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Radar station at the top of Bald Mountain. (Collection of Charles E. Trapp Jr.)

The A-12 trainer during a test flight. Note the two canopies, one for the instructor pilot and another for the trainee. The A-12 trainer aircraft could not reach the upper Mach numbers; CIA pilots experienced that remarkable feat on their own. (CIA)

This CIA project, code-named Tagboard, was an Oxcart with a Mach 3 drone on its back, circa 1965. To avoid confusion with the A-12, the mother ship was designated M-21 (as in “mother”) and the drone was designated D-21 (as in “daughter”). (Collection of Lockheed Martin)

Former U-2 spy plane pilot Tony Bevacqua flies over Hanoi in the fabled SR-71 Blackbird, the Air Force variant of the A-12 Oxcart. This reconnaissance photograph shows an SA-2 missile being fired at Bevacqua from a ground station below. It was the first time an SR-71 was ever fired upon. July 26, 1968. (Collection of Tony Bevacqua/U.S. Air Force)

Colonel Hugh “Slip” Slater served as commander of Area 51 during the Oxcart program. Before he was put in charge of Project Oxcart, he served as commander for the CIA’s Black Cat U-2 Squadron, which flew covert espionage missions over China. Here he is with the YF-12, the attack version of the A-12 Oxcart, circa 1971. (Collection of Colonel Hugh Slater/U.S. Air Force)

Area 51 as seen from above in 1968. (U.S. Geological Survey/Federation of American Scientists)

Frank Murray started out flying chase on Project Oxcart in the F-101 Voodoo. After CIA pilot Walt Ray was killed outside Area 51 during testing, General Ledford asked Murray to take Ray’s place. Here Murray is on Kadena, Okinawa, before a Black Shield mission over North Vietnam. (Collection of Frank Murray)

Jack Weeks and Ken Collins preparing for a Black Shield mission over North Vietnam, inside the command center on Kadena in 1968. A few months later Weeks would be preseumed dead; no trace of the A-12 airplane or his body was ever found. (Collection of Ken Collins)

Area 51 radars, circa 1968. T. D. Barnes and his fellow EG&G Special Project engineers worked in the building at left. To pass the time when the Soviets pinned them down with spy satellites, they pulled pranks, like painting odd-shaped aircraft on the tarmac and heating the images up with hair dryers to add a heat signature. (Collection of Thornton D. Barnes/Roadrunners Internationale)

Radar antennae on the outskirts of Area 51, 1968. (Collection of Thornton D. Barnes/Roadrunners Internationale)

T. D. Barnes, age nineteen, serving in Korea in 1956. A photo of his new bride, Doris, sits on his desk in this photograph, as it still does in 2011. Barnes, a radar expert, started working for the CIA in 1958. (Collection of Thornton D. Barnes)

The Beatty High Range, where radar expert T. D. Barnes worked for joint NASA/CIA projects prior to his transfer to Area 51. From Beatty, Barnes could track airplanes over at Groom Lake, sixty miles as the crow flies. (NASA)

A Russian MiG 21 inside a hangar at Area 51. The CIA borrowed one from the Mossad, reverse engineered it, and then flew it in mock air battles over the Nevada desert. This secret program, which took place in the winter of 1968, was called Operation Have Doughnut and gave birth to the Navy’s fabled Top Gun program. (Collection of Roadrunners Internationale/U.S. Air Force)

Apollo astronauts trained on the subsidence craters at the Nevada Test Site before they went to the moon. Ernest “Ernie” Williams was their tour guide; he helped CIA engineers locate the original water spring at Area 51. (Department of Energy)

Astronauts study the geology on the atomic craters while carrying mock-ups of space backpacks and other gear. (Department of Energy)

Richard Mingus worked security at Area 51 and the Nevada Test Site for decades. He is seen here during weapons training in 1979. (Collection of Richard Mingus/National Nuclear Security Administration)