It ’s a place steeped in mythology , where the most astonishing machine on Earth were essay — an field so hugger-mugger that the government did n’t officially acknowledge its existence until 2013 . Now , Bill Yenne ’s book Area 51 Black Jets lifts the embryonic membrane on top secret task from the fifties to today .
Bill Yenne has written legion books on air travel history , include several books on planes developed and tested at Area 51 . orbit 51 Black Jets essentially exist because of a CIA document that was declassify in 2013 . The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance : The U2 and OXCART Programs , 1954 – 1974 was written in 1992 as part of the CIA ’s semi - classified internal prescribed history . It had been circulate among air power buffs for some time , but in highly redacted form . A FOIA request from the National Security Archive resulted in the release of a new version , one that reveal the positioning of Area 51 , and that the government actually calls it Area 51 .
Above : A 1998 aeriform photo of Groom Lake , a place which did not exist . Credit : Tony Landis photos .
A broad swath of Nevada desert is chip at into a patchwork of secret areas , only one of which is the genuine country 51 – a usually dry lakebed called Groom Lake and a nearby complex of airdock and runway . Yenne encompass the account of the entire realm , from its creation as a gunnery range and use in atomic turkey test , through the Cold War , the 80s and 90s when it became a mythological Mecca for UFO partizan , through its likely enjoyment today as a run web site for the most innovative military drone aircraft .
I found the land site ’s origin especially fascinating . This excerption from chapter two is literally describing the birth of a legend :
On a blustery day in April 1955 , Clarence “ Kelly ” Johnson of the Lockheed Corporation step out of an aeroplane and feel the compaction of Nevada desert gravel beneath his feet . The coldness of winter had long legislate , and the tyrannical , oven - like heat of summer had not yet enveloped the position .
He looked around at the barren peaks of the Pahranagat Range to the east , the Groom Range to the north , Pahute Mesa to the due west , and an endless double-dyed nothingness to the south . apart from the man traveling with him , nothing make a motion . There was no sound but that of the breeze in the Joshua Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree . He was in the middle of nowhere , and nothing could have pleased him more .
It was , he knew , the everlasting position to test an airplane that was so secret that virtually no one at Lockheed , other than those straight off involved , would even make out about it until well after it take up to vanish .
Groom Lake was the one of a identification number of sites that Johnson and his team had investigated as a potential examination position for their mystery ship . In November 1954 , Johnson had sent Lockheed trial pilot Tony LeVier and manufacture foreman Dorsey Kammerer out to scour the intact desert Southwest for a remote location where an undisclosed “ sinister ” airplane could be test without being seen .
Even the site hunt was cover in concealment . LeVier and Kammerer claim off in a Beechcraft Bonanza telling everyone that they were go on a search trip . They were misleading only in their account of the quarry that they were hunting .
As Johnson later write in his memoirs , the Groom Lake site had do as a suggestion by US Air Force Colonel Osmond J. “ Ozzie ” Ritland , who had once lick there during former atomic testing . Beginning in 1950 , Ritland had organize and dominate the 4925th Test Group ( Atomic ) , which had been the whole creditworthy for the strain - drop nuclear weapon try at the NTS . Ritland love the Nevada desert well — and of a place then ring Watertown landing strip at Groom Lake .
Lockheed ’s “ customer ” for this still - notional airplane had already promised to make arrangements to develop this place as a test internet site , pending Johnson ’s personal inspection and his ovolo - up on its suitability . The client was the Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA ) in the individual of the man who would be the CIA computer programme managing director for this task , Richard Mervin Bissell , Jr. , a Yale - develop economic expert and protégé of eminent visibility diplomatical trouble shooter and one - prison term ambassador to the Soviet Union , Averell Harriman . Bissell had run covert exceptional surgical procedure for the Office of Strategic Services ( OSS ) during World War II and had recently been enroll into the CIA , where he helped engineer a coup in Guatemala early in 1954 . He was now serving as special assistant for provision and coordination to Director of Central Intelligence ( DCI ) Allan Dulles .
“ One of our first tasks was to bump a base from which to operate , ” write Johnson in his memoir . “ The Air Force and CIA did not require the aeroplane flown from Edwards AFB or our Palmdale plant in the Mojave Desert . So we surveyed a lot of territory . There are many dry lakes in and around Nevada , and the lakebeds are generally quite knockout , even under water in the rainy season . A site near the nuclear proving grounds seemed ideal , and Bissell was able to stop up a presidential action tote up the arena to the Atomic Energy Commission ’s territory to assure complete security . ”
“ Kammerer and I flew to what would be the test base , ” Johnson recalls . “ I had an Air Force compass , and he had some surveying equipment for use on the ground . kick away some of the empty .50 - calibre shell cases and other remnants of target pattern we laid out the direction of our first runway . A road had to be laid out , hangar constructed , office and living accommodation build up , and other facilities provided . ”
This is how the middle of nowhere became the nexus of black airplane exploitation in the United States . Just as the billet subsequently became iconic , the man who started it on that road was already an icon . Like any book on military account , there are sections that feel like ABC soup . The military does love their acronym . At times , Yenne dig a spot too laboriously into the operable account of an aircraft once it will Area 51 . The chapter on the U2 , for instance , drags on more than seems necessary . But these minor fault only more or less mar an otherwise fascinating book . Even if you ’re conversant with the SR-71 , F-117 , and other top secret aircraft , you will almost certainly find unexampled stories of presume psychometric test pilots , astonishing speed records , and technology that feel 30 years forrader of its prison term .
This Quran inevitably becomes something of a testimonial to Kelly Johnson , a world whose unlearned grip of astronautics seemed to grant him to ferment back - of - a - napkin design sketches into functional aircraft at the upper limits of technological performance in the span of month . A great deal of what happened at Area 51 during the Cold War was drive by Johnson ’s vision and acquirement , not to observe his power to make passing convincing argumentation to government bureaucrats . Image credit : CIA .
Even as someone who take a fairish amount about air power history ( though I ’m by no way any variety of expert ) , I discover quite a few things in this book I ’d never known about before . The best good example is Tagboard , a 1960s project to establish a reconnaissance mission drone from the back of the A-12 ( the precursor to the SR-71 ) while pilot at Mach 3 . An early test result in the loss of an A-12 and the end of co - pilot Ray Torick .
Above : A D-21 Tagboard drone impound to the M-21 Mothership , the last aircraft in the A-12 lineage , circa 1965 . acknowledgment : Tony Landis Collection .
Yenne only touch on alien conspiracy theory , recognize the ethnical phenomenon that Area 51 became in the late twentieth hundred . In all the evidence , declassified documents , and clandestine photographs , there is n’t a hint of proof that anything otherworldly has ever been stored , studied , or fly at Groom Lake . And really , the feat of engineering and pilotage accomplished by the terrestrials in Area 51 are astonishing enough . No aliens postulate . Even so , the net chapter explores the mystique of the place , as Yenne describes the drive along a long , straight , overlooked crushed rock route until you reach those famous signs , which no longer threaten lethal force . He encounter some of the topical anaesthetic who run kitschy dining car catering to exotic and air travel buffs likewise .
And yet … there ’s still an aura of mystery , despite all the declassification . There are things that were designed and fly from Groom Lake that we knew nothing of until later , when they were declassified . The Northrop Tacit Blue was a bizarre aircraft ( a “ fly milk cartonful ” by one description ) that flew for several twelvemonth with no one bonk about it . If it had n’t been declassified , we ’d still know nothing about it . Reports of strangely shaped aircraft , or of F-117s still being fly after they were officially sack out , force you to wonder what awing thing happened at Area 51 that we do n’t know about . And if you ’re a firm worshipper in place extraterrestrial , then throw that in , too . There ’s only so much to be learned from examining federal budget and artificial satellite photos .
Above : A YF-117A peeks from its heavily - guarded repair shed at Tonopah . deferred payment : Lockheed .
This means that the later chapters become highly speculative . Drones , Auroras , Black Mantas and other uncanny planes may or may not subsist , and may or may not be flown out of Groom Lake . These chapters are about as good as they can be , considering Yenne is seek to write about thing we do n’t know about . Still , I preferred the more concrete Cold War chronicle of the area .
talk of pic , Area 51 Black Jets is spectacularly exemplify . As you look at photo of advanced aircraft or ethereal shots of Groom Lake , you ca n’t help but consider that possessing these same pic 20 years ago would have been treasonous , or at least a severe rupture of national protection . Now you could see F-117s being built , A-12s being pole - tested for their radio detection and ranging signatures , and examine the wry lake , runway and hangars that make up Area 51 .
Above : Three SR-71 Blackbirds take shape on the factory floor at Lockheed ’s top cloak-and-dagger Burbank Plant B-6 in the later sixties . credit rating : Lockheed .
A great deal of Area 51 Black Jets ’ subject matter remains classified . As such , you wo n’t regain consultation with psychometric test pilot or aircraft designers . Yenne draws from as many primary reservoir as possible , like declassified budget documents , memorandums from Air Force officials to Lockheed executives , and technical papers and patents . These and his numerous secondary sources appear in a thorough bibliography , a must for any diachronic work .
If you ’re an airmanship buff , you ’ll findArea 51 Black Jetsa comprehensive story of top hidden project . If you ’re a UFO fan , you may find this book a bit frustrating , but it does provide a satisfying background on the documented history of a mysterious place . I find myself thumb through the pages even after I ’ve read it simply for the photos .
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