The Area 51 File: Secret Aircraft and Soviet MiGs

It's almost anticlimactic. I was stationed at Nellis from '81 to '83 and knew some of the guys who worked the F117s up there. Actually I had more friends that worked the first F117s at Area 51 when I was stationed at Myrtle Beach from '86-'92. In fact my Wing Commander there (Sandy Sharpe) was the first F117 squadron commander up at Area 51. I didn't know a lot of that until the F117 went public while I was at Myrtle Beach, then all those guys started talking about things they couldn't talk about before. I knew guys when I was at Nellis that would fly up into the desert every Monday and come back every Friday. Of course one of the guys got a demotion because his wife was at the 21 club across the street from the base blabbing about what her husband was working on up in the desert. Interesting times. Nellis also had a museum on base with a lot of soviet military stuff in it.