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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