Famous Socorro landing case a hoax?

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reply to post by fls13


And what makes you think I'm referring to you?

Unless you are one of the people who claim to have been in on the hoax?

Originally posted by FireMoon
And what makes you think I'm referring to you?

Well, you quoted me and then went into one of your long winded diatribes with what I quoted as your conclusion. If you put as much time into looking at the undisputed facts of the case as you do composing rubbish, the truth would be self evident to you.

Originally posted by fls13
If you put as much time into looking at the undisputed facts of the case as you do composing rubbish, the truth would be self evident to you.

Though Shipman came to NM Tech a couple of years after the Socorro UFO event, the information he provides is invaluable in understanding how such a thing could have ever happened.

ufocon.blogspot.com...

So - no proof.

Just guessing.

The guy wasn't even there and yet his "claims" are used as "insight" into the story.

Colgate still hasn't named any names, so its still only his word and still no actual proof of a prank, and Bragalia's is hyping up the story while his single article gets published on a number of linked blogs.

Hmm.

Just need to dissect this one again...looking at the bold ...Re-reading the original article...

We discussed how the pranksters may have incorporated 1) a large helium balloon resting on the desert floor to appear "landed" and then released up into the air on cue. Perhaps it was a reflective white colored balloon or a balloon fitted over with glossy-white craft paper- with added "landing struts" and a red insignia drawn on its side 2) "roaring" or "whining" explosives, pyrotechnics, model rockets, thrown flares or a flame device 3) smaller students dressed in white lab coats acting as the "aliens" and 4) the digging out of "landing depressions" and burning of nearby bushes. Soil or rock in the area may have been "salted" with silicon or trinitite from the school's Geology Lab. And perhaps it was intentional that Zamora was led to the landed craft by a speeding car. One of the students may have purposely engaged Lonnie in a car chase to lure him to where the hoax was staged. Zamora reports that he "broke the chase" to investigate the UFO- just as the students knew that he would.

Though these ideas about how the hoax may have been accomplished are strictly speculative

My this is getting interesting. Perhaps. May. Strictly Speculative.

As it stands, the whole "hoax" claim is fiction.

I'm looking for substance. I'm not seeing any. So now - instead - I'm wondering why someone suddenly feels the need to try and debunk this case so badly.

Time to start digging.

[edit on 5/10/09 by neformore]

Originally posted by neformore
So - no proof.
...
I'm wondering why someone suddenly feels the need to try and debunk this case so badly.

Time to start digging.

You're right still no proof. But a little more evidence, not of the hoax but of the hoaxing tradition at the school, and the code of silence explaining why they don't take credit etc. There's no way they made up all that stuff on the pranksters website for this, but if you're looking for alternate motives, I always follow the money and noticed that site is selling the pranksters stuff for $15 a pop. I'm not saying they are behind this but only noting that observation.

As for why somebody started digging, I thought it was just a Linus Pauling tip that he followed up on and then he went where the story took him from there.

But if you find some other motivation we'd like to hear it!

Originally posted by neformore
I'm looking for substance. I'm not seeing any. So now - instead - I'm wondering why someone suddenly feels the need to try and debunk this case so badly.

Time to start digging.

You aren't looking very hard. That's why you're seeing what you want to see, which is fine, but you shouldn't be casting aspersions on other people's character when you not only have no reason to do it but the facts are actually the opposite of your ill-informed opinion.

reply to post by fls13


Yet we are expected to take your assertion of someone's character without question.

What exactly were the circumstances around the tip off you mentioned previously ?


Edit just to say that I don't mean it to sound like an accusation - I am interested in the tip off.

[edit on 6-10-2009 by chunder]

Originally posted by fls13
You aren't looking very hard. That's why you're seeing what you want to see, which is fine, but you shouldn't be casting aspersions on other people's character

When and if I do that I'll let you know. At the moment I've done no such thing - I will say this - the UFO "scene" is full of people who want to make specific claims with very little substance to them in order to sell their pet theory.

when you not only have no reason to do it but the facts are actually the opposite of your ill-informed opinion.

What facts? I see no facts.

Re-read my post above.

Tell me where the facts are in the articles I've quoted from - the one you linked to by the way - because there are none. There is speculation, but there are no facts and no substance.

Lets get this straight.

Zamora was convinced he'd seen something very unusual.
The Socorro PD were convinced Zamora had seen something very unusual. The Air Force people and FBI who visited the site were convinced Zamora had seen something very unusual, and J Allen Hynek was convinced Zamora had seen something unusual.

The traces at the scene pointed to something weighing four tons sitting on a particular spot - not dragged there, and there were no signs of equipment being put in place to make those four equidistant marks, and the witness to the sighting claimed craft produced a shock cone down and out from its underside that didn't damage it in any way (something you call a minor detail, but haven't addressed)

And yet we are to believe that a letter that "re-surfaces" 40 years later, with handwriting on it, is the be all and end all of the whole thing?

When you have some actual facts please, let us know

I checked back at the blog that started this to see if Anthony had any more updates, but instead found a post by another author, a guy who wrote an article titled:

In defense of the Socorro hoax hypothesis by Zarkon II

ufocon.blogspot.com...

And even HE admits that more proof is needed to show it was a hoax.

But Mr. Bragalia has only posed the possibility – one that has been raised before – that the Socorro episode was hoax-oriented, and Mr. Bragalia has mustered some interesting circumstantial evidence to support his hypothesis.

Note-"posed the possibility" and "circumstantial evidence" which falls short of proof.

But he also makes the point that some people seem to be less than objective about the case, which I think is apparent not only in the cases he mentions, but also in some of the posts in this thread.

However, the Socorro sighting is so entrenched in the ufological psyche as an extraterrestrial landing (for repairs it seems) that any hypothesis outside the ET one will be attacked viciously and illogically, as is the case when any belief system is challenged.

I think there's some truth to that.

I'm still waiting to see if Bragalia can do as he hopes:

In a future article I hope to conclusively identify the white clad students who walked the arroyos outside Soccoro in 1964

OK Anthony, we're waiting!

www.youtube.com...
Socorro Close Encounter 1-2
Arrow and crescent symbols are indicated 3:09 to 3:16 might indicate
the power plant or engine design.
At 1:20 the ship descends.
At 3:35 a good look at the symbol on the craft and takeoff as the anti
gravity kicks in.

Thus a conical coil engine as we are not privy to how scalar waves
are formed from coils that go directly from electrical energy to
mechanical energy. This has been the big mystery denied.

By the words of the inventor, I'd have to say the craft is pulled up
or lowered from the influx of negative charge flow from above.
This might be seen as lines above the craft like the Earth's Northern
Lights. The flow continues out the bottom on the craft lighting up
the atmospheric gases.

The more waves of force, the more quarter cycle pulses, the greater
the force. Easy as dialing up a radio which Tesla also invented.

Anthony Braglia has written installment 3 in his series on this topic, here:

ufocon.blogspot.com...

"A closer USAF investigation of the site revealed a fair amount of charred particles mixed with dirt, and some charred cardboard was also found."

This single buried sentence speaks volumes. The "charred cardboard" found at the site by AF investigators is an extremely important detail that does not seem to have ever been brought up by "civilian" UFO investigators who support Soccoro as an ET or secret aerocraft event. And of course the reason for this is obvious: such mundane material should not be there if it were ET or if it was an experimental vehicle. Instead, this "find" is indicative of something very terrestrial. This is because "charred cardboard" makes complete sense when considering the event as a student-created hoax:

Pyrotechnics could very well account for the found material. Such cardboard tubes or "casings" are used in shell inserts, bottle rockets and fireworks. When ignited, such spent explosives leave a a distinct charred cardboard appearance upon cooling. Burned cardboard and cardboard powder char are left in their wake.

Not coincidentally, NM Tech had the most advanced Explosives Lab of any college in the country at the time. One 1960s NM student said that the ease of obtaining "cool pyrotechnics" from the school "was like getting candy from a baby."

It's interesting that he discovered some physical evidence documentation that we never heard of before (at least I never heard about the cardboard found at the site until now).

While I think he still needs the actual perpetrators to come forward to prove the hoax, and this cardboard doesn't prove a hoax, it is evidence that weighs in the favor of Braglia's possible explanation.

At the end of his second article Braglia said he was hoping to write a future article with the perps coming forward to prove the hoax, but he didn't mention that this time. I hope he's still working on that.

He mentions some other new things too, so the article is worth a read.

Except...

When you look in the Blue Book Archive..the report isn't there.

And if someone at NICAP has it, then it would surely be on their site, and its not?

I'm going to email Francis Ridge, and see what I can find out.

Originally posted by neformore
Except...

When you look in the Blue Book Archive..the report isn't there.

You may be more familiar with the bluebookarchive.org site than me so perhaps it's not, but I find it a difficult site to navigate to find the report I'm looking for.

I tried a search function on "Zamora"and get one report, but it's a letter discussing something LIKE Zamora's sighting. And some other searches don't turn it up either. But that doesn't mean it's not there, since some reports had the witness names blocked out, and there could be OCR problems so there are a couple of reasons why it might not show up in a search.

Then if I try browsing by date range, the first thing I notice when I try to start browsing some documents in the range of the Zamora sighting, is some documents that don't fit in the date range of that section. So maybe the Zamora document too is included in a range of dates other than the date of the sighting?

Even the Helfin photos aren't in the date range they should be in, they are in a section called "Other Official Microfilm"

So I'm not sure if it's there or not, but if it is, I can't find it.

Let us know what you find out, thanks.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

Originally posted by neformore
Except...

When you look in the Blue Book Archive..the report isn't there.

You may be more familiar with the bluebookarchive.org site than me so perhaps it's not, but I find it a difficult site to navigate to find the report I'm looking for.
...
So I'm not sure if it's there or not, but if it is, I can't find it.

Hi,

The Lonnir Zamora sighting is listed as Project Blue Book Case Number 8766 on the redacted US National Archives and Records Administration (“NARA”) microfilm records of Project Blue Book, released to the National Archives in 1975 – see National Archives Microfilm Publication T1206 roll number 1.

It is also listed (without a Project Blue Book Case Number) on the unredacted Maxwell Air Force Base (“Maxwell”) microfilm records of Project Blue Book – see Maxwell microfilm roll number 30,363.

All the best,

Isaac

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
Instead, this "find" is indicative of something very terrestrial. This is because "charred cardboard" makes complete sense when considering the event as a student-created hoax:

Where's the evidence that the charred cardboard, if found, was related to the event? This seems to pop up out of nowhere and you seem to take for granted that there has to be a connection to the sighting.

reply to post by IsaacKoi


Issac - sorry to be a pain, but as you are familiar with it all - is this cardboard mentioned?

I find it very, very hard to believe that such a thing would only come to light now after such a high profile case has been in the public eye for so long.

I think the whole story is an interesting one until I read that the craft had a antiquated form of rocket style propulsion which in my view rules out anything ET anyway and more possibly hoax.
Cheers
mrix

Originally posted by neformore
reply to post by IsaacKoi

 

Issac - sorry to be a pain, but as you are familiar with it all - is this cardboard mentioned?

Yes, it is discussed in a bit of detail.

In particular, there is a letter from Hynek to Menzel dated 29 April 1965 in which Hynek refers to having personally picked up some cardboard "at the landing site".

Hynek enclosed with that letter a piece of "the identical type of cardboard" and discussed the possibility of a hoax in quite a bit of detail.

There are numerous points made in that letter which undermine the recent allegations of a hoax.

I'm surprised that no-one seems to have responded to those allegations by referring to that letter.

For example, in relation to the reliance upon the charred cardboard in the most recent articles, I think it is important to note that Hynek (i.e. the person that collected the cardboard) noted at the time that it was charred but also had "plainly been weathered quite some time and is hardly the kind that would have been used to fake a model of a spaceship".

As I mentioned above, this is merely one of numerous points made in the relevant letter from Hynek in the Project Bluebook files undermining the suggestion of a hoax that used the charred cardboard found at the scene. I think the articles suggesting a hoax are VERY selective in the bits that they quote from Project Bluebook documents.

All the best,

Isaac

reply to post by IsaacKoi
Thanks Isaac, I see the problem now, it's on roll 30 and they don't have any rolls online between 20 and 66 at bluebookarchive.org. I wonder if they ran out of money or why they didn't put all the rolls online, or perhaps they are still in the process of adding them, I don't know because I haven't monitored the site.

So I guess it's not online anywhere, but apparently these rolls can be purchased for $23 each if I understand correctly.

Originally posted by IsaacKoi
For example, in relation to the reliance upon the charred cardboard in the most recent articles, I think it is important to note that Hynek (i.e. the person that collected the cardboard) noted at the time that it was charred but also had "plainly been weathered quite some time and is hardly the kind that would have been used to fake a model of a spaceship".

As I mentioned above, this is merely one of numerous points made in the relevant letter from Hynek in the Project Bluebook files undermining the suggestion of a hoax that used the charred cardboard found at the scene. I think the articles suggesting a hoax are VERY selective in the bits that they quote from Project Bluebook documents.

Thanks Issac.

I think you hit the nail square on the head there.

It seems that a case is being deliberately constructed to debunk the Socorro landing that relies entirely on supposition and cherry picking selective information to suit, based on something that is in essence also pure speculation as I've pointed out throughout this thread.

Its not a case of uncovering anything, its a case of concocting a story to make it fit the "required" debunk.

And now I'm questioning why Bragalia would want to do that, because he's still running with this, with no credible information to actually back it up.