New Documents

I found some new documents about the Socorro incident that J. Allen Hynek had left to the Northwestern archives, I don't believe it has ever been shared publicly:

• William T. Powers' Socorro Letter
• Socorro Figures Attachment

It includes a detailed version of the Socorro insignia that I've never seen before:

This was included in a report written by William T. Powers, who worked under Dr. Hynek at Northwestern. He starts the report:

…there remains some information that has not yet been published. In this paper are presented a transcript of Zamorra's [sic] initial report, written as Zamorra talked to several investigators

When the Socorro incident first happened, the investigators decided to obfuscate the real insignia to flush out hoaxers, which has led to a lot of controversy and debate about what the real insignia is.

From Trinity by Jacques Vallee and Paola Harris. I believe Vallee and Harris are incorrect though, and the Blue Book symbol is actually the closest to the original.

The Real Insignia

Here are some reasons why I think this version in Powers' document might be the the most accurate drawing of the insignia:

• It's almost the same as the drawings signed by Zamora in the Project Blue Book files. These files were only available to the public decades after the initial Socorro report, so it would have been pointless and confusing to put a fake version in there.






The insignia as it appears in several reports in the Project Blue Book archives. The top two are signed by Zamora's signature and the bottom is an inline drawing in his own report.

• Powers' notes suggests this drawing is directly from Zamora's initial report.
• The only credible documentation for the other forms of the insignia comes from an incidental drawing in Hynek's notes (you can see above in the left-most image, it's just an inline scribble in Hynek's notes).
• This version shows up in other cases! Credit to Richard Geldreich for noticing this.

Left: Kalahari Desert, 1989 (YUFOS)
Right: Cambodia, 1972 (Stringfield)

But what I find interesting is that this version from Powers, which looks the most carefully drawn, has slight but notable differences: instead of an “up arrow” symbol, we have a three-pronged shape like a chicken footprint. This new shape is actually a bit more unique and potentially identifiable, I've only seen it in one other place: ancient scripts.

Indus Valley Script

Indus Valley Script glyphs

This version of the Socorro symbol looks like a pretty close match to what you might see in Indus Valley script, one of the oldest forms of writing. This “chicken foot” with an arc over it is actually pretty common in Indus Valley script:

It's also worth noting that IVS uses compound symbols like Japanese kanji or Egyptian hieroglyphics, where new symbols are often represented by combining other symbols pictorially. So you might have one symbol for a fish and one for a boat, and if you a new symbol that combines both of those you might presume it stands for “fishing boat” or “fisherman”. In this way, the Socorro insignia might not be an “insignia” but a message in the form of a compound glyph.

Unfortunately, the Indus Valley Script is still undeciphered, so the trail to decode the Socorro insignia seems to go cold here :/