A-12 full scale model prepared for radar cross section measurements, c. 1959.
Five decades later, the people who worked at Area 51 during the ’60s are free to talk about their experiences, as it’s finally been declassified. So what was going on out there in the desert?
James Noce recalls eating delicious steaks and lobster, watching super-speed jets being tested, and giving briefcases with $25,000 in cash to local sheriffs to keep things quiet. But sadly, no little green men. The Seattle Times reports:
After nearly five decades, guys like James Noce finally get to tell their stories about Area 51. 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.
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.
Image via Wikipedia
Read More in the Seattle Times
