CT-43S FERRY WORKERS TO SECRET BASE
April 22, 1996 / posted May 12, 1996
Source: Air Force Times
By Vago Muradian
Jets assigned to Hill Air Force Base in Utah are used to transport
passengers to the Air Force's top-secret facility in Nevada commonly
known as Groom Lake, according to an Air Force Times investigation.
Although the planes are assigned to Hill, they spend most of their
time ferrying military and industry personnel with top-secret security
clearances from an unmarked terminal at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas
to Groom Lake about 70 miles north of the city. The planes also fly to
Tonopah Test Range near Groom Lake, a once-secret facility that is not
so secret anymore.
The link to Groom Lake was made after the April 3
crash of a CT-43 killed Commerce Secretary Ronald Brown and 34 others.
The plane that crashed into a Croatian hillside was assigned to
Ramstein Air Base near Kaiserslautern, Germany. After the crash, Air
Force officials hedged on the number of planes that were in the T-43
fleet, which has been in the Air Force since the early 1970s and is
used to train navigators. The aircraft are a derivation of the Boeing
737-200. Initially, Air Force officials said there were 14 planes in
the fleet including the one that crashed. But after being pressed,
they acknowledged another five existed. But they would only say,
without elaboration, that they were located at Hill. The five planes
at Hill carry the CT-43 designation, which means they have been
converted to carry cargo and passengers. Another CT-43 is assigned to
Howard Air Force Base in Panama and like the CT-43 that crashed in
Europe primarily is used to transport dignitaries. Ten of the
remaining 12 planes in the fleet, known as T-43s, are assigned to
Randolph Air Force Base near San Antonio. The remaining two T-43s are
assigned to Buckley Air National Guard Base near Denver and are used
by the Air Force Academy for training.
Several sources with knowledge
of the Groom Lake operation said the five CT-43 planes assigned to
Hill have been dubbed "Janet Airlines'' because Janet is the call sign
used by the planes' pilots. Janet reportedly stands for "Plain Jane
Transportation.'' To hide their Air Force identities, the planes are
painted white with a red stripe down each side and bear no service
markings. Also, to obfuscate their identities, each aircraft has been
reregistered as a civilian plane with a civilian registration number.
Unfortunately for the Air Force, the numbers can be traced to an Air
Force post office box in Clearfield, Utah, a town of 21,500 across the
street from Hill's west gate. Civilian contractors, not the Air Force,
manage the shuttle from Las Vegas to Groom Lake, but the names of the
contractors could not be obtained. At the same time, Air Force
officials declined to be interviewed for this article and did not
respond to written questions submitted April 10. Although service
officials do not like to talk about the secret base, they do
acknowledge that the service has facilities at Groom Lake, which has
been named after a dry bed lake in the area. But officials will not
say what the facilities are, nor will they disclose its official name.
Over the years the site has acquired a number of nicknames other than
Groom Lake including Area 51, Dreamland, Paradise Ranch, the Box, the
Site and Watertown Strip. The facility also has been at the center of
an ongoing controversy for years. Numerous people, many of them
amateur sleuths, have claimed the Air Force is developing secret
programs there. Others, with a bit more imagination have accused the
Air Force of hiding alien corpses and spacecraft at the facility. In
fact, the base since the mid-1950s has been used to develop some of
the U.S. military's most advanced and secretive aircraft, including
such spy planes as the U-2, the A-12 and its successor the SR-71
"Blackbird." Also, development work on the Have Blue - the precursor
to the F-117 stealth fighter - was conducted at Groom Lake. The base
also is rumored to be the home of the "Aurora," allegedly a
super-secret, high-speed successor to the SR-71. But according to a
former Lockheed senior executive, Aurora was the code name for early
B-2 Spirit bomber research and development funding. Regardless of
whether a new Aurora aircraft exists, one of the five CT-43s that fly
to the base - number N5294E - was named the "City of Aurora" in May
1989, according to one source. Air Force officials for years denied
the facility existed. But because of a court case filed by some Groom
Lake employees, service officials on Oct. 26, 1994, acknowledged its
existence. Recently, however, the Air Force won a round in its bid to
keep most of what goes on there secret when a federal judge dismissed
employees' claims that they had been poisoned by hazardous waste being
burned in open pits at the facility.
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