Dreamland: The Secret History of Area 51

As several others have written in reviews, THIS is the book you want if you have any interest (and who doesn't??) in the secret military base know as "Area 51". This base has entered the collective consciousness by association with wild theories (see Bob Lazar section for details) and movies (Independence Day) of underground alien bases and UFO testing. But the facts as presented here are less extraterrestrial but extremely interesting in terms of advanced aerial technology.If you want a sober, detailed, well written account of the declassified programs that were carried out there, this is it! Peter Merlin has done an exceptional job in meticulously researching and assembling a narrative about the history of the base genesis and the various cutting edge aerial programs carried out there. In addition to the "pre-history" of the region before the base was established, he brings the story up to its establishment as a site to test the U-2 aircraft. Merlin continues to describe subsequent programs based there, both well known (A-12, F-117) and some of the more obscure. In some cases he mentions programs that exist but remained classified as to details. But many of the obscure programs like testing of Russian aircraft (e.g. Have Donut) are described in detail.The narrative is extremely detailed and goes into several programs and many incidents in great detail. As an example, the loss of a C-54 transport aircraft and a much later loss of MiGs and an SU-27 are reported in extended narratives. It is clear that Merlin spends much effort to accumulate the photographs throughout the book. You won't see many of these in internet searches! He also includes a chapter on how Area 51 attracted the UFO/Conspiracy crowd, and the expansion of the restricted area due to gawkers hiking in and some camping out. convinced that UFO and aliens are at the base (Spoiler Alert: they're not). There's even a group photo of the security "Camo Dudes". The base did have a serious problem in dealing with its location close by and downwind of the Nevada test site, and the effects of fallout in and around the base.As others have mentioned, this is a massive book. I have several professional medical texts, and this is of the same dimensions and weight. Previous books on Area 51, such as the Jacobsen Area 51 book of 2011, look incredibly lame in comparison to this masterful work. Yes, it is expensive, but you very much get your money's worth and then some.

Just got this book today and immediately browsed through it. No other book on Area 51 comes close to this one. This book is a must read! I am glad I bought it and will be adding it to my other collection of Area 51 books. The information and pictures within appear outstanding and well researched.For those wondering and looking for information about if aliens and UFO's are at Area 51 in this book, you won't find that information. This book is mainly about the history of the Groom Lake/Area 51 base and the Top Secret aircraft projects that were tested there.When you go to read this book, take care and lay it flat/open on a flat surface. Open the book and browse through it carefully if you don't want to damage the spine. With such a big and heavy book with so much information packed inside (500+ pages), it may have been better to split this into a Vol.1 (1950's to 1980's) and a Vol.2 (1990's to Current) books.

As an Air Force brat whose father was stationed at Nellis AFB during his early teens, I have always wondered about the truth of Area 51. This tome is a no nonsense record of many former secret projects. It tells not only what happened, but shows photos of them, the pilots, and others involved.Previously noted , this book is huge and very heavy. The only way I can read it is to place it on a desk. That is my only complaint, that I cannot read it in bed. I did wait a while until the price dropped before purchase.

Much has been written about Area 51 and the Tonopah Test Range, especially with respect to iconic military aircraft tested at these facilities such as the U-2, A-12, and F-117, notwithstanding the fact that conspiracy theories by UFO gurus about Area 51 being used for the storage, examination, and reverse engineering of crashed alien spacecraft have been debunked. However, this new book by Peter Merlin provides an up-to-date overview of the history of testing of advanced aircraft and weapons at Area 51 and TTR, not just the well-known U-2, A-12, D-21, Have Blue, and F-117 but also lesser-known programs such as Tacit Blue, HALSOL, TSSAM, and Bird of Prey, relying on declassified documents and interviews with people who were involved with development and testing of top-secret aerospace vehicles and weapons at Area 51 and TTR to create an up-to-date narrative of aerospace-related activities that took place at these secret bases.Although this book carries a hefty price tag, it contained a treasure trove of revelations that I had never known before plus information on little-known programs carried out at Area 51 and TTR during the Cold War and beyond:- Although it's well-known that the Lockheed U-2 was designated as such to hide its true role, the US Air Force initially wanted to allocate the designation R-17 to a second batch of U-2s on order but in the end, the U-2s with serial numbers 56-6700/6722 and 56-6950/6955 kept the U-2 designation- The name Area 51 is derived from the Project 51 effort by the CIA to build new facilities at Watertown, namely a radar control center, a data reduction lab, and facilities to house radar and data reduction equipment- Captured and/or defected Soviet- and Chinese-built MiGs flown in Nevada by US Air Force pilots for strength and weaknesses compared to American- and European-built jet fighters were allocated cover designations in the pre-1962 F-for-Fighter designation sequence (e.g. YF-110B, YF-114C) because the US Air Force wanted to hide from the Soviet bloc special access programs that conducted evaluation tests of MiG jet fighters- The Lockheed XST design codenamed Have Blue owed its design heritage to the unbuilt Lockheed Harvey concept, and McDonnell Douglas and General Dynamics also undertook design studies for experimental stealth aircraft although those proposals were turned down during DARPA's process of downselecting design for the XST contest- The Lockheed Senior Prom prototype stealth cruise missile and the F-117 Nighthawk (codenamed Senior Prom) were originally codenamed Senior High I and II respectively- The Senior Prom program was canceled in 1982 before it could enter the production phase because of rising costs (suggestions about the Senior Prom being canceled at the prototype stage because it was too big to fit in the bomb bay of a B-1 are untenable because the AGM-129 also was too wide for carriage in the B-1's bomb bay despite entering production and the cancellation of the B-1A by Jimmy Carter in 1977 meant that Senior Prom was optimized for carriage below the underwing pylons of a B-52)- A July 1986 news article in Aviation Week and Space Technology about an F-117 crash near Bakersfield on July 11, 1986 quoted anonymous sources as hinting that the Nighthawk's designation was not F-19 as speculated by many popular print publications (of course, we know that F-19 was skipped at Northrop's request in favor of F-20 for the Tigershark to avoid confusion with the MiG-19 and give the impression that the F-20 was a new-generation jet fighter), and a January 1988 Armed Forces Journal International article was the first report to reveal F-117 as the true designation for the Nighthawk, months before the F-117's existence was revealed- Lockheed submitted a proposal for the BSAX competition won by Northrop's N-345 Tacit Blue in the form of a faceted flying wing- Lockheed test flew a unmanned flying wing in 1986, and Northrop flew an experimental aircraft distinct from the Tacit Blue in 1984-1988- The YF-24 (most probably another US-evaluated Soviet warplane in my opinion was flown in 1997)- The Northrop Grumman reconnaissance flying wing informally called "RQ-180" was first flown in 2010 and resulted from a classified USAF contest for an unmanned P-ISR aircraft drawing upon the AFRL-sponsored Sensorcraft programIn case anyone's curious about rumors of new-generation stealthy reconnaissance planes being fielded by the US Air Force in the early 1990s, including a supposed hypersonic spyplane, this book corroborates comments by Ben Rich in his 1994 memoir detailing his time at the Lockheed Skunk Works revealing that the Pentagon budget codename Aurora associated by some people with the alleged hypersonic follow-on to the SR-71 was actually allocated to intended funds for procurement of the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber due to the Pentagon wonks realizing that the cost of funding the B-2 was difficult to conceal.