The Secret Genesis of Area 51

by Td Barnes

  To save weight and increase altitude, Carter suggested the design eliminate having landing gear and avoid attempting to meet combat load factors for the airframe. The Lockheed Company asked Clarence “Kelly” Johnson to come up with such a design.

  Kelly Johnson already rated as one of the world’s leading aeronautical engineers. His military and civilian design credits included the P-38, P-80, F-104 and the Constellation. In 1953, he conceived the CL-282 plane to overfly the Soviet missile test facility at Kapustin Yar in the Soviet Union to obtain intelligence that the air force refused to attempt. For the proposal, Johnson based his CL-282 design on the Lockheed XF-104, a plane with long, slender, high-aspect-ratio sailplane wings and a short fuselage.

  CL-282 (U-2) details. From Jay Miller’s Lockheed’s Skunk Works, the First Fifty Years.

  Johnson had earned a reputation for completing projects ahead of schedule while working in a separate division of the company, informally called the Skunk Works. This reputation helped Lockheed earn admission to the competition in the fall of 1953. Lockheed approved Carter’s proposal and, by early 1954, had its best aircraft designer, Kelly Johnson, working on the CL-282, which later became the U-2.

  His concept saved weight and increased the aircraft’s altitude by limiting the stress to the airframe to only 2.5 g. He selected the General Electric J73/GE-3, the same non-afterburning turbojet engine chosen for the F-104, and adapted many of the CL-282’s design features from gliders. He ended up with a design having detachable wings and tail, a plane that landed on its reinforced belly instead of landing gear, making it a jet-propelled glider.

  The three firms—Bell Aircraft Corporation of Buffalo, New York; the Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corporation of Hagerstown, Maryland; and the Lockheed Skunk Works of Burbank, California—submitted their proposals in January 1954, with Bell proposing the model 57, later known as the X-16, a twin-engine craft with a maximum altitude of 69,500 feet. Fairchild entered the M-195, a single-engine plane with a maximum potential altitude of 67,200 feet, and Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Company of Baltimore submitted a large wing design version of the B-17 called the Model 294 with a height of 64,000 feet.

  Kelly Johnson sent the CL-282 design to Brigadier General Bernard Schriever’s Office of Development Planning in early March 1954. On the recommendation of Kiefer and Charles F. “Bud” Wienberg, General Schriever asked Lockheed to submit a specific proposal. Lockheed did so the following month, with Johnson following with a plan for Lockheed to construct and maintain thirty aircraft.

  Johnson submitted the proposal to a group of senior Pentagon officials that included Schriever’s superior, Lieutenant General Donald L. Putt, deputy chief of staff for Development, and Trevor N. Gardner, special assistant for the Research and Development to the secretary of the U.S. Air Force. Johnson’s proposal interested the civilian officials. However, it failed to interest the generals. Kiefer, Wienberg and Burton Klein from the Office of Development Planning presented the CL-282 design to the commander of the Strategic Air Command, General Curtis E. LeMay, in early April 1954. General LeMay stood up halfway through the briefing, took his cigar out of his mouth and told the briefer that if he wanted high-altitude photographs, he would put cameras on his B-36 bombers. He added that he lacked any interest in a plane with no wheels or guns. The general left the room, remarking the whole business a waste of his time. (Note: General LeMay felt the same concerning the later SR-71, saying, in effect, that he did not want anything that did not shoot guns or drop bombs.)

  Seaberg recommended the adoption of both the Martin and Bell proposals while expressing a preference to Martin’s version as an interim project. The U.S. Air Force approved Martin’s proposal to modify the B-17, seeing this as providing a rapid completion and deployment potential.

  In mid-May, Seaberg and his colleagues evaluated the Lockheed submission and rejected it in early June. Rather than the unproven General Electric J73 engine proposed by Johnson, the engineers at Wright Field preferred the Pratt & Whitney J57 engine. The designs from Fairchild, Martin and Bell all incorporated this engine.

  The U.S. Air Force, preferring multiengine aircraft to the single-engine design proposed by Lockheed, did nothing different to reduce the loss of camera-carrying bombers conducting ferret flights over Soviet military installations. The Strategic Air Command continued flying Reflex Alert deployments of Convair B-36 and B-47 Stratojet long-range nuclear bombers to overseas bases such as Nouasseur Air Base in French Morocco. The intent was to place them within striking range of Moscow with enough fuel to escape. As one might expect, the original concept of using a light plane met rejection. It was not a combat aircraft.

  The U.S. Air Force also felt two engines better than one, embracing the theory that if one engine failed, the other engine could bring the plane back to a base. Unfortunately, the U.S. Air Force’s concept required excess weight that made high-altitude flying impossible. Nonetheless, General Curtis LeMay, “Old Iron Pants,” had no interest in the air force flying a specially powered, single-engine glider that would fly at seventy thousand feet, at a speed of five hundred knots, to a range of 3,000 nautical miles with only a lone pilot. Instead of carrying bombs or guns, it would use a camera with a long focal length to photograph man-sized targets within a strip 200 miles wide and 2,500 miles long.

  Setting aside the two engines, guns and bombs rhetoric, LeMay and his like-minded staff, the U.S. Air Force rejected Lockheed’s CL-282 proposal simply because it had only one engine and its design was too unusual. Meanwhile, despite the U.S. Air Force rejection, Lockheed continued working on the CL-282 while the company sought new sources of support for the aircraft.

  Aviation records and history revealed single-engine aircraft more reliable than multi-engine planes. The U.S. Air Force failed to realize a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft deep in enemy territory would have little chance of returning to a friendly base should an engine fail. Such a failure would force the plane to descend to an altitude reachable by enemy planes or missiles.

  Following the Berlin Airlift, the United States and the Soviet Union faced each other in the air hundreds of times. The bloodiest period started in 1950, during the Korean War, when Soviet fighters shot down over twenty United States Navy and Air Force planes, mainly reconnaissance aircraft, in one-sided fights with Russian MiGs.

  Dimitri Volkogonov, co-chairman of a Russian-U.S. commission formed to investigate the fate of Americans missing from and since the Korean War, claimed Americans imprisoned in the Soviet Union included more than 730 pilots and other airmen who either made “forced landings on Soviet territory” or were shot down on Cold War spy flights. Volkogonov was not specific on their fate but spoke about prisoners interned in labor camps, some executed and others eventually forced to renounce their U.S. citizenship.

  CHAPTER 3

  A YOUNG AGENCY VERSUS

  THE OLD GUARD

  A NEW KIND OF WARFARE

  Eisenhower categorically refused the possibility of letting someone from the U.S. Air Force fly one of the aircraft. Eisenhower stated, “If the Soviet Union shoots down such an aircraft while flying over the Soviet Union, I’d prefer it to be a nonmilitary aircraft with a civilian pilot. The provocation would then be slightly less in the eyes of the Communists.”

  Sharing this concern was Major John Seaberg, an aeronautical engineer for the Chance Vought Corporation recalled to active duty during the Korean War. With the Korean War ended, the U.S. Air Force teamed him with German aeronautical experts Woldemar Voigt and Richard Vogt to develop a new aircraft that combined the high-altitude performance of the latest turbojet engines and high-efficiency wings to reach ultra-high altitudes. Seaberg, being military, wanted both an aircraft weapons system and an aircraft with an operational radius of 1,500 nautical miles with the capability of conducting pre- and post-strike reconnaissance missions. To obtain an optimum subsonic cruise speed at altitudes of seventy thousand feet, he calculated a payload of up to seven hundred pounds of observation equ
ipment and with a crew of one.

  President Eisenhower had ruled out military intervention in Eastern Europe early in his administration, despite his campaign rhetoric about rolling back world communism. He feared provoking a war with the Soviet Union and quickly made it known his dissatisfaction with the quality of the intelligence estimation of Soviet strategic capabilities. He was dismayed at the paucity of reconnaissance on the Soviet Bloc and, when he pledged presidential support to Seaberg, Leghorn, Wienberg and Kiefer, believed that the United States needed a high-flying reconnaissance plane.

  The committee members met at MIT on April 15, 1954, and again in November, at which time the panel proposed that the CIA proceed with the project that Kelly Johnson, head of the Lockheed Skunk Works, had proposed earlier to the air force. The panel suggested that the CIA combine the technological version of Johnson with the strategic version of Richard S. Leghorn, who had commanded the army air force’s Sixty-Seventh Reconnaissance Group in Europe during World War II.

  Leghorn had worked with several optical scientists and engineers before receiving pilot training and becoming the commander of the Thirtieth Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron flying missions over northern France. He had photographed German forces, transport networks and communications facilities in preparation for the D-day invasion.

  Following his 1951 recall to active duty with the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War, he became the head of the Reconnaissance Systems Branch of the Wright Air Development Command in Dayton, Ohio. There, he strived for an aerial surveillance aircraft capable of exceeding sixty thousand feet, altitudes above those of any Soviet plane. Thus, Leghorn realized the need for high-altitude aerial reconnaissance when he transferred in early 1952 to the Pentagon, where he planned the U.S. Air Force’s reconnaissance required for the next decade.

  There, Leghorn worked for Colonel Bernard A. Schriever, assistant for development planning to the U.S. Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for Development. In his new position, he worked with Charles F. “Bud” Wienberg, a colleague while at Wright Field, and Eugene P. Kiefer, a Notre Dame graduate in aeronautical engineering. Kiefer designed reconnaissance aircraft at the Wright Air Development Center during World War II. Leghorn felt his having three reconnaissance experts working together placed emphasis on his solution enough to involve the U.S. Air Force in high-altitude photo reconnaissance. He was the first to articulate a vision of how to meet the intelligence demands of this new postwar era. Unfortunately, General LeMay felt otherwise.

  The U.S. Air Force agencies listened to Leghorn and awarded Martin Aircraft Company a contract from the Air Research and Development Command to examine modifying the B-57. The U.S. Air Force picked the B-57 for its long, high-lift wings and the American version of the new Rolls-Royce Avon-109 engine to give it high-altitude potential. Meanwhile, the Wright Air Development Command (WADC) in Dayton, Ohio, joined in seeking ways to achieve sustained flight at high altitudes.

  The USAF solicited designs from Bell Aircraft Corporation of Buffalo, New York; Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corporation of Hagerstown, Maryland; and Glenn L. Martin Company of Baltimore thinking three smaller aircraft companies would gain it more priority and a better aircraft than Boeing, Convair, North American, Douglas or Lockheed. However, only Bell and Fairchild were asked to submit bids on a new plane. Martin was asked to examine the possibility of improving the height of the altitude performance of the B-57 already in use.

  However, even without Martin’s specifications or drawings, BEACON HILL committee member Allen F. Donovan from the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory knew alterations to the B-57 by Martin Aircraft Company would not solve the air force’s reconnaissance requirements addressed in the BEACON HILL Report. He made this known at the next Intelligence Systems Panel meeting scheduled for May 24 and 25 at Boston University. In this session, he represented Polaroid Corporation Panel and the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory as they evaluated the changes made to the B-57 by Martin Aircraft Company.

  Donovan explained to the panel how adding weight made any multi-engine aircraft built per military specifications impossible for high flight. He told the group that the B-57 was vulnerable to Soviet interception. He explained, “Safe was a penetrating aircraft flying above 70,000 feet for the entire mission.”

  Donovan mentioned to the panel what Philip Strong of the CIA had told him concerning the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation’s designing a lightweight, high-flying aircraft. The thought impressed Chairman Baker of the Intelligence Systems Panel, who urged Donovan to evaluate the Lockheed design. He asked him also to gather ideas from other aircraft manufacturers concerning high-altitude aircraft.

  Donovan could not make the trip to Lockheed until late summer. What he saw made him realize that this was exactly the type of plane sought by the other Intelligence Systems Panel members and him.

  He met with an old air force acquaintance, Lockheed vice president L. Eugene Root, and learned about the U.S. Air Force’s competition for a high-altitude reconnaissance plane. Kelly Johnson revealed to him what he planned for Lockheed’s unsuccessful entry. Donovan, a lifelong sailplane enthusiast, recognized the CL-282 design being a jet-propel glider. He knew it could attain the altitude necessary for carrying out reconnaissance of the Soviet Union.

  Donovan returned on August 8 and contacted James Baker to suggest an urgent meeting of the Intelligence Systems Panel. Other commitments of the members, however, prevented the panel from hearing Donovan’s report until September 24, 1954, at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory.

  Several members, including Edwin H. Land and Strong, could not attend. It upset those who did to learn of the U.S. Air Force funding a close competition for a tactical reconnaissance plane without informing them. They forgot their annoyance and listened once Donovan began describing Kelly Johnson’s rejected design.

  Donovan maintained his insistence on high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft flying above seventy thousand feet to escape interception. He stressed what he considered the three essential requirements for a high-altitude spy plane: a single engine, a sailplane wing and small structural load factors.

  Donovan favored single-engine aircraft because it lightened the plane and made a more reliable plane than a multi-engine aircraft. He again explained how an aircraft could return to base on one engine. He, however, stipulated this would happen only at an altitude of thirty-four thousand feet. At this altitude, the Soviets shooting them down became a certainty.

  Donovan felt they needed a sailplane wing to take maximum advantage of the thrust of a jet engine operating in the rarefied atmosphere of extreme altitude. Engineers estimated the power curve of a jet engine lowering to 6 percent of its sea level thrust in the thin atmosphere above seventy thousand feet.

  Most of all, he stressed the need for low structural load factors and strengthening the wings and the wing root area, the part of the wing on a fixed-wing aircraft close to the fuselage. Withstanding the high speeds and sharply turned mandate by the standard military airworthiness rules added too much weight to the airframe, negating the efficiency of the sailplane wind.

  Donovan insisted that only Kelly Johnson’s CL-282 met those requirements. He described the CL-282 as a sailplane not having to meet combat aircraft specification. Thus, it flew above Soviet fighters.

  Donovan convinced the Intelligence Systems Panel of the merits of the CL-282 proposal. This panel reported to the U.S. Air Force, which had already rejected the CL-282 in favor of the B-57 the air force was using for specialized “Sneaky Pete” reconnaissance missions in the Far East.

  While the U.S. Air Force’s uniformed hierarchy favored the Bell and Martin aircraft, some high-level civilian officials continued to support the Lockheed design. One of the civilians was Trevor Gardner, special assistant for Research and Development to air force secretary Harold E. Talbott.

  Gardner shared his preference with some prominent West Coast proponents of the Lockheed proposal. Most of them he knew from his once heading the Hycon Manufacturing
Company, producing aerial cameras in Pasadena, California.

  Gardner recalled Kelly Johnson’s presentation on the CL-282 in early April 1954. He believed the design illustrated the most promise for reconnaissance over the USSR. It helped that Gardner’s special assistant, Frederick Ayer Jr., and Garrison Norton, an adviser to Secretary Talbott, believed as he did.

  Most of the civilian officials, including Gardner, were more positive about the CL-282. They preferred its higher potential altitude and smaller radar cross-section. Gardner tried to win Strategic Air Command commander LeMay over to collecting strategic rather than tactical intelligence. General LeMay, however, remained uninterested in an unarmed aircraft. His lack of interest left Gardner, Ayer and Norton with little choice when they approached Philip G. Strong, the CIA chief of the operations staff in the Office of Scientific Intelligence.

  At the time, the CIA depended on the military for overflights. General LeMay wasn’t interested in changing to a plane such as the CL-282. Even the director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles, was opposed to the idea, favoring human over technical intelligence-gathering methods. Thus, it seemed that only the civilians in the photography field and aerial intelligence were sold on high-flight reconnaissance. Their concern was for a good cause. Neither the air force nor the CIA was producing any usable information from the bomber flights.

  Marine Corps Reserve Colonel Strong, who later advanced to the rank of brigadier general, served on several air force advisory boards that kept him well informed regarding developments involving reconnaissance aircraft. He met with Gardner, Norton and Ayer in the Pentagon on May 12, 1954, six days before the Wright Air Development Command began its evaluation of the Lockheed proposal.