The Socorro UFO (Lonnie Zamora)

Socorro, New Mexico, police officer Lonnie Zamora reported a flame overhead and a landed object outside town on April 24, 1964.

Wikipedia says that at about 17:45 on April 24, 1964, Sergeant Zamora radioed dispatcher Nep Lopez about a possible car crash he was going to check in an arroyo. He then called back asking Lopez to look out of his window for an object, which Zamora said looked like a balloon, and asked New Mexico State Police Sergeant Chavez to meet him.

CNET and Brian Dunning's Skeptoid episode in 2017 say Zamora had been chasing a speeding driver when he left the chase to look into a loud roar and a flame. Dunning says he feared a dynamite shack had blown up near a perlite mine. CNET reports that what Zamora first took for an overturned car turned out, in his words, to be a shiny, whitish object in the shape of the letter O, with legs. Dave Thomas of New Mexicans for Science and Reason quotes Zamora's written report, later printed in the 1976 book Project Blue Book edited by Brad Steiger. In it Zamora described a bluish and orange flame coming slowly down, narrower at the top, and noted he wore prescription glasses under green sunglasses with the sun to the west.

Philip J. Klass told Skeptic magazine that he visited Socorro in 1966, two years later. Zamora had reported an egg-shaped craft landing, two figures in coveralls moving about briefly, and the craft taking off like a rocket. Klass said he first suspected a plasma, a glowing effect like ball lightning, since the area often had heavy thunderstorms.