The five specially trained CIA pilots (CIA code-name: Drivers) arrived soon thereafter. In early 1962 the first A-12 (CIA code-name for the A-12 plane: Article) was shipped to Groom Lake. Surplus World War II Navy barracks were moved to the site to furnish billeting for CIA operations. Under the leadership of Werner Weiss, grade GS-15 in the CIA, Colonels Holbury and Slip Slater, USAF increased the size of the facility to accommodate the new Oxcart/A-12 program by lengthening the runway from 5000 feet to 8500 feet and the restricted airspace grew to 20 X 22 nautical miles.
Recognizing the success of testing the U-2 at Area 51, the CIA and the Air Force decided to test all new top-secret military aircraft at Groom Lake. On August 4 the U-2 made its first flight. Construction was completed by July 1955, and on the 24th the first U-2 prototype arrived from the Lockheed Skunk Works Headquarters in Burbank, California by a C-124 transport plane. A bomb with the code-name HOOD, part of the 1957 Operation Plumbob, caused substantial damage at Watertown, the code-name for Area 51. Nuclear tests from the 50's into the 60's caused several evacuations from Area 51. Located within Area 51 of the Nevada Test Site, the base came to be known simply as "Area 51". Tony LeVier, the pilot assigned by Johnson to find a suitable location, found several remote spots, but chose Groom Lake because of the mountainous perimeter it furnished a dry lake bed that would provide the ultimate runway. Nellis Air Force Base, a few miles north of Las Vegas, and the AEC's (Atomic Energy Commission) Nevada Test Site (NTS) composed over 1,300 square miles used to set off hundreds of atomic explosions during the early days of the Cold War. Seeking a place to test the U-2 in secret far from the prying eyes of would-be spies and the public, Johnson settled on Area 51, a remote site in the uninhabitable Nevada desert that had served the military as a remote place to test weapons for quite some time.
Kelly Johnson, an aircraft design and engineering genius running a special design team within the Lockheed Aircraft Company called the "Skunk Works" was asked to design the U-2 to gather intelligence on Soviet bomber and inter-continental ballistic missile bases in the Soviet Union. Prompted by the Cold War era that began immediately after World War II, the CIA was given the task of developing strategic means of determining the military strength of its enemies. A desert region sparsely populated with poisonous, spiny reptiles, insects, plant life, and for a short evolutionary period, the U-2 Dragon Ladies and the A-12 Archangels of THE ROADRUNNERS.
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