students were as you mentioned notorious (and, I would hope, still are!). I did have a student in my Paranormal Borderlands of Science class do some research regarding the story depicted in "The Socorro Saucer in a Pentagon Pantry" book. Can't remember her name. As I recall, she tracked down some Techies of that era and talked to them and also found out that a rear projection device had been removed/borrowed/checked-out etc. from some place on campus. Possibly another stock story. Funny how the story changes: I don't ever recall relaying to students that the "people" were wearing "strange coveralls" and making "eep eep" sounds. Maybe that was just me -- I do originate from Kentucky. I always thought, if the incident had been a student prank, that they would have salted the ground where the purported saucer landed with ground-up trinitite (available from White Sands -- as well as school geology dept) and then mixed in with the sand on the ground. Do I think something from outer space landed there? Not in a million years! Do I think officer Zamora could have misperceived something more mundane? -- yes -- he's human just like the rest of us. Test aircraft from White Sands - greater than zero probability. Tech student prank -- that really, really worked well -- same probability, maybe more. Take care Frank Etscorn

Oh wait, they aren't anonymous . . . . in fact they have buildings named after them.

Allow me to re-introduce the anonymous sources involved in the prank scenario:

The anonymous source, says it all doesn't it? So sure of themselves they won;t stand up and make themselves known> This is not some mole working for the government but a civilian who claims to have knowledge we'd all like to test. it. But no they snipe from the shadows because, i suspect, it is wholly hogwash

There are several anonymous sources i haven;t used which completely negate the guys story and support Zamora's account.

If Zamora was accurate with his details then the idea it was a prank, is frankly ludicrous. Let me reiterate, the claim they have to prove is simple..

That they could maneuverer a car sized dirigible, under control, with no control surfaces using split second timing. That they could then produce several sound effect, on cue, that were reported by witnesses to the the authorities, before the case was made public. They then managed to make a dirigible lift off straight up, most dirigibles lift off nose first... They then managed to accelerate a dirigible to and even if we are conservative with Zamora's testimony to an average speed of 360 mph in a straight line.

What is more they managed to achieve a speed of, again conservatively, 360mph, without a single motor sound and manage to produce sheets of blue flame hot enough to turn sand into glass without melting, lets say as it would be the most obvious material used in the fake, aluminium, A metal whose melting point is over 1000c below that needed to turn sand into glass.

The challenge is simple, yet not one of them seems to want to say that Zamora's account was hugely erroneous. No they seem to be taking credit for the sighting happening exactly as he claimed it did. If they were genuine hoaxers, the first thing they would do would be to totally diss Zamora's report? So why haven't they?

I will say it once more ... If Zamora's account is anything like accurate they have a one hell of a lot of explaining to do before they can make any sort of claim it was a hoax.

The onus is on the hoaxers 100% to show that Zamora's account was shot full of holes. So far not a dicky bird from them, save the anonymous claim that someone who knew someone else reckons it was a prank.

if it was a claim of a UFO landing presented in the same way.. it would have been laughed off this forum , buy hey ho, its a debunk, so lets throw all the laws of logic and proper substantiated evidence out of the window. The non believers will have their belief, i guess.

[edit on 3-10-2009 by FireMoon]

Originally posted by FireMoon
The anonymous source, says it all doesn't it?

It says a lot especially when they're famous and accomplished.

Originally posted by FireMoon
I will say it once more ... If Zamora's account is anything like accurate they have a one hell of a lot of explaining to do before they can make any sort of claim it was a hoax.

The onus is on the hoaxers 100% to show that Zamora's account was shot full of holes. So far not a dicky bird from them, save the anonymous claim that someone who knew someone else reckons it was a prank.

You see a lot of problems I don't see. The only problem might be the 20 seconds figure and even Zamora says he can't tell us how long that was, 20 seconds was just a possibility. So with Zamora himself saying he's not sure of the 20 seconds number I don't see any big discrepancies with the hoax account and Zamora's account.

This is still a pretty fresh revelation, so I'm going to give the students some time and see if they come forward. If they don't the hoax remains unproven in my book.

All we need now is some proof from the (ex) students.

[edit on 3-10-2009 by Arbitrageur]

Yes famous accomplished and nothing details wise at all , other than, they heard stories... ie total speculation based on rumours

Well damn.. if want to go that route.. i could regale you for hours about stories I;ve been told by people who are 1 Famous, 2 Qualified 3 In positions of great responsibility... but it's merely hearsay... Which is exactly what this is..
I heard that from someone whose name icant remember..

Se I've been here before with a UFO incident i was part of the research team on. You have fallen for one of the oldest debunking techniques known. A technique that was applied to several unexplained sightings in the 60s and 70s. You'd actually know that, if you actually did some serious research rather than, just jumped on a passing bandwagon that suits your agenda...

Allow me to introduce to you *The urban myth of the student prank as an explanation for the unexplained*...

Took me a while to track this down but finally found the full story, well, the full story, you the public, know.

montrealradioguy.wordpress.com...

Now not only was i a witness to the original event, i actually worked on the investigation quoted in blog... Oh look what do we find.. why it's the ubiquitous *Student prank*.Now in Zamora's case, no laws were broken so they could chuck a couple of names in, who, of course, weren't involved but have heard of people who might have been involved..

We start from an unprovable baseline but accepted cliche... All student bodies have pranksters. This allows us to lay at their door any incident we care to mention. In our little group we use to have a joke about.. JFK... student prank.... Bay of Pigs... Student prank... etc etc...

A full week later on the 4th of December, the Sunday Times published the ‘official explanation’ that the hoax was carried out by students using just ‘£80 worth of equipment powered by an ordinary car battery’. At no time did anyone come forward to claim responsibility for the ‘hoax’.

Recgonise it? oh yes the same unnamed students from a reputable source that has papers all over the world named after it... I rather think that trumps your professor don't you?


Only as i worked on the report i can flesh a few things out that were never published, because guess what? They were told to us anonymously, so we felt it wans't fair to include them. Maybe your sterling writers should consider that themselves?

However, as they didn't I am going to flesh out actually what we were told about an incident still as unsolved as the Zamora case... strange that isnt; it no real earthly explanation... student prank.. hmmm how many strikes do you want? How many are fair?

The police told us, off the record and on the QT that. A number of students had been arrested and charged under the Broadcasting act with several offenses and they had been found guilty etc etc.. But they had asked the press not to give them publicity as it might encourage others to try the same stunt.

So. like proper researchers we checked, we first checked where the police claimed they had been tried. Nothing. We then checked all the courts in the whole area that was affected by the transmission. Nothing...

In other words the police were lying...but if we published it they would just deny any one had ever actually been charged due to lack of evidence. So we didn't publish that part of the investigation..

the hoax was carried out by students using just ‘£80 worth of equipment powered by an ordinary car battery’

Well blow me down what do we have hear, oh yes exactly the same accusations about the Zamora incident, it was a bag of salt and a back projector... yeah right

Oh guess what?.... we interviewed, anonymously, several TV technicians and guess what they told us?

That to have pulled off the *transmission prank* they would have needed just about every car battery in London to provide enough power. One technician quoted that, probably two large trailers truck generators to perform the *prank*... Again because these were anonymous sources we didn't publish those snippets of, quite genuine, information.

The other thing you will note is that. *pranks* never involve the military, it's never wheeled out for those incidents because it would affect how the public view them in a detrimental way. Hang on we spend how much on these people's training and they do what? They would have to actually do something for real and seen to be doing it in order to stop it happening again..

Of course you can always use the *anonymous sources* ala Rendlesham to suggest that. Many of the personnel were taking psycho reactive drugs and that was the cause of the incident. See that's just another form of the student *prank*, equally unprovable but every bit as damaging.

In other words."The student prank" used as an explanation for cases that have no seeming prosaic explanation is an urban myth, every bit as much as your mate's father's friend who.. drove through a rough district of town, heard a thump and when they arrived home, they found a severed hand attached to chain around the car's fender..

Anyone well versed in actual investigations into his field , is aware of this. it is a running joke. it's one of the more innocuous forms of disinformation fed to people about UFOs.










[edit on 3-10-2009 by FireMoon]

Oh... as an addendum.. That wasn't the only *alien transmission* in the London area. There was another about the same time that affected the Radio station LBC, that was never broadcast, due to the inbuilt delay in the broadcast. They cut it off after 30s seconds and went to adverts..

Luckily, one of the station technicians was a Ufologist and had the savvy to tape the whole thing and s then smuggle the tape out. Most radio people, of a certain age, have heard the tape.. Guess what the internal report said the source of the tape was//oh yes... * A student prank*... case closed...

Only this time the students took over a whole telephone switchboard and jammed all the lines into a radio Station. So, no matter how many times the presenter, from memory one Brian Hayes, put the phone down on the voice, the next phone he picked up was the same person.

Only this incident has never been made public. However, if you want to check it out find anyone from LBC in the late 70s and ask them about the *alien voice tape* and watch their reaction.. If you really want you could even email the station, it's still going and ask them, be interested to see what their reply is.

[edit on 3-10-2009 by FireMoon]

Originally posted by FireMoon
In other words."The student prank" used as an explanation for cases that have no seeming prosaic explanation is an urban myth, every bit as much as your mate's father's friend who.. drove through a rough district of town, heard a thump and when they arrived home, they found a severed hand attached to chain around the car's fender..

The Zamora case does have a prosaic explanation. When you look closely at Zamora's account, add in the NMIMT chatter about a hoax and the students track record of pulling off such pranks and then, most importantly of all, look at the actual site where the sighting took place it's an easy call.

OK.

So....

Heres a brief summary of the hoax as claimed.

The "hoaxers" were waiting for Zamora in the desert. with their already inflated car-sized dirigible, which they've smuggled out to the spot in the desert unseen.

Somehow, by some freak of luck, they manage to actually drag their intended target out of the town, towards where they are. In doing so, they manage to make a noise loud enough to be heard some distance away, a create a flash bright enough to divert a cops attention away from a speeding motorist and make him think a dynamite shack has blown up.

Without the approaching officer seeing anyone holding tethers, or tethers holding the dirigible to the ground, and somehow anticipating that he doesn't shoot any of them, or the dirigible because he's scared out of his wits, they manage to run off when they see him coming, making two loudish bangs in the process.

At that point, the dirigibles tethers come loose - and bear in mind this is a dirigible with legs that retract inside of it - and while they are running away they manage to fire off a device on the underside of it that produces a flame that is light blue, which suggests some kind of gas burner or magnesium shavings with sufficient thrust to force the flame to burn downwards as if its producing thrust and not upwards (which is how flames burn - try tipping a candle upside down). Not only that, but they've installed a speaker system into the balloon that doesn't get damaged by the flame (neither did the ballooon btw), and yet produces a noise that is so loud the cop thinks the object might explode, and the sound is heard at distance by other people in the town.

The hoaxers then escape, without anyone seeing them.

This wonderful dirigible (it does a lot) is also effectively neutrally buoyed at a certain height - (it has pressure bleed valves built in?) and then moves off in a specific direction at speed, apparently accelerating away.

The hoaxers have been so clever, that prior to their hoax they've made imprints in the ground that are shown to equate to four tons of pressure and at the same time they seed the spot under their burner with fused sand that they've made in a lab, and place it in such a manner that none of the military observers who came to the site (and probably tested the soil btw) could tell how it had happened, and leads the man who the airforce paid to debunk the whole UFO subject wondering what the hell happened - and convinced something unusual did - because the incident was so damn convincing the cop in question had such an imprint made on him that he never strayed from his story.

Sorry, but thats not a hoax.

Pulling all that off perfectly is a damn miracle.

Of course, someone writing a comment on a piece of paper all makes that real....

Originally posted by neformore
At that point, the dirigibles tethers come loose - and bear in mind this is a dirigible with legs that retract inside of it - and while they are running away they manage to fire off a device on the underside of it that produces a flame that is light blue, which suggests some kind of gas burner or magnesium shavings with sufficient thrust to force the flame to burn downwards as if its producing thrust and not upwards (which is how flames burn - try tipping a candle upside down). Not only that, but they've installed a speaker system into the balloon that doesn't get damaged by the flame (neither did the ballooon btw), and yet produces a noise that is so loud the cop thinks the object might explode, and the sound is heard at distance by other people in the town.

The hoaxers then escape, without anyone seeing them.

This wonderful dirigible (it does a lot) is also effectively neutrally buoyed at a certain height - (it has pressure bleed valves built in?) and then moves off in a specific direction at speed, apparently accelerating away.

Bold Point 1-Zamora never claims to have seen the legs retract into the vehicle. Twas nothing but a lightweight/cardboard mockup of legs that is folded up and carried away by the two spacemen.

Bold Point 2-Pyrotechnics and noisemakers on the ground.

Bold Point 3-A balloon could easily be moored to the ground but controlled along the up-down axis before its' release, reeled out and reeled in.

Nothing fancy or otherworldly here. Just textbook magician's tricks. Zamora is always at least 500 feet away from the vehicle. Pick a starting point and start pacing that distance off. The ground also dips, then rises between him and the vehicle and then dips again right behind the actual landing spot.

reply to post by fls13


That is you simply rewriting the event to fit your belief system, completely ignorant of the actual data. You are cherry picking the bits that fit your hypothesis and totally disregarding the parts that are difficult for you. In other words doing exactly what the most *batty* of believers do.

You can't have it both ways. If you are accepting anecdotal evidence then you have to explain all the other anecdotal evidence that, at first sight, seems to back Zamora's account.

Typical magicians trick? Scuse me but care to show me the famous... UFO trick where it travels 6 miles in less than a minute?

Originally posted by fls13
Bold Point 1-Zamora never claims to have seen the legs retract into the vehicle. Twas nothing but a lightweight/cardboard mockup of legs that is folded up and carried away by the two spacemen.

Lightweight cardboard legs that made impressions equivalent to 4 tons of pressure?

Bold Point 3-A balloon could easily be moored to the ground but controlled along the up-down axis before its' release, reeled out and reeled in.

And what happened to the gear that did that, exactly? How was it removed without Zamora hearing, or seeing it, given that he didn't leave the scene? He would also have seen the tether line in order for the object to rise vertically, because an immediate release would have sent the object moving straightaway (try letting a balloon go in the wind, it doesn't stop, hover and then move off, its moving from when its let go, any lighter than air untethered object will do the same.)

I notice though that you didn't answer the point about the flame. Please explain that one. Light blue cone, orange at the bottom, blowing downwards.