Comments (20) | Add a comment
Former Area 51 workers talk planes
-
Photos by Craig L. Moran.
Pilot Ray Haupt talks Thursday about flying spy planes at Area 51, including the SR-71 Blackbird that appears behind him in a display at the Atomic Testing Museum. » Buy this photo
Tools
-
Jack Layton, a former CIA pilot, flew A-12s at Groom Lake like the ones shown Thursday in the display behind him at the Atomic Testing Museum.
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Updated: Apr. 10, 2012 | 9:31 a.m.
Mystique about alien spaceships and little green men at Area 51 took a back seat Thursday to the real men who worked there for the CIA and the spy planes they flew during the Cold War.
In fact, a question about a link between the secret installation 90 miles north of Las Vegas and speculation about flying saucer debris and dead aliens from a 1947 crash site near Roswell, N.M., was glossed over as fiction during a panel discussion at the Atomic Testing Museum.
The discussion capped a two-day event at the museum titled "The Spy Planes of Groom Lake."
The panel of former Area 51 workers included test pilots, engineers and a mission planner who were recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1960s for development of the A-12 and later the SR-71 Blackbird.
"The job is to get good photography of the targets you're running against," said 81-year-old Ray Haupt, a retired Air Force brigadier general who flew both planes and their predecessor, the U-2.
Haupt recalled one experience after an SR-71 engine flamed out.
"Suddenly your helmet was bouncing between the two sides of the canopy like a basketball. That got your attention," he said. "It was a rough ride."
CIA pilot Jack Layton said flying at three times the speed of sound, however, could be "very smooth unless the air itself is bumpy."
Haupt, of Tucson, Ariz., said he preferred the SR-71 because it "could get the job done" like the A-12 but had a better navigation system to keep the plane on course.
While the SR-71 was an Air Force plane, the A-12 belonged to the CIA. The aircraft was a high-flying jet made of a titanium alloy to resist high temperatures while flying at supersonic speeds as it photographed targets and evaded enemy missiles.
After the plane was successfully tested at Groom Lake, it was used during the Vietnam War in the mid- to late-1960s to find surface-to-air missile sites.
"We flew 2,850 missions out of Groom Lake that the world did not know about," said electrical engineer T.D. Barnes of Henderson, president of Roadrunners Internationale, a group of former "black project" workers that co-sponsored the event.
Barnes recounted the learning curve that designers of the A-12 experienced, particularly with making planes out of titanium alloy metal instead of aluminum. Tools that could penetrate the hard metal had to be developed to build the aircraft.
"We soon realized the United States did not have good enough quality of (titanium), so this plane we were building for the sole purpose of flying over the Soviet Union, we went to Russia and bought our titanium. They had no idea what we were using it for, but the metal ... did come from our adversary," he said.
Mission planner Sam Pizzo recalled starting from scratch when building the A-12.
"We had to rethink all the things we had to do," he said. "Remember, this plane came to Groom Lake in boxes. It had never been flown."
It wasn't until 2007, when the CIA lifted a veil of secrecy about the A-12, that those who were involved with the project were allowed to talk about certain aspects of it.
Barnes said that he has mixed emotions about that decision.
"We still don't talk much about it," he said. "We can talk about the projects we were on but not the location."
Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.
Comments
Terms & Conditions
The following comments are provided by readers and are the sole responsiblity of the authors. The Review-Journal does not review comments before publication nor guarantee their accuracy. By publishing a comment here you agree to abide by the comment policy. If you see a comment that violates the policy, please use the Report Abuse button.
Some comments may not display immediately due to an automatic filter. These comments will be reviewed within 24 hours. Please do not submit a comment more than once.
Note: Comments made by reporters and editors of the Las Vegas Review-Journal are presented with a yellow background.
RSS
Twitter
Facebook
To Anybody Remember:
The skinny fellow with glasses is named Bob Lazar.
I'd find it funny that this meeting took place at the atomic museum. Been a worker was injured now at that location and the department of labor indicated that location had nothing to do with the test site. Somebody needs to get their stories straight. The land either belonged to the test site, or the Air Force it seems that the ownership of the location jumped from one organization to the next depending on whether the news good or bad. Also after Francis Gary Powers was shot down in a U-2 aircraft and the subsequent destruction of our relationship with Russia our government continued to break international law over 2850 times putting us at risk of war, it's very easy to think that they were able to violate environmental laws at this same location. But the department of labor stated that there is no proof that environmental laws were broken, so I can only assume that none of the activity discussed these meetings ever did, this also must be a lie. A bunch of old men getting together and telling lies.