Yet another possible candidate has emerged in recent years, about the time of the identification of the source of the Roswell Incident to a specific program, New York University constant-level balloon launches from Alamogordo in the summer of 1947 ["The Roswell Incident and Project Mogul," S/I July August 1995]. One of the participants in these launches, Charles B. Moore, stayed in Socorro and taught atmospheric physics at the college there, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (my Alma Mater). Moore, now retired, has had a very distinguished career, and received the prestigious American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Otto C. Winzen Lifetime Achievement Award for his scientific exploits, which included flying a balloon to the very edge of space. He visited the Socorro "landing" site in 1966, and thinks that Lonnie Zamora is sincere, and that he really did see something strange on that day in 1964. In 1995, a colleague of Moore's who ran the Skyhook Balloon program at Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo, Bernard "Duke" Gildenberg, learned from Capt. James McAndrew, the AF's point man on Roswell, that on April 24, 1964, there were special tests being conducted at the north end of the White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) involving a helicopter used to carry a Lunar Surveyor around for some tests. A portion of the WSMR Range Log obtained by McAndrew appears below. Surveyor was a three-legged, unmanned probe, which was used to learn about the moon before the Apollo program got there. In fact, the Apollo 12 astronauts paid a visit to Surveyor 3 almost three years after it had landed on the moon. This new angle on the old Socorro story was first mentioned publicly in a brief piece in the July 15th, 2000 edition of James Moseley's Saucer Smear.

The timing isn't right for the UFO sighting -- the range log calls for morning tests, and the sightings occurred in late afternoon - but then things don't always go "according to plan," and many tests which have defied completion by morning have been known to somehow get finished up in the afternoon. In fact, bombing runs scheduled for that part of the range might have delayed the tests.
There are many other tantalizing bits that might support the Surveyor explanation for Socorro.

• The Surveyor tests were done with a small Bell helicopter that supported the craft from its side. The helicopter and spacecraft would have presented a bizarre profile. The Surveyor's slanted legs fit Zamora's description well, and are also a match for the shape of the "landing pod imprints" found later. In Stanford's 1976 book, he mentions Phil Klass's comment that landing pads like Surveyor's were among the only practical shapes for that function.
• The spacecraft used vernier engines and attitude jets to probe and sample soil, which could explain the flames the policeman saw, and the burn marks many saw. The flames weren't being used for lift; that was supplied by the helicopter. The burn marks at the site did not indicate sufficient thrust to lift a large vehicle, according to Hynek.
• The Surveyor used a mechanical scoop with a shape that matches a rectangular trough photographed at the Socorro site.
• Zamora described the craft as "aluminum-white," which certainly matched the bulk of the Bell helicopter.
• The test missions were manned by a helicopter pilot and a Hughes engineer ... two persons, in white coveralls.
• Most people in Socorro, and several of the investigators, thought it was most likely a secret government experiment, and some Blue Book researchers even pinned it down as a tenant operation run by Holloman, the base for the Surveyor test flights.
• Of course, this new evidence is far from conclusive. A lot has happened since 1964, and it's difficult to reconstruct events from that long ago, especially events with strong implications. Was it a college prank? A hoax? A balloon? An alien craft from another world? Perhaps we'll never really know. Gildenberg is confident that William of Occam, of Occam's Razor fame, would think kindly of the Surveyor explanation, especially over some of the other contenders.