Anti-Gravity Propulsion

Are the possible connections between Anti-Gravity Propulsion, Project Aurora, Roswell incident and UFO's 

A major theoretical break-through has occurred and I am currently putting together a new video to explain it. It is based on papers and life work published by electrical engineer Frank Znidarsic. Through his 25+ year study into Cold Fusion and Gravitational anomalies, he witnessed the NASA replication of the Podkletnov effect at Marshall Space Center's Advanced Concepts Office, and noticed a velocity which had also appeared in Cold Fusion experiments. This velocity can be used to yield Planck's constant and the reformulations yield special relativity as a consequence instead of a basis.

NASA's Gravity Probe B recently measured the gravity-magnetic field of the Earth as it rotates around the sun. With Maxwell's Field Equations so begin many attempts to unify the theories of Electromagnetism and Gravity... A Unified Field Theory will provide the correct analog and allow us to then build technology with which to control Gravity.

In science we start with experimental evidence, which brings us to a superconductor laboratory in Finland 1992 where Dr. Eugene Podkletnov and colleagues discovers an anomalous gravitational effect in rotating superconductors. This effect has since been replicated by NASA, ESA (European Space Agency), and others...

Here is the initial paper by Dr. Eugene Podkletnov and Giovanni Modanese:
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0108005

Confirmation by ESA (European Space Agency)
http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0603033

And NASA's Advanced Concepts Office
(Link to an article, but my friend Frank Znidarsic went to Marshall to witness the experiments first hand and has pictures)
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/anti_g...

Here is Modanese's most recent paper:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0409/0409098.pdf

Boeing Aerospace has even shown interest in this antigravity effect:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/2157975.stm

Out of the Blue

OUT OF THE BLUE

Out of the Blue – The Definitive Investigation Of The UFO Phenomenon “This award-winning documentary reveals, through exclusive interviews with high-ranking military and government personnel, that some Unidentified Flying Objects could be of extraterrestrial origin. The film, narrated by PETER COYOTE, brings to light how secrecy and ridicule are used to shroud the UFO issue.” “Out of the blue” “ufo Documentary” “James Fox” “Tim Coleman” “Boris Zubov” “Charles fox” “Peter Coyote” “Sci-fi Channel” Evidence Roswell New “Mexico Phoenix Lights” “Rendlesham Forest” Bentwaters “Top Secret Files” MOD NASA “Apollo 14″ “Astronaut Edgar Mitchell” Gordon Cooper military government ufos Disclosure Obama 2010 Interstellar Travel Unidentified Flying Objects extraterrestrial origin ET Aliens “UFO REPORT LIVE” ufos aliens…

Vet breaks Silence about Area 51 - Government Opps or UFO's?????

Area 51 vets break silence: Sorry, but no space aliens or UFOs

Newly revealed stories from people who used to work at Area 51 shed light on a site still shrouded in mystery.

 

DEAN RUTZ / THE SEATTLE TIMES

James Noce holds a medallion he says was given to him by the CIA at a recent convention in Las Vegas. Reunions of Area 51 veterans used to be clandestine.

James Noce recalls secret A-12 plane's early flights.

TIM ZARRELLA

An old photo shows James Noce with an F-105 whose pilot he says ventured over Area 51.

VANCOUVER, Wash. — After nearly five decades, guys like James Noce finally get to tell their stories about Area 51.




The one that gets brought up when people talk about secret Air Force projects, crashed UFOs, alien bodies and, of course, conspiracies.
The secrets, some of them, have been declassified.
Noce, 72, and his fellow Area 51 veterans around the country now are free to talk about doing contract work for the CIA in the 1960s and '70s at the arid, isolated Southern Nevada government testing site.
Their stories shed some light on a site shrouded in mystery; classified projects still are going on there. It's not a big leap from warding off the curious 40 or 50 years ago, to warding off the curious who now make the drive to Area 51.
The veterans' stories provide a glimpse of real-life government covert operations, with their everyday routines and moments of excitement.
Noce didn't seek out publicity. But when contacted, he was glad to tell what it was like.
"I was sworn to secrecy for 47 years. I couldn't talk about it," he says.
In the 1960s, Area 51 was the test site for the A-12 and its successor, the SR-71 Blackbird, a secret spy plane that broke records at documented speeds that still have been unmatched. The CIA says it reached Mach 3.29 (about 2,200 mph) at 90,000 feet.
But after September 2007, when the CIA displayed an A-12 in front of its Langley, Va., headquarters as part of the agency's 60th birthday, much of the secrecy of those days at Area 51 fell away.
Advance warning to UFOlogists: Sorry, although Noce and other Area 51 vets say they saw plenty of secret stuff, none make claims about aliens.

Secrets included payroll
But on to the secrecy part.
Noce remembers always getting paid in cash, signing a phony name to the receipt, during his several years of working security at the site. It was, in CIA parlance, "a black project."
Noce says he has no paperwork showing that he worked at Area 51 for the CIA. He says that was common. Others who got checks say they came from various companies, including Pan American World Airways.
But Noce is vouched for by T.D. Barnes, of Henderson, Nev., founder and president of Roadrunners Internationale, membership 325. Barnes is the one who says he got checks from Pan Am, for whom he had never worked.
Roadrunners is a group of Area 51 vets including individuals affiliated with the Air Force, CIA, Lockheed, Honeywell and other contractors.
For the past 20 years, they'd meet every couple of years at reunions they kept clandestine. Their first public session was last October at a reunion in Las Vegas at the Atomic Testing Museum.
As age creeps up on them, Barnes, 72, an Area 51 radar specialist, wants the work the vets did to be remembered.
And Barnes himself has someone quite credible to vouch for him: David Robarge, chief historian for the CIA and author of "Archangel: CIA's Supersonic A-12 Reconnaissance Aircraft."
Robarge says about Barnes, "He's very knowledgeable. He never embellishes."
Barnes says that the way membership in the Roadrunners grew was by one guy who worked for the CIA telling about another buddy who worked at Area 51, and so on. Barnes says other Area 51 vets vouched for Noce.
Noce was a 1955 Vancouver High grad who went right into the Air Force and was trained in radar.
Leaving the service in 1959, he worked as a produce manager for the Safeway in Camas, 17 miles east of Vancouver.
Sometime in late 1961, Noce got a phone call at the grocery store. It was from a buddy of his from the Air Force days, who now worked for the CIA.
"He knew I had classified clearance from working at the radar sites," remembers Noce. "He asked me how would I like to live in Las Vegas."
Noce agreed to drive to Las Vegas and call "a guy" who worked for "the agency."
Comings and goings
And so Noce began doing security.
Most of the time, it was routine stuff.
On Monday mornings, a Lockheed Superconstellation would fly in from the "Skunk Works" in Burbank, Calif., bringing engineers and others who were working on the A-12. They'd stay there during the week and return home on weekends.
Skunk Works was the nickname for Lockheed's Advanced Development Projects, which had the A-12 contract.
The routine stuff included checking badges and making sure nobody had weapons or cameras. Security workers also made sure only those with proper clearance would witness a test flight.
And what a sight it was.
According to the CIA, its late former chief Richard Helms recalled visiting Area 51 and watching a midnight test flight of an A-12.
"The blast of flame that sent the black, insect-shaped projectile hurtling across the tarmac made me duck instinctively. It was as if the devil himself were blasting his way straight from hell," said Helms, according to former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden.
Other times, the routine got very exciting.
Noce remembers when "Article 123," as one of the A-12s was called, crashed on May 24, 1963, after the plane stalled near Wendover, Utah. The pilot ejected and survived.
Noce says he was among those who flew to the crash site in a giant cargo plane loaded with several trucks. They loaded everything from the crash into the trucks.
He remembers that a local deputy had either witnessed the crash or had quickly arrived at the scene. There also was a family on a vacation car trip who had taken photos.
"We confiscated the camera, took the film out," says Noce. "We just said we worked for the government."
He says the deputy and the family were told not to talk to anybody about the crash, especially the press.
"We told them there would be dire consequences," Noce says. "You scared them."
As an added incentive, he says, the CIA arrived with a briefcase full of cash.
"I think it was like 25 grand apiece, for the sheriff and the family," says Noce.
Robarge says of cash payments to cover things up, "It was common practice."
Noce also remembers providing security in 1962 as a disassembled A-12 was trucked along back roads from Burbank to Area 51.
At one point, a Greyhound bus traveling in the opposite direction grazed one of the trailers. Wrote Robarge, "Project managers quickly authorized the payment of nearly $5,000 for damage to the bus so no insurance or legal inquiry would take place ... "
Stories about aliens
About the aliens.
Noce and Barnes say they never saw anything connected to UFOs.
Barnes believes the Air Force and the "Agency" didn't mind the stories about alien spacecraft. They helped cover up the secret planes that were being tested.
On one occasion, he remembers, when the first jets were being tested at what Muroc Army Air Field, later renamed Edwards Air Force Base, a test pilot put on a gorilla mask and flew upside down beside a private pilot.
"Well, when this guy went back, telling reporters, 'I saw a plane that didn't have a propeller and being flown by a monkey,' well, they laughed at this guy — and it got where the guys would see [test pilots] and they didn't dare report it because everybody'd laugh at them," says Barnes.
Noce says he quite liked working at Area 51.
He got paid $1,000 a month (about $7,200 in today's dollars). Weekdays he lived for free at the base in admittedly utilitarian housing — five men assigned to a one-story house, sharing a kitchen and bathroom.
Something that all Area 51 vets remember about living at the base, he says, was the great food.
"They had these cooks come up from Vegas. They were like regular chefs," Noce remembers. "Day or night, you could get a steak, whatever you wanted."
Lobster was flown in regularly from Maine. A jet, sent across the country to test its engines, would bring back the succulent payload.
On weekends, Noce and other contracted CIA guys would drive to Las Vegas.
They rented a pad, and in the patio plumbed in a bar with storage for two kegs of beer. It was a great time, barbecuing steaks and having parties, Noce says.
Noce has two pieces of proof from his Area 51 days: faded black-and-white snapshots taken surreptitiously.
One shows him in 1962 in front of his housing unit at Area 51. The other shows him in front of what he says is one of two F-105 Thunderchiefs whose Air Force pilots overflew Area 51 out of curiosity. The pilots were forced to land and were told that a no-fly zone meant just that.
Noce worked at Area 51 from early 1962 to late 1965. He returned to Vancouver and spent most of his working life as a longshoreman.
Noce remembers once in recent years talking with fellow retired longshoreman pals and telling them stories about Area 51. When they didn't believe him, he says, "Well, there was nothing I could do to prove anything."
Collecting memories
Mary Pelevsky, a University of Nevada visiting scholar, headed the school's Nevada Test Site Oral History Project from 2003 to 2008. Some 150 people were interviewed about their experiences during Cold War nuclear testing. Area 51 vets such as Barnes also were interviewed.
The historian says it was difficult to verify stories because of secrecy at the time, cover stories, memory lapses and — sometimes — misrepresentations.
But, she says, "I've heard this cloak-and-dagger stuff, and you say, 'No way.' Then you hear enough and begin to realize some of these stories are true."
In October, Noce and his son, Chris, of Colorado, drove to Las Vegas for that first public reunion of the Area 51 vets. He and his old buddies remembered the days.
"I was doing something for the country," Noce says about those three years in the 1960s. "They told me, 'If anything should ever come up, anyone asks, 'Did you work for the CIA?' Say, 'Never heard of them.' But [my buddies] know."

Road to Area 51

by Annie Jacobsen

 

Area 51. It's the most famous military institution in the world that doesn't officially exist. If it did, it would be found about 100 miles outside Las Vegas in Nevada's high desert, tucked between an Air Force base and an abandoned nuclear testing ground.

Then again, maybe not-- the U.S. government refuses to say. You can't drive anywhere close to it, and until recently, the airspace overhead was restricted--all the way to outer space. Any mention of Area 51 gets redacted from official documents, even those that have been declassified for decades.

• Related
• April 05, 2009 Issue

It has become the holy grail for conspiracy theorists, with UFOlogists positing that the Pentagon reverse engineers flying saucers and keeps extraterrestrial beings stored in freezers. Urban legend has it that Area 51 is connected by underground tunnels and trains to other secret facilities around the country. In 2001, Katie Couric told Today Show audiences that 7 percent of Americans doubt the moon landing happened--that it was staged in the Nevada desert. Millions of X-Files fans believe the truth may be "out there," but more likely it's concealed inside Area 51's Strangelove-esque hangars--buildings that, though confirmed by Google Earth, the government refuses to acknowledge.

The problem is the myths of Area 51 are hard to dispute if no one can speak on the record about what actually happened there. Well, now, for the first time, someone is ready to talk--in fact, five men are, and their stories rival the most outrageous of rumors. Colonel Hugh "Slip" Slater, 87, was commander of the Area 51 base in the 1960s. Edward Lovick, 90, featured in "What Plane?" in LA's March issue, spent three decades radar testing some of the world's most famous aircraft (including the U-2, the A-12 OXCART and the F-117). Kenneth Collins, 80, a CIA experimental test pilot, was given the silver star. Thornton "T.D." Barnes, 72, was an Area 51 special-projects engineer. And Harry Martin, 77, was one of the men in charge of the base's half-million-gallon monthly supply of spy-plane fuels. Here are a few of their best stories--for the record:

On May 24, 1963, Collins flew out of Area 51's restricted airspace in a top-secret spy plane code-named OXCART, built by Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. He was flying over Utah when the aircraft pitched, flipped and headed toward a crash. He ejected into a field of weeds.

Almost 46 years later, in late fall of 2008, sitting in a coffee shop in the San Fernando Valley, Collins remembers that day with the kind of clarity the threat of a national security breach evokes: "Three guys came driving toward me in a pickup. I saw they had the aircraft canopy in the back. They offered to take me to my plane." Until that moment, no civilian without a top-secret security clearance had ever laid eyes on the airplane Collins was flying. "I told them not to go near the aircraft. I said it had a nuclear weapon on-board." The story fit right into the Cold War backdrop of the day, as many atomic tests took place in Nevada. Spooked, the men drove Collins to the local highway patrol. The CIA disguised the accident as involving a generic Air Force plane, the F-105, which is how the event is still listed in official records.

As for the guys who picked him up, they were tracked down and told to sign national security nondisclosures. As part of Collins' own debriefing, the CIA asked the decorated pilot to take truth serum. "They wanted to see if there was anything I'd for-gotten about the events leading up to the crash." The Sodium Pento-thal experience went without a hitch--except for the reaction of his wife, Jane.

"Late Sunday, three CIA agents brought me home. One drove my car; the other two carried me inside and laid me down on the couch. I was loopy from the drugs. They handed Jane the car keys and left without saying a word." The only conclusion she could draw was that her husband had gone out and gotten drunk. "Boy, was she mad," says Collins with a chuckle.

At the time of Collins' accident, CIA pilots had been flying spy planes in and out of Area 51 for eight years, with the express mission of providing the intelligence to prevent nuclear war. Aerial reconnaissance was a major part of the CIA's preemptive efforts, while the rest of America built bomb shelters and hoped for the best.

"It wasn't always called Area 51," says Lovick, the physicist who developed stealth technology. His boss, legendary aircraft designer Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson, called the place Paradise Ranch to entice men to leave their families and "rough it" out in the Nevada desert in the name of science and the fight against the evil empire. "Test pilot Tony LeVier found the place by flying over it," says Lovick. "It was a lake bed called Groom Lake, selected for testing because it was flat and far from anything. It was kept secret because the CIA tested U-2s there."

When Frances Gary Powers was shot down over Sverdlovsk, Russia, in 1960, the U-2 program lost its cover. But the CIA already had Lovick and some 200 scientists, engineers and pilots working at Area 51 on the A-12 OXCART, which would outfox Soviet radar using height, stealth and speed.

Col. Slater was in the outfit of six pilots who flew OXCART missions during the Vietnam War. Over a Cuban meat and cheese sandwich at the Bahama Breeze restaurant off the Las Vegas Strip, he says, "I was recruited for the Area after working with the CIA's classified Black Cat Squadron, which flew U-2 missions over denied territory in Mainland China. After that, I was told, 'You should come out to Nevada and work on something interesting we're doing out there.' "

Even though Slater considers himself a fighter pilot at heart--he flew 84 missions in World War II -the opportunity to work at Area 51 was impossible to pass up. "When I learned about this Mach-3 aircraft called OXCART, it was completely intriguing to me--this idea of flying three times the speed of sound! No one knew a thing about the program. I asked my wife, Barbara, if she wanted to move to Las Vegas, and she said yes. And I said, 'You won't see me but on the weekends,' and she said, 'That's fine!' " At this recollection, Slater laughs heartily. Barbara, dining with us, laughs as well. The two, married for 63 years, are rarely apart today.

"We couldn't have told you any of this a year ago," Slater says. "Now we can't tell it to you fast enough." That is because in 2007, the CIA began declassifying the 50-year-old OXCART program. Today, there's a scramble for eyewitnesses to fill in the information gaps. Only a few of the original players are left. Two more of them join me and the Slaters for lunch: Barnes, formerly an Area 51 special-projects engineer, with his wife, Doris; and Martin, one of those overseeing the OXCART's specially mixed jet fuel (regular fuel explodes at extreme height, temperature and speed), with his wife, Mary. Because the men were sworn to secrecy for so many decades, their wives still get a kick out of hearing the secret tales.

Barnes was married at 17 (Doris was 16). To support his wife, he became an electronics wizard, buying broken television sets, fixing them up and reselling them for five times the original price. He went from living in bitter poverty on a Texas Panhandle ranch with no electricity to buying his new bride a dream home before he was old enough to vote. As a soldier in the Korean War, Barnes demonstrated an uncanny aptitude for radar and Nike missile systems, which made him a prime target for recruitment by the CIA--which indeed happened when he was 22. By 30, he was handling nuclear secrets.

"The agency located each guy at the top of a certain field and put us together for the programs at Area 51," says Barnes. As a security precaution, he couldn't reveal his birth name--he went by the moniker Thunder. Coworkers traveled in separate cars, helicopters and airplanes. Barnes and his group kept to themselves, even in the mess hall. "Our special-projects group was the most classified team since the Manhattan Project," he says.

Harry Martin's specialty was fuel. Handpicked by the CIA from the Air Force, he underwent rigorous psychological and physical tests to see if he was up for the job. When he passed, the CIA moved his family to Nevada. Because OXCART had to refuel frequently, the CIA kept supplies at secret facilities around the globe. Martin often traveled to these bases for quality-control checks. He tells of preparing for a top-secret mission from Area 51 to Thule, Greenland. "My wife took one look at me in these arctic boots and this big hooded coat, and she knew not to ask where I was going."

So, what of those urban legends--the UFOs studied in secret, the underground tunnels connecting clandestine facilities? For decades, the men at Area 51 thought they'd take their secrets to the grave. At the height of the Cold War, they cultivated anonymity while pursuing some of the country's most covert projects. Conspiracy theories were left to popular imagination. But in talking with Collins, Lovick, Slater, Barnes and Martin, it is clear that much of the folklore was spun from threads of fact.

As for the myths of reverse engineering of flying saucers, Barnes offers some insight: "We did reverse engineer a lot of foreign technology, including the Soviet MiG fighter jet out at the Area"--even though the MiG wasn't shaped like a flying saucer. As for the underground-tunnel talk, that, too, was born of truth. Barnes worked on a nuclear-rocket program called Project NERVA, inside underground chambers at Jackass Flats, in Area 51's backyard. "Three test-cell facilities were connected by railroad, but everything else was underground," he says.

And the quintessential Area 51 conspiracy--that the Pentagon keeps captured alien spacecraft there, which they fly around in restricted airspace? Turns out that one's pretty easy to debunk. The shape of OXCART was unprece-dented, with its wide, disk-like fuselage designed to carry vast quantities of fuel. Commercial pilots cruising over Nevada at dusk would look up and see the bottom of OXCART whiz by at 2,000-plus mph. The aircraft's tita-nium body, moving as fast as a bullet, would reflect the sun's rays in a way that could make anyone think, UFO.

In all, 2,850 OXCART test flights were flown out of Area 51 while Slater was in charge. "That's a lot of UFO sightings!" Slater adds. Commercial pilots would report them to the FAA, and "when they'd land in California, they'd be met by FBI agents who'd make them sign nondisclosure forms." But not everyone kept quiet, hence the birth of Area 51's UFO lore. The sightings incited uproar in Nevada and the surrounding areas and forced the Air Force to open Project BLUE BOOK to log each claim.

Since only a few Air Force officials were cleared for OXCART (even though it was a joint CIA/USAF project), many UFO sightings raised internal military alarms. Some generals believed the Russians might be sending stealth craft over American skies to incite paranoia and create widespread panic of alien invasion. Today, BLUE BOOK findings are housed in 37 cubic feet of case files at the National Archives--74,000 pages of reports. A keyword search brings up no mention of the top-secret OXCART or Area 51.

Project BLUE BOOK was shut down in 1969--more than a year after OXCART was retired. But what continues at America's most clandestine military facility could take another 40 years to disclose.

ANNIE JACOBSEN is an investigative reporter who sat for more than 500 interviews after she broke the story on terrorists probing commercial airliners. When she isn't digging into intelligence issues for the likes of the National Review, she's snapping together Legos with her two boys.

Retrieved from: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-mag-april052009-backstory,0,5104077.story, June 11th, 2001.

Area 51 Roswell

LAS VEGAS -- Nevada's top secret military base known as Area 51 exploded into the public arena in the late 1980's after stories first broadcast on Channel 8 about alleged alien technology being tested out in the desert.
Now, a new, equally bizarre account is generating a furor. It's a twisted tale involving Nazi's, Russians, and horrific human experimentation.
L.A. Times writer Annie Jacobsen did not set out to uncork one of the most exotic conspiracy stories of all time. The focus of her new book, Area 51, An Uncensored History, was always going to be on the Cold War heroes who toiled in obscurity at Groom Lake on top secret programs like the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes.
Area 51 workers, part of a social group called the Roadrunners, first went public with their insiders tales of the base in 2005 on 8 News NOW. Jacobsen knew their histories would make a great book.
But a seven page section at the end of her new book has overshadowed everything else, generating a media firestorm. Jacobsen has appeared on everything from Comedy Central to National Geographic telling a story that ties Area 51 to the infamous Roswell incident
"I got this email from these conspiracy theorists in the UK who were very angry with me and said that even we don't believe you," she said.
UFO researchers have long contended that a flying saucer crashed near Roswell in 1947, that alien bodies were recovered, that everything was whisked to Wright Patterson Air Force Base and later to Area 51 in Nevada. A former government scientist, Bob Lazar, first told us that he worked on recovered saucers near Groom Lake, trying to master the extraterrestrial technology.
Jacobsen says she was told a much different tale by a senior engineer who worked on the atomic bomb program for 30 years, but who was part of a small team in charge of a recovered saucer and little bodies.
"He was told it came from the Roswell crash. In addition to the equipment, he and the four other engineers received these child-sized aviators, two of whom were comatose but still alive," she said.
The engineers were told the saucer had been built by the Russians, based on a flying wing design created by German engineers for Adolf Hitler. The crew members were large-headed, alien looking teenagers who had been surgically altered by Nazi doctor Joseph Mengele.
The plot was to create a War of the Worlds type panic in the U.S., but it went awry when Stalin's saucer crashed.
Jacobsen defends this wild tale based on the credibility of her anonymous source.
"I believe my source. He believes what he was told," she said.
But others have a lot of trouble with the story. The Area 51 roadrunners, for one, whose president T.D. Barnes says that while they support most of the book, they are disappointed with the saucer story and strongly disavow any association with it.
UFO researchers and critics finally agree on something -- that this story is hard to swallow. And national media are aiming their guns at Jacobsen
"So it goes when you're a journalist, George," she said.

Area 51 Declassified

Shadowy government departments, X Files, extraterrestrial pilots and futuristic crashed flying saucers - even Elvis Presley. They are all supposedly contained in the legendary and mystical Area 51 complex in the Nevada desert.
The intense secrecy surrounding the base - the U.S. government barely acknowledges its existence - has guaranteed its popularity in conspiracy theories and sci-fi films.
But now declassified information and pictures have given a rare and tantalizing glimpse into the most famous top secret site on Earth.

 

Prototype: Suspended upside down, a titanium A-12 spy-plane prototype is 'prepped' for radar testing. After a rash of declassifications, details of the legendary Area 51 are coming to light

 

 Blackbird: The U.S. Air Force's SR-71 (double cockpit training version) was in many ways a product of Area 51 testing and an evolution of the A-12, which was decommissioned in 1968

Fateful flight: CIA test pilot Ken Collins, above left, in front of one of the spy-plane prototypes. When a 1963 test flight ended in a crash in Utah, a recovery team was sent from the Area 51 section of Edwards Air Force Base in Nevada. The signs in an otherwise empty section of desert, above right, is all there is to show of the secret site 

The pictures predominantly deal with the January 1963 crash of a A-12 spy plane - the prototype of what was later to become the SR-71 'Blackbird'.
In details to be aired tomorrow night on Area 51 Declassified, a documentary for the the National Geographic Channel, the crash was quickly covered up by the government.
At the height of the Cold War, the U.S. Air Force, the CIA and NASA did not want to show the progress they had made in both supersonic and stealth technology.
Essentially undetectable to radar technology at the time, the A-12 could fly at 2,200 miles an hour - almost three times the speed of sound, which is fast enough to cross the continental U.S. in 70 minutes.
From 90,000 feet, the plane's ultra-sensitive cameras could capture foot-long objects on the ground below.
Almost 50 years after the event, the documentary reveals how a routine test flight turned into a potential international incident when CIA test pilot Ken Collins was forced to eject from a wildly out-of-control aircraft.

 

Crash site: Even to the untrained eye, the wreckage shows a futuristic aircraft design that the U.S. was desperate to keep secret. While Collins kept curious locals away, a team from Area 51 rushed to the site

 

Quick response: A government 'sanitation' team uses bulldozers and cranes to remove all traces of the A-12 spy plane from the Utah desert. The whole incident was kept secret for more almost 50 years

Cover-up... literally: Knowing when Russian spy satellites were expected over the U.S., the Area 51 team had to cover any unremoved wreckage with tarpaulins so they could not be photographed

Flying under his Area 51 code name Ken Colmar, Collins was testing the A-12's subsonic engines at at 25,000 feet when 'the airplane pitched up and went up and got inverted and went into a flat incipient spin'.
In layman's terms, that is when a plane ceases to be aerodynamic and begins an unrecoverable freefall - in this instance, while also upside down.
With a high measure of understatement, Mr Collins adds: 'I thought I’d better eject, so I ejected down, because I was upside down.'
The plane went down near Wendover, Utah, and - despite the unconventional ejection - Collins safely parachuted to the ground.
He was immediately met by three civilians in a pickup truck, who offered to give him a ride back to the wreckage of his plane.
But Collins had been trained to keep civilians away from military crash sites at all costs, so told the kind-hearted folk to drive him in the opposite direction. He launched into his pre-arranged cover story that the plane had a nuclear weapon on board and it was unsafe.

Heavyweight removal: Smaller pieces of debris were packed up in boxes, while larger bits of wreckage, such as the engines, were cut up using blowtorches and loaded onto flatbed trucks

upsideRadar testing: The unique design of the A-12 made it virtually invisible to radar at the time. A mock-up of the aircraft is seen here upside down as it is tested. Ironically, this is is also how test pilot Collins had to eject in 1963

At the same time, a team of government agents from Area 51 had been scrambled to the site and were initiating a complete cover-up operation. Pieces of wreckage were loaded into boxes, and larger parts - such as engines - were cut to pieces by blowtorches and loaded onto flatbed trucks.

Photos show how the recovery team had to cover A-12 wreckage with tarpaulins so that Russia's own spy satellites could not identify any of the technology.
By the following day, there was little left at the site that would suggest a crash had even taken place. Details of the crash and the wreck site were kept secret during the next half century.
Collins even claims that U.S. officials later asked him to undergo hypnosis and treatments of 'truth serum' sodium pentothal to be sure he relayed every detail of the incident truthfully and correctly.