The first completed A-12 arrived at Area 51 in February 1962, after being disassembled in Burbank and transported to Nevada in a specially designed trailer that cost almost $100,000 (more than $830,000 today). WATCH: Full episodes of America's Book of Secrets online now. While President Eisenhower halted all U-2 flights over the Soviet Union, plans were already in the works for a smaller, faster-and stealthier-aircraft. In May 1960, the Soviets shot down a U-2 over the Russian city of Sverdlovsk, capturing its pilot Francis Gary Powers and forcing the United States to admit it was spying. There was a cost, however: In 1956, three CIA pilots were killed during U-2 test flights, including two at Area 51 and one at an Air Force base in Germany.
The U-2 (accidentally) took its first test flight over Groom Lake on Augand less than a year later flew over the USSR for the first time, becoming “immediately the most important source of intelligence on the Soviet Union,” according to a now-declassified CIA report. In addition, the technology behind the pressurized suits developed to keep U-2 pilots alive at such high altitudes would later play a key role in the manned space program. To meet this challenge, Shell Oil Company produced a special low-volatility kerosene fuel using the petroleum byproducts it normally employed in its “Flit” fly and bug spray. Before the U-2 was ready to fly, Lockheed engineers had to find a fuel that would not evaporate in the high altitudes at which the aircraft was designed to fly.
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