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Project OXCART Declassified From Area 51

Posted by Soulskill on from the tommy-lee-jones-comes-forward dept.

An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from the LA Times: "... 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 ... 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."

6 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The A-12 is better known as the SR-71 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The A-12 was a successor to the U-2 and precursor to the SR-71. The A-12 project ended in '68. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_A-12

  2. Re:The A-12 is better known as the SR-71 by jhesse · · Score: 5, Informative

    A-12: CIA-flown single-seater
    SR-71: Air Force-flown two-seater

    --

    --
    "I have also mastered pomposity, even if I do say so myself." -Kryten
  3. Re:How they could have kept this secret by Nasajin · · Score: 5, Informative

    Pffffff... The gay bomb was declassified years ago.

  4. Re:OXCART by bcmm · · Score: 4, Informative

    Oppenheimer quote, rather. Got confused as it was reprinted in a book about von Neumann.

    --
    # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i llama
    Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
  5. Because if two people know, it's not a secret by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Informative

    Basically what it gets down to is the more people who are in on something, the more likely information leaks out. Now as with any large government bureaucracy, when you involve another arm of the government, you get even more people than just those you needed. I mean if you go to the Air Force and secretly hire away some pilots, well then very few people even know that anything has happened, and all they know is that the CIA wants some flyboys. If you have the AF run it, well now you have all kinds of additional people who know about it.

    A big part of keeping secrets is compartmentalizing information, and restricting access to the minimum amount of people.

  6. Nothng new here by Animats · · Score: 4, Informative

    Most of this info is in Ben Rich's book, "Skunk Works". The story doesn't have much if any new information. The SR-71 story is well known, and there's one at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. (They have the engineering documents for it, too, which can be seen on request.) Most of the stealth aircraft were tested at Area 51.

    There are other sites "near" Area 51. Jackass Flats was a well known nuclear test area in the 1950s. (You can't really hide atmospheric nuclear testing.) The Sedan crater, from a nuclear test, is in that area. It's interesting to look at the area in Google Maps. There are all sorts of little abandoned installations in the Nellis Bombing Range area.

    Back in the 1980s, the Lockheed Skunk Works ran a small ad in Aviation Week. It said only "If you missed out on this one (picture of U-2) and on this one (picture of SR-71) how'd you like to get in on the next one? Lockheed Skunk Works, Burbank, CA." That's how you got into stealth aircraft.

    There's still a big USAF black budget, and it doubled during the Bush years. The question is whether much useful is coming out.