Area 51: Never Before Seen Photos of America's Secret Base

A 1945 report on airplanes designed by Germany's Horten brothers included this photograph of an unusually shaped parabolic aircraft. Two years later, after the crash of a foreign disc-shaped aircraft in New Mexico, in July 1947, the Counter Intelligence Corps embarked on a manhunt across Western Europe to locate the Horten brothers and their so-called flying disc. (National Archives)

The Nevada Test and Training Range, a federally restricted land parcel slightly smaller than the state of Connecticut. Area 51 and the Nevada Test Site are located inside. (Annie Jacobson)

Groom Lake, Nevada, in 1917. Once little more than a dry lake bed in the southern Nevada desert, what is now known as Area 51 has become the most secretive military facility in the world. (Special Collections, University of Nevada–Reno)

Trailers at Area 51 where U-2 pilots like Hervey Stockman and Tony Bevacqua slept while learning how to fly the CIA’s first spy plane. (Laughlin Heritage Foundation/CIA)

Part of a U-2 spy plane seen in 1955 coming out of a transport airplane at Area 51 -- where the secret craft was designed and perfected. The CIA’s first spy plane was so secret that Air Force pilots transporting it to Area 51 in pieces inside larger airplanes, would fly to a set of coordinates over the Mojave Desert and contact a UHF frequency called Sage Control for orders. Only when the aircraft was a few hundred feet off the ground would runway lights flash on. (Laughlin Heritage Foundation/CIA)

Alleged to be Stalin’s secret UFO study team are (standing left to right) Sergei Korolev, chief missile designer and inventor of Sputnik; Igor Kurchatov, father of Russia’s atomic bomb; and Mstislav Keldysh, mathematician, theoretician, and space pioneer. (Collection of Museum of M. V. Keldysh, Russia)

"Operation Paperclip" scientists at Fort Bliss, Texas, in 1946. Until 1945, these men worked for Adolf Hitler, but as soon as the war ended these “rare minds” began working for the American military and various intelligence organizations, the details of which remain largely classified. Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun is in the front row, seventh from the right with his hand in his pocket. (NASA)

In Area 12 of the Nevada Test Site -- a separate though related nearby military facility -- workmen enter an underground atomic bomb tunnel through its mouth, summer 1957. (National Nuclear Security Administration)

The new book "AREA 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base" by Annie Jacobsen published in May. It is the first book based on interviews with the scientist, pilots, and engineers—74 in total—who provide a unprecedented and sometimes horrifying look into a critical, secret chapter in American history.  (Little, Brown and Company)