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A Different Kind of Graveyard: Stealth Aircraft Rumored to Be Buried at Area 51

Jan. 10, 2013 2:00pm Liz Klimas

Here’s something you might never have considered: What does the military do with all its secret planes when it’s time to retire them. Although you might think they sit collecting dust in a hangar in a protected location, rumor has it they are physically buried underground. Where? Area 51, allegedly — where else?

Report States Classified Aircraft Are Buried at Area 51 in Nevada

Groom Lake in an area popularly known as Area 51 in Nevada. (Image: Doc Searls via Wikimedia)

Urban Ghosts Media has a story that states although some of the planes that become declassified and stripped of their more secret components head to museums, burial near Groom Lake in Nevada — also well known as Area 51, a military base shrouded in secrecy and popularized in conspiracy theories — might be common treatment as well. Although not necessarily a new or well-known practice, it makes for fascinating reading none the less.

A sign outside of the restricted military land. (Photo via Wikimedia)

It’s not the first time the rumors have arisen of an Area 51 stealth plane graveyard. In 2001, the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Keith Rogers brought the intriguing practice to light. Rogers wrote the account of a former worker at Groom Lake who spoke anonymously as he recalled what he witnessed in 1982:

It was a massive excavation, he said. “They didn’t dig that hole and put Martians or moon men in it.”

He said the wreckage of a classified plane that was buried on the base was for months in what’s called the “Scoot-N-Hide,” a shed off a taxiway where secret planes are kept out of view of orbiting satellites.

“They put it on a flatbed truck and put it in a hangar. Then one day they scraped it off the flatbed into the hole and buried it,” he said. “They attached a cable to the aircraft and just pulled it off. The thing was shattered like an egg.”

A color adjusted photo from NASA’s Landsat (Image: NASA via Wikimedia)

Rogers went on to report the account of Peter Merlin, an aviation writer who found evidence of the practice in declassified documents, who said at the time that more than a dozen were buried there with the combined value of up to $1 billion. These are the aircraft Merlin believed to be buried at Area 51:

Several 1960s-vintage A-12s, predecessors of the fast, high-flying SR-71 Blackbird spy planes.

Four U2s from the 1950s.

An F-101 chase plane that crashed in 1965.

Two Have Blue airframes that were used to demonstrate technology for the F-117A.

Wreckage of a MiG-23 that crashed in 1984.

“We have no reason to believe [this practice] has stopped,” Merlin said, according to the Review-Journal.

More recently, British aviation enthusiast David Cundall said it was common practice at the end of wars to bury military machines such as planes, tanks and jeeps. It is this that has lead Cundall on a 17-year quest to unearth World War II-era Spitfires, which were rumored to be buried in a wooden crate near northern Myanmar.

The wooden crate was found in Myitkyina in Kachin state during a dig that began in December 2012. Several digs are planned nationwide, including another near the airport in Yangon.

Cundall said the search team in Kachin inserted a camera in the crate and found water. What else was inside the crate was unclear and pumping out the water could take weeks, he said.

As seen in an announcement from the government seeking sources for demilitarization and scraping of aircraft, those planes that are not classified and can be of disposed more generally go through a process that includes recycling and destroying military offensive or defensive advantages.

Read more about Urban Ghost’s theories on burial and potential sightings of stealth planes here.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

(H/T: io9)

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Comments (25)

scrapadapolis
Posted on January 11, 2013 at 9:58am
I buried 2 307 amc javlin heads in my garage along with a dodge 727 transmission and a cracked 307 amc block.whats the big deal.

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- grampdad
  Posted on January 11, 2013 at 11:31am
  good!
  
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exfire
Posted on January 10, 2013 at 11:56pm
God,this great news ! At last, the damm aliens that have taken over my back yard maybe heading out if they learn about this….I wasn’t to upset when I first found then, at first they were kind of fun to have around…I mean , come on, little gray guys that glow in the dark…now how wound’t find that to be a kick in the pants ! But it got to be old in a hurry, with them bar-b queing all night long, not to mention having to pick up all the beer cans every morninng ! But my wife really didnt like the fact that she coundn’t take a shower without the little bastards peekin’ in the bathroom window all the time….

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RKD
Posted on January 10, 2013 at 9:31pm
About 25 years ago I sat on a flight next to an elderly woman who claimed she was one of the first female engineers hired by a large aviation company. She told me that at one time in her career she worked on a project where they were developing nuclear engines for aircraft but that they weren’t successful. What I was told was that a huge pit was dug and the aircraft they were testing the engines on was pushed in to the pit and covered over (cause it was hot). All of this took place out in the desert according to her. I sat there and had no reason to NOT believe this grandmotherly woman sitting next to me knitting a sweater for her granddaughter. Could the story about the stealth aircraft being buried in area 51 be true…why not!

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TexBork
Posted on January 10, 2013 at 8:58pm
Well, at least an aircraft graveyard does suggest that we’ve never left one up there!

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- G-WHIZ
  Posted on January 12, 2013 at 11:36am
  First …the secret-parts to be removed and dissintegrated. Seccond…Th rest of the craft would be crushed beyond reccognition. Third..all the useable-metals and others to be recycled. Fourth…what’s left can then be berried(maybe). This is just annother PROGlimation to keep the AREA51-SMOKESCREEN going!! What’s the OTHERHAND doing???
  
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Insert Clever Username Here
Posted on January 10, 2013 at 7:00pm
Also buried at Area 51′s graveyard:

The Ark of the Covenant, Noah’s Ark, Archimedes of Syracuse, an arc reactor invented by Nikola Tesla, a sane female politician from California, a black hole that served as an exit path for the Bermuda Triangle’s Einstein Rosen bridge, the remains of the lost Roanoke colony, an ancient scroll within which is written a screenplay for Indiana Jones 4 that doesn’t suck, and the ghost of extraterrestrial dinosaur God particles.

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- fedupcitizen2012
  Posted on January 10, 2013 at 9:51pm
  You forgot about the flux capacitor.
  
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Zeb
Posted on January 10, 2013 at 6:20pm
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON00
September 29, 1995
Presidential Determination
No. 95-45

MEMORANDUM FOR THE ADMINISTRATOR OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL
PROTECTION AGENCY
THE SECRETARY OF THE AIR FORCE

SUBJECT: Presidential Determination on Classified
Information Concerning the Air Force’s Operating
Location Near Groom Lake, Nevada

I find that it is in the paramount interest of the United States
to exempt the United States Air Force’s operating location near
Groom Lake, Nevada (the subject of litigation in Kasza v. Browner
(D. Nev. CV-S-94-795-PMP) and Frost v. Perry (D. Nev. CV-S-94-
714-PMP)) from any applicable requirement for the disclosure to
unauthorized persons of classified information concerning that
operating location. Therefore, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 6961(a),
I hereby exempt the Air Force’s operating location near Groom
Lake, Nevada from any Federal, State, interstate or local
provision respecting control and abatement of solid waste or
hazardous waste disposal that would require the disclosure of
classified information concerning that operating location to any
unauthorized person. This exemption shall be effective for the
full one-year statutory period.
Nothing herein is intended to: (a) imply that in the absence of
such a Presidential exemption, the Resource Conservation and
Recovery Act (

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- Zeb
  Posted on January 10, 2013 at 6:27pm
  (RCRA) or any other provision of law permits or
  requires disclosure of classified information to unauthorized
  persons; or (b) limit the applicability or enforcement of any
  requirement of law applicable to the Air Force’s operating
  location near Groom Lake, Nevada, except those provisions, if
  any, that would require the disclosure of classified information.
  
  The Secretary of the Air Force is authorized and directed to
  publish this Determination in the Federal Register.
  
  [Signed]
  William J. Clinton
  
  Report this comment
gr8t2bfree
Posted on January 10, 2013 at 6:01pm
This sounds incredibly stupid. Why not just cut them up and recycle the steel. What advantage is there to burying them? Storage for resurrection at a later date? I think not.

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- corbecket
  Posted on January 10, 2013 at 8:01pm
  There’s not a lot of steel in the more recent generation of military aircraft. Maybe some exotic metals in the engine components, and a fair amount of titanium in the A-12 variants (obsolete & retired now). Most current aircraft are heavily composite in their construction. As the witness implied, these things shatter like eggs when they’re involved in an accident. The F-16′s are noted for this characteristic in crashes, and they’re becoming antiques, having gone into production back in 1976. I’m sure the trend has continued, so who knows how much the actual metal content has been reduced in the newest spook aircraft.
  
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proliance
Posted on January 10, 2013 at 5:43pm
Somebody violated his Top Secret clearance.

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- monitor
  Posted on January 10, 2013 at 5:58pm
  Wrong procedure … should’ve, by SOP, gone thru the clintons 1st so they could sell the tech to China.
  
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BlasberryStrat
Posted on January 10, 2013 at 3:24pm
What is the main known (stated by officials) strategy to military secrecy, “rumors and deception”. “Old plane burial site” sounds good and the public can accept that story. The photo showing an approximate size required for an underground / upgraded (perfected for military if you will) HAARP Program….a bit more diffucult to explain to the public.

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ECOMCON
Posted on January 10, 2013 at 3:19pm
A massive excavation? Betcha it was for Jimmy Hoffa.

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The-Monk
Posted on January 10, 2013 at 3:18pm
Yeah right….

Probably sold them to a Muslim Country and are just saying they’re buried.

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Go Glenn
Posted on January 10, 2013 at 3:00pm
I can think of other things (or people) that are useless and should be buried. Area 51 would be as good as any other place.

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Eastinfection
Posted on January 10, 2013 at 2:48pm
With the price of various metals these days, you’d think it would be fiscally responsible for them to dismantle the items, melt them down, & re-use the material.
Instead, out tax bucks are used to subsidized mandatory catalytic converters that retail at less than their scrap value.
WTF?

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- media-bias-steals-elections
  Posted on January 10, 2013 at 3:26pm
  I think the story was suggesting that this practice is no longer necessary and they recycle the materials, of course, that assumes they are not hazards to humans anymore after certain protective materials are removed?
  
  We don’t need to know, so we will never be told.
  
  Report this comment
- RaydocX
  Posted on January 10, 2013 at 3:40pm
  don’t forget, the catalytics were used to clear the lead from gasoline, and are almost entirely unnecessary today… better mileage and no measureable emissions increase without in many car models.
  
  it’s a perfect case of bureaucracy choosing expedience over precision…
  cal tech i believe showed that a device in the 80′s could pinpoint which cars were polluting rather then forcing every driver to pay for periodic emissions tests… we drive through speed traps almost daily, so it could be integrated into policework…
  
  government refused to go for it… insisted instead of pin pointing the offending cars that every car periodically have their emissions checked, at a substantial cost to the public.
  
  Report this comment
- pissantno.10
  Posted on January 10, 2013 at 8:03pm
  they have been burying stuff for ever . tanks, bulldozers, jeeps any inventory they dont want to show . they bury it. and get new stuff the next year
  
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mrja
Posted on January 10, 2013 at 2:21pm
why is everything ‘rumored to be’ at area 51? Oh because jesse ventura chickened out and didnt enter

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brntout
Posted on January 10, 2013 at 2:16pm
Wouldn’t it be easier to cremate the remains? Badgers, Badgers, we don’t neeed no stinkin’ Badgers.

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- brigott
  Posted on January 10, 2013 at 7:19pm
  I love the Badgers.
  
  On, Wisconsin!
  
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