1.3 It Came Out of The Sky

The man who came to Spain to hold those talks was Mr Gumper, the President of Arizona State Teachers College. When Jair Sivils revealed his plan, Gumper paid him fifty thousand dollars to get started. Jair Sivils had a contact in Hungary who was a TAM operative. His name was Aleksandre Giorgashvili, better known as Alexey, and he was able to reroute rutile ore shipments from Ukraine to Armenia. Those shipments originally ordered to Plant 31 – Tbilisi Aircraft State Association – also known as JSC Tbilaviamsheni.

The General said, “CIA operates a Grumman to pick cargo from Lake Sevan. Not an easy task though we may presume it is safe, flies over Tehran. There is always the risk at the Soviet front. With that confrontation, they say the Armenians or the Russians, were shouting, ‘THEY ARE AMERICAN!’ I think they knew not where the cargo was going.”

“What is the load?” asked General Howe.

“I can’t say, sir,” replied Bradley, “They normally ship five to ten tonnes.”

“Who authorised the payment?”

“Mr Rick Helmsley, the DDP.”

“When and where?”

“In June. I transferred two million dollars to the College two months ago.”

“What do you think? Is this our problem…worth going after?” asked General Entwine, “Find this Jair Sivils hiding somewhere in Greece!”

Mr Hudson replied, “It’s a large amount but if we consider this area in the Soviet Union, as you say, it is too risky. It is not our problem in one way, on the other hand, we lost the money and the goods.”

Gumper suggested, “Can’t the FBI go after him?”

“No, Randy,” glowered the General, “We cannot engage FBI outside our jurisdiction. We have to leave this inquest for some other time. McCone asked me to adjust the funds. I can do that and keep them rolling.

“Mr Hudson, you can inform Clarence Johnson,” the General was poised to mention a recent revelation of the secret project codenamed ‘Archangel’, “LeMay wants to change the manuscripts to ‘SR-71’ on 29000 blueprints since the President last week misread the letters.

“If requested by the ATSC, I will engage CIA to lead an investigation and I will instruct the College to file a lawsuit to sue Catai Tours. All these dummy companies get their ore from Russian mines. South Africa Sector is doing alright.

“Gentlemen! We are done here. Bradley, keep an eye on this guy!”

“Yes sir,” returned the lieutenant.

And with that the meeting was over and Melville Bradley flew back to where he came from.

The Central Intelligence Agency established the Groom Lake test facility in April 1955 for Project AQUATONE – the development of the Lockheed U-2 strategic reconnaissance plane. Project Director Richard M Bissell figured that the flight test and pilot training programmes could not be conducted at Edwards Air Force Base or at Lockheed’s Palmdale facility, given the extreme secrecy surrounding the project. He carried out a covert search for a suitable testing site. He notified Lockheed who sent an inspection team out to Groom Lake.

On 4^th May 1955, a survey team arrived at Groom Lake and laid out a 1500 m north-south runway on the southwest corner of the lakebed and designated a site for a base support facility. It initially consisted of little more than a few shelters, workshops and trailer homes. A little over three months later, the base consisted of a single paved runway, three hangers, a control tower and basic accommodation for test personnel. Amenities included a movie theatre and a volleyball court. There were several wells, a mess hall and fuel storage tanks. This was how it looked when Bradley first arrived here in March 1959 five years ago.

The base received its first U-2 delivery on 24^th July 1955 from Burbank on a C-124 Globemaster II cargo plane, accompanied by Lockheed engineers on a Douglas DC-3. Regular Military Air Transport Service flights were set up between the test facility and Lockheed’s offices in Burbank, California. To preserve secrecy, personnel flew to Nevada on Monday mornings and back to California on Friday evenings. And its secrets were so daunting that the CIA denied an ‘Area 51’ ever existed but just a ranch for flight tests and pilot training.

In late 1957, the CIA approached their defence contractor, Lockheed, to build an undetectable spy plane. American aerospace engineer, Clarence (Kelly) Johnson, head of Lockheed’s Skunk Works in Burbank, California, led Project OXCART with aim of flying higher and faster than the U-2 spy plane that was downed by the Russians. Project OXCART was established in August 1959 for anti-radar studies, aerodynamic structural tests and designs. CIA approved a 96-million-dollar budget to build a dozen planes named A-12. The A-12 first flew at Groom Lake on 25^th April 1962.

The A-12’s performance potential was evidently found to be much greater and the USAF ordered a variant of the A-12 in December 1962.

The SR-71 is a long-range, high-altitude, Mach 3+ strategic reconnaissance plane with a longer and heavier fuselage allowing to hold more fuel as well as a two-seat cockpit. Designed to minimise its radar cross section and painted in a blackish blue colour to increase the emission of internal heat and to act as a camouflage in the night sky. This dark colour led to the aircraft’s new identity as the ‘Blackbird’.

With these features, it gave very little time for an enemy SAM site to acquire and track the aircraft on radar. By the time a SAM site could track the SR-71, it was often too late to launch a surface-to-air missile and the SR-71 would be out of range before the SAM could catch up to it. At sustained speed of more than Mach 3.2, the aircraft was faster than the Russian’s fastest interceptor, MiG-25, which also could not reach the SR-71 altitude. During its service life, no SR-71 was ever shot down.

On the SR-71, titanium was used for 90% of the structure in and out. Titanium was in short supply in the United States. The Skunk Works team was forced to look elsewhere for the metal. The major supplier of rutile ore was the USSR. Lieutenant Melville Bradley was committed from the very beginning to get the ore.