Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Annie M. Jacobsen (List of Illustrations) #27

List of Illustrations

^{Groom Lake, Nevada, in 1917. Once little more than a dry lake bed in the southern Nevada desert, what is now known as Area 51 has become the most secretive military facility in the world. (Special Collections, University of Nevada-Reno)}

^{From up on top of the old Groom Mine in 1917, looking down. Not until the 1950s would the federal government take over the dry lake bed and adjacent land. (Special Collections, University of Nevada-Reno)}

^{Vannevar Bush, age eighty, receives the Atomic Pioneer Award from President Nixon at a White House ceremony in 1970. Other recipients are (from left to right) Glenn T. Seaborg, the man who co-discovered plutonium; James B. Conant of the National Defense Research Committee; and General Leslie R. Groves, who was the commander of the Manhattan Project but took orders from Vannevar Bush. (U.S. Department of Energy)}

^{Colonel Richard S. Leghorn during Operation Crossroads, at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, July 1946. Leghorn led the mission to photograph the nuclear explosions from the air, and he is credited with the concept of “overhead,” which led to spy planes and satellites. (Collection of Richard S. Leghorn/Army Air Forces)}

^{The Baker bomb at Operation Crossroads, July 25, 1946, was 21 kilotons, one and a half times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Baker’s underwater fireball produced a “chimney” of radioactive water 6,000 feet tall and 2,000 feet wide. Stalin had spies at the event. (Library of Congress)}

^{The black device attached to this balloon in Area 9 of the Nevada Test Site is a 74-kiloton atomic bomb code-named Hood, the largest atmospheric nuclear weapon ever exploded in the United States. Standing on a ladder minutes before this photograph was taken on July 5, 1957, Al O’Donnell put the final touches on the bomb’s firing system. Area 51 is over the hill to the right of the device. (Collection of Alfred O’Donnell/National Nuclear Security Administration)}

^{A column of radioactive smoke rises from the Hood bomb. To the right of the mushroom stem the landscape can be seen on fire. Approximately one hour after the bomb went off, security guard Richard Mingus drove through ground zero to set up a guard post at the Area 51 guard gate, directly over the burning hills. (National Nuclear Security Administration)}

^{In Area 12 of the Nevada Test Site, workmen enter an underground atomic bomb tunnel through its mouth, summer 1957. (National Nuclear Security Administration)}

^{Operation Paperclip scientists at Fort Bliss, Texas, in 1946. Until 1945, these men worked for Adolf Hitler, but as soon as the war ended these “rare minds” began working for the American military and various intelligence organizations, the details of which remain largely classified. Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun is in the front row, seventh from the right with his hand in his pocket. (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)}

^{Nazi Dr. Walther Riedel after his capture by the U.S. Army in 1945. Unsmiling in this never-before-published file photograph, Riedel is missing teeth, which had been knocked out by U.S. soldiers while questioning him about his role in Hitler’s “bacteria bomb.” (National Archives)}

^{Alleged to be Stalin’s secret UFO study team are (standing left to right) Sergei Korolev, chief missile designer and inventor of Sputnik; Igor Kurchatov, father of Russia’s atomic bomb; and Mstislav Keldysh, mathematician, theoretician, and space pioneer. (Collection of Museum of M. V. Keldysh, Russia)}

^{This photograph of the all-wing Horten V appeared in the Secret G-2 Combined Intelligence Objective Sub-Committee report “Horten Tailless Aircraft,” dated May 1945. (National Archives)}

^{The 1945 G-2 report on the Horten brothers airplanes included this photograph of the unusually shaped Parabola. Two years later, after the crash of a foreign disc-shaped aircraft in New Mexico, in July 1947, the Counter Intelligence Corps embarked on a manhunt across Western Europe to locate the Horten brothers and their so-called flying disc. (National Archives)}

^{A German-designed V-2 rocket is hoisted up onto a U.S. Army test stand at the White Sands Proving Ground, in New Mexico, on January 1, 1947. Five months later one of the V-2s went off course. No one was killed, but the German Paperclip scientists in charge of the rocket launch were put under investigation. (NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center)}

^{Part of a U-2 coming out of a transport airplane at Area 51 in 1955. The CIA’s first spy plane was so secret that Air Force pilots transporting it to Area 51, in pieces inside larger airplanes, would fly to a set of coordinates over the Mojave Desert and contact a UHF frequency called Sage Control for orders. Only when the aircraft was a few hundred feet off the ground would runway lights flash on. (Laughlin Heritage Foundation/CIA)}

^{Early U-2s on the flight line at Area 51 in 1956, a worker standing on a wing. (Laughlin Heritage Foundation/CIA)}

^{Trailers at Area 51 where U-2 pilots like Hervey Stockman and Tony Bevacqua slept while learning how to fly the CIA’s first spy plane. (Laughlin Heritage Foundation/CIA)}

^{A rare perspective on Area 51 looking northeast in 1955. The triangular mountain peak (just right of center in the far distance) is Tikaboo Peak, the single remaining location from where the curious can catch a faraway glimpse of Area 51. (Laughlin Heritage Foundation/CIA)}

^{Hervey Stockman left Princeton University to fly with the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. In 1956, he was the first man to fly over the Soviet Union in a U-2. He flew 310 combat missions in three wars. In June 1967 he was involved in a midair crash over North Vietnam and became a POW for nearly six years. (Collection of Colonel Hervey S. Stockman)}

^{After the tragic death of U-2 pilot Robert Sieker on April 4, 1957, the flag at Area 51 was flown at half-mast. (Laughlin Heritage Foundation/CIA)}

^{The U-2 aloft, circa 1965. All indicators of ownership, including its former NACA designation, have been removed. (Collection of Lockheed Martin)}

^{A rare look at Building 82, inside the fabled Lockheed Skunk Works, circa 1957. The world’s first anechoic chamber can be seen at the far rear of the room. Shoe-sized models of the CIA’s spy planes would be hung from the ceiling and tested. (Collection of Lockheed Martin)}

^{Area 13 sits inside Area 51 and was contaminated with plutonium in a 1957 “dirty bomb” test. This photograph, part of a set never released publicly before, was taken during a 1960 Atomic Energy Commission investigation into theft of a “hot” item stored there. After the dirty bomb test, someone had cut the fence, ignored the “Warning Alpha Contamination” hazard signs, and stolen a 1952 model pickup truck that was contaminated with plutonium and scheduled for burial in a hazardous waste pit. (National Nuclear Security Administration)}

^{President Kennedy touring the NERVA nuclear facility at Area 25. The plan was to build a nuclear-powered rocket ship to take men to Mars in the astonishingly short time frame of 124 days. (Department of Energy)}

^{While working on the nuclear space ship program, T. D. Barnes walked to work each day through this 1,150-foot-long underground tunnel below Area 25. (Department of Energy)}

^{The Nuclear Rocket Test Facility at Jackass Flats, located in Area 25, seen here from above sometime in the 1960s. Three test cells (ETS-1, E-MAD, and R-MAD) were connected by a remote-controlled railroad that transported the highly radioactive reactor between them. (Department of Energy)}

^{The engine for the Mars rocket can be seen at the center of the Engine Test Stand-1, positioned upside down to prevent it from taking off during testing. Operating at 3680.6 degrees Fahrenheit meant the nuclear reactor inside the engine needed to be cooled down by liquid hydrogen, contained in white industrial dewars seen at right. (Department of Energy)}

^{Moving the first A-12 to Area 51, over the Cajon Pass in California. The transport crate had been disguised to look like a generic wide load. (CIA)}

^{A full-scale mock-up of the Oxcart being assembled at Area 51 in 1959, even before the CIA contract was officially secured. The facility had been deserted after nuclear fallout shuttered the place in the summer of 1957. These Lockheed Skunk Workers were among the earliest returnees. (Collection of Roadrunners Internationale/CIA)}

^{Setting up the legendary Area 51 pylon, or radar test pole. The radar antennas, manned and monitored by EG&G, were located a mile away from the pole. (Collection of Roadrunners Internationale/CIA)}

^{Less than eight feet of the fifty-five-foot-long pole is visible here. The rest of the pole is underground, below a concrete pad, and rises up from an underground chamber built inside the desert floor. (Collection of Roadrunners Internationale/CIA)}

^{Working at night meant less of a chance of being surveilled by Soviet spy satellites. “Getting an aircraft up on the radar test pole took eighteen minutes. It took another eighteen minutes to get it back down,” says Ed Lovick. “That left only a set amount of time to shoot radar at it and take data recordings.” As soon as technicians were done, they took the aircraft down and whisked it away into its hangar. (Collection of Roadrunners Internationale/CIA)}

^{Area 51 as seen from the air, circa 1964. This rare photograph has never been published before. (Collection of Roadrunners Internationale)}

^{Yucca Flat, which spans several Areas at the Nevada Test Site, is one of the most bombed-out places on earth. In this photo taken during the winter months from a helicopter above Area 10, the Sedan Crater can be seen in the forefront. A 104-kiloton bomb was buried at a depth of 635 feet, and its detonation produced a crater 1,280 feet wide and 320 feet deep, moving 12 million tons of radioactive dirt in an instant and creating a hole that can be seen from space. (National Nuclear Security Administration)}

^{Ed Lovick, at Skunk Works in the mid-1960s, with the waveguide, as he works to reduce the radar cross section for the A-12 to meet the CIA’s demands. (Collection of Edward Lovick/Lockheed Martin)}

^{A-12 ejection-seat test on Groom Lake’s dry lake bed. (Collection of Roadrunners Internationale/CIA)}

^{The A-12 Oxcart hidden behind a barrier at Area 51. It took 2,400 Lockheed Skunk Works machinists and mechanics to get a fleet of fifteen ready for the CIA. Visible on either side of the aircraft are the uniquely adjustable inlet cones that regulated airflow and allowed the CIA spy plane to cruise in afterburner and reach peak speeds of Mach 3.29 by May 1965. (Lockheed Martin)}

^{Richard Bissell, known best for his role in the Bay of Pigs fiasco, was the CIA officer who built Area 51 from the ground up. In this rare photograph, he shakes hands with CIA pilot Louis Schalk after the first flight of the A-12 Oxcart in April 1962. Bissell had already resigned. (Lockheed Martin)}

^{The A-12 Oxcart lands on the runway at Area 51, April 1962. (Collection of Roadrunners Internationale/CIA)}

^{Charlie Trapp was chief of Rescue and Survival at Area 51 from 1962 to 1967. It was in this H-43B helicopter that Trapp found the body of Oxcart pilot Walt Ray and his airplane after a fatal crash. Trapp received the Air Medal for the twenty-five-day operation. (Collection of Charles E. Trapp)}

^{CIA pilot Ken Collins, in full flight gear, hanging above the Area 51 swimming pool during ocean-survival training circa 1965. Charlie Trapp sits on the diving board with a technician, name unknown. (Collection of Charles E. Trapp Jr.)}

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

^{Jack Weeks and Ken Collins preparing for a Black Shield mission over North Vietnam, inside the command center on Kadena in 1968. A few months later Weeks would be preseumed dead; no trace of the A12 airplane or his body was ever found. (Collection of Ken Collins)}

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

^{A Predator drone on the tarmac at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada, June 2008. Located just thirty miles south of Area 51, the airstrip here was formerly called Indian Springs. It is where atomic sampling pilots once trained to fly through mushroom clouds; where Dr. Edward Teller, “father of the H-bomb,” used to land before atomic bomb tests; and where Bob Lazar says he was taken and interrogated after getting caught trespassing on Groom Lake Road. (U.S. Air Force/Steve Huckvale)}

^{From Creech Air Force Base, Nevada, U.S. Air Force pilots fly drones over Iraq and Afghanistan using remote control. (U.S. Air Force/author collection)}

^{Site of former EG&G offices on the edge of downtown Las Vegas as it looked in 2009. (Author collection)}

^{Operation Harass and the search for the Horten brothers netted this sketch of a possible advanced Horten aircraft design. (Department of Defense)}

^{Walter Horten holding a scale model of the Horten 10B in Baden Baden, Germany, in 1987. (Collection of David Myhra)}

^{Reimar Horten in Argentina, 1985. (Collection of David Myhra)}

^{The Operation Crossroads 1946 commemorative yearbook depicts the Ros-well Army Air Base as the military facility from which the opening shot in the Cold War was fired. (Collection of Richard S. Leghorn/Army Air Forces)}