"Hoot and scoot" sheds and cardboard decoys hid high-tech prototypes.
No word yet on alien starships, but now that many Cold War-era Area 51 documents have been declassified, veterans of the secret U.S. base are revealing some of the clever—and surprisingly low-tech—ways they hid futuristic prototypes from prying eyes.
The CIA created Area 51 in 1955 to test and develop top secret U.S. military projects in the remote Nevada desert. More than 50 years later, the base still doesn't officially exist and appears on no public U.S. government maps.
In the 1950s and '60s, Area 51 was the epicenter of the OXCART project, intended to create the successor for the U-2 spy plane.
The OXCART plane was expected to be undetectable in the air as it flew surveillance and information-gathering missions over the Soviet Union. But Area 51 personnel soon found it necessary to conceal the craft from the Soviets eyes even when it was still being tested on the ground.
Cat and Mouse at Area 51
It was discovered that Soviet spy satellites, dubbed ash cans by Area 51 staff, were making regular rounds over Nevada.
U.S. intelligence agencies, though, provided Area 51 workers with a decisive advantage in this international "game of cat and mouse," according to T.D. Barnes, a former hypersonic flight specialist at Area 51 whose expertise was in electronic counter measures.
No longer sworn to secrecy by the CIA, Barnes said, "In our morning security meetings, they'd give us a roster of the satellites that the Soviets had in the air, and we'd know the exact schedule of when they were coming over.
"It was like a bus schedule, and it even told us whether it was an infrared satellite or what type it was," Barnes told National Geographic news.
The Area 51 Hoot and Scoot
Often hoisted atop tall poles for radar tests of the planes' stealthiness, OXCART prototypes were tested outside—making the Soviet spy satellites especially aggravating.
"We had hoot-and-scoot sheds, we called them," Barnes says in the new National Geographic Channel documentary Area 51 Declassified. (The Channel is part-owned by the National Geographic Society, which owns National Geographic News.)
"If a plane happened to be out in the open while a satellite was coming over the horizon, they would scoot it into that building."
Former Area 51 procurement manager Jim Freedman adds, "That made the job very difficult, very difficult.
"To start working on the aircraft and then have to run it back into the hangar and then pull it out and then put it in and then pull it out—it gets to be quite a hassle," Freedman says in the film.
Shadows of Area 51
It turned out that even laborious hooting and scooting weren't enough. Spies had learned that the Soviets had a drawing of an OXCART plane—obtained, it was assumed, via an infrared satellite.
As a plane sat in the hot desert, its shadow would create a relatively cool silhouette, visible in infrared even after the plane had been moved inside.
"It's like a parking lot," Barnes told National Geographic News. "After all the cars have left you can still see how many were parked there [in infrared] because of the difference in ground temperatures."
To thwart the infrared satellites, Area 51 crews began constructing fanciful fake planes out of cardboard and other mundane materials, to cast misleading shadows for the Soviets to ponder. (Not intended to be seen, the decoys themselves were scooted out of sight before satellite flyovers.) Sometimes staff even fired up heaters near imaginary engine locations to make it look as if planes had just landed.
"We really played with the infrared satellites," Barnes recalled.
Ahead of Its Time—And Gone Before Its Time?
As for the real U-2 successor, the Soviets never solved the secrets of OXCART before the program was made public in the mid-1960s.
But during the course of some 2,850 top-secret test flights numerous people did see an oddly shaped (for the time), Mach-3 aircraft. Unidentifiable even to air controllers or commercial pilots, the gleaming titanium craft no doubt helped fuel the persistent rumors connecting UFOs with Area 51.
In the end, the result of all the subterfuge was the Archangel-12, or A-12, considered by some to be the first true stealth plane. (Related: "'Hitler's Stealth Fighter' Re-created.")
The A-12 could travel over 2,000 miles an hour (3,220 kilometers an hour) and cross the continental U.S. in 70 minutes—all while taking pictures that could resolve foot-long objects on the ground from an altitude of 90,000 feet (27,430 meters).
But despite being "the most advanced aircraft ever built," as CIA historian David Robarge writes, the A-12 never saw spy service over the Soviet Union. And just as the Archangel was to be deemed ready for operation, its successor, the U.S. Air Force's famed SR-71 Blackbird, was already in the works.
Due to fiscal pressures and Air Force/CIA competition, Robarge writes, the A-12, one of Area 51's greatest creations—at least that we know about—was decommissioned in 1968 after only a year in active service.
Suspended upside down, a titanium A-12 spy-plane prototype is prepped for radar testing at Area 51 in the late 1950s. After a rash of declassifications, details of Cold War workings at the Nevada base, which to this day does not officially exist, are coming to light—including never before released images of an A-12 crash and its cover-up.
Area 51 was created so that U.S. Cold Warriors with the highest security clearances could pursue cutting-edge aeronautical projects away from prying eyes. During the 1950s and '60s Area 51’s top-secret OXCART program developed the A-12 as the successor to the U-2 spy plane.
Nearly undetectable to radar, the A-12 could fly at 2,200 miles an hour (3,540 kilometers an hour)—fast enough to cross the continental U.S. in 70 minutes. From 90,000 feet (27,400 meters), the plane's cameras could capture foot-long (0.3-meter-long) objects on the ground below.
But pushing the limits came with risks—and a catastrophic 1963 crash of an A-12 based out of Area 51.
A rapid government cover-up removed nearly all public traces of the wrecked A-12—pictured publicly for the first time in this gallery, thanks to the CIA's recent declassification of the images.
Stranded Far From Area 51
Photograph from CIA via Pangloss Films
Remnants of a crashed A-12 spy plane—including two engines and the shattered rear fuselage—litter the ground near Wendover, Utah, in a 1963 picture recently declassified by the CIA and published here for the first time.
Things went horribly wrong for test pilot Ken Collins (flying under his Area 51 code name Ken Colmar) when testing the plane's subsonic engines at low altitude. At 25,000 feet (7,620 meters), "the airplane pitched up and went up and got inverted and went into a flat incipient spin," Collins says in the new National Geographic Channel documentaryArea 51 Declassified. (The Channel is part-owned by the National Geographic Society, which owns National Geographic News.)
From such a position, "you just can't recover. So I thought I’d better eject, so I ejected down, because I was upside down."
U.S. officials later asked Collins to undergo hypnosis and treatments of sodium pentothal (a "truth drug") to be sure he relayed every detail of the incident truthfully and correctly.
A crane hoists A-12 debris (right) onto a flatbed truck at the site of the 1963 A-12 crash in Utah. Part of an engine nacelle and an exhaust ejector are visible at left.
Though the CIA has released some photos of the incident, officials remain mum about exactly who was involved in the cover-up and how it was carried out. "There’s nothing I can tell you about how [this or] any other incidents were or are handled," CIA historian David Robarge said.
Aerospace historian Peter Merlin, who has examined this crash site and several others involving secret aircraft, said he's pieced together at least part of the cover-up story.
"The A-12's fuselage and wings were cut apart with blowtorches and loaded onto trucks along with the tails and other large pieces," he said. "Smaller debris was packed in boxes."
Next Generation
Photograph courtesy NASA
Flying intelligence missions from 1966 to 1990, the U.S. Air Force's SR-71 Blackbird (pictured: dual-cockpit version, for training) was in many ways a product of Area 51 testing and an evolution of the A-12, which was decommissioned in 1968.
Compared to the A-12, the SR-71 was larger, carried more fuel, and featured sharp sides to improve both stability and stealth. Such advances led to numerous world records for altitude and speed—including a 64-minute flight from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., in 1990. (Related: "'Hitler's Stealth Fighter' Re-created.")
Today experts at Area 51 are likely working on the next generation of aircraft. But don't expect any information to emerge for several decades—despite the recent declassifications, CIA's Robarge still won't confirm the base exists. "Sorry," he said, "I can’t say anything about it."
