From: trev@babbacom.demon.co.uk (Trevor Prinn) Subject: Re: Socorro encounter in 64 Date: 29 Jan 94 23:42:03 GMT Organization: Babbacombe Computers Ltd In article thad@netcom.com (Thad Floryan) writes: > Uh, we gotta problem. Your drawing doesn't resemble what Zamora himself > described less than a day after the sighting (I heard his description first- > hand in a live radio interview with him (as I posted earlier, I was in the > area at the time)) nor does it jibe with the quote attributed to Hynek a > few days later in the local newspapers after his investigation. [deleted] > So, 30 years after the sighting, we [now] have four quite-different variations > of the symbol which appeared on the craft. I submit that MY drawing (the > top one in the enclosed GIF) more-accurately resembles the eye-witness account > described live less than 24 hours after the sighting. > > Thad Floryan [ thad@btr.com, thad@cup.portal.com, thad@netcom.com ] This is interesting. I got the picture I drew from an appendix in Ray Stanford's book, Socorro Saucer, which I last read about 10 years ago. When I saw the question about it last week I found the book, saw a page with three similar sketches on it, and copied them without reading the text. I've now read it properly and agree with your two pictures as well. It seems most likely that the one you have attributed to Hynek is the correct one, and the one I drew originated with Capt Richard T Holder, the up-range commander at White Sands Stallion Site. It looks as though, for some unexplained reason, he wanted an incorrect insignia to be circulated. At that stage Zamora still thought that he had probably seen a secret government device, and would have gone along with that. According to the first police officer to arrive on the scene after Zamora, Sgt Chavez, Zamora drew the picture you have attributed to Hynek on a piece of paper sack just before he arrived. The picture in Air Force files which purports to be the one drawn at the time (the one I copied) does not appear to be from a paper bag and the signature on it doesn't look like Zamora's (the style of the Z is completely different), although Stanford says that he believes the signature to be genuine. The drawing itself matches one by Holder better than it does Zamora's drawing of that version of the insignia. Zamora described it at the time, on the police radio, as "una V invertido con tres lineas debajo" ("an inverted V with three lines underneath"). I don't speak Spanish, but it appears that "debajo" is ambiguous in this context and could mean across or under, as could underneath. Stanford suggests one possible explanation for these different versions is simply inter-service rivalry. Holder was an Army officer and may have wanted to put one over on the Air Force. That sounds rather unlikely to me, and I prefer his other explanation, that it was to help identify any hoaxers who described the invented symbol. ------------------------------------------------------- Trevor Prinn Babbacombe Computers Ltd trev@babbacom.demon.co.uk tprinn@cix.compulink.co.uk 100016,2726 on Compuserve -------------------------------------------------------