Much to the surprise of the nuclear scientists, the atomic weapons tests revealed that sometimes, in the first milliseconds of destruction, the atomic energy actually jettisoned splintered pieces of the bomb tower away from the intense heat, intact, before vaporization could occur. These highly radioactive pieces were then carried aloft in the clouds and deposited down on places like Groom Lake, and Atomic Energy Commission workers could then locate them with magnets. But while workers measured fallout patterns, weapons planners moved ahead with preparations for the next atomic test series, which would take place the following fall. The Operation Hardtack II nuclear test series would prove even bigger than Plumbbob, in terms of the number of tests. From September 12 to October 30, 1958, an astonishing thirty-seven nuclear bombs were exploded—from tops of tall towers, in tunnels and shafts, on the surface of the earth, and hanging from balloons. Areas 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 12, and 15 served as ground zero for the detonations, all within eighteen miles of Area 51.
All but abandoned by the CIA and left to the elements, the once-bustling Area 51 facility took on a spooky, postapocalyptic feel. Guards from the test site did occasional spot tests, but the classified material had all been moved. While the barren landscape weathered the fallout, the animals observed around Groom Lake suffered terribly. Wild horses, deer, and rabbits roamed around the abandoned hangars and vacant airfields covered with beta radiation burns—the skin lesions caused by radiation poisoning that had plagued so many people and animals in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the war. It was also during this period that a rare breach of security over Area 51 airspace occurred. On July 28, 1957, a Douglas Aircraft Company employee named Edward K. Current made what he said was an emergency landing on the former U-2 airstrip at Groom Lake. Mr. Current told Atomic Energy Commission security officers who questioned him that he had been on a cross-country training flight when he became lost and ran low on fuel. He was held overnight and released. The following day, the Nevada Test Organization uncharacteristically issued a press release stating that a private pilot had mistakenly landed on the “Watertown landing strip.” Mr. Current never made a public statement about his curious visit and remains the only civilian who ever landed at Area 51 uninvited in a private airplane, got out, and roamed around.
Meanwhile, in Washington, DC, Richard Bissell waited for presidential approval to plan more overflights using U-2s stationed at secret CIA facilities overseas. And on the West Coast, in Burbank, California, Lockheed’s Kelly Johnson was busy drawing up plans for the secret new spy plane. If Johnson was able to secure the new CIA contract he was working on with Bissell, it would likely mean Lockheed would spend the next decade fulfilling contract work out at Area 51. But what Kelly Johnson needed at this point was a radar cross-section wizard.
It was September of 1957, and Edward Lovick was standing on Lockheed’s antenna pattern range tinkering with echo returns when Kelly Johnson approached him for a chat. Lovick, then a thirty-eight-year-old physicist, was known among colleagues as Lockheed’s radar man. Radar was still a relatively new science but Lovick knew more about the subject than anyone else at Lockheed at the time.
“Would you like to come work on an interesting project?” the boss asked Lovick. In his eight-and-a-half-year tenure at the company, Lovick had never seen Kelly Johnson before. But standing beside Johnson were William Martin and L. D. MacDonald, two scientists Lovick considered to be brilliant. Martin was Lovick’s former boss, and the three men used to work together in the antenna lab. Martin and MacDonald had since disappeared to work on projects inside Building 82, a large, nondescript hangar at the north end of the facility where Lockheed’s black operations went on. As for the project that Kelly Johnson was asking Lovick to join, Johnson said it might finish in six weeks. Instead, it lasted thirty-two years. Although Lovick had no idea at the time, he was being invited into Lockheed’s classified group, officially called Advanced Development Projects but nicknamed the Skunk Works. In 1957, its primary customer was the CIA.