Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and a lot of all things tech. Is time for
Speaker 1: a classic episode. This episode originally published back on September two,
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen. It is the first part of a multi
Speaker 1: part episode, so we're gonna be doing this over the
Speaker 1: next couple of Fridays. This is titled The History of
Speaker 1: Area fifty one, Part one. Area fifty one has gone through, obviously,
Speaker 1: cycles of infamy as being a top secret location where
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff whereas going on. Some people just said, okay,
Speaker 1: well that's just it's it is a top secret facility,
Speaker 1: but it's one where regular terrestrial kind of aircraft are
Speaker 1: being tested. Others were saying, no, no, no no. Area fifty
Speaker 1: one is a secret base where alien technology exists and
Speaker 1: is being studied. Um, so let's listen in on the
Speaker 1: actual history of Area fifty one. So we decided I
Speaker 1: had talked about doing an episode about Area fifty one
Speaker 1: for years. Threatening might be the better word for it.
Speaker 1: I've been threatening to do an episode about Area fifty
Speaker 1: one for years. And just it was one of those
Speaker 1: things that we kept on putting off because it's a
Speaker 1: it's a big topic, and it's so big that Ben
Speaker 1: has been very generous with his time and he and
Speaker 1: I are going to be doing three episodes about this subject.
Speaker 1: So the first two episodes are a history of this
Speaker 1: facility and what what is actually documented as having happened there,
Speaker 1: the real history, mind you. The third episode will be
Speaker 1: the mythology of Area fifty one and some of the
Speaker 1: stories that have been attributed to that area, some of
Speaker 1: which border on um whacka doodle. I think it's a
Speaker 1: good way of putting in. Yeah. So yeah, So we're
Speaker 1: gonna cover all of that. So this episode we're gonna
Speaker 1: look at the history. And if you've heard the term
Speaker 1: Area fifty one, but you've only seen the depictions in
Speaker 1: pop culture, like in science fiction, you probably aren't entirely
Speaker 1: sure what it is now. First of all, Area fifty
Speaker 1: one isn't necessarily the the proper designation for this facility.
Speaker 1: It's the popular one, but really it's more often referred
Speaker 1: to within within UM documents official documentation as Groom Lake,
Speaker 1: and that's because there's a big dry lake bed in
Speaker 1: Nevada called Groom Lake. And this facility is built right
Speaker 1: on there, right, and it's built there for a reason.
Speaker 1: It's in Nevada. And you you've got some great notes
Speaker 1: on this all the way down to latitude and longitude. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because because this was the thing, you know, for years
Speaker 1: and years and years, the government would would very very
Speaker 1: carefully disavow any inform any knowledge of such a facility.
Speaker 1: They would say that, you know, nothing out there exists
Speaker 1: Groom Lake. What what is that? Why would you groom
Speaker 1: a late there's purpose a dry lake. You are speaking
Speaker 1: crazy talk. So yeah, but but one of the big
Speaker 1: reasons why it's out there is cause a dry lake
Speaker 1: bed in Nevada tends to be pretty darn flat. And
Speaker 1: if you want to say have a remote location where
Speaker 1: you can develop and test secret aircraft, and you need
Speaker 1: that space in order to take off and land the aircraft,
Speaker 1: a big dry lake beds a pretty good you know location, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fantastic. It's also far enough inland that the any
Speaker 1: foreign observers at the time of Groom Lakes construction would
Speaker 1: have a really difficult time observing anything happened there without
Speaker 1: being noticed. First absolutely, because at the time. This is
Speaker 1: before we get into satellites, right, So if you are
Speaker 1: trying to spy upon the construction of Area fifty one,
Speaker 1: it was built back in the fifties, then you essentially
Speaker 1: had to have a spy plane flying over the United States,
Speaker 1: which was a pretty risky thing to do. But meanwhile,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what was going on at Area fifty one
Speaker 1: was the development and testing of spy planes. So it's
Speaker 1: also known as Homey Airport. That's more. That's a more
Speaker 1: recent moniker over there. Um and it's uh, it's probably
Speaker 1: I have it in my notes. I have it as
Speaker 1: the most famous secret facility, worst kept. Yeah, it's the
Speaker 1: it's the secret facility everyone has heard of, which is
Speaker 1: kind of funny. But but they still managed to keep
Speaker 1: the actual activities within the the facility itself largely secret.
Speaker 1: There's been some reports that have come out. Some of
Speaker 1: them are credible, some of them are less so. But
Speaker 1: it's it's one of those things that that secrecy has
Speaker 1: also led to some serious issues that will get to
Speaker 1: more in the second part. Some things that have happened
Speaker 1: that that bring up the question of accountability, like how
Speaker 1: can you be accountable if you can't acknowledge the stuff
Speaker 1: that goes on at that site, right, And it's no
Speaker 1: wonder we know that whenever there is a lack of transparency,
Speaker 1: we find a plethora and I'm using that word correctly
Speaker 1: of speculation, absolutely, because we have to fill in the gaps. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a Hitchcock movie. The monster you don't see
Speaker 1: is always going to be worse than the monster on screen. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: But let's go to UH as as they say in
Speaker 1: Alice in Wonderland, let's start at the beginning. What do
Speaker 1: you say? Absolutely, So let's say that you are uh,
Speaker 1: you are a country that is involved in a little
Speaker 1: altercation called World War two, and as a result, you
Speaker 1: need to start building out your own military uh capabilities. Well,
Speaker 1: the United States was very much concerned with this and
Speaker 1: started to look for all sorts of places where they
Speaker 1: could build various airport, landing strips or military purposes. So
Speaker 1: they identified this one spot. And you mentioned I had
Speaker 1: the latitude and longitude. I'm gonna go ahead and give it.
Speaker 1: It's at thirty seven degrees fourteen minutes north latitude and
Speaker 1: one fifteen degrees forty eight minutes west longitude, which means
Speaker 1: it's right. It's within a hundred miles or hundred sixty
Speaker 1: one kilometers of Las Vegas. Uh, that's that's to the
Speaker 1: south of Every fifty one. And then the closest town
Speaker 1: is actually called Rachel, Nevada, and that's about twenty five
Speaker 1: miles or forty kilometers to the north. And uh, the
Speaker 1: the original purpose of the facility, which wasn't really even
Speaker 1: a facility, was just a couple of landing strips, like
Speaker 1: more like a little compound or small airport. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was meant to be a training place for gunner schools,
Speaker 1: for for people who are actually working on on gun
Speaker 1: are positions within aircraft. So it's a training facility. And
Speaker 1: uh it was created by the Army Air Corps. Notice
Speaker 1: we didn't say Army Air Force. Yeah, this is before
Speaker 1: the Air Force was ever a thing. So yeah, it
Speaker 1: was Army Air Corps. Uh. They ended up using it,
Speaker 1: like I said, during the forties. By the end of it,
Speaker 1: they essentially they didn't formally decommission it because there wasn't
Speaker 1: really enough there to do that. Yeah, they just sort
Speaker 1: of stopped using it. Yeah, they're kind of like, well,
Speaker 1: the war is done, let's pack up and go and
Speaker 1: they left it kind of where it was. Now, that
Speaker 1: didn't mean that that was the only you only organization
Speaker 1: to use that area. Uh, there was something else that happened.
Speaker 1: So in the nineteen fifties, and this is jumping around
Speaker 1: a little bit because I don't actually have it right
Speaker 1: here in my notes, But in the nineteen fifties, two
Speaker 1: things are going on. One is you have the rise
Speaker 1: of the Cold War, which means that now we no
Speaker 1: longer have an active armed conflict going on, but we
Speaker 1: do have an escalating political conflict between the United States
Speaker 1: and the Soviet Union. And a bunch of spine, Yes,
Speaker 1: a bunch of spine, which would factor in heavily. We
Speaker 1: also had that same time on both sides. Both the
Speaker 1: United States and Soviet Union had an era of developing
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons. Right, so the part of the developing them
Speaker 1: was testing them to make sure that one they worked
Speaker 1: and two you you wanted you wanted other countries to
Speaker 1: know you had them without knowing specifically what your armament was,
Speaker 1: right and without you explicitly admitting that you had them either, right,
Speaker 1: it was tricky stuff. So the the waste lands of
Speaker 1: Nevada were often areas that uh, the Atomic Energy Commission
Speaker 1: would use to test this stuff. And there was this
Speaker 1: grid of land that they were using to test various
Speaker 1: types of atomic weapons, including some that were developed by
Speaker 1: Edward Teller. Joe McCormick and I recorded an episode about
Speaker 1: five technologies that were supposed to bring an into World
Speaker 1: War but didn't. And Edward Teller is the father of
Speaker 1: the hydrogen bombs, so several of his designs were tested
Speaker 1: in this area. That grid had thirty squares in it,
Speaker 1: and each square was called an area alright, so he
Speaker 1: had areas one through Area thirty. This particular parcel of
Speaker 1: land where the former Army Air Corps facility was was
Speaker 1: more or less adjacent to a square known as Area fifteen.
Speaker 1: So it's possible that the Area fifty one name comes
Speaker 1: from transposing the one in five and saying, all right,
Speaker 1: well that was Area fifteen. This is Area fifty one.
Speaker 1: It was not part of the grid originally. In fact,
Speaker 1: when when the facility was constructed, the grid had not expanded.
Speaker 1: It did expand gradually. I think it eventually had something
Speaker 1: like two squares to it. Testing increased and they built
Speaker 1: the fake towns and everything right right, yeah, And then
Speaker 1: you see Indiana Jones getting the refrigerator. Knew. I knew
Speaker 1: we were going to say that, Yeah, that's the new
Speaker 1: Jump the Shark, isn't it. Yeah. Yeah, there's Jump the
Speaker 1: Shark and Jump in the Fridge, which which did not
Speaker 1: work out for Punky Brewster but did work out for
Speaker 1: Indiana Jones. Um. So, I mean, while we've got this
Speaker 1: testing going on in this remote part of Nevada, which
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're aware of. This turns out
Speaker 1: that if you're testing lots of nuclear weapons in an area,
Speaker 1: it tends to be a deterrent for people to come
Speaker 1: snooping around. Oh that's what we did wrong. We weren't
Speaker 1: we weren't actively testing new devices around the office. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, that's true. There's a there's a profound effect.
Speaker 1: And I know it sounds like we're jokingly noting something
Speaker 1: that is glaringly obvious. But even at that time, before
Speaker 1: there had been the before we had had such extensive
Speaker 1: research on the effects of this sort of weaponry. Uh,
Speaker 1: everybody kind of saw the writing on the wall. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So at that same time, like you were saying, with
Speaker 1: all the spying going on, and there was a lot
Speaker 1: of it, we've we've done episodes on tech stuff about
Speaker 1: spy tech before, and we've even done episodes on specific
Speaker 1: spy planes, like the the YouTube plane being one of
Speaker 1: the most famous. There needed to be some way of
Speaker 1: developing this technology and testing it without people being aware
Speaker 1: of it, so that we can maintain that superiority of
Speaker 1: folks not knowing what we're we are and are not
Speaker 1: capable of doing so. That led to the Central Intelligence
Speaker 1: Agency trying to find a good spot for this. And
Speaker 1: you might say, wait, the c i A. Aren't they
Speaker 1: for an intelligence They are foreign intelligence. So these were
Speaker 1: going to be mostly spy plane spying on other places,
Speaker 1: not the United States. We have plenty of agencies that
Speaker 1: are here to spy on us, and it isn't the
Speaker 1: Air Force already involved. So that's what you would think, right, like,
Speaker 1: why why the CIA? Why not the Air Force? Well,
Speaker 1: it comes down to and been I know you've heard
Speaker 1: this to black budgets, right, Yeah, the idea that you
Speaker 1: need to have a budget that is impenetrable people. People
Speaker 1: approve them, but they cannot see what the budgets are
Speaker 1: actually for. And it's all under the umbrella of national security.
Speaker 1: And the reason that this exists now. I know these
Speaker 1: get a tough time nowadays, and and they should. There's
Speaker 1: a great argument for the transparency at this time. Just
Speaker 1: to be fair we have to play devil's advocate and
Speaker 1: say that the argument against transparency is, of course, during
Speaker 1: the Cold War, when people are trying to mask their capabilities,
Speaker 1: anyone with the right amount of subterfusion influence could find
Speaker 1: uh something that wasn't a black budget all the way
Speaker 1: down to individual components, the literal nuts and bolts. So
Speaker 1: at the time their argument will be that this is
Speaker 1: necessity and if you want something secret, you put it
Speaker 1: under At this time in America history, you put it
Speaker 1: under the CIA. Yeah. Yeah, because the Air Force would
Speaker 1: end up having a budget that was reviewable by Congress,
Speaker 1: right exactly. And so this would at least mean that
Speaker 1: everyone in Congress and plus all the congressional aids would
Speaker 1: have access to those budgets, which could mean that that's
Speaker 1: a security risk that that information could leak out and
Speaker 1: it would get into the hands of of of foreign
Speaker 1: agents that would end up having the advantage because now
Speaker 1: they know what we were capable of. By having it
Speaker 1: as a black budget, you take that out. It also
Speaker 1: means that again, you don't have that transparency and you
Speaker 1: leave the world wide open to just speculate on what's
Speaker 1: actually going on. So there's a there's another edge to
Speaker 1: that sword. So the CIA is in charge of this.
Speaker 1: They work with the Air Force, but I mean when
Speaker 1: we talk about testing these planes, it was CIA pilots
Speaker 1: that we're doing the testing, right, not Air Force pilots.
Speaker 1: It's very important distinct. So they were civilians who then
Speaker 1: got classification of top secret access through the c I A.
Speaker 1: I think I've talked about this before, way way back.
Speaker 1: But top secret, by the way, does not mean you
Speaker 1: automatically have access to everything that's classified top secret right
Speaker 1: spot on intelligence at that level is often what they
Speaker 1: call compartmentalized altely. Yeah, so you have access to one
Speaker 1: specific branch, but anything outside of that you don't. So
Speaker 1: you may be able to go to the very furthest
Speaker 1: lengths in that branch, but it doesn't mean you have
Speaker 1: access to everything. It doesn't mean, for instance, So then
Speaker 1: just to illustrate this, the c i A pilot let's
Speaker 1: call him Mr. Smith because that's not a sketchy name,
Speaker 1: that's perfect. Mr Smith might be They call it being
Speaker 1: read onto a program. So Mr Smith might be read
Speaker 1: onto a program for a particular plane, or even something
Speaker 1: as small as just a particular engine or design of
Speaker 1: a plane. Everything else about that is a mystery, and
Speaker 1: it is understood that he is not even supposed to
Speaker 1: pretend that he thought of asking. We're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick break, but will be back to talk about more
Speaker 1: of the history of Area fifty one in just a moment.
Speaker 1: Everyone who was working at Area fifty one, whether you're
Speaker 1: a pilot or an engineer, you were only really allowed
Speaker 1: to know about whatever it was your specific project was
Speaker 1: was concerned with, right, yeah, Yeah, even if you're in
Speaker 1: the private industry, which also was involved with this. A
Speaker 1: couple of people are familiar with this story. You're probably
Speaker 1: waiting and they're saying, Jonathan Ben sure, the CIA, the
Speaker 1: Air Force, but why aren't you talking about the people
Speaker 1: who actually built the planes. So you're talking about Lockheed
Speaker 1: hold On one. So Lockheed is a military contractor among
Speaker 1: other things, but they do a lot of work with
Speaker 1: the United States military, and so Lockheed was going to
Speaker 1: be the company that was largely responsible for building the
Speaker 1: planes that we're going to be tested at Area fifty one.
Speaker 1: So when we get down to this point where the
Speaker 1: CIA is ready to find a site for this, they
Speaker 1: work with Lockeed And there is a designer at Lockeed
Speaker 1: who is absolutely famous in the spy world, Clarence Kelly Johnson. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's you if you've heard some of the stories about
Speaker 1: this stuff. He's definitely famous in the spy world. But
Speaker 1: he is a I think we're a family show here,
Speaker 1: so I'll just say he is a gosh darn good designer. Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, he's the top dog at Lockey.
Speaker 1: Jonathan earlier mentioned the YouTube spy playing that is our
Speaker 1: boy Kelly. Yeah. He also ended up largely defining skunk
Speaker 1: Works at Lockeed, and we've done an episode on Tech
Speaker 1: Stuff about skunk Works as well. Skunk Works now is
Speaker 1: just a general term that a lot of companies used
Speaker 1: to describe their secret R and D projects that aren't
Speaker 1: aren't meant for public consumption. This is stuff that is
Speaker 1: going to end up becoming part of products maybe five
Speaker 1: or ten years down the line. But that was defined
Speaker 1: at Lockheed. That was the top secret development lab where
Speaker 1: anyone outside of that lab was not aware of what
Speaker 1: was going on, and even people within the lab may
Speaker 1: only be aware of very small parts of what is
Speaker 1: going on. So uh with you two and skunk Works. Obviously,
Speaker 1: he had already kind of developed this reputation of being
Speaker 1: the go to guy when it comes to this kind
Speaker 1: of thing. So the CIA consulted with him as well
Speaker 1: as some other military folks, and they started looking around. Now,
Speaker 1: Johnson had said that the facility needed to be remote
Speaker 1: enough to escape casual attention, so you couldn't have it
Speaker 1: close to any kind of metropolitan area or or settlement. Um,
Speaker 1: it also had to be close enough to a major
Speaker 1: city so that you could get supplies for all the
Speaker 1: stuff you need in order to do the testing, the
Speaker 1: building and and all of that kind of stuff. Now,
Speaker 1: a lot of these vehicles were not actually constructed at
Speaker 1: Area fifty one. They'd be built in another facility and
Speaker 1: then would be transported Area fifty one for all the testing.
Speaker 1: But even so, like you have to get all the
Speaker 1: food there, you have to you know, all the all
Speaker 1: the basic the fuel that you would need, you would
Speaker 1: have to have all of that shipped to Area fifty
Speaker 1: one in some way. So there were a lot of
Speaker 1: logistics involved, which meant that it had to be far
Speaker 1: enough away from a city to avoid uh notice, but
Speaker 1: not so far as to make it impossible to get
Speaker 1: stuff there. It had to be inconvenient but not inaccessible.
Speaker 1: There's a Goldilocks zone here, uh, sort of like in
Speaker 1: Star Trek where everybody's looking for an M class planet.
Speaker 1: That's a very good way of putting it. So as
Speaker 1: they were looking around, uh, there was a member on
Speaker 1: the search team named Colonel Osman Ritland who had actually
Speaker 1: trained at the gunnery school that had existed at Groom Lake,
Speaker 1: and so he said, hey, you know, there was this
Speaker 1: place that I had to work at when during World
Speaker 1: War Two that might be worth checking out. And so
Speaker 1: they ended up going there and as soon as Johnson
Speaker 1: saw it, he said that that was the perfect spot.
Speaker 1: It would mean that they would have to do obviously
Speaker 1: a lot of work to make it ready for it
Speaker 1: to actually be a test facility, but he said, this,
Speaker 1: this meets all the requirements I had in mind. So
Speaker 1: he called it Paradise Ranch, right, which, uh, you have
Speaker 1: a great note about this. Yeah, it says, uh, it's
Speaker 1: a little more attractive than quote site adjacent to a
Speaker 1: former nuclear test area end quote. Uh. In fact, it
Speaker 1: wasn't even former, it was a current nuclear test area.
Speaker 1: There were times when the Atomic Energy Commission in later
Speaker 1: the Nevada Test site ended up having to evacuate Area
Speaker 1: fifty one because they were going to be doing some
Speaker 1: tests and it's possible that wind could carry radioactive particles
Speaker 1: over towards the facility. I mean, you win some, you
Speaker 1: lose some, right, Yeah. So the other term you could
Speaker 1: have used is desolate hell whole, but that also not
Speaker 1: so attractive if you're trying to get uh, civilians interested
Speaker 1: in helping out. So they actually did employ civilians to
Speaker 1: help construct, right, Yeah, from us surrounding Las Vegas area
Speaker 1: and from Rachel, Nevada as well. Yeah, and it meant
Speaker 1: it meant that people had to pass some pretty stringent
Speaker 1: background checks and they had to sign silence oaths. And
Speaker 1: for the most part, people have been really good at
Speaker 1: keeping those oaths. I mean there's only been a few
Speaker 1: people who have ever talked about Area fifty one, which
Speaker 1: is pretty amazing because we talked about how it's really
Speaker 1: hard to keep secrets, right, especially in that that difficulty
Speaker 1: increases exponentially the more people involved with this secret. But
Speaker 1: in this in this part too, It's important for us
Speaker 1: to remember that even the people who had signed the
Speaker 1: secrets didn't really have that much access. They were they
Speaker 1: were limited by necessity, which meant that even first of all,
Speaker 1: if you were to communicate outside of area fifty one,
Speaker 1: it would very quickly become obvious who was talking because
Speaker 1: it would all be dependent upon what they knew. So
Speaker 1: if you were talking about stuff that you knew but
Speaker 1: you didn't know other things, that narrows down that list
Speaker 1: of suspects, and there could be some pretty serious penalties.
Speaker 1: We're talking like scary, scary penalties that could go against
Speaker 1: you if you were to spell the beans and those people. Also,
Speaker 1: this is a side note, but I think this is
Speaker 1: a illustrative of the kind of scrutiny that these folks
Speaker 1: were under. Afterwards. The I R s UH keeps a
Speaker 1: tab for on these people afterward to verify that they're
Speaker 1: not suddenly coming into inexplicable amounts of income, to make
Speaker 1: sure that they're not like secrets, right what even though
Speaker 1: if you I mean, even though, if you think about it, man,
Speaker 1: those secrets I'm air quoting so hard here, folks. Those
Speaker 1: secrets would be things like, um, I was paid to
Speaker 1: drive a truck from Rachel to this location drop off fuel.
Speaker 1: Right and and I did you know there were three gates?
Speaker 1: I got into one or something like that. Um, And
Speaker 1: that's you know, that's for sake of example. I don't
Speaker 1: know if there was a number of tiered gates. Please
Speaker 1: don't don't come after us. We have not been there,
Speaker 1: nor have we tried to look. Um. So, the during
Speaker 1: the lifetime of the the test site, which again bordered
Speaker 1: Area fifty one, it was pretty active. They did a
Speaker 1: hundred and five above ground explosions and more than eight
Speaker 1: hundred underground explosions. They would do their last test in
Speaker 1: nine two, So this was kind of a just a
Speaker 1: fact of life at Area fifty one, is that nuclear
Speaker 1: testing was going on. I mean several miles away. I
Speaker 1: don't want to give the implication that it was like
Speaker 1: just outside the gates, but it was certainly close enough
Speaker 1: for it to be a concerned Yeah. Because and also
Speaker 1: a lot of people are probably surprised to hear that
Speaker 1: that continued until nineteen two. So, you know, most people
Speaker 1: will place the end of the Cold War in the
Speaker 1: late eighties. But this doesn't mean that the testing would
Speaker 1: stop completely because just as a cold war has kind
Speaker 1: of a hazy conflict zone. It also has a hazy
Speaker 1: beginning and end, whereas we can trace World War Two
Speaker 1: with some concrete dates, right yeah, I mean, if nothing else,
Speaker 1: you can go with the declaration of war and the
Speaker 1: treaties that ended it exactly. But when you get down
Speaker 1: to this, you also have the first acknowledgement that there
Speaker 1: was actually something there, which comes in a booklet that
Speaker 1: the Atomic Energy Commission put out that was titled Background
Speaker 1: on Nevada Nuclear Tests, and it came out in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty seven, and it mentions a facility at Groom Lake.
Speaker 1: But in that one it's called the Watertown Project, and
Speaker 1: that it was meant to study the weather. Ah, And
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen, remember that last fact, because it comes
Speaker 1: into play later. Right in two episode we will cover
Speaker 1: the the weather part of the mythology of Area fifty one.
Speaker 1: It's interesting, though, because it gives you yet another name
Speaker 1: for this place. You know, I tend to call it
Speaker 1: Area fifty one when I mentioned it to other folks,
Speaker 1: I usually say Groom Lake because that's the official designation.
Speaker 1: But Area fifty one, being probably the popular term, is
Speaker 1: the one that I tend to say in this in
Speaker 1: my notes here. Yeah, Area fifty one is sort of
Speaker 1: the street name for groom Lake nickname, but there's uh.
Speaker 1: I think one thing that we should talk about real
Speaker 1: quick is the nature of secrecy, because we we mentioned
Speaker 1: a little bit about how people who are helping, even
Speaker 1: in a small way, had things that are essentially gag
Speaker 1: orders for life, and again that this comes under the
Speaker 1: curtain of national security or the purview rather, and which
Speaker 1: gives the the acting government agencies tremendous powers in pursuit
Speaker 1: of that goal. So one of the big questions is,
Speaker 1: you know, if Area fifty one was first publicly knowledge
Speaker 1: shall be under another name in nineteen fifty seven, then
Speaker 1: clearly the people at least in Rachel, Nevada knew something
Speaker 1: was there, just like the people in the town surrounding
Speaker 1: Oak Ridge knew something was there. Yeah. And the fact
Speaker 1: that you had people commuting in from places like Las
Speaker 1: Vegas or from California who are flying in the construction
Speaker 1: crews who are coming in to build out the facility
Speaker 1: meant that there's some folks who know that something is
Speaker 1: going on. They may not know the full extent of
Speaker 1: what the purposes, but It's what's really interesting is that
Speaker 1: a lot of the documents that have come out since then,
Speaker 1: most of them avoid naming the facility at all, or
Speaker 1: the name has been redacted, it's been blacked out. Um.
Speaker 1: And a lot of the information I've read has suggested
Speaker 1: that in the two or three times that it hasn't
Speaker 1: been that it's been in an official document, they think
Speaker 1: that it was an oversight, that someone had failed to
Speaker 1: black it out exactly. Yeah, they were like, do you
Speaker 1: have another sharpie? And no one's got so. Yeah. It's
Speaker 1: funny that the only reason why we really have a
Speaker 1: lot of information on it at all is because it
Speaker 1: could just have been an oversight from someone who failed
Speaker 1: to mark that part out. Thank you for being in
Speaker 1: a hurry at work, uh, the Uncle Sam employees. But
Speaker 1: but with this idea about privacy, one of the big
Speaker 1: questions is, well, of course we know it's near Las Vegas, right,
Speaker 1: Las Vegas at this point already big airport hub, right,
Speaker 1: So so how do they keep these planes from figuring
Speaker 1: out what's going on? Yeah? They ended up creating a
Speaker 1: restricted air zone where not even military aircraft were allowed
Speaker 1: to pass through without authorization, and by authorization, I usually
Speaker 1: mean that the military aircraft probably took off from Area
Speaker 1: fifty one, went on some sort of test flight which
Speaker 1: could go outside the restricted airspace, but then would be
Speaker 1: allowed to come back in if it were any other
Speaker 1: military flight. Let's say it's a training exercise from Nellis
Speaker 1: or something along those lines. They expressly were told they
Speaker 1: could not fly through this particular zone, which originally was
Speaker 1: five by nine nautical miles, which is about nine by
Speaker 1: seventeen kilometers, and the uh it went all the way
Speaker 1: up to space. It's time for another quick break, but
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. So not the time. Your commercial
Speaker 1: aircraft tended to fly at an altitude of around twenty ft,
Speaker 1: and your military aircraft might go up to forty feet.
Speaker 1: But we're talking spy planes that were designed to fly
Speaker 1: at sixty ft or higher. So these altitudes meant that,
Speaker 1: you know, you didn't want aircraft coming in and seeing
Speaker 1: something flying above them. They could actually have a pretty
Speaker 1: good view of that. In fact, that did happen quite
Speaker 1: a few times, which lent uh some it end up
Speaker 1: being not as big an issue because a lot of
Speaker 1: people assumed it was something otherworldly that they were seeing. Right. Yes,
Speaker 1: and this this is one of the big facts that
Speaker 1: later will later we'll see um provides an explanation to
Speaker 1: some of this because at this time, for people surrounding
Speaker 1: the area who were just you know, just your regular civilians,
Speaker 1: they would they would eventually turn to one another and say,
Speaker 1: what the heck is going on up there? Did you
Speaker 1: see that? Well, especially since a lot of these test
Speaker 1: flights took place at night, so instead of being able
Speaker 1: to actually see an aircraft, all you see are the lights.
Speaker 1: And some of these aircraft were designed to travel at
Speaker 1: remarkable speeds, particularly compared against the state of the art
Speaker 1: aircraft in other fields, like a commercial aircraft, could not
Speaker 1: hope to keep up with some of the Some of
Speaker 1: these were going mock three. I mean, we're talking supersonic
Speaker 1: speeds here, and at that speed, seeing a light travel
Speaker 1: that quickly could be a real head scratcher if you
Speaker 1: didn't know that. In fact, this was a spy plane
Speaker 1: developed by the United States government, right. And that's how
Speaker 1: these things, that's how these things can evolve. Just imagine,
Speaker 1: if you will, and this is hypothetical, an ex airline
Speaker 1: pilot saying, well, I flew planes, or a World War
Speaker 1: Two veteran saying you know, I was a pilot in
Speaker 1: the Pacific Theater, and there is no earthly craft that
Speaker 1: could do this. So that's where we see people making
Speaker 1: the leap, and again in the absence of transparency, going
Speaker 1: with what they think is the I want to say,
Speaker 1: the most probable idea, but really it's the most exciting
Speaker 1: and the coolest. Yeah, And it's one of those things
Speaker 1: where if you can't conceive of people being able to
Speaker 1: accomplish that, then what else could it be? Right? So
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where you think, I have
Speaker 1: never in my life traveled in a vehicle that is
Speaker 1: capable of moving at that speed. I don't know of
Speaker 1: anything that humans have built that could do it. Then
Speaker 1: you start saying, well, if humans didn't build it, who did?
Speaker 1: And then you go to the little gray men or
Speaker 1: a little green men? Right, And it's weird because we
Speaker 1: you know, if I could do a little bit of
Speaker 1: a cibar here, man. We see this kind of reasoning
Speaker 1: pop up throughout history absolutely, right, yeah, Yeah, Like no
Speaker 1: one could build the Pyramids because look at how big
Speaker 1: they are. There's no way they have the technology. Therefore,
Speaker 1: aliens had to do it right, exactly and in a
Speaker 1: lot of times that situation is bound up in assumptions
Speaker 1: about human potential. Absolutely, and we don't want to we
Speaker 1: don't want to take away from right now the frankly
Speaker 1: astonishing and extraordinary things that human beings were doing at
Speaker 1: Groom Late. Yeah, the engineering was phenomenal. So that's relatively
Speaker 1: small restricted airspace I talked about. By nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: when they started working on other projects besides the U
Speaker 1: two spy plane, which again wasn't developed at Groom Lake,
Speaker 1: but it was. It was tested there quite a bit.
Speaker 1: Um They would expand it to an area of twenty
Speaker 1: two by twenty nautical miles which is forty one by
Speaker 1: thirty seven kilometers, and it became known as Groom Box
Speaker 1: or just the box. That you were not allowed to
Speaker 1: enter the box unless you were expressly told to. So
Speaker 1: there were a few times where pilots might accidentally or
Speaker 1: perhaps cheekly skirt the box and we're told in no
Speaker 1: uncertain terms to get the heck out of it before
Speaker 1: they might yeah, yeah, like be forced to the ground
Speaker 1: or fired upon. I mean, we're this serious business. So
Speaker 1: the first spy plane they started to really work on
Speaker 1: at Groom Lake after the U two was the A twelve.
Speaker 1: You're gonna get a lot of letters numbers in these episodes. Um.
Speaker 1: This was part of Project ox Cart. So in nineteen two,
Speaker 1: the first A twelve spy plane arrives at Groom Lake
Speaker 1: and it wouldn't to be until I think the following
Speaker 1: year that CIA pilots would actually be able to fly it.
Speaker 1: So it had been at groom Like for about a
Speaker 1: year before it was being flown in tests. So it
Speaker 1: was meant to be a more capable spy plane than
Speaker 1: the YOU two. And it's major difference was that it
Speaker 1: traveled way faster, right, and this this was I mean,
Speaker 1: clearly there's an advantage there, but also uh, while it
Speaker 1: was traveling faster, it was reducing the footprint that it
Speaker 1: leaves on a radar. Yeah, so it was partly to
Speaker 1: try and find a way because the YouTube has very
Speaker 1: very wide wings, right, It's it's very long and very wide.
Speaker 1: It's also from why I understand a true bear to
Speaker 1: fly like it's it's supposed to be one of the
Speaker 1: hardest planes to fly in land. Yeah, I like that
Speaker 1: you added and land. That's a really good point because
Speaker 1: it was built for the SPECS for which was built,
Speaker 1: and the expectations of this plane are in some ways
Speaker 1: contradictory to what makes a good plane. Yeah, it made
Speaker 1: it possible to fly it at incredibly high altitudes, which
Speaker 1: was important for the spying purposes and also just to
Speaker 1: evade UM things like like missile fire, although what was
Speaker 1: happening was missile technology was catching up to aircraft technology,
Speaker 1: which was again the reason why they had to start
Speaker 1: developing things like the A twelve. So the ox Cart
Speaker 1: program required the groom like facility to expand and include
Speaker 1: more facilities just for military and civilians alike. So it
Speaker 1: had to had to have more buildings, and that means
Speaker 1: you have to hire construction crews and figure out what
Speaker 1: you're gonna do. Uh. The A twelve also needed a
Speaker 1: longer and stronger runway than what was that groom like,
Speaker 1: so they had to reinforce the existing um runway and
Speaker 1: extend it out further or else this plane would not
Speaker 1: be able to take off and land. So cleared construction
Speaker 1: workers these are civilians security clearance, they would take exactly,
Speaker 1: they would take either a C forty seven out of Burbank, California,
Speaker 1: or a D eight teen at a Las Vegas. So
Speaker 1: both of those planes were military transport aircraft, and uh,
Speaker 1: the secrecy around those aircraft fueled the rumors and suspicion
Speaker 1: about what was going on at Groom Lake for years,
Speaker 1: because you'd have these aircraft lining up at various airports
Speaker 1: and there'd be no designation, like you had to know
Speaker 1: about it in order to be able to get on
Speaker 1: it and be cleared for it, which meant that if
Speaker 1: you were paying attention, just as a commuter going through
Speaker 1: these air airports, you think, what's going on over there? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no there's no indication of what's happening here. And
Speaker 1: they weren't flown back immediately either, right, They weren't doing
Speaker 1: this every day because that's just not that's just not uh,
Speaker 1: you know, efficient. So what they had to do was
Speaker 1: build some some uh like sleeping facilities essentially trailers originally
Speaker 1: out at Groom Lake, and people would spend the week
Speaker 1: there and then over the At the end of the
Speaker 1: week they could fly back and go home, but for
Speaker 1: the duration of the week they would be at the facility,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty much cut off from the world, working
Speaker 1: on this stuff. And you have a great side note
Speaker 1: that I thought was fascinating this is something that I
Speaker 1: did not know. So you're talking about how in Nevada,
Speaker 1: if you work forty eight hours or longer in the
Speaker 1: state for any given project, you are required by law
Speaker 1: to have your name recorded so that you would have
Speaker 1: to show up on a state document somewhere. Well, the
Speaker 1: folks over at Area fifty one, the CIA in particular,
Speaker 1: didn't really like that idea too much because in theory,
Speaker 1: if you got hold of that list and you made
Speaker 1: you cross reference and you figured out where everybody was
Speaker 1: from what companies they worked for, you could then start
Speaker 1: to figure out weight based upon what this company does.
Speaker 1: I have an idea of what's going on at this
Speaker 1: secret facility that they're going to uh in Nevada that
Speaker 1: you know. I know they're going there because their names
Speaker 1: are showing up on the state list. So, again, out
Speaker 1: of the concern for national security, they had to figure
Speaker 1: out a way, well, how do we keep people's names
Speaker 1: off this list, and how do we do it so
Speaker 1: it's legal, because if you start doing illegal things and
Speaker 1: that catches up to you, it's the same problem. So
Speaker 1: they say, ha ha, we found a loophole. It turns
Speaker 1: out that government workers were exempt from this forty eight
Speaker 1: hour work rule in Nevada, if you work for the government,
Speaker 1: you did not have to have your name recorded. So
Speaker 1: every single person who worked on that construction crew became
Speaker 1: listed as a government consultant. Everyone became a government consultant
Speaker 1: for the purposes of working at Area fifty one, which
Speaker 1: is a lot better than some of the alternatives, which
Speaker 1: would just be not having a job. But also it's
Speaker 1: very it's it's strange when you think about it, because
Speaker 1: when we say construction, we also mean like the caterers. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: there are stories that that the food at Area fifty
Speaker 1: one was actually quite good. They said that they would
Speaker 1: fly down occasionally, uh a, a chef from Las Vegas
Speaker 1: who would cook, which means that someone like chefs in
Speaker 1: Las Vegas, had to sign secrecy oaths so that they
Speaker 1: could go there. Now, granted, when you were when you
Speaker 1: were going there, you might have a lot of secrecy,
Speaker 1: not just the fact that you know you're flying on
Speaker 1: a plane that's not listed anywhere else where you're going.
Speaker 1: You might you might be put into a transport that
Speaker 1: has curtains all along it, so you don't get a
Speaker 1: real view of what's going on. All the different buildings
Speaker 1: are essentially hidden from view from each other, so you're
Speaker 1: not gonna be able to look in and see what
Speaker 1: people are working on. So it's it's really I mean
Speaker 1: like there were times where people were acquired to stay
Speaker 1: in their office while an aircraft was being wheeled either
Speaker 1: in or out of a hangar because they weren't allowed
Speaker 1: to see that aircraft, which again makes sense because in
Speaker 1: retrospect as paranoid as this sounds, in red respect, we
Speaker 1: know uh a little bit about the extent of KGBS
Speaker 1: uh spine in the United States. Yeah, yeah, there have
Speaker 1: been KGBS KGB spies that have infiltrated the CIA and
Speaker 1: the FBI. I mean, you know, the their their entire stories,
Speaker 1: fascinating stories about people who were able to do that,
Speaker 1: double agents and all this kind of stuff. And and
Speaker 1: with that in mind, you know, yeah, it sounds paranoid.
Speaker 1: But if you don't take these incredible precautions, you set
Speaker 1: yourself up. And now these precautions are oh I never
Speaker 1: get to do this catchphrase now more than ever, the
Speaker 1: the government was saying to various departments of the government.
Speaker 1: Departments were saying to one another, we have to have
Speaker 1: this secrecy because business a groom Lake is booming. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they ended up for some of the buildings. You know,
Speaker 1: you're trying to you have a black budget, which it's
Speaker 1: hard to tell where money is gonna go to a
Speaker 1: blank check. Yeah, but they were still being pretty careful.
Speaker 1: I mean, they didn't just build state of the art facilities.
Speaker 1: It's not like if you were to go to Area
Speaker 1: fifty one, especially if you went to Area fifty one
Speaker 1: back in nineteen five or so, it's not like you
Speaker 1: were going to walk into a super awesome, state of
Speaker 1: the art facility. They bought surplus buildings from the Navy.
Speaker 1: They had Navy hangars and Navy surplus housing buildings that
Speaker 1: had been disassembled, packed into cargo planes or on on trucks,
Speaker 1: shipped out to Groomla and then reassembled on the site.
Speaker 1: So we're not talking like yeah, no, they were not
Speaker 1: cushy accommodations. So getting back to the ox Card aircraft,
Speaker 1: I have an account of a test flight the explains
Speaker 1: how quick quickly this thing traveled and and sort of
Speaker 1: the extent of the test flight. So remember I said,
Speaker 1: these test aircraft weren't confined to that stricted airspace. They
Speaker 1: could actually leave that restricted airspace depending upon the actual
Speaker 1: requirements of the test. So an impressive demonstration of the
Speaker 1: ox carts capability occurred on twenty one December nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: when lockeed test pilot Bill Parks flew ten thousand one
Speaker 1: statute miles in six hours. The aircraft left the test
Speaker 1: area in Nevada and flew northward over Yellowstone National Park,
Speaker 1: thence eastward to Bismarck, North Dakota, and onto Duluth, Minnesota.
Speaker 1: It then turned south and passed Atlanta en route to Tampa, Florida,
Speaker 1: then northwest to Portland, Oregon, then southwest to Nevada again.
Speaker 1: The flight turned eastward, passing Denver and St. Louis, turning
Speaker 1: around at Knoxville, Tennessee. It passed Memphis in the home
Speaker 1: stretch back to Nevada. This flight established a record unapproachable
Speaker 1: by any other aircraft. It began at about the same
Speaker 1: time a typical government employee starts his work day and
Speaker 1: into two hours before his quitting time. So that's a
Speaker 1: pretty interesting tour of the United States right there. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: That was literally a whirlwind tour. Yeah. No, the fact
Speaker 1: that it goes to just about everywhere in the US
Speaker 1: besides the northeast, right or the you know, the not Alaska,
Speaker 1: Hawaii obviously, but yeah, it's pretty impressive. So during the
Speaker 1: whole history of the twelve, only thirteen were built, and
Speaker 1: out of those thirteen, four crashed in some sort of
Speaker 1: case or another. Um so that was that it was
Speaker 1: never meant to be this is going to be the
Speaker 1: replacement you two. It was more like, we are going
Speaker 1: to test all of these technologies that we've developed with
Speaker 1: this plane and then see which ones work best, and
Speaker 1: that those will inform the design of what will become
Speaker 1: the U two successor, right. So one important part for
Speaker 1: us to remember about that is that this means the
Speaker 1: four that crashed, as well as the ale that we're built,
Speaker 1: the remaining nine are all going to be a little
Speaker 1: bit different, their variations on a theme with further improvements. Absolutely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not like they are cookie cutter designs that are
Speaker 1: coming out of this. And that concludes Part one of
Speaker 1: the History of Area fifty one, a series that originally
Speaker 1: began publishing back on September fourteen. We will be back
Speaker 1: next week with the continuation of these classic episodes. If
Speaker 1: you have any suggestions for topics I should cover in
Speaker 1: future episodes of tech Stuff. Let me know the best
Speaker 1: way to do that is over on Twitter. The handle
Speaker 1: for the show is text Stuff hs W and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.