Project Aquatone's U-2 Spy Plane | Inside America's Secret Missions
[spooky music]
NARRATOR: Area 51 was built around a dry lake bed known as Groom Lake. It offered obvious advantages.
RAY GOUDEY: Well, we needed a good place to land that we could land any direction, depending on where the wind came from. And the round lake served that purpose. It was also protected in the mountain range around it. So it wasn't very visible.
MAN: Smooth as glass, just unbelievable. I could take that staff car out there, and as fast as it'd go. And it wouldn't even make a bump.
RAY GOUDEY: We had a bunch of trailers for us to live in. And we had an all-purpose building where you eat. Didn't have TV, didn't even have a radio.
ED LOVICK: Paradise Ranch was the first name that was given to the establishment. They thought it would soften the blow of the austerity that was attempt to, perhaps, convince people it wasn't quite as bad as it looked.
NARRATOR: Area 51 was created for one top secret project called Aquatone. In 1955, men from the CIA, the Air Force, and a secret division of Lockheed came to Paradise Ranch to begin work.
TONY BEVACQUA: All they would tell us was we had to go for a pressure suit. So we knew it was going to be high altitude stuff. Your blood boils above 50,000 without having pressurization. So if you were to lose pressurization, just your engine conk out, and you're above 50, that suit saves you.
MAN: When pilots fly higher than man has ever flown, equipment changes are necessary.
NARRATOR: In this declassified footage, Ray Goudey prepares for a flight inside Area 51. The men look like nothing seen on earth, and rumors about what was going on inside Area 51 started to swirl.
TONY BEVACQUA: [inaudible] I didn't know what it was until I got there. And wondered what I got myself into.
NARRATOR: The men were testing one of the most important tools of the Cold War, the U2 spy plane.
TONY BEVACQUA: There was no trainer. There was no two seater. There was no simulator.
NARRATOR: The U2 was equipped with high resolution cameras designed to fly at 70,000 feet and take photographs from the edge of the stratosphere. As the Cold War arms race with the Soviet Union intensified, the U2 was America's best hope for tracking their rival's growing nuclear arsenal and it put enormous demands on pilots who had to breathe pure oxygen to survive at such heights.
MAN: Pilots find the confines of the helmet and face plate conducive to claustrophobia. A number of pilots have been dropped from the program because of this single factor.
NARRATOR: The government's cover story for the U2 was that it was being used for weather research.
MAN: If not conventional aircraft, then, what did they see?
NARRATOR: The U2 cruised at three times the height of regular airliners and would sometimes be glimpsed by civilians.
MAN: I can't be sure, but I believe I saw the sun glinting off of windows or observation portholes of a sort.
NARRATOR: In the mid 1950s, while both the Cold War and America's interest in UFOs were at their peak.
MAN: I think it was from outer space, but friendly.
NARRATOR: The silver colored planes sometimes created confusion.
TONY BEVACQUA: It was pure aluminum, and we said hey, we look like a bright star up there.
NARRATOR: Pilots were told to deny everything, even to aircraft controllers.
TONY BEVACQUA: There were stories about seeing something flying way above. They may have called it in. But they'll still get nothing, other than evasive stuff.
RAY GOUDEY: If you get up along the Canadian border, the ground controller questioned my altitude. Actually, he was pretty accurate. And I said, no, you got to recalibrate your weapon. [laughs] That's not the altitude we were at.
NARRATOR: By 1957, unacknowledged U2 flights were the source of half of all reported UFO sightings. But they were nothing compared to what would come.