The Secret Genesis of Area 51

by Td Barnes

  A pilot being suited up in a partial-pressure suit at Watertown. CIA via TD Barnes Collection.

  U-2 flight at Watertown, 1956. Note the U-2 flying overhead. CIA via TD Barnes Collection.

  Flight tests continued, with the U-2 ascending to altitudes never attainable in sustained flight. Almost every day, the U-2 broke the world’s altitude record of sixty-four thousand feet, but due to the secrecy, those present could not tell anyone. On August 16, LeVier took the aircraft up to fifty-two thousand feet. During preparation for this flight, the forty-two-year-old test pilot completed the U.S. Air Force partial-pressure suit-training program, becoming the oldest pilot to do so.

  LeVier completed Lockheed’s Phase 1 testing that included taking the U-2 to 50,000 feet, achieving the maximum design speed of Mach 0.84 and making a successful dead-stick landing. The Lockheed test pilots Bob Matye and Ray Goudey expanded the altitude envelope to 74,500 feet. The two pilots replaced LeVier shortly before the second U-2 (Article 342) arrived at Area 51.

  The rest of the Lockheed test pilots arriving at Area 51 to flight test this latest plane entering the world of aviation were Tony LeVier, Robert Matye, Ray Goudey, Robert Sieker and Robert Schumacher.

  Anthony W. “Tony” LeVier began his aviation career with air racing in a Keith Rider racer dubbed the Firecracker. Following World War II, he bought a war surplus P-38 Lightning that he modified, painted bright red and used for air racing. He began his career at Lockheed ferrying Hudson bombers to the Royal Air Force. In 1942, he became an engineering test pilot flying the PV-2 Ventura. At Lockheed, he made the first flight of the XP-80A. He flew the first flight of the XF-104 Starfighter and the first flight of the U-2. When Tony LeVier, Lockheed’s chief test pilot for the F-104, was chosen by Kelly Johnson to fly the U-2 prototype, he reportedly remarked, “I switched from flying the plane with the shortest wings in the world to the one with the longest.” LeVier was an air racer and test pilot for the Lockheed Corporation from the 1940s to the 1970s. During his flight career, LeVier survived eight crashes and one midair collision.

  Robert L. Matye was a career experimental test pilot for the Lockheed Aircraft Company. Being an accomplished fighter pilot in World War II, he received an assignment to the first jet-powered fighter group. After the war, Lockheed hired Matye as a test pilot, and he enjoyed an outstanding career there lasting twenty-six years. He was only the second pilot to fly the famous U-2 spy plane and the first person to take it to its maximum altitude capability. He flew every Lockheed aircraft produced during that time.

  Ray Goudey first soloed on September 25, 1937, and had enjoyed a career where he flew 258 different types of aircraft and accumulated 23,708 flight hours. He flew single-engine jets, multi-engine jets, multi-engine turboprop planes, single-engine reciprocating, multi-engine reciprocating, single-engine helicopters, single-engine seaplanes, multi-engine seaplanes and even one hundred hours in gliders. Goudey trained civilian pilots for the army air corps and was the U.S. Navy acceptance pilot at Grumman, Chance Vought, Curtis and the U.S. Naval Factory. He flew in air shows for the flying circus and was the chief pilot for the Hank Coffin Flying Service. From 1952 to 1990, he flew as a test pilot for Lockheed, where he set several speed and altitude records and flew several first flights.

  Robert “Bob” Schumacher was a navy dive bomber assigned to the USS Bennington in World War II. He received the navy’s Distinguished Flying Cross for his part in sinking the Japanese battleship the Yamamoto. He joined Lockheed in 1953 as a test pilot. In 1956, he began testing the U-2 spy plane. In 1965, he would become the first pilot to land the U-2 on an aircraft carrier.

  CHAPTER 6

  WE CAN’T TELL YOU THE

  ASSIGNMENT, GENTLEMEN

  EXPERIENCED PILOTS WANTED

  The Atomic Energy Commission covered for the CIA adding additional infrastructure to the Area 51 facility by releasing a statement to the Las Vegas Review-Journal that discussed the progress on the Watertown Project. The news release stated that Reynolds Electrical and Engineering Company, Incorporated would complete the additional work sometime in 1956 under the direction of the Atomic Energy Commission’s Las Vegas branch office.

  The increase in logistics involving equipment, supplies and personnel made it necessary to fly the essential personnel to the site on Monday morning and return them to Burbank on Friday evening. The AEC provided trailers for the workers to live in during the week and a mess hall for their meals.

  Personnel already on the site to train the arriving air force pilots included the Lockheed pilots, Bob Matye, Ray Goudy, Bob Schoemacher and Bob Sieker. The Lockheed pilots briefed the USAF pilots and Colonel Phillip O. Robertson (ops officer) on the expected idiosyncrasies not yet learned.

  Richard Newton was the CIA station chief at Watertown. The 4070th SAS was composed of Colonel William F. Yancey, commander; Major R.E. Mullin, pilot navigator and classroom instructor; Navigation Officer Jack Delap; Lieutenant Colonel Art Lien, chief of supply; Colonel Herbert Shingler, deputy commander and material chief; Louis A. Garvin, development and test flight officer; Phillip O. Robertson; and Captains Hank Meierdierck and Louis Setter, U-2 pilots and test flight officers. This air force transition team, in turn, trained the first CIA pilots. The unit had a few enlisted personnel for administrative and maintenance duties.

  The U.S. Air Force cadre instructor pilots received only a few flights before the agency (Central Intelligence) pilots, all F-84 qualified, arrived from Turner and Bergstrom Air Force Bases as recruits. Major Delap, a USAF navigator, devised a system of flight planning and navigation while the cadre officers learned the systems with help from the Lockheed and other contractor people. Using this “learn-as-they-go” process, the staff officers used their flight experience to brief the student CIA pilots in ground school and subsequent flights. Robertson, Garvin, Meierdierck and Setter all flew their first low-level flight on the same day.

  The air force 4070 Special Activities Squadron participants in the U-2 Project AQUATONE worked for the CIA, including Colonel Yancey. In a memorandum to Colonel Yancey, Dick Bissell instructed Yancey in his assumption of duties at Area 51. He told Yancey to assume the duties as chief of base, representing the Central Intelligence Agency at Area 51, Nevada. He informed Yancey that his status was that of commanding officer, 4070 Special Activities Squadron, and that his status as chief of base would be made known to those U.S officials and industry personnel from whom he solicited cooperation in furtherance of his mission.

  When the first air force U-2 squadron trained at Area 51, the U.S. Air Force intended to activate an air force U-2 squadron at Turner Air Force Base in Georgia. Colonel Yancey sent Captain Meierdierck to Turner to advise them on the placement of the ground approach control (GAC) vans on the base. At Turner, the division commander refused to take suggestions from a lowly captain until Colonel Gerald Johnson, who knew Captain Meierdierck, intervened.

  Training and flight testing were beginning at Area 51 with the Watertown support aircraft consisting of one C-47, four T-33s, one B-25, a Twin Bonanza and two Navions. Meierdierck went to the Sacramento Air Depot to pick up one of the Navions only to learn it belonged to General LeMay. In those days, the wing and base commander signed all flight clearances, except the pilots in the unit. Meierdierck lacked authority for his taking General LeMay’s plane. Nonetheless, he signed for it and headed to Watertown with no known repercussions.

  HIRING FOREIGN U–2 PILOTS

  In authorizing the U-2 project, President Eisenhower told DCI Dulles he wanted non-U.S. citizens to pilot these planes. He believed this made it easier for the United States to deny any responsibility for a U-2 coming down in hostile territory.

  In mid-1955, the CIA had assigned the directorate of plans Air/Maritime Division (AMD) the task of hiring the pilots, with Lieutenant Colonel Geary in charge of training the recruits.

  Using foreign pilots soon ran into trouble at Luke Air Force Base, where all except four of the Greek pilots selected to fly the U-2 flu
nked from the training program. None of them qualified to advance to Watertown for flight training. In May 1956, Luke Air Force Base sent the four Greek and one Polish pilot to Watertown for pilot familiarization in the U-2 at the same time that the CIA’s Detachment B, the second class, arrived.

  SAC instructor pilot Louis Setter found they lacked the proficiency to fly operations. While the later famous Francis Gary “Frank” Powers’s class was in training, the Greek pilots all washed out, and the U.S. Air Force instructor pilot never allowed the Polish pilot to fly the U-2.

  One Greek student pilot did complete the standard transition training in the T-33 that consisted of dozens of “drag in” approaches to simulate the U-2 approach. He flew the U-2 only once, and it was without a pressure suit. He experienced trouble communicating in English, making radio calls to him quite difficult. On his first U-2 landing on the lakebed, he leveled off at thirty feet in the air at near stall speed. With the tail down, the airplane stalled, hitting hard and kicking up a cloud of dust. Lou Setter, his instructor pilot, was a short distance behind him in the chase car, talking to him on the radio, and saw it all. Kelly Johnson saw it as well and decided, “No more U-2 flying for this pilot.”

  Even before eliminating the Greek students, Bissell realized the CIA lacked enough trained foreign pilots available in time for deployment. He resumed the search for U-2 pilots by going with SAC F-84–trained pilots.

  THE CIA U–2 PILOTS

  The search for the agency pilots to fly the U-2 was limited to only SAC F-84 fighter pilots holding reserve commissions. The CIA and the U.S. Air Force refused to consider using regular air force pilots because of the complexities involved in them resigning from the U.S. Air Force to become hired civilians for the AQUATONE project. The CIA selection required SAC pilots with an interest in the U-2 project to resign from the U.S. Air Force and assume civilian status—a process known as sheep dipping. Although air force pilots felt an attraction to the challenge of flying over hostile territory, they remained reluctant to leave the service and give up their seniority. To overcome the pilots’ reluctance, the CIA offered handsome salaries, and the U.S. Air Force promised each pilot that he could return to his unit upon satisfactory conclusion of his employment with the CIA. In the meantime, the pilot retained consideration for promotion along with his contemporaries who declined the job to continue their air force careers.

  Initially, the recruiters used the criteria of the former OSS, seeking single men with little or no family ties. They found the single men less responsible and lacking the stability of married men. Consequently, with the U-2 program, the U.S. Air Force and CIA found it more practical to recruit married candidates with families. The strong bonding and support within the family proved essential to the performance of their candidate. The screening process, in most instances, included the candidate’s family.

  In all cases, the individual only learned of someone considering him after the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the various agencies wishing to recruit him completed a meticulous scrutiny of his background. If the candidate failed to pass this scrutiny, the individual never knew about the agency even considering him.

  The CIA U-2 pilots endured a rigorous selection process. Because the strain involved flying at extreme altitudes for extended periods of time, the selection process took painstaking efforts to exclude all pilots who were nervous or unstable in any way. The exclusions included those having excessive debt, alcoholism or drug dependency or being homosexual. The Lovelace Foundation for Medical Education and Research in Albuquerque, New Mexico, under a contract signed with the CIA on November 28, 1955, conducted the physical and psychological screening of potential U-2 pilots.

  The CIA recruited a tough breed of pilots from the best. The CIA required that pilots already have 1,500 hours of flying time, with 900 being first pilot/instructor time. It also required they have experience in one, two and sometimes three aircraft, plus outstanding records and a wing commander’s recommendation. With all this, they might undergo an interview lasting two weeks.

  The CIA’s insistence on more stringent physical and mental examinations than those used by the U.S. Air Force to select pilots for its U-2 fleet resulted in a higher rejection rate of candidates. The CIA’s selection criteria remained high throughout its manned overflight program and resulted in a much lower accident rate for agency U-2 pilots than for their counterparts in the U.S. Air Force program.

  Of the prospective pilots, 50 percent or less made it past interviews conducted by the wing commander, his squadron commanders and ops officers. Once they passed the interview stage, they received a physical and three in-flight evaluations in the U-2.

  Each of the detachment commanders chose his military staffs consisting of Operations, Flight Planners, Physiological Trainers and Engineering officers. Each of those chosen received orders to report to the 1007th Air Intelligence Service Group in Washington, D.C. Upon arrival, the individual pilot signed in at Bolling Air Force Base for billeting in the BOQ (bachelor officers’ quarters). He next reported to the 1007th Air Intelligence Service Group located in an old World War II building near Fort McNair.

  Despite the list, if those recruited possessed Q or top-secret security clearances, the CIA required they attend orientation classes, physiological tests, interviews and the infamous lie detector examination. The CIA dismissed those not passing this phase of the recruitment after a strict debriefing to the effect that none of this ever happened.

  When the agency requested the unsuspecting individual appear for a personal interview, it invariably went something like: “Mr., Sergeant, Captain” (or whatever), the no-name person would say. “You’ve been recommended for a job of the utmost importance to your country. I have reviewed your records, and I have asked you and your spouse here today to request that you volunteer for this assignment. I will tell you both upfront: this is something dangerous that you cannot discuss with your wife or anyone else. At times, it may become a remote assignment unaccompanied by family. If you choose to decline, no one is to know what we discuss here today. I need you and your spouse to please sign this security agreement.”

  For military recruits, the recruiter advised them that they had to leave the military and became civilians. The recruit signed the security agreement, thinking this something to do with an earlier application to become an astronaut, navy seal, test pilot or whatever. At this point, the questions and answers went like:

  “Where is this assignment?”

  The recruiter answers, “Sorry, that’s classified. I can’t tell you.”

  “What will I be doing?”

  “Sorry, I can’t tell you that either.”

  “Whom will I be working with?”

  “Sorry, I can’t tell you.”

  The man turns to his spouse and asks, “What do you think, Hon?”

  “Just whatever you think. You know the kids and I will stand by whatever you decide.”

  Recruiter: “Do you need some time to think it over?”

  The recruit says to the recruiter, “Negative, Sir. I’ll take the assignment.”

  The recruiter smiles and tells the recruit to return to his old job—he will hear from someone later.

  Those the CIA recruited as pilots arrived at March Air Force Base with no idea at this point of why the CIA picked them or for what reason. All of them reaching this recruitment stage volunteered, which meant resigning their air force commissions and signing a contract with the CIA. Only then did they report as civilians to Project AQUATONE Headquarters in a super secure area of the Matomic Building at 1717 Street in downtown Washington. There, they met the CIA members of the team, including the project director, Richard Bissell, executive officer James Cunningham and the others recruited for their detachment.

  This same procedure applied to the support team members, except they retained their rank in the U.S. Air Force. Where the CIA project pilots received four times their air force pay, with some withholds based on performance, the U.S. Air Force su
pport members of the team received seven dollars per day per diem when deployed.

  Most of the new recruits rented apartments at 1600 Fifteenth Street, near the Russian Embassy, next door to the Cairo Hotel and within walking distance of the Matomic Building.

  At the time, no Dash-1 operating manuals existed for the U-2 plane. The recruit pilots reviewed notes and documents filed in loose-leaf binders. They studied the flying manual for the T-33 aircraft, which played a major part in the U-2 training.

  The high operating altitude and the partial cockpit pressure were equivalent to twenty-eight thousand feet pressure altitude. The pilot wore a partial-pressure space suit to deliver his oxygen supply and provide emergency protection in case of cabin pressure loss. While pilots could drink water and eat various liquid foods in squeezable containers through a self-sealing hole in the face mask, they lost up to six pounds of weight on an eight-hour mission. While in Washington, the pilots, in CIA fashion, met with Dave Clark of the Clark Clothing Company of Worcester, Massachusetts, in a nondescript hotel in Washington for measurement for their individual partial-pressure suits.

  After passing the extensive physical and psychological tests, the first group of pilots for Detachment A sheep dipped into an existence of name changes, separation from the service and anonymity. The CIA Detachment A pilots trained at Area 51 were Hervey Stockman, Marty Knutson, Carmine Vito, Glendon Dunaway, Carl Overstreet, Howard Carey and Jake Kratt.

  Following a general security briefing, the pilots flew to Area 51 for an introduction to the secret, high-flying reconnaissance aircraft. There, they met the Lockheed engineers, led by Ernie Joiner and his staff of experts on the U-2. Arriving at Area 51, they met Lockheed test pilots Ray Goudy, Bob Sieker and Bob Schumacher, who did all the phase testing, testing the aircraft coming off the assembly line while training the Strategic Air Command pilots.