Area 51 has long been the stuff of alien lore, with whispers of crashed UFOs and extraterrestrial autopsies behind its barbed-wire-laced fence.
The base, established in 1955, remained largely unknown until 1989 when Robert Lazar claimed on TV that he worked at a secret site near Groom Lake, ‘S-4,’ studying alien technology and spacecraft.
While the remote US Air Force base in Nevada has kept a tight lid on its activities, the CIA finally lifted the lid in 2013, officially admitting Area 51’s existence.
The agency declassified a more than 400-page report that detailed how testing its secret spy planes ‘accounted for more than one-half of all UFO reports during the late 1950s and most of the 1960s.’
The U-2 spy and A-12 reconnaissance planes were being flown in the shadows of the desert amid the Cold War, but the extreme altitudes sparked fears of an alien invasion.
‘High-altitude testing of the U-2 soon led to an unexpected side effect—a tremendous increase in reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs),’ the report states.
‘Once U-2s started flying at altitudes above 60,000 feet, air-traffic controllers began receiving increasing numbers of UFO reports.’
However, the CIA report does not mention Area 51’s purpose after 1974.
Area 51 remained largely unknown until 1989 when Robert Lazar claimed on TV that he worked at a secret site near Groom Lake, ‘S-4,’ studying alien technology and spacecraft
While the document was declassified in 2013, it has resurfaced on X where the public appears to be seeing it for the first time.
‘The mystery has been solved,’ one user shared.
The CIA documents were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request made in 2005, and provide details about how Area 51 came about.
Area 51, officially referred to as the Groom Lake test facility or ‘the Ranch,’ was established in April 1955 when scouts spotted the area while flying over the Mojave Desert.
‘By July 1955, the Groom Lake facility was ready for operations, although it was still quite primitive,’ the report states.
‘It included a 5,000-foot asphalt runway, housing for about 150 personnel, a mess hall, a few wells to provide water, fuel storage tanks, and a small amount of hangar and shop space.’
The first planes were delivered to Area 51 on July 25, 1955, and the trials began two days later, and the first documented test flight occurred on August 4, 1955.
The goal was to establish Project AQUATONE, the CIA’s program to develop the Lockheed U-2 strategic reconnaissance aircraft.
The U-2 was designed to conduct high-altitude, long-range surveillance of the Soviet Union to address critical intelligence gaps during the Cold War.
The CIA report noted that reports about UFOs around Area 51 occurred ‘in the early evening hours from pilots of airliners flying from east to west.’
Area 51, officially referred to as the Groom Lake test facility or ‘the Ranch,’ was established in April 1955 when scouts spotted the area while flying over the Mojave Desert. Pictured is Area 51 taken during a 1957 U-2 flight
A CIA document declassified in 2013 revealed the UFO sightings were due to it flying US spy planes over the area
‘If a U-2 was airborne in the vicinity of the airliner at the time, its horizon was considerably more distant, and it was still in sunlight,’ reads the document.
‘At times, when a U-2 pilot made a turn, the sunlight reflecting off the U-2’s silver wings would cause a series of glints or flashes. This caused airliner pilots to report seeing a bright object high above them.’
Even more, the CIA revealed that it had flown personnel assigned to the test site from ‘the Lockheed plant in Burbank, California, every Monday morning and returned to Burbank on Friday evening’ to conceal the base from the public eye.
The OXCART program, which developed the A-12 reconnaissance plane, started flights in September 1960.
The Lockheed A-12 was intended for high-speed, high-altitude reconnaissance missions, particularly over areas deemed ‘denied’ or politically sensitive.
The airplane was used by the CIA for five years to fly operational missions over Southeast Asia before it was retired in 1969 and put into storage at Palmdale, California.
‘In early 1962, CIA officials became concerned about the possibility that the Soviet Union might learn about the OXCART program through overhead reconnaissance,’ the document reads.
Because of the fear, the CIA tested the site’s visibility using their own reconnaissance assets by having having ‘Groom Lake photographed by a U-2 and later by a CORONA reconnaissance satellite.’
But in 1974, ‘the Skylab astronauts inadvertently photographed the Groom Lake test site despite specific instructions not to do so.’
Skylab was America’s first space station and a pioneering research laboratory in space.
The agency declassified a more than 400-page report that detailed how testing its secret spy planes ‘accounted for more than one-half of all UFO reports during the late 1950s and most of the 1960s.’ Pictured is a mysterious triangle tower on the base
Details about astronauts snapping images of Area 51 are the last reference to the secret base in the 400-page report.
Self-proclaimed Ufologist Stanton Friedman did not take the documents as fact, saying in 2013: ‘The notion that the U-2 explains most sightings at that time is utter rot and baloney.
‘Can the U-2 sit still in the sky? Make right-angle turns in the middle of the sky? Take off from nothing?’
And it seemed thousands of Americans did not believe the CIA either.
In July 2019, nearly 500,000 people committed to storming Area 51 that September.
The ‘Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us’ event was created on Facebook, garnering more than 460,000 ‘going’ RSVPs while another 460K said that they were ‘interested’ in infiltrating the Nevada compound.
‘We will all meet up at the Area 51 Alien Center tourist attraction and coordinate our entry,’ the event description says.
‘If we Naruto run, we can move faster than their bullets. Lets [sic] see them [sic] aliens.’
The phrase ‘Naruto run’ refers to anime character Naruto Uzumaki, who is known for a running style that has his body tilted forward and low to the ground while his arms are stretched out behind his back.
A few days after the Facebook event was created by Matty Roberts, he revealed it was all a ‘joke.’
Roberts told Nevada’s KLAS-TV via video call on Wednesday he was amazed at how his hoax took off. ‘I posted it on like June 27th and it was kind of a joke,’ Roberts said.
Roberts said he had decided to come forward out of fear the FBI would come to question him over the joke after millions of UFO conspiracy theory fans signed up to invade the top-secret US Air Force base.
