Comedy | June 02, 2011 | 37 comments

Declassified Photos of Area 51 and Crashed Spy Plane Have Surfaced | Photos Included

source: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/06/area-51-national-geographic-spy-plane.html

Image
EthicalVegan
Los Angeles Times...


Technology


Declassified photos of Area 51 and crashed spy plane surface

June 2, 2011 | 12:26 pm

Area-51-cover-up




Area 51 has been ground zero for conspiracy theorists for decades.

Flying saucers. Bug-eyed aliens. Staged moon landings.

The government hasn't helped alleviate speculation –- it doesn't even acknowledge that the military outpost exists. If it did, it would be deep in the Nevada desert about 100 miles outside of Las Vegas.

But now, National Geographic is providing the public with a rare glimpse inside the clandestine site. It recently published never-before-seen, declassified photos from 1963 of a military plane crash and its coverup by the government, according to its website.

"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," National Geographic said. "During the 1950s and '60s Area 51's top-secret OXCART program developed the A-12."

Made by Lockheed Corp., the A-12 was a precursor to the SR-71 Blackbird spy plane. The futuristic-looking jet could tear through the skies at more than 2,200 mph at 80,000 feet.

Check out the photo above and here to see the A-12 without its ominous black paint. Instead, its silver titanium shines bright under the desert sun -- a stark contrast to the A-12 in front of the Science Center at Exposition Park.
  1. groups:
    Community,   News and Politics,   Tech,   Comedy,   16 more
  2. tags:
    National Security,  Propaganda,  CIA,  National Geographic,  19 more
  3.     
    |

37 comments // Declassified Photos of Area 51 and Crashed Spy Plane Have Surfaced | Photos Included

  • Earl_Dixon
  • EthicalVegan
  • GISchmo
  • Pete_Eckhardt
    • -1
      Pete_Eckhardt  
    • EthicalVegan:

      "What is a Black Bird"?

      It's a Beatles song!

      Blackbird

      "... in the dead of the night ...
      Blackbird fly ...
      Into the light of the dark black night.
      All your life
      You were only waiting for this moment to arise".

    • 12 months ago
  • Pete_Eckhardt
    • -2
      Pete_Eckhardt  
    • EthicalVegan:

      "What is a Black Bird"?

      It's right in the article: "... the A-12 was a precursor to the SR-71 Blackbird spy plane".

      Both the A-12 and SR-71 were known as the Blackbird, although sometimes the A-12 is referred to as the OXCART, after the development program at the SkunkWorks. The CIA ordered five A-12s the year before the U-2 was shot down by the Russians, knowing that it was no longer suitable for the mission. The Air Force later ordered a stretched (2-seater) version, which would become the SR-71.

    • 12 months ago
  • eternal_springs
  • GISchmo
  • EthicalVegan
  • hoosierdaddy
  • 14_Crusaders
    • 0
      14_Crusaders  

    • Then how do you know about our government testing Star War products..If it's nobodies business...You should take your own advice..and butt out...

    • 12 months ago
  • Keith_Wilde
    • -5
      Keith_Wilde  

    • All you nut wanting to know our great Nation secerts which are classifed, so if we are building star war products or testing different aircraft it is none of your bussiness, the SR-71 is no longer flying, and , if you get a job get a clearence maybe you mite go there, working in Nevada desert 120* who want to be there,
      be a proud, american and mind your own business

    • 12 months ago
  • mistro
  • jonlemnh
  • 14_Crusaders
    • +1
      14_Crusaders  

    • this plane is located at the main gate of Area 51 North gate / Range site 71 the A-12 / the SR-71 is located at Range 61 / 50 miles west of area 51 near Cheech AB....

    • 12 months ago
  • EthicalVegan
  • 14_Crusaders
    • +2
      14_Crusaders  

    • That looks like the SR-71 turned upside down being painted or repaired....And I think while they were testing it..as to flight..something went wrong..and the pilot ditched the plane....I can see if this was a spy plane designed back then and we just now find out about it..but to see pictures of something that we all know about for years..whats the point..

    • 12 months ago
  • EthicalVegan
  • 14_Crusaders
  • manhattan_project
  • rodstradamus
  • EthicalVegan
    • +2
      EthicalVegan  

    • http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/05/pictures/110520-spy-plane-area-5.../area-51-cover-up-plane-crash-intact-a-12_35803_600x450.jpg

      National Geographic...

      Area 51 Spy Plane, Intact

      Photograph from Roadrunners Internationale via Pangloss Films

      ON TV: Area 51 Declassified premieres on the National Geographic Channel on Saturday, May 28, at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT.

      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.

      —Brian Handwerk

      Published May 20, 2011

    • 12 months ago
  • EthicalVegan
    • +1
      EthicalVegan  
    • Image
    • EthicalVegan:

      National Geographic...

      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.

      Published May 20, 2011

      http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/358/overrides/are...

    • 12 months ago
  • EthicalVegan
    • +2
      EthicalVegan  
    • Image
    • EthicalVegan:

      http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/358/overrides/are...

      National Geographic...

      Cover-up Crew

      Photograph from CIA via Pangloss Films

      An aerial photo shows a massive rapid-response team at the site of the A-12 crash near Wendover, Utah, in 1963.

      After pilot Ken Collins had parachuted to the ground, he was stunned to be greeted by three civilians in a pickup, who offered to give him a ride to the wreckage of his plane. Instead, Collins got them to give him a ride in the opposite direction, by telling them the plane had a nuclear weapon on board—a prearranged cover story to keep the Area 51 craft a secret.

      Soon a team of government agents appeared to direct a complete cleanup—and cover-up—operation. By the next morning, recovery crews had begun loading the wreckage on trucks for the return trip to Area 51 in Nevada.

      No one else approached the wreck site or even learned of the crash during the next half century.

      Published May 20, 2011

    • 12 months ago
  • EthicalVegan
    • +1
      EthicalVegan  
    • Image
    • EthicalVegan:

      http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/358/overrides/are...

      National Geographic...

      Removing the Evidence

      Photograph from CIA via Pangloss Films

      A government "sanitation" team uses heavy equipment, including bulldozers and cranes, to remove all traces of the A-12 spy plane from a 1963 crash site in the Utah desert.

      "There was some debate over whether to dynamite the large sections of wreckage, to make identification by unauthorized personnel more difficult," said independent aerospace historian Peter Merlin.

      Today that secrecy has outlived its use, according to CIA historian David Robarge, explaining why the crash photos have been declassified.

      "CIA records managers review [information requests] case-by-case to determine whether the information sought is still sensitive on national-security grounds. In their judgment, the photos of the 1963 crash no longer are, and so they were declassified and released," Robarge told National Geographic News.

      "In 2007 the CIA declassified over a thousand documents related to the OXCART program and published an unclassified history of it in conjunction with the acquisition from the Air Force of one of the nine remaining A-12 airframes," now on display at CIA headquarters, Robarge added.

      Published May 20, 2011

    • 12 months ago
  • EthicalVegan
    • +1
      EthicalVegan  
    • Image
    • EthicalVegan:

      http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/358/overrides/are...

      National Geographic...

      Loading Spy-Plane Debris

      Photograph from CIA via Pangloss Films

      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."

      Published May 20, 2011

    • 12 months ago
  • EthicalVegan
    • +1
      EthicalVegan  
    • Image
    • EthicalVegan:

      http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/358/overrides/are...

      National Geographic...

      Wreckage Under Wraps

      Photograph from CIA via Pangloss Films

      Before the cleanup, after pilots from Area 51 had reported that the wreck in Utah was still identifiable, crews quickly covered all large pieces with tarps.

      "At the time of the crash, the OXCART program was a very closely kept secret, and any exposure of it—such as through a crash that got publicized—could have jeopardized its existence," the CIA's Robarge said.

      "If U.S. adversaries used that disclosure to figure out what the program was about, they might have been able to develop countermeasures that would make the aircraft vulnerable.

      "The U.S. government had to make sure that no traces of the 1963 crash might be found and give hostile powers insights into the engineering and aeronautical advances the program was making."

      Published May 20, 2011

    • 12 months ago
  • EthicalVegan
    • +1
      EthicalVegan  
    • Image
    • EthicalVegan:

      http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/358/overrides/are...

      National Geographic

      Pieces Left Behind

      Photograph from Pangloss Films/NGT

      Shards of titanium from the wrecked A-12 scatter the crash site as aerospace historian Peter Merlin recently searches the debris field with a metal detector.

      Merlin's research into recently declassified documents on the OXCART project unearthed a memorandum that reported that all traces of the plane had been removed from the crash scene in 1963.

      "My experience with crash sites, however, is that there is always something left," Merlin says in the Area 51 documentary.

      And in fact recent investigations of the site have turned up parts of the plane's wing structure as well as cockpit remnants still bearing the stamp "skunk works"—the covert department of the defense contractor Lockheed, which worked on the plane.

      Published May 20, 2011

    • 12 months ago
  • EthicalVegan
    • +1
      EthicalVegan  
    • Image
    • EthicalVegan:

      http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/358/overrides/are...

      National Geographic...

      Upside Down at Area 51

      Photograph from Roadrunners Internationale via Pangloss Films

      In an undated picture, a mock-up of the A-12 spy plane sits perched upside down on a testing pylon at Area 51—part of radar tests to reveal revealed how visible, or invisible, the design was to radar.

      Area 51 staff had to regularly interrupt such tests and hurry prototypes into "hoot-and-scoot sheds"—lest they be detected by Soviet spy satellites.

      The Soviets unwittingly provided raw materials for the unprecedented plane. The A-12 was about 93 percent titanium, a material then unheard of for aircraft design. Most of the men who built the craft are still wondering today how that metal was secretly sourced from inside the U.S.S.R., according to the new documentary.

      Published May 20, 2011

    • 12 months ago
  • EthicalVegan
    • 0
      EthicalVegan  
    • Image
    • EthicalVegan:

      http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/358/cache/area-51...

      National Geographic...

      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."

      ON TV: Area 51 Declassified premieres on the National Geographic Channel on Saturday, May 28, at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT.

    • 12 months ago
  • 14_Crusaders
  • EthicalVegan
  • Wicks934
    • +1
      Wicks934  

    • The fifties hysteria over UFOs worked to make people fearful and willing to give their money to the military industrial complex.

    • 12 months ago
  • ozoneocean
  • Wicks934
  • Leen61
    • +2
      Leen61  

    • Thanks for posting this, EthicalVegan. I have always found this place interesting. In Vegas, you can get close to that area, but you can never actually get into it.

    • 12 months ago
  • EthicalVegan
    • +2
      EthicalVegan  
    • Leen61:

      Only two months ago, I attended a memorial service for an old friend and, towards the end of talking about his adventurous life, his wife mentioned to everyone that Lee had been employed at Area 51. Wow!

    • 12 months ago
  • Leen61
    • +1
      Leen61  
    • EthicalVegan:

      I have heard about these guys who worked at Area 51 dying because of what they handled there. I heard that the widows knew that was a dangerous place to work yet they had trouble getting compansated for their husband's death.

    • 12 months ago
more from Comedy:
from the community

top videos