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)
