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Area 51: what is the mysterious place that inspires conspiracy theories?
Area 51: what is the mysterious place that inspires conspiracy theories?
At first they called it "Rancho Paraíso" or "Land of Dreams".
It is a place in the middle of the desert where no one would want to go to work, so they had to give it a name that sounded attractive and they had no better idea than to name it Area 51.
What is this place?
Area 51 is a military base that was secret until recently, but was actually created more than 50 years ago. A base for military projects that has been a source of mystery and legend since its creation.
This military base is located in the desert of the US state of Nevada, about 135 km north of Las Vegas. The Area 51 testing ground exceeds 12,000 km2, and it is believed that some 1,500 people work there.
Area 51 was created when Central Intelligence Agency officer Richard Bissell was commissioned by the CIA to find a hidden area in the United States to experiment with U2 prototypes an American spy plane was designed to spy on the territory of the Soviet Union to track its military development.
It had to be in a deserted area, a place that nobody knew or that nobody had ever seen, as if it did not exist in the world.
When was it found?
That is how on April 12, 1955, when Bisell was flying over the Nevada desert, he saw a salt flat near Groom Lake, a former military base used in World War II that was abandoned. Bissell saw the base, in the middle of nowhere, in the ghost rocks, and realized that this was the ideal place
Why was this Area created?
It was created in the mid-1950s, in the midst of the Cold War, as a laboratory where the Air Force tested various weapons for a possible confrontation with the Russians.
It was there that the U-2 spy plane, the A-12 OXCART and SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft, as well as the stealthy F-117, were put to the test.
Those in charge of these missions worked with the utmost secrecy and with limited information, even for themselves. They couldn't even tell their families what they did for a living. One of the pilots, for example, told his wife that he worked repairing televisions.
Researcher of this article: Fabianna Shakespeare
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