Latest / Skeptoid / Skeptoid #1007: The Pilots Who Landed at Area 51

Transcript

Skeptoid #1007: The Pilots Who Landed at Area 51 · Skeptoid

• 0:03
  Area 51 is said to be one of the most secure places in the entire world,
• 0:08
  but it's also reasonably accessible being located not far from Las Vegas.
• 0:13
  And it also draws lots of curiosity from conspiracy theorists who
• 0:18
  believe the government stores aliens and their spaceships there.
• 0:22
  Put all of that together and it's a recipe for lots of people
• 0:26
  trying to sneak in illegally.
• 0:28
  What happens when they try?
• 0:31
  We're gonna find out right now on Skeptoid.
• 0:42
  You are listening to Skeptoid.
• 0:43
  I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.
• 0:47
  The pilots who landed at Area 51.
• 0:52
  Welcome to the show that separates fact from fiction, science from pseudoscience,
• 0:56
  real history from fake history, and helps us all make better life decisions
• 1:00
  by knowing what's real and what's not.
• 1:03
  Doing this show for a living, I get exposed to all kinds of weird topics
• 1:08
  and to those who believe weird things.
• 1:11
  Obvious to all who listen to this show is that that includes UFOs and
• 1:16
  UFOlogists and since many of them believe that the U.S. government keeps
• 1:20
  aliens and/or their spaceships at the famous classified test facility,
• 1:25
  popularly known as Area 51, I tend to get all the weird Area 51 beliefs also.
• 1:33
  One of these, which I've heard more times than I can count, is that
• 1:36
  anyone attempting to enter Area 51 is immediately killed, and that
• 1:41
  unauthorized aircraft approaching too close are immediately shot down.
• 1:47
  Today we're gonna point the skeptical eye at pilots who are said to
• 1:51
  have landed their planes at the forbidden air base, and find out what
• 1:55
  did -- and didn't -- happen to them.
• 2:00
  One of the points that authors commonly make about Area 51 is that its biggest
• 2:04
  secret is that it was never secret.
• 2:07
  And that's completely true.
• 2:09
  Lockheed advertised for people to come and work there when the site
• 2:12
  was first established in 1955.
• 2:16
  Its FAA airport designation, XTA is in the navigation databases.
• 2:22
  The entire place has always appeared in full detail in all the public mapping
• 2:26
  systems like Google Maps and Apple Maps.
• 2:29
  You can even scroll through the historical imagery and see the new facilities
• 2:33
  appear at the same time their testing programs began, such as the newest
• 2:38
  hangers at the south end of the base, widely believed to be used for the
• 2:42
  RQ-180 remotely piloted stealth UAS.
• 2:46
  And using websites like FlightRadar24.com, you can even
• 2:51
  track the movements of all the planes in the Janet fleet in real time.
• 2:56
  Those are the 737s of the chartered airline that the Air Force uses to
• 3:00
  move civilian employees and other personnel between Las Vegas and sites
• 3:04
  in the Nevada Test and Training Range, such as Area 51, Tonopah Test Range,
• 3:10
  Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, Edwards Air Force Base, and others.
• 3:15
  If someone is trying to keep Area 51 secret, they're not doing a very good job.
• 3:21
  But it's still a classified facility and it is highly secure.
• 3:26
  You cannot approach by land or by air without being detected.
• 3:31
  You certainly can't go there.
• 3:33
  Many have tried, few have succeeded.
• 3:35
  The standard case is some yo-yo driving or hiking in, ignoring the fences or
• 3:40
  signs thinking they're gonna get inside.
• 3:42
  They don't.
• 3:45
  This happens pretty regularly.
• 3:47
  If you drive toward the place in your car, they know you're coming.
• 3:50
  They have multiple types of security systems, including motion detectors,
• 3:54
  buried next to all the approach roads, and even inside the perimeter.
• 3:59
  These are sensitive enough to detect hikers as well as vehicles.
• 4:03
  People have found these sensors and posted videos to YouTube, so we
• 4:07
  know these systems are out there.
• 4:10
  They alert a security force popularly known as the "camo dudes." They
• 4:16
  work for a private security company contracted by the Air Force.
• 4:20
  They are quick to arrive in either white pickups or Jeep Cherokees and
• 4:24
  quick to apprehend anyone they catch.
• 4:27
  Sorry to disappoint the conspiracy theorists, but such
• 4:30
  trespassers are never just killed.
• 4:34
  They are instead detained until the Lincoln County
• 4:37
  Sheriff's deputy can get there.
• 4:39
  They're typically cited for trespassing on a military facility, which carries
• 4:43
  a hefty fine and possible imprisonment depending on the circumstances.
• 4:48
  You can see this for yourself.
• 4:50
  Body cam footage from the deputies has been posted to YouTube also.
• 4:56
  But today we want to focus on the more extraordinary cases.
• 4:59
  People who have flown in and landed their planes either on the runways
• 5:04
  or on dry Groom Lake itself.
• 5:07
  Now it's fair to start off by pointing out that this hasn't happened nearly
• 5:11
  as often as some people think.
• 5:13
  Everyone has a story they've heard.
• 5:15
  Even military pilots know someone who knows someone who did it.
• 5:20
  Several times a year, Nellis Air Force Base holds a two week combat training
• 5:23
  exercise called Red Flag with pilots from all the American forces and usually
• 5:29
  from other countries too, participating.
• 5:31
  They all have stories about Red Flag pilots who tried it.
• 5:36
  The truth is much less facetious.
• 5:40
  Colloquially, they call it "The Box" -- officially, it's
• 5:44
  Restricted Area 4808 North.
• 5:47
  Violating The Box means severe disciplinary action and probable
• 5:52
  loss of flight privileges.
• 5:54
  It's a career move that few fighter pilots would be willing
• 5:58
  to risk if it's ever happened.
• 6:01
  No accounts have been published due to operational security.
• 6:05
  If they'd actually landed, we'd probably know about it.
• 6:09
  As a number of former employees from Area 51 have written books
• 6:13
  that detail a few such accounts.
• 6:15
  The only accounts about Red Flag guys are informal anecdotes, usually hearsay
• 6:22
  and never giving names or dates.
• 6:27
  So now let's have some fun and check out the few times this
• 6:31
  is confirmed to have happened.
• 6:35
  1957: Edward K. Current, Jr.
• 6:39
  This honor of the very first known incursion, fell onto this poor
• 6:44
  guy who was doing a cross country checkout to get a private pilot's
• 6:47
  license, and coincidentally was an employee for Douglas Aircraft.
• 6:52
  Lost and low on fuel, he did as he'd been taught and landed safely at what looked
• 6:58
  like an abandoned airfield on a dry lake.
• 7:01
  He thought he was the luckiest guy ever until a few minutes later when he
• 7:05
  had all kinds of guns pointed at him.
• 7:09
  A while later, he was released, given fuel, and took off.
• 7:12
  But fate was not his friend that day as shortly thereafter, his engine gave out
• 7:17
  and he crashed near the town of Mercury.
• 7:21
  The incident prompted Groom Lake, most of it anyway, to be added to the Nevada
• 7:25
  Test Site, removing public access, and finally giving it some kind of security.
• 7:33
  1959: Three NASA Employees
• 7:38
  Groom Lake had been identified by NASA as an acceptable emergency landing
• 7:42
  site for their new X-15 space plane.
• 7:46
  With permission they had tested the surface and found it strong enough
• 7:50
  to safely handle the X-15's weight.
• 7:53
  But if a flight was to be conducted following a rainstorm, the emergency
• 7:58
  landing sites would have to be retested.
• 8:01
  One time, X-15 pilot Forrest Petersen and two other NASA guys did so.
• 8:06
  And since the part of Groom Lake they were interested in was outside of that
• 8:11
  newly established secure boundary, they didn't bother asking for clearance.
• 8:16
  They just came right in and landed their big old Douglas R4D, a plane heavy
• 8:21
  enough to simulate the weight of an X-15.
• 8:24
  They taxied around looking at the depth of their tire tracks to
• 8:28
  determine the site's suitability.
• 8:31
  Before long, they noticed a group of Jeeps speeding out toward them.
• 8:35
  Deeming discretion to be the better part of valor, they booked it and took off
• 8:40
  to get the heck out of there as fast as they could, successfully getting airborne
• 8:44
  before the Jeeps could reach them.
• 8:46
  Once they returned to their own base at Edwards, they got yelled at, but
• 8:50
  suffered no other disciplinary action.
• 8:55
  You might wonder why there would be animosity between the Air Force and NASA.
• 8:59
  Well, that's an enormous can of worms that we're not gonna
• 9:02
  open today and which reached its climax with the Apollo program.
• 9:06
  Suffice it to say that cameras on an X-15 were perfectly capable of photographing
• 9:12
  U-2s and A-12s at Area 51 and on more than one occasion, inadvertently did.
• 9:22
  1960: Robert Wilcox
• 9:26
  In this case, he didn't actually land there, but did the next closest thing.
• 9:31
  This pilot was training in an F-100C Super Saber when his plane
• 9:36
  suffered a major hydraulic failure.
• 9:38
  The airstrip at Area 51 being the only one in sight, he aimed the plane
• 9:43
  toward it, but quickly realized he wouldn't make it and punched out.
• 9:48
  The plane crashed on one side of Groom Lake and he parachuted
• 9:51
  into the hills on the other side.
• 9:54
  When base personnel reached him, they saw he was uninjured, and since he was far
• 9:58
  enough away that he hadn't seen anything classified, they drove him out onto the
• 10:03
  lake bed where a rescue helicopter from Nellis was able to land and pick him up.
• 10:09
  Following this incident, R-4808 was established, giving the
• 10:14
  base further protection from military pilots getting too close.
• 10:20
  1963: Anthony Bendell and Wingman
• 10:25
  A British RAF Officer, Anthony Bendell, was leading a flight of
• 10:30
  three F-105 Thunder Chiefs as part of the officer exchange program.
• 10:35
  One of the other planes developed an oil pressure problem, so Bendell ordered
• 10:39
  the third plane back to Nellis while he stayed with the problem plane and
• 10:44
  watched him safely make an emergency landing on a runway at Area 51.
• 10:49
  But before Bendell could head back to Nellis himself, a pair of
• 10:53
  F-101 Voodoo fighters appeared.
• 10:56
  Upon hearing his British accent over the radio and determining he clearly wasn't
• 11:00
  American, they forced him to land as well.
• 11:04
  As he taxied, they ordered him not to look to his left, so of course
• 11:09
  he instinctively looked to his left and saw a classified A-12 spy plane.
• 11:16
  Both pilots were separately and extensively interrogated.
• 11:20
  Eventually, Bendell was allowed to return in his F-105 to Nellis
• 11:25
  while the student pilot was placed on the next Janet back to Las Vegas.
• 11:30
  As they both acted properly during a legitimate emergency,
• 11:34
  neither was disciplined.
• 11:38
  1960s: Two civilian incidents
• 11:42
  These two cases are known only from remarks made by A-12 pilot Dennis
• 11:47
  Sullivan, who was stationed at Area 51 when they happened, during a public talk
• 11:52
  he gave at the National Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas in October, 2005.
• 11:59
  Unfortunately, he gave no dates but given his position, I'm willing to
• 12:04
  call them likely true, while also being careful to remember that
• 12:08
  pilots love to tell tall tales.
• 12:12
  One time a guy was taking his girlfriend for a flight out of Las Vegas, but became
• 12:17
  lost and ran low on fuel and landed when he saw runway lights at Area 51.
• 12:23
  When security guards detained them and questioned them, the girlfriend
• 12:27
  began beating the pilot with her purse for being such an idiot.
• 12:32
  Another time a student pilot who was doing a solo cross-country checkout
• 12:36
  flight got lost and landed there for the same reason, and it turned out
• 12:41
  he was a former Air Force navigator.
• 12:44
  His story was verified and his plane was refueled, and he was sent on his way.
• 12:50
  1977: A Civilian Beech Bonanza
• 12:56
  During a sensitive ground test of the HAVE BLUE prototype of the
• 13:00
  F-117 stealth fighter, the weather came in and cloud cover dipped low.
• 13:05
  To everyone's surprise, a Civilian Beech Bonanza appeared out of
• 13:09
  nowhere and directly overflew the base and the prototype.
• 13:14
  They had it tracked and the pilot was later found and debriefed.
• 13:18
  But the reason he'd gotten away with it was the low cloud cover.
• 13:22
  He hadn't intended any intrusion, but the ceiling pushed him lower
• 13:26
  and lower until he was below radar coverage, so they never saw him coming.
• 13:31
  A Lockheed Skunk Works engineer on hand quipped, "I don't know why we are trying
• 13:37
  so hard to make a stealth airplane; why don't we just build a bunch of those?"
• 13:43
  2016: Navy P-8A Poseidon crew
• 13:49
  During a Red Flag exercise, this Navy patrol and reconnaissance
• 13:53
  aircraft based on the Boeing 737 was providing battlespace-wide
• 13:58
  information on airborne threats.
• 14:00
  But at some point, either accidentally or otherwise, its electronic surveillance
• 14:06
  gear got pointed at Area 51, even though the plane itself never went into The Box.
• 14:12
  Data was seized and reprimands were issued, but due to the complexity of the
• 14:17
  environment, it could not be demonstrated that the crew did anything intentionally.
• 14:23
  2023: 70-year-old Mooney M20F pilot
• 14:30
  One day someone on Reddit posted a screenshot of what he happened
• 14:34
  to be watching on the FlightAware flight tracking website: a
• 14:38
  1967 Mooney private plane, tail number N3770N overflying Area 51.
• 14:49
  He later landed in Concord, California where the tower advised
• 14:53
  him that he'd been instructed to telephone Nellis Air Force Base.
• 14:58
  This soon made it from Reddit to the Daily Caller news website, which
• 15:03
  posted a statement from Nellis that included "Any attempt to illegally
• 15:07
  access the area is highly discouraged."
• 15:12
  The pilot's name was not published, though the plane's owner is easy to
• 15:16
  look up by its tail number and two names were bandied about on Reddit.
• 15:21
  As my business is something other than repeating internet rumors about suspected
• 15:26
  criminal actions, I will refrain from giving those here -- though since the
• 15:31
  Daily Caller reported he was 70 years old as of that date in 2023, I leave it to
• 15:37
  the curious to investigate on their own.
• 15:41
  And that's it.
• 15:43
  No records of anyone getting shot down or extrajudicially executed.
• 15:49
  Of course, I can already tell that some of the feedback I get on this episode
• 15:52
  will be that of course there are no records of the shootdowns and killings
• 15:56
  because the military would've erased them.
• 16:00
  And thus, once again, to the conspiratorial mind, a lack of
• 16:04
  evidence is proof of the conspiracy.
• 16:07
  As science communicators, we just can't win -- just as Area 51
• 16:13
  will always be plagued by yahoos and weirdos trying to sneak in.
• 16:20
  Special thanks to Peter W. Merlin, author of this episode's primary source,
• 16:25
  the exceptional 2023 magnum opus:
• 16:28
  Dreamland: The Secret History of Area 51
• 16:32
  and who provided substantial additional information on very
• 16:35
  short notice and otherwise bent over backwards to be helpful.
• 16:39
  Thanks Peter.
• 16:42
  We continue with a ground intrusion case said to be the farthest anyone's
• 16:46
  ever gotten into Area 51 in the ad-free and extended premium feed.
• 16:52
  To access it, become a supporter at skeptoid.com/gopremium
• 17:02
  A great big Skeptoid shoutout to our premium supporters, including Kareman;
• 17:08
  Joshua Austin, DDS of San Antonio, Texas; Derek, your friendly neighborhood,
• 17:13
  Satanist; and Mahrcel-Jahn Kreygsman.
• 17:17
  We've got lots of live events coming up.
• 17:19
  There might still be a couple tickets available for our Skeptoid
• 17:22
  Adventure to Death Valley in October.
• 17:25
  Come to the website to find out.
• 17:27
  I am also speaking at a couple of Skepticamps around the country,
• 17:30
  and of course, we have our monthly Nerd Nights here in Bend, Oregon.
• 17:35
  You can see the whole schedule and get details at skeptoid.com/events
• 17:40
  or to book me for your own event, come to skeptoid.com/speaking
• 17:46
  Come join in the discussion of this episode in our private Discord channel.
• 17:50
  Just visit skeptoid.com/discord
• 17:55
  Skeptoid is a production of Skeptoid Media.
• 17:57
  Director of Operations and Tinfoil Hat Counter is Kathy Rightmire.
• 18:02
  Marketing Guru and Illuminati Liaison is Jake Young.
• 18:05
  Production Management and All Things Audio by Will McCandless.
• 18:09
  Music is by Lee Sanders.
• 18:12
  Researched and written by me, Brian Dunning.
• 18:15
  Listen to Skeptoid for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
• 18:19
  Amazon Music, or iHeart.
• 18:24
  You are listening to Skeptoid, a listener-supported program.
• 18:28
  I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.