Here is what I believe to be wrong with your reasoning:
1) Sgt. Sam Chavez of the State Police was probably by Zamora's side within a minute or so of the object's departure from the landing site. In all accounts that I've ever read, they carried on a normal conversation (other than Zamora still being hyped on adrenaline from being scared out of his wits). Nobody ever mentioned them shouting at one another because Zamora suffered a severe hearing loss, even if temporary.
In addition, even before Chavez got there, probably within only 10-20 seconds after the object departed the landing site, Zamora was on his car radio calling for backup. He had no problem carrying on a conversation with the dispatcher, which shouldn't have been possible with the conjectured massive hearing loss you are describing (to the point where he literally lost almost all hearing and couldn't hear the roar of a jet engine). Temporary hearing loss from extremely loud noises causes tinnitus (ringing in the ears) that usually takes several days to subside.
2) If a conventional rocket/jet engine was used on a WINGLESS VTOL craft that subsequently took off cross-country still hugging the ground, it would require the engine to remain at near full throttle just to support the craft. Think of the Harrier jet, still under development then, which might be the closest thing in existence around then to duplicating what Zamora saw and described. It uses vectored thrust from its jet engine for VTOL capability and cannot hover and then horizontally depart without having its engine revved up in full. Zamora would NOT have heard an EXTREME decline in volume as he described, BEFORE the craft even left (i.e. still hovered above the landing site), even if he had a massive hearing loss. Had that happened, any conventional craft would have fallen back to the ground.
3) You are simply WRONG about the craft moving "into the distance TOWARD White Sands". White Sands is to the ESE of Socorro. The object departed and disappeared towards the mountains WEST of Socorro, more specifically to the WSW. This is at right angles to White Sands, and the object would have been moving AWAY from W.S., NOT towards it. That makes no sense if it was an experimental craft from W.S. It also makes no sense that any super-secret craft would have been off-range, period.
If you are talking about the lunar lander, hadn't been built yet, much less being tested at White Sands. It was a fragile craft designed only to operate in low lunar gravity. It could not work in Earth's gravity.
The Surveyor Moon lander has been proposed by some, because one was being tested that morning at White Sands, suspended from a helicopter and dropped to the ground (simple drop test). But it wasn't manned, wasn't fueled for testing, couldn't take off on its own, had only 3 landing gears and round landing pads, not 4 rectangular ones in a diamond-shaped pattern (impressions found at site). It also looked something like a tripod or hat-rack, not the Hummer-sized egg-shaped craft that Zamora described.
Just as serious as the lack of any project remotely matching Zamora's close encounter is the fact that whatever-it-was did NOT have anything resembling a conventional propulsion system. Conventional jets or rockets, besides being noisy as hell at ALL times, would have excavated a large crater in the sandy arroyo floor as the object took off. Never happened! Hynek commented on this at the time, saying it had him perplexed. Zamora commented multiple times the craft created no smoke nor left any sort of trail, only kicked up a little dust initially, but even there he said it might have been the strong wind that created the dust.
In addition, Zamora was probably only around 50 feet away at the time the object "blasted off". A conventional jet or rocket engine would have sand-blasted him, even burned him at that close range. Never happened.
The object rose and departed to only about 20 feet off the desert floor and flew horizontally hugging the ground for 2 miles until reaching the mountains. Again, this was a wingless craft, and to travel this close to the ground would have required a strong component of downward vector thrust, again like a Harrier jet. It should have been kicking up dust beneath it the entire way, plus leaving behind a prominent trail. Never happened.
The Air Force took soil samples of the burned areas and tested for chemical propellents. The tests were negative, therefore could NOT have been conventional organic propellents like jet fuel, kerosene, gasoline, etc. About the only possible rocket propulsion system that could pass such a test would have been liquid hydrogen, very tricky to work with, still being perfected at the time. It was eventually used on the UPPER stages of the Saturn V (not as effective in the lower atmosphere), but not on the lunar lander. Also the later Space Shuttle used liquid hydrogen, but on takeoff and in the lower atmosphere depended largely on the two solid-fuel booster rockets. It would still leave some sort of water vapor trail and crater the arroyo floor.
No, again you are simply wrong. It DIDN'T depart to the SE. It departed to the WSW , the direction of the perlite mine at the base of the mountains only 2 miles away (big white scar on side of mountains, impossible to miss). As I mentioned in my first post, Zamora also described it departing UP the arroyo (WSW), over the dynamite shack nearby (WSW), shooting up the mountains and finally fading out in the sky in the vicinity of 6-mile Canyon (WSW) above the mountains. It would be just about impossible for Zamora to be totally confused about this. The only close mountains were to his west.
If this was a secret craft from White Sands, what the heck was it doing over 20 miles from the most extreme part of the Range, and why did it take off in a direction taking it AWAY from W.S. instead of back towards it? Where were the chase planes that would have been following a secret project like this?
Also in Zamora's interview, probably the next day on Socorro radio, the interviewer (Walter Shrode of KSRC) told Zamora that a TV news station in Albuquerque at 5:30 pm, only 20 minutes before Zamora's encounter, got a call from a viewer reporting the same or similar craft headed south, or in the direction of Socorro. This is more speculative, but Shrode thought the objects were the same and this independent sighting corroborated Zamora's. This other reported object was about 75 miles north of Socorro or 100 miles from the closest part of White Sands to the south.
Probably DOES mean there never was one. It would be quite unique in aviation history if not a shred of evidence survives of its existence. Even very top-top-secret aircraft like Stealth, U-2, SR-71 Blackbird, A-12, etc. (even when abandoned, like the A-12 was) are usually publicly known within a decade or two. We are now approaching 50 years, and not a trace of anything like this, small oval-shaped VTOL aircraft at Socorro.
The flying wing was never top secret, or if it was, it was for only the briefest of times. Photos of it were published in newspapers in the late 1940s. It was even brought up in early July 1947 in the newspapers (with photos) as a possible solution to the flying saucer mystery that started with the Kenneth Arnold sighting back on June 24. The Army Air Force said no, not possible. All prototypes were grounded at the time.
No, could NOT have been any sort of rocket or jet engine, exotic or otherwise, for reasons given above (no cratering, trail, silent departure). Instead, the propulsion system has all the indications of a field propulsion system instead of our primitive conventional mass impulse propulsion systems. Don't know what you mean about W.S. missile range being "exotic." 1964, there was nothing "exotic" about what was going on there. Conventional rockets and jets had been around for some time. In fact, very little new rocketry was being tested at W.S., most having moved instead to Cape Kennedy and Vandenberg AFB. White Sands was simply too small for more modern rockets, which were launched out over the ocean for safety reasons.
According to Zamora, in statements to Hynek and Ray Stanford, he thought the object took only about 10 seconds from when it departed silently to reach the perlite mill at the base of the mountains 2 miles away. If that estimate was correct, the object traveled an AVERAGE of 720 miles per hour. Stanford doubled the estimate of time in his book. Even if you tripled it, that would still be 240 mph average, with an even higher peak speed (since object accelerated from a standstill). E.g., if it had constant acceleration, then its speed when it reached the mountains would have been 480 mph. I consider even that pretty "incredible" considering the object was wingless, silent, and left no behind no smoke, trail, or dust path, thus could NOT have had a conventional propulsion system.
When it reached the base of the mountains, Zamora said it went into a steep climb. It was accelerating so fast and rose so quickly at that point, that Zamora said he was having trouble following it by eye. As he said in the radio interview the next day, "...it flew low to the perlite mine, and then from there on it did go faster than you could barely view." As it quickly rose and moved away, it faded out in the sky, in the vicinity of 6 mile Canyon in Zamora's estimation. Last part (rising, fading out), probably less than 10 seconds, according to interview with Stanford on site, to go roughly 4 more miles. Average speed during that interval, roughly 1400 mph average. You could triple the time interval again and divide the average speed by 3, and you still get nearly 500 mph average. This is at least jet aircraft speed, yet no trail, no cratering, no noise. (I don't buy your argument at all that Zamora lost all his hearing. In the same interview, Zamora said that when it went silent, you could hear a pin drop.)
Given these factors we simply cannot safely assume that what Zamora observed was some kind of alien craft. That doesn't mean it wasn't. It just means that as a responsible ufologist, I cannot promote that theory when the evidence suggests otherwise ( as much as I would like to ).
I see no evidence at all that this could have been any sort of conventional aircraft. The only other possibility I can possibly see here is a highly UNCONVENTIONAL human aircraft utilizing field propulsion and which for some reason still remains highly secret. You would think the military would have quickly adopted such advanced VTOL, high-speed, silent technology to replace its conventional jet and propeller aircraft. Yet it has never happened. That alone speaks volumes against it being one of ours. If this were a prototype of back-engineered alien propulsion technology, then I can see how it might possibly still be kept secret, but I consider that a long-shot as well.
Fact is, the AF's Blue Book debunkers were under a lot of pressure, including from the White House and Congress, to come up with an explanation for the well-publicized Socorro case. The head of B.B., Quintanilla, put out feelers all over the place for ANY project that might explain what Zamora saw. He never found anything. The case was a complete turning point for Hynek, who even wrote that if they could explain it, it would be do more to debunk UFO reports than any other case. But he never could explain it in any conventional way, in fact turned into a "believer" because the case was so "nuts-and-bolts" chock full of physical evidence, with no remotely plausible hoax or other conventional explanation in sight.
One of the unique things about Socorro was that the key witness, Zamora, never left the site. His first backup, Chavez, was already overlooking the area about 800-1000 feet away, there at his side probably within a minute after the object took off. Half the Socorro police force was there within 10 minutes. There was no place for hoaxers to hide, no where to escape unnoticed, no time to clean up after themselves, no way to invisibly remove necessary hoaxing paraphernalia, no way to erase footprints, no way to burn the soil and hard-to-ignite greasewood bushes in only seconds right in front of Zamora, etc. And how do you hoax a craft traveling at high speed close to the ground for 2 miles, bucking a strong wind, and then shoot at high speed up the mountainside? Does any thinking person really think a "hot air balloon" can fly against the wind at high speed while hugging the ground? That's the extremely silly magical thinking that people like Frank Stalter are still trying to sell others on.
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