We have persisted in dragging the alleged symbol or insignia seen by Officer Lonnie Zamora on the craft he observed in Socorro, New Mexico in 1964 into the light of day too often, and here we go again.
This is the publicized symbol, the one everyone thinks that Officer Zamora saw and drew:
This is the symbol that Ray Sanford and a few fringe ufologists say is the actual symbol Officer Zamora saw and drew, but didn't make public at the behest of the Air Force (to deter copycatters, ostensibly):
The matter has never been adequately resolved. Officer Zamora's wife told me (once in a phone call) that the symbol her husband saw and drew was the first one above.
Whichever symbol or insignia is the right one, one has to remember that Officer Zamora was rather far away and wearing corrective glasses for inferior eyesight.
That aside, the symbol or insignia, both of them as shown here, can be found in this book:
Take your pick: both are alchemical symbols, representing amalgam or an alloy of mercury and silver, or a representational sign used to designate a disordered mind, or even Mars.
But neither symbol was created by an extraterrestrial culture; the symbols are too Earthian in construction.
Anthony Bragalia would propose that the symbols were put on a balloon by students of the Chemistry Department at New Mexico's Institute of Technology as part of a hoax to gull and torment Officer Zamora whom they didn't like.
We reject the hoax idea. the scenario is too ornate for a created prank.
But if that isn't the case and extraterrestrials are not the creators of the insignia, who or what is?
We have always proposed that Officer Zamora saw a Hughes Aircraft/CIA designed prototype. (See our archives here or at the RRRGroup blog for details.)
Even if our suggestion rankles, one must admit that Carl Liungman's litany of symbols in his book (pictured above) account, in some way, for what Officer Zamora saw an drew.
That means that the symbols -- either one -- are human in construction, and not an alien composition.
