The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance; The U-2 and OXCART Programs, 1954-1974

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Sec, et NOFORN
Chapter 2
56
In addition to the camera systems, the U-2 carried one other im­
portant item of optical equipment, a periscope. Designed by James
Baker and built by Walter Baird of Baird Associates, the optical peri­
scope helped pilots recognize targets beneath the aircraft and also
proved to be a valuable navigational aid. 22
PREPARATIONS FOR TESTING THE U-2
As work progressed in California on the airframe, in Connecticut on
the engines, and in Boston on the camera system, the top officials of
the Development Projects Staff flew to California and Nevada to
search for a site where the aircraft could be tested safely and secretly.
On 12 April 1955 Richard Bissell and Col. Osmund Ritland (the se­
nior Air Force officer on the project staff) flew over Nevada with
Kelly Johnson in a small Beechcraft plane piloted by Lockheed's
chief test pilot, Tony Le Vier. They spotted what appeared to be an air­
strip by a salt flat known as Groom Lake, near the northeast corner of
the Atomic Energy Commission's (AEC) Nevada Proving Ground.
After debating about landing on the old airstrip, LeVier set the plane
down on the lakebed, and all four walked over to examine the strip.
The facility had been used during World War II as an aerial gunnery
range for Army Air Corps pilots. From the air the strip appeared to be
paved, but on closer inspection it turned out to have originally been
fashioned from compacted earth that had turned into ankle-deep dust
after more than a decade of disuse. If LeVier had attempted to land on
the airstrip, the plane would probably have nosed over when the
wheels sank into the loose soil, killing or injuring all of the key fig­
ures in the U-2 project.23
Bissell and his colleagues all agreed that Groom Lake would
make an ideal site for testing the U-2 and training its pilots. Upon re­
turning to Washington, Bissell discovered that Groom Lake was not
part of the AEC proving ground. After consulting with Dulles, Bissell
and Miller asked the Atomic Energy Commission to add the Groom
Lake area to its real estate holdings in Nevada. AEC Chairman Adm.
Lewis Strauss readily agreed, and President Eisenhower also ap­
proved the addition of this strip of wasteland, known by its map des­
ignation as Area 51, to the Nevada Test Site. The outlines of Area 51
" Information supplied by James Baker to Donald E. Welzenbach, 12 May 1986 (U).
'·' OSA History, chap. 8, pp. 1-2 (TS Codeword); Miller, Lockheed U-2. pp. 19-20.
Sea,at