Selecting a remote place called Are 51 in Nevada and beneath a shroud of secrecy, the Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, first flew the U-2, the Angel, knowing at the time that the Russians would most likely shoot it down within 18 months. To Replace the U-2, the CIA engaged the Lockheed Aircraft Company at its Skunk Works in California to build America's first stealth-designed plane, using the slide rule to produce what today remains the highest flying and fastest manned, air breathing aircraft ever flown, the A-12 Archangel. The Agency named it the Oxcart, the first of a family of four Blackbird, Mach 3 planes. At Area 51, the CIA flew the Oxcart on 2,850 sorties across the United States, some faster than a rifle bullet and up to 90,000 feet that remained unknown to the world for decades to come. Now, after 50 years the story can be told about the CiA'S Project OXCART at Area 51.

The combination of the shoot down of the U-2 over Russia in 1960, Russia's moving into Cuba, and the war in Vietnam placed a heavy load on the Central Intelligence Agency to develop a replacement spy plane, unlike anything the world had ever seen before. The CIA reestablishes its station at Area 51 under the CIA's new Directorate of Science and Technology where it develops America's first stealth plane, the A-12 Archangel. Designed with slide-rule technology, the CIA produces what is still today the fastest and highest flying manned air-breathing aircraft ever. The A-12 plane spends 18 months on a pylon situated on the dry Groom Lake during RCS, radar cross section evaluations by the CIA's special projects team at Area 51. It flies 2,850 secret flights out of Area 51 during the flight tests known as Project OXCART. From Area 51, CIA Director Helms deploys people and three planes to a CIA outpost in Kadena, Okinawa where the CIA operationally overflies North Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and North Korea during Operation BLACK SHIELD before the Air Force replacing it with the SR-71, the fourth member of the Blackbird family.

This "compellingly hard-hitting" bestseller from a Pulitzer Prize finalist gives readers the complete untold story of the top-secret military base for the first time (New York Times). It is the most famous military installation in the world. And it doesn't exist. Located a mere seventy-five miles outside of Las Vegas in Nevada's desert, the base has never been acknowledged by the U.S. government — but Area 51 has captivated imaginations for decades. Myths and hypotheses about Area 51 have long abounded, thanks to the intense secrecy enveloping it. Some claim it is home to aliens, underground tunnel systems, and nuclear facilities. Others believe that the lunar landing itself was filmed there. The prevalence of these rumors stems from the fact that no credible insider has ever divulged the truth about his time inside the base. Until now. Annie Jacobsen had exclusive access to nineteen men who served the base proudly and secretly for decades and are now aged 75-92, and unprecedented access to fifty-five additional military and intelligence personnel, scientists, pilots, and engineers linked to the secret base, thirty-two of whom lived and worked there for extended periods. In Area 51, Jacobsen shows us what has really gone on in the Nevada desert, from testing nuclear weapons to building super-secret, supersonic jets to pursuing the War on Terror. This is the first book based on interviews with eye witnesses to Area 51 history, which makes it the seminal work on the subject. Filled with formerly classified information that has never been accurately decoded for the public, Area 51 weaves the mysterious activities of the top-secret base into a gripping narrative, showing that facts are often more fantastic than fiction, especially when the distinction is almost impossible to make.

The CIA’s 2013 release of its book The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance 1954–1974 is a fascinating and important historical document. It contains a significant amount of newly declassified material with respect to the U-2 and Oxcart programs, including names of pilots; codenames and cryptonyms; locations, funding, and cover arrangements; electronic countermeasures equipment; cooperation with foreign governments; and overflights of the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, and other countries. Originally published with a Secret/No Foreign Dissemination classification, this detailed study describes not only the program’s technological and bureaucratic aspects, but also its political and international context, including the difficult choices faced by President Eisenhower in authorizing overflights of the Soviet Union and the controversy surrounding the shoot down there of U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers in 1960. The authors discuss the origins of the U-2, its top-secret testing, its specially designed high-altitude cameras and complex life-support systems, and even the possible use of poison capsules by its pilots, if captured. They call attention to the crucial importance of the U-2 in the gathering of strategic and tactical intelligence, as well as the controversies that the program unleashed. Finally, they discuss the CIA’s development of a successor to the U-2, the Oxcart, which became the world’s most technologically advanced aircraft. For the first time, the more complete 2013 release of this historical text is available in a professionally typeset format, supplemented with higher quality photographs that will bring alive these incredible aircraft and the story of their development and use by the CIA. This edition also includes a new preface by author Gregory W. Pedlow and a foreword by Chris Pocock. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

The Central Intelligence Agency founded Area 51 to develop the revolutionary high-flying U-2 reconnaissance plane. Area 51 becomes a station for the Central Intelligence Agency's newly formed Directorate of Science and Technology initiated to develop a successor to the U-2 Angel. Under Dr. Bud Wheelon, the Science and Technology Directorate making up the CIA's 5th discipline for intelligence gathering, the CIA recruited specialists to form a special project team to design the A-12 Archangel as America's first stealth plane. The CIA underwent many trials and tribulations using slide rule technology to successfully build and fly the highest and fastest plane operationally ever. The A-12 reconnaissance program ends when the US Air Force becomes operational with the SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance plane. By this time, the CIA's Science and Technology Directorate has assembled a special projects team at Area 51 like no other in the world. Knowing that it will soon be out of the aerial reconnaissance business, the CIA had already made its unique facilities at the Area 51 station into a business of continuing with stealth development. It already had a new project needed by customers starting with the US Air Force and the Navy. Thus, the Area 51 station began the exploitation of the Soviet MiG planes that had mastered the aerial war in Vietnam. That was only the start of a highly classified technology laboratory, and business that has expanded to a level one can only imagine today. Recent declassification by the CIA now allows the telling by Barnes, an Area 51 veteran, of the CIA's extraordinary accomplishments at Area 51 for almost a decade after all its planes stopped flying.

Get closer to solving the mystery of Area 51 with this riveting title. Learn about leading theories, important clues, and study the evidence to develop your on conclusions about what happened and what still happens today in Area 51.

Once Upon A Time by CIA A-12 pilot Frank Murray, call sign Dutch 20, is a declassified account of little known incidents and activities occurring during CIA Project Oxcart at Area 51 and Operation Blackshield, the operational phase flying SEA surveillance missions out of Kadena, Okinawa.