Holloman landing and hangar claim (1964)

Holloman landing and hangar claim (1964)

Date	Thursday, 30 April 1964, six days after the Zamora sighting at Socorro
Location	Near Stallion Site, a few miles east of San Antonio, New Mexico, on the north range extension of the Holloman–White Sands test range
Reported by	Coral Lorenzen, APRO, in the July 1964 APRO Bulletin and a later Fate article
Claim	A B-57 pilot radioed that an egg-shaped white object with Socorro-like markings had landed
Related claims	A UFO held under guard in a Holloman hangar; a guard who fired at a UFO; radar tracks on 15 and 22 May
Air Force response	Confirmed radar tracks on 22 May; found "no basis" for the landing or hangar stories
Status	Unconfirmed; no official records released
Topics	Military encounters (topic)
People	Lonnie Zamora, Coral Lorenzen
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 66
Year	1964 in UFO history
Timeline	1964 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	9

On 30 April 1964, six days after police officer Lonnie Zamora's famous sighting at Socorro, New Mexico, a B-57 pilot over the White Sands range reportedly radioed that he had seen a white, egg-shaped object, and then that it had landed.^[1][2][6] The story was published by the civilian Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) under the headline "UAO Landing at Air Force Base", on the word of informants it did not name.^[2] It was later linked to a rumour that a UFO was held under guard at Holloman Air Force Base. Separately, a far more elaborate legend says that aliens landed at Holloman in 1964 by prior arrangement.^[2][3][7] The Air Force said it could find no basis for the landing or the hangar story, and no official record of either has been released.^[2][7]

Holloman and the range

Holloman began as Alamogordo Army Air Field, a World War II training base. From 1947 it became the main U.S. site for testing unmanned aircraft, guided missiles and other aerial research. It was renamed in 1948 after Col. George V. Holloman, a guided-missile pioneer.^[5] Holloman shared ranges and facilities with the neighbouring White Sands Proving Ground, which worked for the Army and Navy. The two were eventually combined into one integrated test range, with the Air Force commanding the northern part.^[5]

UFOs were reported at Holloman almost from the start of the modern UFO era. The range's cameras and tracking equipment meant that unusual objects could be, and were, filmed and tracked.^[5] Project 1947's catalogue of Holloman reports runs from 1947 into the 1960s.^[5] It includes a November 1957 case near Orogrande, in which a Holloman technician and other motorists saw a pearl-white, oval or egg-shaped object.^[5]

The B-57 report

Coral Lorenzen, APRO's co-founder, had been its international director and the editor of The APRO Bulletin since 1952.^[3] She described the incident in the July 1964 APRO Bulletin and again in an article for Fate magazine, "UFO Lands at Air Force Base".^[1][2][3] In her account:^[1][2][3]

• The flight. On Thursday 30 April 1964 a lone B-57 bomber was flying a routine mission near Stallion Site, a few miles east of San Antonio, New Mexico. Stallion Site lies on the north range of the Holloman Air Force Base–White Sands Proving Ground integrated test range.
• The call. The pilot radioed Main Control that he was "not alone up here". Asked to explain, he said he had a UFO, which was "egg-shaped and white".
• The markings. Asked about markings, he said they were the same as at Socorro, and that he would make another pass.
• The landing. Minutes later, after turning and coming back over the area, he reported, "It's on the ground." Radio communications then ceased, and photo crews were told to stand by.

In Fate, Lorenzen explained that Main Control was a building set apart from the main base and full of tracking equipment and radar antennas. From there controllers coordinated the planes, missiles, radars and theodolites used in tests across the range.^[3] She wrote that the landing took place on the range extension between Socorro and Albuquerque. A "digital track recording", an automatic tape of the object's elevation, azimuth and range, had been made while it was present.^[3]

How APRO heard

The Bulletin said the story first came from "a very reliable source". APRO then checked with its other contacts in the Alamogordo area and got confirmation almost at once:^[2][3]

• Radio station KALG. Terry Clarke of KALG Radio in Alamogordo, nine miles east of the base, already knew of the landing. His information came from a ham radio operator who had been checking equipment and picked up the frequency used by the bomber and Mission Control, and had listened until communications stopped.
• The local newspaper. Arlynn Bruer of the Alamogordo Daily News had also heard of the landing. When he tried to confirm it with the Air Force at Holloman, he got the "usual run-around" and gave up.
• Independence. APRO said its original informant had no connection with either man, and that Clarke and Bruer worked independently for competing outlets. That made three unconnected sources.

Lorenzen withheld some details to protect her informants. She noted that at the time there was no sign of classification, and the incidents were discussed freely at White Sands and Holloman.^[2][3] She also wrote that the area was now under tight military security, so APRO could not interview the people involved. She called the investigation "a kind of intelligence operation".^[3]

The hangar claim

Clarke and Bruer both mentioned a rumour that a UFO was being held in a hangar at Holloman under heavy guard.^[2][3] According to Clarke, the rumour began when an airman excitedly told people in a men's clothing store in Alamogordo that the Air Force had a UFO under guard at the base. A day or two later the same airman came back to the store and said he had been mistaken.^[2]

APRO treated the story with caution:^[2][3]

• A planted story? The Bulletin suggested that the retraction might itself have been arranged. In the week after Socorro there had been talk that the Socorro object was a secret Air Force vehicle. An airman who "made a mistake" would plant the idea that he had simply seen an unfamiliar test vehicle.
• An honest error? It doubted the Air Force could capture a UFO even on the ground, given how fast the Socorro object left. The captured-UFO story was "obviously a plant or an honest error". The airman may have seen a closely guarded hangar, "not uncommon at Holloman", and jumped to conclusions.
• One source. In Fate, Lorenzen wrote that all her sources for the hangar story traced back to a single airman, and her contacts found no corroboration. The man was either seeking attention or had been excited by a closely guarded hangar.
• The logic. If a UFO had been captured, she reasoned, it would have to be the one from 30 April. A ground patrol would have had to reach it while its occupants were away. Yet she knew of no case where occupants strayed far from their craft. The noise of a B-57 made it hard to believe they had not noticed it. She found it hard to credit the rumour "and remain objective".

Lorenzen published the story in the July 1964 APRO Bulletin and again in Fate. The account rests on APRO's anonymous informants.^[2][3]

Other range reports

APRO gathered several other reports from the range during its inquiry:^[2][3]

• Lights before Socorro. One contact said unidentified lights had been seen on the range in April, before Zamora's sighting.
• The guard. A guard reportedly came upon a UFO on the range at night, emptied his side arm at it and fled, with the object seemingly in pursuit. By the time he reached base headquarters he had to be sedated and hospitalized. Lorenzen wrote that she did believe this account.
• 15 May. Between 11:30 a.m. and 12:15 p.m., surveillance radar and FPS-16 radars at Stallion Site tracked two objects north of the site. They flew side by side, separated, rejoined and made up-and-down "pogo" manoeuvres. A trained radar operator saw them as brown, football-shaped objects flying low before they vanished behind buildings.
• Recognition signals. What APRO found most disturbing was that one or both objects were alternately answering with the standard FAA transponder recognition signal (IFF), the coded reply aircraft send when a ground station interrogates them.
• 22 May. Seven days later, radar made an automatic track of an object moving very slowly, up to 2,000 feet per minute, which came within 3,700 yards of a range radar. The skies were clear.

APRO argued that these were sightings on a military range at the very time the military was dismissing similar civilian reports as mistakes or hoaxes. In Lorenzen's view the Air Force's public program was "merely an attempt to explain away" UFOs, while the serious study went on elsewhere.^[3]

The Air Force response

To draw out more information, the Lorenzens sent the press wires a release about the landing, the alleged captured UFO and the radar sightings on Saturday, 24 May.^[2][3] On Sunday 25 May an Associated Press story datelined Holloman carried the Air Force's reply:^[2][3]

• Confirmed. The Air Force confirmed that "a radar unit" at Holloman had twice tracked UFOs around White Sands the previous Friday, and said the report was under investigation.
• Explained. It suggested that a natural phenomenon such as a dust storm was probably responsible.
• Denied. A spokesman found no basis for the Tucson group's report of a visual sighting at Holloman, or for an egg-shaped object under guard in a hangar.

APRO replied that the statement had at least revealed two sightings on Friday 22 May, not one. It argued that a dust storm could not explain the radar contacts, since the skies were clear and a radar operator would recognize a dust devil. It also suggested that public information officers would not be told about highly classified UFO matters.^[2] The Fate version refers in one place to incidents on "May 15 and 20", where the rest of both accounts give 15 and 22 May.^[2][3]

The Socorro link

On 24 April 1964 Socorro police sergeant Lonnie Zamora reported seeing a shiny, whitish object shaped like the letter "O", with two small figures in white overalls beside it. It then rose with a roar and a blue and orange flame.^[6] Project Blue Book listed the case as "unknown". Proposed explanations include a lunar-lander test by White Sands personnel and a hoax by New Mexico Tech students.^[6]

The B-57 pilot's remark about "markings… same as Socorro" mattered to APRO for a particular reason:^[2][3]

• The symbol. Zamora described red markings about 1½ feet high: a crescent with a vertical arrow and a horizontal line beneath. Air Force officers had asked that his drawing not be published, so that it could be compared with other reports. Fate printed it with Lorenzen's article.
• A briefing? APRO thought it striking that the pilot knew what the Socorro markings looked like. It inferred that personnel at White Sands and Holloman had been secretly briefed.
• The civilian pilots. On the Saturday after the landing, civilian pilots returning from a convention in Louisiana stopped briefly at Holloman. An Air Force major showed them a paper with the Socorro marking and asked whether they had ever seen anything like it. None had.
• Straight lines. Lorenzen noted that a line drawn from Socorro to Round Mountain near Tularosa, where a motorist saw a bright object coming down, crosses the Holloman range near Stallion Site. She linked this to the "orthotenic" straight-line patterns APRO plotted in that spring's sightings. She admitted that the landing could not be presumed to lie on any line.

Lorenzen also noted that Lincoln La Paz had vouched for Zamora's integrity, and that she had learned of a "UFO Board" of military and civilian scientists to which reports went.^[3] She speculated that the spring 1964 wave might be an intelligence operation carried out by the UFOs' occupants.^[3]

The Holloman landing legend

A much more elaborate story says that in 1964 aliens landed at Holloman by prior arrangement and met Air Force officers.^[7][9] In its usual form:^[7]

• The craft. Some time in April or May 1964 (accounts differ), radar at Holloman tracked three unidentified objects approaching the base. One wobbled and landed.
• The meeting. A ramp extended and a "non-human entity" emerged. The visitors reportedly carried a translator-like device and met base officers in a pre-arranged meeting. Some versions add an exchange of primates.
• The film. The encounter was said to have been filmed on 16mm by military cameras, with the footage shown only to select insiders.

The story spread through the filmmaker Robert Emenegger. He was asked to make a film about UFOs using only official Defense Department and NASA material. Accounts differ on who asked: the Republican Party, officials at Norton Air Force Base in California, or the Department of Defense itself.^[9] He said he was promised authentic footage of a 1964 Holloman landing for the film. The approach is sometimes dated to 1973, but a production history of the film places it in 1971.^[7][9] The footage was never supplied, possibly for political reasons such as Watergate, and he was told to present the landing as hypothetical.^[7]

The documentary, UFOs: Past, Present, and Future (1974), was narrated by Rod Serling and others. It was re-released in 1976 and 1979 as UFOs: It Has Begun and was nominated for a Golden Globe.^[9] It ends with a dramatization of the landing:^[9]

• Three objects approach Holloman. The base contacts Edwards AFB, tries to communicate, sounds a red alert and launches fighters.
• A photographer in a helicopter, and later a ground crew, film the craft as it hovers and lands on three pads.
• Three short, man-like beings with blue-grey skin, wide-set eyes and rope-like headpieces step out. The commander and two scientists greet them, and the group goes into an office in the "King 1" area.

A myth that a few seconds of real footage made it into the film was later debunked; the shot in question was part of the reenactment.^[9] Emenegger later said he had seen the film, describing three beings leaving the craft.^[7] The writer Jason Colavito commented that nobody involved in the film "checked any of the facts". The landing sequence has often been compared with the finale of Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).^[7][9]

The legend has also been revived in recent years:^[7]

• James Fox. The filmmaker said on a 2023 episode of the Julian Dorey podcast that the government "definitely" has footage.
• Eric Davis. In the 2025 Amazon Prime documentary The Age of Disclosure, the astrophysicist Eric Davis, a former AATIP adviser, said that George H. W. Bush confirmed in a private 2003 conversation that he had heard of the event.
• The primate link. Some versions tie the story to Holloman's real chimpanzee and monkey research for the space program in the 1950s and 1960s. No evidence links it to aliens.

Some researchers think the legend began as a film pitch or as disinformation; local coverage calls it fact, folklore or "clever disinformation". In 1994 Emenegger and Jacques Vallée agreed that a then-new autopsy yarn involving J. Allen Hynek was disinformation "managed from Washington". Emenegger said something similar had happened to him, describing a meeting at his home with Col. Philip Corso.^[4][7] Davis is also the named author of an alleged 2001 National Institute for Discovery Science memo about the "alien autopsy" film. The memo surfaced online in 2019, and Keith Basterfield examined it that year.^[4]

Status

Neither the B-57 landing report, the hangar story nor the "Holloman landing" has any official documentary support. No official records, declassified documents or National Archives files confirming a 1964 landing have been released.^[2][7] The Air Force has consistently denied any extraterrestrial involvement. Holloman's real work, including missile tests, balloon launches and space research, could explain many radar returns and lights.^[7] The Socorro case itself remains one of Project Blue Book's best-known unexplained cases.^[6] The NICAP link at a second address returns a "not found" error; the same file is available at the first address.^[3][8]

People and topics

• Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
• Holloman Air Force Base — An Air Force base next to White Sands.
• Socorro — The New Mexico town where Lonnie Zamora reported a landing in 1964.
• Lonnie Zamora — Police officer who reported the 1964 Socorro landing.
• Project Blue Book — The Air Force's public UFO investigation from 1952 until its closure in December 1969.
• APRO — A civilian UFO research group founded by Coral and Jim Lorenzen in 1952.
• Coral Lorenzen — Co-founder of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO).
• White Sands — The New Mexico missile test range.
• U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.
• Disinformation — False information spread deliberately to mislead.

On the Timeline

• Jerome Nelson's Atlas missile site sighting (Late 1963) — An Atlas missile launch officer's affidavit describes a glowing round UAP over his site in New Mexico.
• Big Sur UFO film (September 1964) — An officer says he studied film of a UAP downing a test warhead over the Pacific; the CIA took it.

See every 1964 event on the UAP Timeline →

Further reading

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “Lonnie Zamora incident”, “UFOs: Past, Present, and Future”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.