Area 51_ An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base - Annie Jacobsen [260]
The engine for the Mars rocket can be seen at the center of the Engine Test Stand-1, positioned upside down to prevent it from taking off during testing. Operating at 3680.6 degrees Fahrenheit meant the nuclear reactor inside the engine needed to be cooled down by liquid hydrogen, contained in white industrial dewars seen at right. (Department of Energy)
Moving the first A-12 to Area 51, over the Cajon Pass in California. The transport crate had been disguised to look like a generic wide load. (CIA)
A full-scale mock-up of the Oxcart being assembled at Area 51 in 1959, even before the CIA contract was officially secured. The facility had been deserted after nuclear fallout shuttered the place in the summer of 1957. These Lockheed Skunk Workers were among the earliest returnees. (Collection of Roadrunners Internationale/CIA)
Setting up the legendary Area 51 pylon, or radar test pole. The radar antennas, manned and monitored by EG&G, were located a mile away from the pole. (Collection of Roadrunners Internationale/CIA)
Less than eight feet of the fifty-five-foot-long pole is visible here. The rest of the pole is underground, below a concrete pad, and rises up from an underground chamber built inside the desert floor. (Collection of Roadrunners Internationale/CIA)
Working at night meant less of a chance of being surveilled by Soviet spy satellites. “Getting an aircraft up on the radar test pole took eighteen minutes. It took another eighteen minutes to get it back down,” says Ed Lovick. “That left only a set amount of time to shoot radar at it and take data recordings.” As soon as technicians were done, they took the aircraft down and whisked it away into its hangar. (Collection of Roadrunners Internationale/CIA)
Area 51 as seen from the air, circa 1964. This rare photograph has never been published before. (Collection of Roadrunners Internationale)
Yucca Flat, which spans several Areas at the Nevada Test Site, is one of the most bombed-out places on earth. In this photo taken during the winter months from a helicopter above Area 10, the Sedan Crater can be seen in the forefront. A 104-kiloton bomb was buried at a depth of 635 feet, and its detonation produced a crater 1,280 feet wide and 320 feet deep, moving 12 million tons of radioactive dirt in an instant and creating a hole that can be seen from space. (National Nuclear Security Administration)
Ed Lovick, at Skunk Works in the mid-1960s, with the waveguide, as he works to reduce the radar cross section for the A-12 to meet the CIA’s demands. (Collection of Edward Lovick/Lockheed Martin)
A-12 ejection-seat test on Groom Lake’s dry lake bed. (Collection of Roadrunners Internationale/CIA)
The A-12 Oxcart hidden behind a barrier at Area 51. It took 2,400 Lockheed Skunk Works machinists and mechanics to get a fleet of fifteen ready for the CIA. Visible on either side of the aircraft are the uniquely adjustable inlet cones that regulated airflow and allowed the CIA spy plane to cruise in afterburner and reach peak speeds of Mach 3.29 by May 1965. (Lockheed Martin)
Richard Bissell, known best for his role in the Bay of Pigs fiasco, was the CIA officer who built Area 51 from the ground up. In this rare photograph, he shakes hands with CIA pilot Louis Schalk after the first flight of the A-12 Oxcart in April 1962. Bissell had already resigned. (Lockheed Martin)
The A-12 Oxcart lands on the runway at Area 51, April 1962. (Collection of Roadrunners Internationale/CIA)
Charlie Trapp was chief of Rescue and Survival at Area 51 from 1962 to 1967. It was in this H-43B helicopter that Trapp found the body of Oxcart pilot Walt Ray and his airplane after a fatal crash. Trapp received the Air Medal for the twenty-five-day operation. (Collection of Charles E. Trapp)
CIA pilot Ken Collins, in full flight gear, hanging above the Area 51 swimming pool during ocean-survival training circa 1965.