April 24, 1964: Socorro, New Mexico
A brief excerpt from UFO Casebook
April 24, 1964: Socorro, New Mexico
Before the mid-1960's, there was little written about physical evidence from
UFOs. Part of the reason was that the Air Force, with its restrictive
categories, placed everyone who had seen a landed UFO in the crackpot file,
because they would not believe that an extraterrestial spacecraft would land
on earth. Project Bluebook officers were willing to waste tax money chasing
high-flying discs but refused to even look at early cases that involved
landings. For this reason, many of the early physical evidence cases were
rejected before there were any investigations of them and the evidence was
lost before it was recovered.
This changed in 1964 with the Socorro, New Mexico, landing. It could be that
too much of the case made the papers before the Air Force had a chance to
ridicule it or it could be that a police officer made the report,but
regardless, the evidence was still visible days and even months later.
Whatever the reason, the Air Force didn't ridicule the case, Hynek didn't
call it swamp gas, and other physical evidence reports and landing cases
began to receive serious treatment by the Air Force...