The US secret service CIA has released documents after appealing to public disclosure laws that reveal what the military was up to in a closed-off stretch of desert known as Area-51. Among other things, the U-2 spy plane was tested there. This top-secret aircraft was indispensable during the Cold War.
In the 1950s, Nevada residents regularly saw strange lights in the sky at night over a government-locked patch of desert. It soon became obvious that a secret air force base was located there. But what were those lights? Secret planes being tested? There were even rumors that the government kept and researched UFOs there, as in the movie Independence Day.
UFOs don't exist, at least not in Area-51. Secret planes do. It has also been known for some time that the U-2 spin-off aircraft was developed in top secrecy in the 1950s by the Lockheed company and was tested in Area-51. British historian Chris Pocock wrote two comprehensive books on the history of U-2.
But the National Security Archive , a George Washington University research facility, has now forced the CIA to release its own history of the U-2. This shows that not everything about the U-2 was known yet.
The remote and expansive Groom Lake salt flat in Nevada was designated for testing the U-2 and training specialized pilots. On July 25, 1955, the first prototype arrived there. Test flights were undertaken at high altitude almost immediately. Because no one at the time believed that flying at an altitude of more than 10 kilometers was possible, the test flights of the U-2 led to a large number of reports of UFOs. Pilots of commercial aircraft (average at 10 kilometers altitude) saw strange lights high above their cockpits when sunbeams were reflected from a U-2.
The US brought its U-2 spy planes to a military base in Britain in early 1956. Because Prime Minister Eden feared that if the Russians learned that the Lakenheath base was being used for spy flights, he was skeptical about the planes on his territory. To reassure him, the US State Department said it was only one reconnaissance aircraft. In reality there were four.
Then, without informing the West German authorities, the Americans moved the U-2s to a military airfield near Wiesbaden. From there, the first espionage flights over Eastern Europe began. On July 5 and 6, 1956, the U-2s took undetected aerial photographs of Moscow and Leningrad.
Bet against France and China
Even after the flights over the Soviet Union were put on the back burner by President Eisenhower due to fierce political protests by the Russians, the U-2 continued to prove its worth. During the Suez Crisis, leading up to the Bay of Pigs Invasion (which failed miserably), the Cuban Missile Crisis, at virtually all key moments of the Cold War, the aerial photographs of the U-2 proved to be an important source of information.
The U-2 was eventually also deployed against China. In 1962, that country fought a short but fierce border war with neighboring India over disputed territory in Kashmir. The US helped India by allowing U-2s to make spy flights over China. Previously it was thought that the US kept aloof in this Sino-Indian conflict. The base that India offered to the US could later be used for new flights over the Soviet Union.
Finally, France was also monitored. In 1963, President De Gaulle announced that France would conduct an atomic bomb test at Mururoa Atoll. When was not announced. Flights with the U-2 over the area gave the Americans a picture of the preparations for the test, which took place later that year.