The Secret Genesis of Area 51 Read online

  Adding to the diplomatic faux-pas stacking up in Whitehall, two days later (in May 1956), a U-2 on a training flight from Lakenheath inadvertently penetrated the British radar network, causing Royal Air Force fighters to scramble. The British government, embarrassed at the Russians catching the British spy in the act, asked the United States to postpone the Lakenheath flights. By May 4, all the detachment’s personnel and equipment, including four aircraft, were taking the long flight in an old, shaky C-124 to Lakenheath.

  Douglas C-124 Globemaster preparing to take off at Watertown, Area 51. CIA via TD Barnes Collection.

  U-2 loading onto a C-124 for overseas deployment. CIA via TD Barnes Collection.

  After deployment, on May 7, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics released an unclassified U-2 cover story. The cover story stated that a Lockheed aircraft flown by the USAF Air Weather Service was intended to study high-altitude phenomena. It identified studies such as the jet stream, convective clouds, temperature and wind structures at jet-stream levels and cosmic-ray effects up to fifty-five thousand feet. The announcement was the first public acknowledgment of the existence of the U-2. In reality, all this research happened much later. The U-2 was a spy plane; the research projects were its cover.

  U–2 DETACHMENT A LEAVES ENGLAND FOR GERMANY

  To avoid delays, on June 11, 1956, following the refusal of the British government to allow mounting U-2 operations from Britain, Detachment A moved to Wiesbaden, Germany, without approval from the German government, while Giebelstadt Army Airfield prepared to become a more permanent base.

  It concerned Eisenhower that despite their great intelligence value, overflights of the Soviet Union might cause a war. His fear reached back to the 1955 Geneva Summit, while the U-2 was under development. Eisenhower proposed to Nikita Khrushchev that the Soviet Union and the United States each grant the other country airfields for use in photographing military installations. Khrushchev rejected the “Open Skies” proposal. At the time, the CIA was telling the president that the Soviets lacked the ability to track high-altitude U-2 flights. The CIA based this belief on the Soviet Union still using American radar systems given them during World War II.

  Although the Russians could track the overflights, they could not identify the aircraft. Often the U-2s overflying Soviet-denied territory would have an entire squadron of MiGs flying at much lower altitudes beneath the U-2s, which for the pilots was a real pain in the neck because the MiGs blocked the U-2’s view of its recon target. In the three weeks from June 20 through July 10, 1956, the CIA U-2s made eight overflights beyond the Iron Curtain, including five over the Soviet Union.

  Now, a year after the Geneva Summit, the Office of Scientific Intelligence appeared more cautious, stating that detection was possible but believing the Soviets were unable to track the aircraft. Dulles further told Eisenhower (per Presidential Aide General Goodpaster) that in any aircraft loss, the pilot would not survive. Having such assurances and with the growing demand for accurate intelligence regarding the alleged “bomber gap” between the United States and the Soviet Union, Eisenhower approved ten days of overflights for June 1956.

  On July 4, 1956, a month after it was declared operational, a U-2 piloted by Carl Overstreet conducted the first “Operation Overflight” out of Wiesbaden, West Germany. This mission was the first overflight over denied territory of the Soviet Union. It was under the cover designation of the WRSP-1. Meanwhile, the Second Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, Provisional (WRSP-2), in Incirlik, Turkey, and the Third Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, Provisional (WRSP-3), in Atsugi, Japan, were preparing to follow.

  CARL OVERSTREET, THE FIRST CIA U–2 PILOT

  TO FLY OVER DENIED TERRITORY

  Carl Overstreet entered the reconnaissance business in the winter of 1954 when Gerry Johnson, his 508 SFW wing CO at Turner AFB, stopped him out on the ramp and suggested he meet some people downtown who had something to offer. Overstreet’s thoughts turned to F-86s and the Flying Tigers. Off he went to meet the recruiters for the CIA, who revealed to him a photo of the article, and he agreed to fly it. After physical exams, fitting for a pressure suit and a scary ride in the hypobaric chamber to test the effects of altitude on his body, he arrived at Area 51 in January 1956.

  Now, in the summer of 1956, the trained Weather Reconnaissance Squadron A sat ready and waited at Wiesbaden Air Base, West Germany. With events moving rather slowly from his point of view, he took a short weekend trip to Vaduz, Lichtenstein, accompanied by Max Conn, a tech rep for Westinghouse. He returned to Wiesbaden, where he learned of the CIA scheduling him for the first operational flight of the U-2 over Eastern Europe.

  U-2 missions from Wiesbaden always departed westward to gain altitude over friendly territory before turning eastward at operational altitudes. The NATO Air Defense mission in that area included No. 1 Air Division RCAF (Europe), which operated the Canadair Sabre Mark 6 from bases in northeastern France. The service ceiling of this aircraft was fifty-four thousand feet. Nonetheless, the U-2 and RCAF “ZULU” recorded numerous encounters between alert flights for posterity.

  On Wednesday, June 20, 1956, Carl Overstreet flew Mission 2003 over Eastern Europe, flying north and west from Wiesbaden to gain altitude before looping back to the base and turning east. He entered hostile territory where the borders of West Germany, East Germany and Czechoslovakia met. He flew across northern Czechoslovakia and turned north, passing east of Dresden and into Poland, flying over every major Polish city before turning back to Wiesbaden the way he came via Prague.

  The overflights of Eastern Europe continued. In another mission for the CIA, Overstreet photographed the Suez from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean after President Gamal Abdel Nasser shut down the canal in 1957.

  On July 2, 1956, Jake Kratt flew Mission 2009 over Eastern Europe, heading south from Wiesbaden across Austria into Hungary. Kratt flew past Budapest and turned south, flying along the Yugoslav border. The route extended all the way across Bulgaria to the Black Sea and back to Wiesbaden, making it a seven-hour sortie.

  On the same day, July 2, 1956, Glendon Keith Dunaway flew Mission 2010 over Eastern Europe. He headed north from Wiesbaden over East Germany, southern Poland, eastern Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania before turning around at the Black Sea and returning to Wiesbaden after a seven-hour sortie.

  The first U-2 overflight had already occurred, using the existing authorization of air force overflights over Eastern Europe. On this flight, the CIA tested the Soviet radar to see if it could track the angel. Eisenhower shared this worry. He nonetheless approved the first overflight over the Soviet Union, Mission 2013, scheduled for July 4, 1956.

  THE SUICIDE PILL

  During the early 1950s, tales of Soviet secret police torture of captured foreign agents led Bissell and Cunningham to approach Dr. Alex Batlin of the Technical Services Division in the Directorate of Plans for ideas to help “captured” U-2 pilots avoid such suffering. Batlin suggested the method used by Nazi war criminal Hermann Goering: a thin glass ampule containing liquid potassium cyanide. A pilot had only to put it in his mouth and bite down on the glass. Death followed in ten to fifteen seconds. Project AQUATONE ordered six of the poison ampules, called L-pills, and offered one to each pilot before a mission. The CIA left it up to each pilot to decide if he wanted to take an L-pill with him. Some did; most did not. No pilot ever used the pill.

  Most pilots chose not to take with them the suicide pill offered before a mission. After a pilot almost ingested an L-pill instead of candy during a December 1956 flight, the CIA placed the suicide pills into boxes to avoid confusion.

  When, in 1960, the CIA realized a pill breaking inside the cockpit would kill the pilot, it destroyed the L-pills, and as a replacement, its Technical Services Division developed a needle poison with a powerful shellfish toxin hidden in a silver dollar. The CIA made only one after the agency decided any pilot who needed to use it would cancel the program.

  THE FIRST OVERFLIGHT OVER THE SOVIET UN
ION

  Carl Overstreet’s first flight over Eastern Europe was significant. However, Hervey Stockman was suiting up to fly directly over the communist homeland itself. The CIA was preparing to poke the bear itself.

  On July 4, 1956, Stockman flew Article 347, marked as NACA 187, on Mission 2013, the first flight over the Soviet Union to target the Soviet submarine construction program in Leningrad, as well as count the number of new Hisasishchev M-4 “Bison” bombers. From Wiesbaden, he flew over East Germany and Poland before crossing the Soviet border near Grodno in Belarus. He flew over various bomber bases around Minsk, north to the naval shipyards and bomber bases at Leningrad, west over more bomber bases in the Baltic states and back to Wiesbaden in an eight-hour-and-forty-five-minute flight. Soviet radar tracked this mission, and several MiG fighters attempted to intercept the U-2.

  On July 5, 1956, Carmine Vito in Article 347 flew the second Soviet overflight during Mission 2014, flying a similar route to Mission 2013 except farther south, continuing the search for Russian Bison bombers. He continued to the royal capital city of Krakow in Poland and into the Ukraine over Brest and Baranovici. He headed toward Moscow, following the railway from Minsk to the Soviet capital. He flew over the Fili airframe plant in Moscow and northwest to Kaliningrad and the main Soviet flight test and research center at Ramenskoye, returning to Wiesbaden via the Baltic states, where Soviet radars and MiG-17s again tracked the overflight. Vito remained the only U-2 pilot to fly over Moscow. His flight was the third operational flight over potentially hostile territory, or what the pilots called “hot” flights.

  Eisenhower realized how unrealistic his hope of no Soviet detection from the earlier overflights had been and ordered the overflights to stop if the Russians managed to track the aircraft. The CIA confirmed the Soviets were unable to track the U-2s. Therefore, the Russians did not know of the U-2 overflying Moscow and Leningrad. The aircraft’s photographs depicted tiny images of MiG-15s and MiG-17s attempting and failing to intercept the aircraft, proving the Soviets could not shoot down an operational U-2.

  The National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., has the U-2 flown by Vito suspended from the ceiling. It still contains a payload from one of its earliest flights: a small lump of Tutti Frutti chewing gum under the left rail. Vito stuck it there on July 5, 1956, before taking off from Wiesbaden, Germany, on his first operational mission.

  On July 9, 1956, Marty Knutson flew the third Soviet overflight, Mission 2020, from Wiesbaden north to overfly Berlin, East Germany and the Baltic states to Riga. He headed east and south, covering targets around Kaunas, Vilnius and Minsk before returning via Warsaw to Wiesbaden. His mission was to learn how much of a numerical gap existed between the bombers of the United States and Russia. He captured photos of an airfield where all of Russia’s Tupolev Bison bombers were based. This informed the United States that the Russians did not have as many bombers as thought by the United States. Knutson’s mission lasted nine hours and twenty minutes. He landed with only twenty gallons of fuel remaining. Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA, called the intelligence photos from Mission 2020 “million-dollar photos.”

  U-2 pilot Marty Knutson, Detachment A at Area 51, flew the third Soviet overflight. Marty Knutson.

  On July 9, 1956, Carl Overstreet flew the fourth Soviet overflight, Mission 2021, from Wiesbaden to head south into Czechoslovakia and Hungary. He flew northeast into the Ukraine as far as Kiev and over various bomber bases before returning to Wiesbaden via Poland.

  This same day, the NACA made another announcement about the great research work conducted with the U-2. It informed the public of the need to conduct these types of research flights overseas. The announcement was merely another cover story to explain the presence of U-2s in Germany and other locations.

  On July 10, 1956, Glendon Dunaway flew the fifth Soviet overflight, Mission 2024, from Wiesbaden over East Germany, Poland and Ukraine to Kerch on the eastern tip of the Crimean Peninsula. He headed back via Sevastopol, Simferopol, Odessa, Romania, Czechoslovakia and Hungary to Wiesbaden with fighter aircraft radar tracking his flight near Odessa.

  BOMBER GAP DISPROVEN

  On July 10, 1956, the Soviets protested what they described as overflights by a USAF twin-engine medium bomber, believing it a Canberra. The United States knew by July 19, 1956, of no American “military planes” having overflown the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, the fact that the Soviets’ report revealed they could track the U-2s for extended periods caused Eisenhower to halt overflights over Eastern Europe. In truth, the president was more concerned about the Soviet protests than he was about the public’s reaction to news of the United States violating international law. To avoid project cancellation, the CIA began Project RAINBOW to make the U-2 less detectable.

  The eight overflights over communist territory, however, had already proven the bomber gap did not exist. The U-2s did not find any Myasishchev M-4 Bison bombers at the nine air bases they visited; however, the Eisenhower administration could not disclose the source of its intelligence because of the secrecy of the CIA operation.

  The presidential order did not restrict U-2 flights outside Eastern Europe. In May 1956, Turkey approved the deployment of Detachment B at Incirlik Air Base, near Adana, Turkey. Before the new detachment was ready, however, Detachment A in late August used Adana as a refueling base to photograph the Mediterranean. The aircraft found evidence of many British troops on Malta and Cyprus as the United Kingdom prepared for its forthcoming intervention in Suez. The United States released some of the photographs to the British government. As the crisis grew in seriousness, the project converted from a source of strategic reconnaissance, where the priority was high quality over speed (its maker processed the film and then analyzed in Washington), to a tactical reconnaissance unit that provided immediate analysis.

  The Photo-Intelligence Division set up a lab in Wiesbaden as Detachment B took over for Detachment A to fly over targets that remain classified today. The Wiesbaden lab’s rapid reporting helped the U.S. government predict the Israeli-British-French attack on Egypt three days before it began on October 29.

  On August 29, 1956, Missions 1104 and 1105, two U-2s, flew from Wiesbaden to the Suez area during the Suez Crisis, where they photographed preparations for the Suez landings. The missions landed at Incirlik in Turkey. The following day, the two U-2s at Incirlik retraced the previous day’s sortie, flying over the Suez area and landing back at Wiesbaden. Meanwhile, the CIA pilots of Detachment B had completed their training and received transfer orders to Incirlik Air Base, Turkey, as Detachment 10-10, Detachment B, Weather Research Squadron (WRSP-2). The CIA pilots were Tom Birkhead, Bill McMurry, E.K. Jones, Buster Edens, John MacArthur, Francis Gary “Frank” Powers, J. Robbie Robinson, Bill Hall, David Dowling and Sammy Snyder.

  In August 1956, the third U-2 training class, Detachment C, arrived at Area 51. The Detachment C U-2 pilots were Al Smiley, Lyle Rudd, Jim Barnes, Jim Cherbonneaux, Barry Baker, John Shinn, Al Rand, Bob Ericson and Tom Cull.

  Three months following the loss of Wilburn Rose, on August 31, 1956, a second fatal crash occurred at Area 51 during a night-flying exercise. To avoid a stall, experienced U-2 pilots always cut back abruptly on the throttle as soon as the pogo stick falls away. Frank G. Grace, lacking experience, stalled Article 354 at an altitude of fifty feet when he tried to climb too steeply at takeoff. The falling craft cartwheeled on its left wing and struck a power pole near the runway.

  U-2 pilot Jim Barnes, CIA Detachment C at Area 51, flew the U-2 for thirty-two years, a record-setting 5,862 flying hours. Jim Barnes.

  Before the year’s end, there were two more U-2 crashes, one of them fatal. On September 17, 1956, Article 346 lost part of its right wing while on its takeoff ascent from Lindsey Air Force Base in Wiesbaden, Germany. The aircraft flew into the jet wash from a Canadian F-86 and disintegrated in midair near Kaiserslautern, West Germany, killing pilot Howard Carey.

  Detachment A moved to Giebelstadt in October 1956, placing
it within seventeen miles of the Iron Curtain. The CIA flew nine sorties over various Middle Eastern countries involved in the Suez Crisis in the Sinai Peninsula during the build-up to the ten-day Suez conflict on October 19, 1956. Detachment B flew several sorties over the Suez area during the build-up to the conflict after troops landed at the Suez on November 6, 1956. The CIA flew fourteen sorties over Syria between November 7 and December 18, 1956.

  Eisenhower refused the CIA pleas in September 1956 to reauthorize overflights of Eastern Europe. It took the Hungarian revolution in November and his reelection that month to persuade the president to renew Eastern Bloc overflights over border areas.

  On November 20, 1956, Gary “Frank” Powers flew the sixth Soviet overflight, Mission 4016, from Incirlik, north over Syria and Iraq. He flew over Baghdad into Iran before turning north toward the Caspian Sea. He crossed the Soviet border and flew over Baku before turning west to overfly Yerevan. The flight aborted heading for Tbilisi when electrical problems forced an early return to Incirlik. The flight was the first using the B-Camera. Both radar and fighters tracked the mission.

  When its interceptors failed to reach the U-2s, the Soviets protested a December overflight of Vladivostok by RB-57Ds. Eisenhower again forbade communist overflights. However, flights close to the border continued with the first ELINT-equipped U-2s.

  On December 10, 1956, the CIA flew Mission 4018 over Eastern Europe from Incirlik over Albania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia and back to Incirlik.

  The same day, December 10, Carmine Vito flew Mission 2019 over Eastern Europe from Wiesbaden over Albania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia and back to Wiesbaden. On this sortie, Vito, known as the Lemon Drop Kid, almost bit on the suicide L-pill, mistaking it for one of his favorite sweets. A poison needle replaced the L-pill in January 1960.