Tonopah Test Range

They tested shapes on how they penetrate and whatever, how those fall.

And that's 18 miles to the main gate at Tonopah Test Range.

So we blast down this road.

We get there now.

And we're sitting there waiting for something to happen.

You can see the whole facility.

Anybody who wants to go out there today and see Tonopah Test Range, you can.

There's no restriction.

For seven years, the United States denied the public a clear look at the program.

Pilots flew at night from the Tonopah Test Range.

Maintenance crews hid the airframes before daylight.

The Air Force acknowledged the F-one seventeen Nighthawk in November nineteen eighty-eight.

So that's what you did up until you flew, and then you would fly the very next morning.

I think in a book, I think it was a 9 AM takeoff on a cool November morning up at Tonopah Test Range, and, uh, you take off.

So that's your checkout.

Well, that's the beginning of your-- That's all your academics through your ground runs, and then you take it airborne, and you have, uh, five flights like that.

And then you, you'll remember, um, the F-117 supposedly was retired.

Matt and I were out there on the day that they closed the hangar doors at, uh, Area 52 at Tonopah Test Range.

They folded up their wings and put them all in a warehouse.

That's it.

And then about a minute and a half later, Number two, so you can see you've got this parasitic aircraft flying over Catalina Island, wakes everybody up in the morning in Los Angeles, and then a chase plane follows it.

Here's the track returning to Area 51 going over Catalina Island, Los Angeles, waking everybody up, then heading north of Edwards Air Force Base, going into Tonopah Test Range, and then into Area 51.

So I want to give you kind of a brief cross-section of what their flight pattern looks like.

Again, Catalina Island, Thursday, April 16, 1992, 6.58 a.m.