WEBVTT - The History of Area 51 - Part Two 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with text Stuff from how 0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:14.120 Stuff Works dot Com. Hey there, and welcome to Text Stuff. 0:00:14.200 --> 0:00:17.840 I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm joined once again by Ben Bolan, 0:00:18.720 --> 0:00:25.480 host extraordinaire improv genius. Yeah, you're laying it on man. Well, 0:00:25.520 --> 0:00:28.040 I'm just the short round here, Indiana Jones here, so 0:00:28.440 --> 0:00:32.000 thanks for having me on the show. I cheat little, 0:00:32.040 --> 0:00:34.720 you cheat big. Uh. Yeah, we're going to uh, we're 0:00:34.720 --> 0:00:38.080 going to continue our discussion about Area fifty one. If 0:00:38.120 --> 0:00:41.559 you have not heard the first part of this series, 0:00:41.600 --> 0:00:44.120 I urge you to go and listen to the previous 0:00:44.120 --> 0:00:47.000 episode where we set up what Area fifty one is. 0:00:47.240 --> 0:00:49.519 How we got start. We talk all about the A 0:00:49.680 --> 0:00:53.640 twelve spy plane that was developed and tested, were largely 0:00:53.720 --> 0:00:56.520 tested there, and now we're going to look at what 0:00:56.600 --> 0:01:01.240 happened post A twelve at the room like facility a 0:01:01.360 --> 0:01:03.640 k a. Area fifty one. To keep in mind that 0:01:03.680 --> 0:01:05.400 a lot of the stuff like eight the A twelve 0:01:05.440 --> 0:01:07.400 tests are going on at the same time as all 0:01:07.440 --> 0:01:09.720 of this. You know, the way history works is we 0:01:09.800 --> 0:01:12.000 like to think of it as there's a beginning, middle, 0:01:12.000 --> 0:01:13.520 and end of each thing, and then the next thing 0:01:13.560 --> 0:01:15.600 has a beginning middle, and end when really everything is 0:01:15.640 --> 0:01:19.440 overlapping everything else. Yeah, it's that's that's exactly right, and 0:01:19.440 --> 0:01:21.679 I'm glad you said that. I was thinking about that 0:01:22.000 --> 0:01:26.240 earlier this week. If you've ever looked up historical characters 0:01:26.240 --> 0:01:31.119 who who lived in the same time period, it's it's fascinating. Yeah, 0:01:31.200 --> 0:01:35.080 and it can get really confusing really fast. Right, It's hard. 0:01:35.120 --> 0:01:40.000 It's hard to communicate how complex history is because we 0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:44.440 work really well understanding narratives. Right, but when you when 0:01:44.440 --> 0:01:47.600 you weave in so many narratives, that becomes like the 0:01:47.720 --> 0:01:51.680 ultimate Quentin Tarantino film, you can get lost. Yeah, but 0:01:51.800 --> 0:01:56.480 you are an explainer extraordinary, how about that? So, so, 0:01:56.680 --> 0:02:00.639 I I think that you can easily guy us through 0:02:00.720 --> 0:02:03.360 some stuff that might be might be a little confusing 0:02:03.360 --> 0:02:05.000 if you get it all at once, but take us 0:02:05.040 --> 0:02:08.040 through point by point, because I'll be honest with you, man, 0:02:08.120 --> 0:02:10.240 we're getting to my favorite part of the story. Yeah, 0:02:10.280 --> 0:02:13.600 here's here's where things get a little weird. Um. So, 0:02:14.080 --> 0:02:16.919 we had talked about the A twelve that had started. 0:02:17.200 --> 0:02:20.680 The first A twelve arrived at Area fifty one in 0:02:20.760 --> 0:02:23.679 nineteen sixty two and wouldn't really be tested until the 0:02:23.720 --> 0:02:26.840 following year. That's when pilots trained by the c I 0:02:26.960 --> 0:02:31.600 A or pilots who had joined the CIA began to 0:02:31.680 --> 0:02:35.200 test these these aircraft at that same time. All the 0:02:35.240 --> 0:02:39.480 way back in nineteen sixty two, you had a project 0:02:39.720 --> 0:02:43.120 that ended up being called the D twenty one. That 0:02:43.200 --> 0:02:46.040 twenty one, by the way, where that number come from. Well, 0:02:46.080 --> 0:02:48.520 they had the A twelve and they figured having like 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:51.000 an A twelve and a D twelve would be really confusing, 0:02:51.040 --> 0:02:53.760 so they just they just transpose those numbers to the 0:02:53.800 --> 0:02:56.240 A twelve and the D twenty one. This is when 0:02:56.280 --> 0:03:00.120 you realize how capricious the naming systems are. It's so 0:03:00.160 --> 0:03:02.040 you eventually like, ah, you know, I always thought those 0:03:02.360 --> 0:03:06.160 letters of numbers really had special designation. Not all the time. 0:03:06.240 --> 0:03:09.480 Oh here's an idea, Jonathan. We if we end up 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:13.800 ever doing top secret government work, I hope that you 0:03:13.840 --> 0:03:15.600 and I could both threw our names in the hat 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:18.520 to be the people who make up the code names. 0:03:19.000 --> 0:03:22.480 That'd be fantastic. And yeah, and and ultimately people will 0:03:22.520 --> 0:03:24.560 fear us because they know that if they if they 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:26.520 do not please us, we will give them the worst 0:03:26.639 --> 0:03:30.800 code names. Yeah. Yeah, Also, uh, going back to it, 0:03:30.880 --> 0:03:34.400 Sorry for that, Uh, it's called the D twenty one 0:03:34.800 --> 0:03:37.560 instead of the A twelve. Then we know they transpose 0:03:37.640 --> 0:03:41.560 numbers to avoid uh, to avoid too much similarity. But 0:03:41.640 --> 0:03:45.080 what's this D twenty one about? So this is this 0:03:45.160 --> 0:03:47.880 is where things are are pretty amazing. And the D 0:03:47.880 --> 0:03:52.160 twenty one was an unmanned vehicle. It was meant to 0:03:52.200 --> 0:03:55.120 be a spy plane that would not require a human 0:03:55.160 --> 0:03:58.080 pilot behind the controls. I mean, there would be a 0:03:58.080 --> 0:04:00.880 pilot controlling it, but they be control pulling it remotely 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:04.560 on the ground. So we are talking about this not 0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:06.640 an autonomous vehicle. I don't want to go so far 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:08.880 as to say it's like some sort of robotic super 0:04:09.080 --> 0:04:12.680 thing that happened bo, but we're talking about a remote 0:04:12.680 --> 0:04:17.400 controlled aerial vehicle that was essentially a jet. I mean, 0:04:17.440 --> 0:04:21.240 it's it was not like it was that much smaller 0:04:21.279 --> 0:04:23.279 than some of the other aircraft we're talking about. It 0:04:23.320 --> 0:04:25.800 wasn't It wasn't like the size of a drone. You 0:04:25.880 --> 0:04:27.719 might go and get one of those little quad copters. 0:04:28.120 --> 0:04:32.400 It was significantly larger than that. It was amazing to 0:04:32.440 --> 0:04:35.960 me that it was this early. Now the reasons behind 0:04:36.000 --> 0:04:38.680 developing it make a lot of sense, because if you 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:41.520 have a manned vehicle, then clearly you have a human 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:45.239 life at risk whenever that vehicle is in operation. Even 0:04:45.279 --> 0:04:48.880 if first we have to consider the fact that flying 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:51.359 is can be dangerous. Flying a spy plane in particular, 0:04:51.400 --> 0:04:54.040 can be dangerous because the design may mean that it's 0:04:54.080 --> 0:04:57.560 difficult for you to have it take off or land safely, 0:04:57.680 --> 0:05:02.839 even if there's no enemy uh interference whatsoever during the mission, right, Yeah, 0:05:02.839 --> 0:05:08.000 and if you have to conduct evasive maneuvers, then there's 0:05:08.000 --> 0:05:10.560 not really a nice way to say it. You're in 0:05:10.600 --> 0:05:13.080 a lot of trouble. Yeah, I mean, the we already 0:05:13.120 --> 0:05:15.680 mentioned in the previous episode that the YouTube plane is 0:05:15.760 --> 0:05:20.480 notoriously difficult to fly. So just with that alone, if 0:05:20.520 --> 0:05:23.039 you were able to have an unmanned version where you 0:05:23.040 --> 0:05:26.360 could get that same sort of reconnaissance ability but you 0:05:26.480 --> 0:05:29.760 don't put a pilot's life in danger, that's good. But 0:05:29.839 --> 0:05:33.200 on top of that, there's another reason that's that goes 0:05:33.240 --> 0:05:35.400 back to safety, but it's more about the safety of 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:39.120 the country and not the pilot. Yeah, which means that 0:05:39.279 --> 0:05:41.800 if you have one of these aircraft and it's unmanned 0:05:41.800 --> 0:05:46.400 and it's shot down, there's no pilot for the folks 0:05:46.440 --> 0:05:48.320 who shot down the aircraft. There's no pilot for them 0:05:48.360 --> 0:05:51.200 to capture and interrogate, so they're not going to get 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:55.000 any other information apart from the actual workings of whatever 0:05:55.040 --> 0:05:57.440 the device was. So they might see that, you know, 0:05:57.480 --> 0:05:59.480 what kind of engine you're using or whatever, what sort 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:01.640 of technology you made it work, but they're not going 0:06:01.680 --> 0:06:03.640 to have a person that they can say, all right, 0:06:03.640 --> 0:06:06.480 how many other operatives are in the area, where did 0:06:06.480 --> 0:06:10.520 you fly from? Yeah? So that also, I mean it's 0:06:10.520 --> 0:06:15.039 not completely um, it's not just something that's in concern 0:06:15.080 --> 0:06:18.120 for the pilot's well being. Uh, it's also a national 0:06:18.120 --> 0:06:21.880 security issue, which you know, it's not pleasant to talk about, 0:06:21.920 --> 0:06:23.919 but it's certainly something they had to keep in mind. 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:29.440 And at this point sixty two, they're developing this early 0:06:29.520 --> 0:06:32.960 nineteen sixties. Uh, the U s s R already knows 0:06:33.000 --> 0:06:35.880 about the you Tube and they're on the lookout for 0:06:35.960 --> 0:06:41.440 these vehicles I almost say creatures, but for these planes absolutely. 0:06:41.480 --> 0:06:44.520 And so this one in particular was was an an 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:49.279 ambitious project. It wasn't just an unmanned drone, which already 0:06:49.360 --> 0:06:51.880 like I always think of the quad copters. It's just 0:06:51.920 --> 0:06:55.680 because the quad copters is such a popular consumer drone 0:06:55.760 --> 0:06:57.560 right now. And it's also kind of the design that 0:06:57.600 --> 0:07:01.800 we're seeing for stuff like the proposed most Amazon delivery drones. 0:07:02.360 --> 0:07:06.119 This was this was a ramjet engine drone. We're talking 0:07:06.160 --> 0:07:10.560 about a super sonic vehicle. It's not meant to travel 0:07:10.800 --> 0:07:13.760 and speeds lower than that. In fact, you couldn't have 0:07:13.880 --> 0:07:17.760 this takeoff from a regular landing strip, you know, or 0:07:17.880 --> 0:07:21.880 or a runway. You had this mounted to a separate vehicle, 0:07:22.280 --> 0:07:25.280 like an A twelve. The A twelve would travel and 0:07:25.320 --> 0:07:28.200 start to reach supersonic speeds, and from that point you 0:07:28.240 --> 0:07:33.200 would then launch the D twenty one, which would already 0:07:33.200 --> 0:07:36.400 be traveling at a superspeed, a sonic supersonic speed, and 0:07:36.440 --> 0:07:40.280 it would just go from there. So this meant that 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:46.320 they had a pretty risky launch sequence. I mean it 0:07:46.360 --> 0:07:49.320 meant you already had an aircraft that was manned that 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:51.360 had to be traveling at this incredible speed before you 0:07:51.400 --> 0:07:54.720 even launched the unmanned vehicle during the test that the 0:07:54.760 --> 0:07:59.720 drones would actually land slash crash, usually on a nearby mountain, 0:08:00.120 --> 0:08:03.280 uh near Groom Lake during the actual tests, and so 0:08:03.360 --> 0:08:07.640 to retrieve it, they would send out another aircraft, usually 0:08:07.680 --> 0:08:09.280 I guess a helicopter because it had to have some 0:08:09.360 --> 0:08:13.040 hovering capabilities, and they had para jumpers, but the jumpers 0:08:13.080 --> 0:08:15.640 wouldn't parachute. What they would do is they would lower 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:20.760 down on lines from the aircraft hook the drone, you know, 0:08:20.760 --> 0:08:22.760 it had some you know, they would attach the line 0:08:22.800 --> 0:08:24.880 to the drone in some way, and then they would 0:08:24.920 --> 0:08:28.320 essentially tow the drones back to the facility, so that 0:08:28.360 --> 0:08:31.520 you just didn't have these unmanned vehicles crashed on the 0:08:31.520 --> 0:08:33.680 side of mountains, which I'm sure would fuel even more 0:08:33.720 --> 0:08:36.680 speculation if they had been found by civilians, yeah, or 0:08:37.240 --> 0:08:43.200 god forbid, a rival government. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So so 0:08:44.480 --> 0:08:46.880 they were a cool idea, but like I said, it 0:08:46.920 --> 0:08:50.040 was really dangerous and kind of impractical. There's a high 0:08:50.160 --> 0:08:53.240 rate of attrition for these vehicles, just because I mean, 0:08:53.280 --> 0:08:57.880 think about it. We just named four big ifs in 0:08:58.000 --> 0:09:02.600 the takeoff, if the twelve survived, if the pilot's cool, 0:09:03.120 --> 0:09:05.680 if it reaches the you know, if it reaches the 0:09:05.720 --> 0:09:09.719 speed sufficient to deploy, and if it deploys successfully. Yeah, 0:09:09.760 --> 0:09:14.520 And unfortunately, there was an accident in nineteen sixty six. 0:09:14.559 --> 0:09:18.760 It was a catastrophic failure the drone, which I believe 0:09:18.960 --> 0:09:23.560 was top mounted onto an A twelve, UH ended up 0:09:23.600 --> 0:09:26.640 tilting downwards instead of upwards when it took off and 0:09:26.760 --> 0:09:31.240 cut the plane in half. Now, the two pilots inside 0:09:31.280 --> 0:09:34.120 that plane. At this point, the the twelve was over 0:09:34.440 --> 0:09:37.319 the Pacific Ocean. It had flown out over the coast 0:09:37.360 --> 0:09:40.839 of California. The two pilots aboard the A twelve were 0:09:40.880 --> 0:09:45.199 able to eject successfully. However, one of the two tragically 0:09:45.640 --> 0:09:49.640 got caught up in his parachute line and drowned in 0:09:49.679 --> 0:09:53.839 the ocean. The other one had been rescued successfully. And 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:57.480 the story is that Kelly Johnson, we talked about him 0:09:57.480 --> 0:10:00.760 in the first episode about A one, is the guy 0:10:00.800 --> 0:10:04.360 from Lockheed who very much was the the head of 0:10:04.440 --> 0:10:08.080 development at Area fifty one, This guy who designed the 0:10:08.080 --> 0:10:13.880 YouTube plane. Well, Kelly Johnson was so horrified at this accident. 0:10:13.960 --> 0:10:16.880 I mean he really personally took it very, very hard. 0:10:17.440 --> 0:10:21.920 That he reportedly shut down the project and then returned 0:10:22.320 --> 0:10:26.160 the project funding to the Air Force and the CIA, 0:10:26.559 --> 0:10:29.440 which is sort of unheard of in the world of contracting. Yeah, 0:10:29.480 --> 0:10:32.760 that I had heard that. The phrase I read was 0:10:33.200 --> 0:10:38.680 emotionally and impulsively returned the funding. So, I mean it 0:10:38.760 --> 0:10:41.400 was clear that he truly cared about the people who 0:10:41.400 --> 0:10:44.760 were working for him. So um. And that's something I 0:10:44.800 --> 0:10:46.920 think that's also important to remember is that we often 0:10:46.960 --> 0:10:50.800 in these stories we d personalized dehumanize the folks who 0:10:50.800 --> 0:10:53.319 are involved in it. Because so much secrecy is there, 0:10:53.360 --> 0:10:56.079 we don't really know that much about the people involved. 0:10:56.559 --> 0:10:59.719 But these are people, right, and they're probably friends, They 0:10:59.760 --> 0:11:02.720 hang out, they probably eat together, things like you would 0:11:02.760 --> 0:11:05.400 do with your friends. Yeah. So it's it's good to 0:11:05.440 --> 0:11:10.160 have this this touchstone to just remind ourselves that while 0:11:10.160 --> 0:11:12.520 we're talking about this, and while it lends itself to 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:17.719 the whole discussion of shadowy government projects, ultimately we're not 0:11:17.760 --> 0:11:24.120 talking about these giant organizations that are somehow sentient on 0:11:24.160 --> 0:11:28.480 their own and acting without direction, their actual people behind, 0:11:28.920 --> 0:11:33.320 not some faceless octopus. But no, that's that's the S 0:11:33.360 --> 0:11:38.000 four facility, not area right, faceless octopus lake look it up. 0:11:38.360 --> 0:11:41.800 I know the uh they got a little lovecraft craft. 0:11:42.040 --> 0:11:45.920 That's fair. So in nineteen sixty seven, a big thing happens, right, 0:11:45.960 --> 0:11:50.320 because the mission that we have always been trying to 0:11:50.360 --> 0:11:53.600 avoid in the United States at this time is to 0:11:53.880 --> 0:11:58.920 never have an aircraft captured. Right. But conversely, we want 0:11:58.920 --> 0:12:01.480 to capture aircraft, and in fact we were able to 0:12:01.520 --> 0:12:04.880 do that. The very first MiG twenty one plane arrived 0:12:04.880 --> 0:12:07.440 at Groom Lake, So that's a Soviet aircraft. This is 0:12:07.480 --> 0:12:12.160 then the the era of the U S s R UM. 0:12:12.200 --> 0:12:14.120 You know, I I grew up in the eighties, so 0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:16.520 I grew up when the USSR was still a thing. 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:21.000 And even at that point, even maybe especially in the eighties, 0:12:21.400 --> 0:12:24.800 something like the thought of a MiG twenty one being 0:12:24.840 --> 0:12:27.520 in US hands was a big, big deal because it 0:12:27.600 --> 0:12:31.040 meant that we could see what are our opponent in 0:12:31.080 --> 0:12:33.400 the Cold War was capable of. You could see what 0:12:33.480 --> 0:12:36.720 the military capabilities of this aircraft were, and it meant 0:12:36.720 --> 0:12:39.960 that the Area fifty one became a testing ground not 0:12:40.040 --> 0:12:43.120 just for developing technology here in the United States, but 0:12:43.360 --> 0:12:47.160 also for foreign technology, so that we could really understand 0:12:47.200 --> 0:12:51.000 what the capabilities were and therefore design our stuff to 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:54.720 meet and exceed those capabilities. So it becomes kind of 0:12:54.760 --> 0:12:58.520 this this game of uh, they get one square ahead, 0:12:58.559 --> 0:13:00.319 then we have to jump two squares a head, and 0:13:00.720 --> 0:13:02.600 what are they able to do and what can't they do? 0:13:03.280 --> 0:13:07.520 And we're continually reverse engineering. Right. So with the arrival 0:13:07.600 --> 0:13:10.600 of Soviet aircraft at the Groom Lake facility, because this 0:13:10.640 --> 0:13:12.520 MiG would not be the only one. There would be 0:13:12.520 --> 0:13:15.760 other Soviet aircraft that would join it. Throughout the years, 0:13:16.280 --> 0:13:19.440 the pilots begin to have a new name for the 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:22.640 restricted airspace, which in our last episode you may remember 0:13:22.640 --> 0:13:25.800 we talked about being the Groom Box or just the box. 0:13:26.240 --> 0:13:29.960 Now it's called Red Square because now it is the 0:13:30.120 --> 0:13:33.400 space the one place in the United States where you 0:13:33.480 --> 0:13:36.600 might see Soviet aircraft lying overhead. And again that starts 0:13:36.600 --> 0:13:40.240 to fuel a lot of conspiracy theories because you'd see 0:13:40.280 --> 0:13:43.720 a jet that doesn't look like anything you would have 0:13:43.760 --> 0:13:47.240 seen here in the US, and you see it fly overhead, 0:13:47.280 --> 0:13:50.040 and you wonder what the heck was that thing? And 0:13:50.040 --> 0:13:52.440 and that starts to you know, you start to fill 0:13:52.440 --> 0:13:53.960 in the blanks as much as you can, and if 0:13:54.000 --> 0:13:59.760 you're a veteran, then you say, uh, the Soviet plane. 0:14:00.200 --> 0:14:03.199 You go back to your to your your house, and 0:14:03.280 --> 0:14:05.240 you sit down your typewriter and you type up the 0:14:05.280 --> 0:14:08.600 first draft a Red Dawn, which one of us would 0:14:08.640 --> 0:14:13.240 reach that first. But of course with this they immediately 0:14:13.480 --> 0:14:18.520 begin uh retooling and working on new iterations of stealth 0:14:18.559 --> 0:14:22.440 craft right right, So they're earlier there earlier plan had 0:14:22.480 --> 0:14:27.040 been reduced radar footprint, but mainly go go so fast 0:14:27.040 --> 0:14:29.600 that people can't shoot you down. You know. It's a 0:14:29.960 --> 0:14:33.160 pretty simple plan, but it can be really effective. However, 0:14:33.200 --> 0:14:35.640 it can mean also that the aircraft itself is really dangerous. 0:14:35.680 --> 0:14:38.480 So they start looking at other ways of creating stealth technology, 0:14:38.480 --> 0:14:42.520 and engineers over at Lockheeds start to develop something called 0:14:42.760 --> 0:14:46.760 Have Blue which was a stealth aircraft, and it was 0:14:46.800 --> 0:14:49.560 a proof of concept aircraft. It wasn't meant to be 0:14:50.400 --> 0:14:54.080 a full production vehicle. Only two Have Blue aircraft were 0:14:54.080 --> 0:14:58.040 ever made, and they started as kind of ended up 0:14:58.080 --> 0:15:02.160 being a predecessor to the F one seventeen Nighthawk, which 0:15:02.480 --> 0:15:05.800 has another name that became famous in the early nineties, 0:15:06.440 --> 0:15:09.600 that would be the stealth fighter. So this is the 0:15:09.680 --> 0:15:11.840 even though it was not really a fighter by the way, 0:15:12.200 --> 0:15:14.280 just set it was meant to. It was meant it 0:15:14.320 --> 0:15:17.800 was that air took round combat vehicle, not an air 0:15:17.840 --> 0:15:19.800 to air vehicle, which is what you would typically call 0:15:19.840 --> 0:15:23.880 a fighter versus what the stealth what the Nighthawk actually was. 0:15:24.240 --> 0:15:26.440 So and this is the one that if you look 0:15:26.440 --> 0:15:28.960 at the pictures that has all those crazy funky angles 0:15:28.960 --> 0:15:32.120 on it that are meant to deflect radar so that 0:15:32.600 --> 0:15:37.160 the returning radar signals don't go back to the receiving station, 0:15:37.560 --> 0:15:39.960 which means that the receiving station doesn't get an accurate 0:15:39.960 --> 0:15:43.760 representation of where the aircraft is. Right, They get something, 0:15:43.920 --> 0:15:48.360 but it's not anything you can concretely trace, and hopefully 0:15:48.520 --> 0:15:51.400 in theory, not something you can shoot at. Right right, 0:15:51.520 --> 0:15:54.840 that's the whole point of it. So they have blue aircraft? Uh? 0:15:55.080 --> 0:15:58.400 Is that that predecessor? And so a lot of stealth 0:15:58.440 --> 0:16:02.120 technology was pioneer at Area fifty one, especially in the 0:16:02.120 --> 0:16:04.720 testing phase because again a lot of this stuff would 0:16:04.760 --> 0:16:08.120 end up being built at Lockheed's other facilities and then 0:16:08.200 --> 0:16:11.520 transported over to Area fifty one for testing. Now we're 0:16:11.520 --> 0:16:15.240 gonna skip ahead quite a bit. That was seventy seven 0:16:15.280 --> 0:16:18.320 with the have blue aircraft and e D two. You 0:16:18.400 --> 0:16:24.440 have tacit Blue? It does it? Does tacit Blue? Come on, 0:16:24.520 --> 0:16:27.520 let's go fight the kaiju um. It's a still aircraft 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:29.640 that was developed by Northrop. So this one was not 0:16:29.920 --> 0:16:33.320 a Lockheed aircraft as a Northrop aircraft and that's also 0:16:33.400 --> 0:16:36.920 tested room like. Only one was ever built and it 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:40.800 was retired in nineteen eighty five, So from two to 0:16:40.920 --> 0:16:44.560 eighty five this thing existed. Now we didn't know about 0:16:44.600 --> 0:16:49.200 it until nineties six, so this thing had been out 0:16:49.240 --> 0:16:52.920 of commission for more than a decade before the government said, oh, 0:16:52.960 --> 0:16:55.440 by the way, yeah we had this thing. It was 0:16:55.800 --> 0:16:58.280 a forerunner of the stealth technology that we used today. 0:16:58.280 --> 0:17:02.640 It's called Tacit Blue. And guys, you know, this is 0:17:02.680 --> 0:17:05.240 an audio podcast, which is in some ways is great 0:17:05.280 --> 0:17:06.880 because it means you can listen to it whenever you're 0:17:06.880 --> 0:17:09.080 doing anything like jogging or driving and you're not missing 0:17:09.080 --> 0:17:11.560 it out on anything. But it also means that we 0:17:11.600 --> 0:17:14.680 can't do it justice by saying this thing looks weird. 0:17:16.200 --> 0:17:20.080 It go google tacit Blue and take a look at 0:17:20.080 --> 0:17:22.800 this aircraft because it does not look like other aircraft. 0:17:22.840 --> 0:17:27.919 It just it's very oddly designed and shaped. So it 0:17:27.960 --> 0:17:31.440 certainly can tell you that the experiments in stealth technology 0:17:31.560 --> 0:17:34.440 were uh, they went in all sorts of you're looking 0:17:34.440 --> 0:17:38.760 at it right now, aren't you, isn't it? Yeah? It 0:17:38.800 --> 0:17:43.480 looks like if you've seen a sci fi film made 0:17:43.480 --> 0:17:46.879 in the seventies about how crazy the two thousands, so 0:17:46.920 --> 0:17:49.200 you're gonna be this is a plane they would fly 0:17:49.440 --> 0:17:52.360 you can see that plane flying overhead during clockwork orange. 0:17:52.560 --> 0:17:55.639 Oh yeah, because with all the white, uh, the white 0:17:55.680 --> 0:18:00.960 furniture that's in that Yeah. So in nineteen four, Area 0:18:01.000 --> 0:18:04.399 fifty one, the Groom Lake Facility petitions Congress for an 0:18:04.400 --> 0:18:08.679 additional eighty nine thousand acres of land. Meanwhile, you've got 0:18:09.160 --> 0:18:13.520 armed guards who patrol the area, essentially patrolling that additional 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:16.960 eighty nine thousand acres, turning people away, even though it 0:18:16.960 --> 0:18:20.560 wouldn't be till that the request would actually be approved 0:18:20.560 --> 0:18:24.040 by Congress. So technically they were kind of acting like 0:18:24.080 --> 0:18:27.720 the land was theirs before it officially had become theirs. 0:18:27.760 --> 0:18:30.520 And you might wonder, well, why were they asking for 0:18:30.560 --> 0:18:33.560 all this land? I mean, besides being able to expand 0:18:33.560 --> 0:18:36.280 outward for the testing purposes. Part of it was that 0:18:36.720 --> 0:18:39.240 Area fifty one, by the eighties was starting to become 0:18:39.240 --> 0:18:40.960 one of those things that people were getting more and 0:18:40.960 --> 0:18:45.280 more interested in. Right exactly, because at this time we 0:18:45.440 --> 0:18:49.080 see as some of the what will later become the 0:18:49.480 --> 0:18:53.399 big known conspiracy theories about Area fifty one or about 0:18:53.400 --> 0:18:57.240 Groom Lake. We see these taking root roots because there 0:18:57.280 --> 0:19:00.840 are now people who are able to say, well, I 0:19:00.960 --> 0:19:04.200 heard some rumors, I lived nearby. I drove out there, 0:19:04.359 --> 0:19:09.040 and sure enough somebody showed up. Uh, and they'll say, 0:19:09.080 --> 0:19:12.240 I don't know, was that the United Nations or was 0:19:12.280 --> 0:19:15.639 that the US government? And they and they drove me away. 0:19:16.480 --> 0:19:20.160 And so now it begins to look like a real thing, 0:19:20.400 --> 0:19:23.240 and you still don't know exactly what's going on. Yeah, 0:19:23.240 --> 0:19:27.320 and there were a couple of of points, like natural 0:19:28.119 --> 0:19:32.880 um hills, natural ledges that were not too far from 0:19:32.880 --> 0:19:36.879 the facility that originally we're not we're not within that 0:19:36.880 --> 0:19:39.359 that border, right, so you could crawl up there. Yeah, 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:41.600 if you hiked out there, which would be quite a 0:19:41.640 --> 0:19:43.680 hike anyway, but because you know, and you'd have to 0:19:43.720 --> 0:19:46.040 be pretty well equipped to do it, but you could, 0:19:46.080 --> 0:19:47.960 in theory, go and hike out at one of these 0:19:48.040 --> 0:19:52.359 little points of interest, set up a telescope or binoculars, 0:19:52.640 --> 0:19:54.680 and maybe not get a real good idea of what 0:19:54.720 --> 0:19:56.760 was going on, but at least see that there's activity 0:19:56.800 --> 0:20:00.040 going on. And especially if you're there toward dusk and 0:20:00.080 --> 0:20:01.960 you're looking out I mean, if you're looking out in 0:20:01.960 --> 0:20:03.760 the daytime, it's hard anyway, because you get a lot 0:20:03.760 --> 0:20:06.600 of distortion from the heat and sound the desert. But 0:20:06.680 --> 0:20:08.720 at nighttime, if you're out there looking at it, and 0:20:09.000 --> 0:20:11.960 and everything's lit up. You could you see that stuff 0:20:12.000 --> 0:20:14.120 is going on. You might even see aircraft taking off 0:20:14.160 --> 0:20:16.320 and landing, although you know, you might not have a 0:20:16.359 --> 0:20:19.439 real good look at what they how they're shaped. But 0:20:19.520 --> 0:20:21.200 it was one of those things that became a concern. 0:20:21.280 --> 0:20:26.440 And so while they didn't have official ownership of that land, 0:20:26.480 --> 0:20:29.760 they were discouraging people from being there. And by day, 0:20:29.840 --> 0:20:32.840 I mean, uh, some folks in camouflage. We'll talk about 0:20:32.880 --> 0:20:36.199 them in a mythology episode because because they have they 0:20:36.240 --> 0:20:40.280 have a reputation, like they're called the Camo dudes. We'll 0:20:40.280 --> 0:20:42.480 talk about that. And it's not just not just a couple, 0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:45.760 there's actually quite a few of all the yeah, it's 0:20:45.760 --> 0:20:49.800 our teaser for part three exactly. So some citizens also 0:20:50.200 --> 0:20:53.359 point out that it's not strictly legal for them to 0:20:53.400 --> 0:20:57.960 be told to leave land that doesn't belong to the facility. 0:20:58.160 --> 0:21:00.520 You know, it's like the stud land is belong to you, 0:21:00.600 --> 0:21:03.320 So therefore, what what authority do you have to tell 0:21:03.359 --> 0:21:07.199 me to leave this place? Um, which that would end 0:21:07.240 --> 0:21:10.639 up fueling the facility really petitioning to get access to 0:21:10.680 --> 0:21:14.680 this this light. And and you know, realistically, if somebody 0:21:14.760 --> 0:21:19.120 were to go to UH Quarter or to local law 0:21:19.200 --> 0:21:21.879 enforcement and say, hey, what's going on here, There is 0:21:22.160 --> 0:21:26.360 no chance that it would go anywhere. And the those 0:21:26.800 --> 0:21:31.359 suspicions is very interesting. Those suspicions and those concerns were 0:21:31.560 --> 0:21:37.800 finally verified in so all through this time the government 0:21:37.840 --> 0:21:41.280 is still saying there's nothing out there, or that they 0:21:41.359 --> 0:21:44.320 cannot comment on it, or that it's a weather station, 0:21:44.359 --> 0:21:47.440 that anything other than what it actually is. Right, and internally, 0:21:47.600 --> 0:21:50.000 at the same time, they're telling each other, we have 0:21:50.119 --> 0:21:55.240 to keep security at the maximum level, the most unreasonable level, 0:21:55.320 --> 0:21:59.080 because people cannot find out about this, and if we 0:21:59.160 --> 0:22:04.480 slip at all, someone will yeah, and then lives. National 0:22:04.520 --> 0:22:10.240 security everything's at stake. So that included telling companies that 0:22:10.280 --> 0:22:15.639 operated satellites, hey, this this area of Nevada, you can't 0:22:15.640 --> 0:22:20.880 photograph that. You cannot image that, and either they would 0:22:20.920 --> 0:22:25.240 prevent companies from imaging that whole area of Nevada, or 0:22:25.320 --> 0:22:27.840 if those images were gathered, they would demand to have 0:22:28.000 --> 0:22:32.240 them censored so that the facility itself would not show 0:22:32.320 --> 0:22:36.679 up on satellite photography, which worked fine until when a 0:22:36.760 --> 0:22:40.880 Soviet satellite flew overhead and took images of very fifty one. 0:22:41.440 --> 0:22:44.240 Here's the thing that the CIA finds a little frustrating. 0:22:44.720 --> 0:22:48.919 They do not have authority over the Soviet Union. If 0:22:48.960 --> 0:22:51.960 they did, their jobs would be so much easier during 0:22:52.000 --> 0:22:55.840 this time. But because the Soviets ended up flying a 0:22:55.880 --> 0:22:59.520 satellite overhead taking images, it meant that the cat was 0:22:59.560 --> 0:23:03.160 out of the bag. So those images would end up 0:23:03.600 --> 0:23:07.560 being published in an article for Popular Science, which was 0:23:07.640 --> 0:23:10.680 the first time that most people got a real look 0:23:11.080 --> 0:23:15.439 and granted a far overhead look of what area fifty 0:23:15.440 --> 0:23:18.600 one actually looks like. You haven't had a few people 0:23:18.640 --> 0:23:21.080 try and sneak some photos here and there from a 0:23:21.160 --> 0:23:24.920