Featured Image Credit: Google Maps
Conspiracy theorists are frothing at the mouth, as a resurfaced CIA document that confirms Area 51's existence also reveals the 'real' purpose of the classified US Air Force facility. While Area 51 has long been linked to UFOs, alien testing, and covert missions, the truth could be far less interesting...or so the government would have you believe.
Area 51 was established back in 1955 when the CIA opened the Groom Lake test facility and went on to develop the Lockheed U-2 strategic reconnaissance aircraft.
Secrecy has always run in Area 51's blood, and despite the many headlines about what it was being used for, the CIA only officially acknowledge its existence in 2013.
The name Area 51 comes from how it was named on Atomic Energy Commission maps, while it was nicknamed 'Paradise Ranch' in an attempt by Lockheed to lure workers there.
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These days, Area 51 and the surrounding Nevada Test and Training Range sit under the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS umbrella, with the CIA calling it Groom Lake and Homey Airport.
While satellite imagery was once restricted, you've been able to view Area 51 from above on Google Maps since 18.
But just what is going on there? Although we're poised to find out more in 2025, the 2013 CIA report delivers 400 pages explaining how over half of all UFO reports in the '50s and '60s can be attributed to testing secret spy planes like the Lockheed U-2.
Both the U-2 and later A-12 were being flown across the desert as the Cold War rumbled on, while their ability to fly at extreme altitudes led to a boom in (supposedly) incorrect UFO sightings. The report was the result of a Freedom of Information Act request that was made in 2005, writing: "High-altitude testing of the U-2 soon led to an unexpected side effect—a tremendous increase in reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs).
"Once U-2s started flying at altitudes above 60,000 feet, air-traffic controllers began receiving increasing numbers of UFO reports."
Referring to the original site, it adds: "By July 1955, the Groom Lake facility was ready for operations, although it was still quite primitive.
"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."
As noted by the Daily Mail, there's no mention of what Area 51 was used for after 1974.
This was the year that astronauts from America's first space station (Skylab) accidentally photographed the Groom Lake test site from above.
Despite this being the last mention of Groom Lake in the document, Ufologist Stanton Friedman wasn't convinced. Back in 2013, Friedman said: "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?"
Still, with more about Area 51 supposedly being revealed in 2025, we might be one step closer to finding out whether the CIA is really sitting on a real-life version of The X-Files.
