Area 51
Area 51 is a highly classified United States Air Force facility within the Nevada Test and Training Range in southern Nevada, north-northwest of Las Vegas.
A remote detachment administered by Edwards Air Force Base, the facility is officially called Homey Airport or Groom Lake. Details of its operations are not made public, but the USAF says that it is an open training range, and it is commonly thought to support the development and testing of experimental aircraft and weapons. The USAF and U.S. Central Intelligence Agency acquired the site in 1955, primarily for flight tests of the Lockheed U-2 aircraft.
All research and occurrences in Area 51 are Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information. The CIA publicly acknowledged the base's existence on 25 June 2013, through a Freedom of Information Act request filed in 2005; it has declassified documents detailing its history and purpose. The intense secrecy surrounding the base has made it the frequent subject of conspiracy theories and a central component of unidentified flying object folklore.
The surrounding area is a popular tourist destination, including the small town of Rachel on the so-called "Extraterrestrial Highway".
Geography
Area 51
The original rectangular base of is part of the "Groom box", a rectangle of restricted airspace measuring. The area is connected to the internal Nevada Test Site road network, with paved roads leading south to Mercury and west to the NTS's Yucca Flat region. Leading northeast from the lake, the wide and well-maintained Groom Lake Road runs through a pass in the Jumbled Hills. The road formerly led to mines in the Groom basin; it has been improved since their closure. It winds past a security checkpoint; the restricted area around the base extends farther east. After leaving the restricted area, Groom Lake Road descends eastward to the floor of the Tikaboo Valley, passing the dirt-road entrances to several small ranches before converging with State Route 375, the "Extraterrestrial Highway", south of Rachel.Area 51 shares a border with Yucca Flat, the location of 739 of the 928 nuclear tests conducted at NTS by the United States Department of Energy. The Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository is southwest of Groom Lake.
Groom Lake
is a salt flat in Nevada used as runways by the Nellis Bombing Range Test Site airport on the north side of Area 51. The lake sits south of Rachel, Nevada, in the namesake Groom Lake Valley portion of the Tonopah Basin. Some above sea level, it is about from north to south and from east to west at its widest point.History
The origin of the name "Area 51" is unclear. It is believed to be from an Atomic Energy Commission numbering grid, although Area 51 is not part of this system; it is next to Area 15. Another explanation is that 51 was used because it was unlikely that the AEC would use the number. According to the Central Intelligence Agency, the facility is called Homey Airport and Groom Lake, though the name "Area 51" was used in a CIA document from the Vietnam War. Nicknames for the facility include "Paradise Ranch" and "Dreamland"; the latter is the approach control call sign for the surrounding area. Air Force public relations has referred to the facility as "an operating location near Groom Dry Lake". The special use airspace around the field is referred to as Restricted Area 4808 North.Lead and silver were discovered in the southern part of the Groom Range in 1864, and the English company Groome Lead Mines Limited financed the Conception Mines in the 1870s, giving the district its name. J. B. Osborne and partners acquired controlling interest in Groom in 1876, and Osborne's son acquired it in the 1890s. Mining continued until 1918, then resumed after World War II and continued until the early 1950s.
The airfield on the Groom Lake site opened in 1942 as Indian Springs Air Force Auxiliary Field with two unpaved 5,000-foot runways.
U-2 program
The Central Intelligence Agency established the Groom Lake test facility in April 1955 for Project AQUATONE: the development of the Lockheed U-2 strategic reconnaissance aircraft. Project director Richard M. Bissell Jr. understood that the flight test and pilot training programs could not be conducted at Edwards Air Force Base or Lockheed's Palmdale facility, given the extreme secrecy surrounding the project. He conducted a search for a suitable testing site for the U-2 under the same extreme security as the rest of the project. He notified Lockheed, who sent an inspection team to Groom Lake. According to Lockheed's U-2 designer Kelly Johnson:The lake bed made an ideal strip for testing aircraft, and the Emigrant Valley's mountain ranges and the NTS perimeter protected the site from visitors; it was about north of Las Vegas. The CIA asked the AEC to acquire the land, designated "Area 51" on the map, and to add it to the Nevada Test Site.
Johnson named the area "Paradise Ranch" to encourage workers to move to "the new facility in the middle of nowhere", as the CIA later described it, and the name became shortened to "the Ranch". On 4May 1955, a survey team arrived at Groom Lake and laid out a north–south runway on the southwest corner of the lakebed and designated a site for a base support facility. The Ranch initially consisted of little more than a few shelters, workshops, and trailer homes in which to house its small team. A little over three months later, the base consisted of a single paved runway, three hangars, a control tower, and rudimentary accommodations for test personnel. The base's few amenities included a movie theater and volleyball court. There was also a mess hall, several wells, and fuel storage tanks. CIA, Air Force, and Lockheed personnel began arriving by July 1955. The Ranch received its first U-2 delivery on 24 July 1955 from Burbank, California on a C-124 Globemaster II cargo plane, accompanied by Lockheed technicians on a Douglas DC-3. Regular Military Air Transport Service flights were set up between Area 51 and Lockheed's offices in Burbank, California. To preserve secrecy, personnel flew to Nevada on Monday mornings and returned to California on Friday evenings.
OXCART program
Project OXCART was established in August 1959 for "antiradar studies, aerodynamic structural tests, and engineering designs" and all later work on the Lockheed A-12. This included testing at Groom Lake, which had inadequate facilities consisting of buildings for only 150 people, a asphalt runway, and limited fuel, hangar, and shop space. Groom Lake had received the name "Area 51" when A-12 test facility construction began in September 1960, including a new runway to replace the existing runway.Reynolds Electrical and Engineering Company began construction of "Project 51" on 1October 1960 with double-shift construction schedules. The contractor upgraded base facilities and built a new runway diagonally across the southwest corner of the lakebed. They marked an Archimedean spiral on the dry lake approximately across so that an A-12 pilot approaching the end of the overrun could abort instead of plunging into the sagebrush. Area 51 pilots called it "The Hook". For crosswind landings, they marked two unpaved airstrips on the dry lakebed.
By August 1961, construction of the essential facilities was complete; three surplus Navy hangars were erected on the base's north side while hangar7 was new construction. The original U-2 hangars were converted to maintenance and machine shops. Facilities in the main cantonment area included workshops and buildings for storage and administration, a commissary, a control tower, a fire station, and housing. The Navy also contributed more than 130 surplus Babbitt duplex housing units for long-term occupancy facilities. Older buildings were repaired, and additional facilities were constructed as necessary. A reservoir pond surrounded by trees served as a recreational area north of the base. Other recreational facilities included a gymnasium, a movie theater, and a baseball diamond. A permanent aircraft fuel tank farm was constructed by early 1962 for the special JP-7 fuel required by the A-12. Seven tanks were constructed, with a total capacity of.
Security was enhanced for the arrival of OXCART and the small mine was closed in the Groom basin. In January 1962, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration expanded the restricted airspace in the vicinity of Groom Lake, and the lakebed became the center of a addition to restricted area R-4808N. The CIA facility received eight USAF F-101 Voodoos for training, two T-33 Shooting Star trainers for proficiency flying, a C-130 Hercules for cargo transport, a U-3A for administrative purposes, a helicopter for search and rescue, a Cessna 180 for liaison use, and Lockheed provided an F-104 Starfighter for use as a chase plane.
The first A-12 test aircraft was covertly trucked from Burbank on 26 February 1962 and arrived at Groom Lake on 28 February. It made its first flight 26 April 1962 when the base had over 1,000 personnel. The closed airspace above Groom Lake was within the Nellis Air Force Range airspace, and pilots saw the A-12 20 to 30 times. Groom was also the site of the first Lockheed D-21 drone test flight on 22 December 1964. By the end of 1963, nine A-12s were at Area 51, assigned to the CIA-operated "1129th Special Activities Squadron".
D-21 Tagboard
After the loss of Gary Powers' U-2 over the Soviet Union, there were several discussions about using the A-12 OXCART as an unpiloted drone aircraft. Although Kelly Johnson had come to support the idea of drone reconnaissance, he opposed the development of an A-12 drone, contending that the aircraft was too large and complex for such a conversion. However, the Air Force agreed to fund the study of a high-speed, high-altitude drone aircraft in October 1962. The service's interest seems to have moved the CIA to take action, and the project was designated Q-12. By October 1963, the drone's design had been finalized. Its name was changed as well, to D-21, to distinguish it from other A-12-based projects. "Tagboard" was the project's code name.Lockheed completed the first D-21 in spring 1964. After four months of checkouts and static tests, the aircraft was shipped to Groom Lake and reassembled. It was to be carried by the M-21, a two-seat derivative of the A-12. When the D-21/M-21 reached the launch point, the first step would be to blow off the D-21's inlet and exhaust covers. With the D-21/M-21 at the correct speed and altitude, the LCO would start the ramjet and the other systems of the D-21. "With the D-21's systems activated and running, and the launch aircraft at the correct point, the M-21 would begin a slight pushover, the LCO would push a final button, and the D-21 would come off the pylon".
Technical problems occupied the D-21 team at Groom Lake in 1964 and 1965, including aerodynamic difficulties revealed by captive flights. By late January 1966, more than a year after the first captive flight, everything seemed ready. The first D-21 launch came on 5March 1966: the drone flew 120 miles with limited fuel. In the second D-21 flight, in April 1966, the drone flew 1,200 miles, reaching Mach 3.3 and 90,000 feet. On 30 July 1966, a fully fueled D-21 was launched on what was supposed to be a checkout flight. But the drone suffered an unstart and collided with the M-21 launch aircraft. The two crewmen ejected and landed in the ocean 150 miles offshore. One crew member was picked up by a helicopter, but the other, having survived the aircraft breakup and ejection, drowned when sea water entered his pressure suit. Kelly Johnson personally cancelled the entire program, having had serious doubts about its feasibility from the start.
A number of D-21s had already been produced, and rather than scrapping the whole effort, Johnson again proposed to the Air Force that they be launched from a B-52H bomber. By late summer 1967, the modifications of the D-21 and the B-52Hs were complete. The test program could now resume. The test missions were flown out of Groom Lake, with the actual launches over the Pacific. The first D-21B to be flown was Article 501, the prototype. The first attempt, on 28 September 1967, ended in complete failure. As the B-52 was flying toward the launch point, the D-21B fell off the pylon. The B-52H gave a sharp lurch as the drone fell free. The booster fired and was "quite a sight from the ground". The failure was traced to a stripped nut on the forward right attachment point on the pylon. Several more tests were made, none of which met with success. Time was running out for the D-21B Tagboard drones. The A-12 had finally been allowed to deploy, and the SR-71 was soon to replace it. A new generation of reconnaissance satellites would soon cover not just the Soviet Union but anywhere in the world. The satellites' resolution would be comparable to that of aircraft but without the slightest political risk.
Several more test flights, including two over China, were made from Beale Air Force Base, California, in 1969 and 1970, to varying degrees of success. On 15 July 1971, Kelly Johnson received a wire canceling the D-21B program. The remaining drones were transferred by a C-5A and placed in dead storage. The tooling used to build the D-21Bs was ordered destroyed. Like the A-12 Oxcart, the D-21B remained a black-ops airplane, even in retirement. Its existence was not suspected until August 1976, when the first group was placed in storage at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base Military Storage and Disposition Center. A second group arrived in 1977. They were labeled "GTD-21Bs".
Davis-Monthan is an open base, with public tours of the storage area at the time, so the odd-looking drones were soon spotted and photos began appearing in magazines. Speculation about the D-21Bs circulated within aviation circles for years, and it was not until 1982 that details of the Tagboard program were released. Only in 1993 was the B-52/D-21B program made public. That same year, the surviving D-21Bs were released to museums.