# Area 51: No ETs, but the truth is even weirder?! **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 10, 2011, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946 "2011-06-10T03:40:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/21 "2011-06-10T12:43:49Z")
The Hortens’ postwar careers appear to be fairly well documented and AFAIK there isn’t a shred of evidence they ever spent any time in, or did any design work for, the Soviet Union. At best, it might be possible that Soviet designers constructed aircraft based on Horten designs from WWII, but there’s pretty much nothing but hearsay as evidence for that. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Arky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/87869e/32.png) [@An\_Arky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Arky)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/22 "2011-06-10T12:59:38Z")
Why, why, WHY do people have such a bugaboo about Area 51? It’s really simple. The US has a Dept. of Defense. As such, part of their charter is to do research and development of new ways to be more effective. Some of this stuff is kind of out of the box, which is one way of developing new ideas. Naturally, this has to be done in secret. That’s. It. There’s really nothing else to see here, and anybody who starts talking UFO B.S. is automatically excluded from serious consideration. And I assure you, “they” haven’t gotten to me. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/23 "2011-06-10T13:03:30Z")
> [@An\_Arky](#): > > Why, why, WHY do people have such a bugaboo about Area 51? It’s really simple. The US has a Dept. of Defense. As such, part of their charter is to do research and development of new ways to be more effective. Some of this stuff is kind of out of the box, which is one way of developing new ideas. Naturally, this has to be done in secret. That’s. It. There’s really nothing else to see here, and anybody who starts talking UFO B.S. is automatically excluded from serious consideration. Why? Because of a very short conversation the government has with anyone who asks about it. You can’t see how this would cause people to ask “what’s really going out there?”: **UFO Nut:** So what goes on at the air force base at Groom Lake. **What the Government Official Should Say:** Top secret military testing and training. I can’t go into details. **What the Government Official Actually Says:** No such base exists. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/24 "2011-06-10T13:18:47Z")
If **I** were in charge of the covering-up, I would leak all kinds of stories about Area 51, and keep the flying saucers stashed in an old warehouse in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Arky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/87869e/32.png) [@An\_Arky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Arky)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/25 "2011-06-10T13:24:34Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > Why? Because of a very short conversation the government has with anyone who asks about it. You can’t see how this would cause people to ask “what’s really going out there?”: > > **UFO Nut:** So what goes on at the air force base at Groom Lake. > > **What the Government Official Should Say:** Top secret military testing and training. I can’t go into details. > > **What the Government Official Actually Says:** No such base exists. It’s basic protocol not to comment on such matters or to deny their existence. If they say, “Top secret military testing and training. I can’t go into details.”, that confirms both the existence and purpose, which is in violation of that basic protocol. That’s why they don’t do that, silly as it seems. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/26 "2011-06-10T13:31:09Z")
> [@An\_Arky](#): > > It’s basic protocol not to comment on such matters or to deny their existence. If they say, “Top secret military testing and training. I can’t go into details.”, that confirms both the existence and purpose, which is in violation of that basic protocol. That’s why they don’t do that, silly as it seems. But that’s what causes people to go nuts. Denying something even exists that people can see from a distance makes it look some serious shit is going down. So when you later come out and say you were just testing some new plane, people are confused as to why you couldn’t just say that at the time. You see five-year olds do it all the time. They want the toy their sibling is playing with. They don’t really care about the why, they just want it. But as soon as they get it, they don’t care anymore. And so it is with the nuts. They see a semi-secret base out in the middle of the desert and have a simple question. They get totally stonewalled and then wait louder. But once they get told the truth (“The Stealth Bomber was tested there”), they don’t really give a shit. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Arky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/87869e/32.png) [@An\_Arky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Arky)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/27 "2011-06-10T13:37:05Z")
Well, it’s a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation. I don’t think it should be the government’s position to kowtow to nutbags. ---
**Author:** ![Speak\_to\_me\_Maddie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/58956e/32.png) [@Speak\_to\_me\_Maddie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Speak_to_me_Maddie)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/28 "2011-06-10T14:37:15Z")
That story is a mess. The whole Mengele part just puts it way past the pale. Mengele wasn’t some sort of amoral genius scientist. He was just a sadist who got off on torturing children and prisoners. Even if he were capable of anything like mutating people it doesn’t make sense. The pilots were “at least 13 years old”. So did Mengele start working with the soviets on this project in 1932? Because if he waited until 1945 he had about two years to turn some perfectly healthy 10 year old kids into super-mutants capable of flying an experimental aircraft across the globe. Or maybe he just brought some of own own homemade mutant children along with him after he left Auschwitz. You know, like a carnival sideshow following him around war-torn Germany with the Red Army just behind. So Stalin has a ridiculously advanced stealth aircraft capable of flying long distances, manned by Nazi mutant children. Maybe he should build a whole fleet of these planes and make a show of power. Nah, a better idea is to fly the machine into the middle of the desert and crash it. In fact, crash it right next to an American experimental aircraft range where no one will see it, and where a bunch of other experimental aircraft are seen on a regular basis. The whole story is so stupid it has to be a joke. Or maybe this is just a really awesome form of alternative marketing for a future Spielberg movie. I tuned in for Michael Medved’s interview with the author. He flat out accused her of making up the story to sell books. He said it was a shame because 99% of the book was a well-researched and interesting piece on the history of Area-51, with facts to back it up and named sources. Then tacked on to the end of the book, literally in the last few pages, came this hogwash. He suspects either she or her publisher realized that the book wouldn’t sell so she went back in and added the silliness. ---
**Author:** ![Kozmik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8dc957/32.png) [@Kozmik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kozmik)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/29 "2011-06-10T14:37:21Z")
> [@An\_Arky](#): > > Why, why, WHY do people have such a bugaboo about Area 51? It’s really simple. The US has a Dept. of Defense. As such, part of their charter is to do research and development of new ways to be more effective. The United States has has a Department of Defense only since after 1945, after World War II. The charter you refer to is probably the National Security Act of 1947. That same year, 1947, the first Secretary of Defense, James V. Forrestal, was named. Two years later, James V. Forrestal commited suicide on while staying at Bethesda Naval Hospital for psychiatric treatment. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/30 "2011-06-10T18:07:42Z")
(Post 1945) Nazis and aliens are really the same thing. ---
**Author:** ![zamboniracer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e9a140/32.png) [@zamboniracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zamboniracer)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/31 "2011-06-10T18:16:10Z")
> [@An\_Arky](#): > > And I assure you, “they” haven’t gotten to me. :rolleyes: But if they HAD gotten to you, then naturally you’d have no choice but to deny it here on this board. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/32 "2011-06-10T18:26:50Z")
I’ve just started reading this, and haven’t gotten to the Mengele part yet. I’ll suspend full judgment until I’ve finished the book, but she strikes me as hard-digging yet credulous. She writes about the Horten brothers designing crescent-shaped “flying wings”, which is credible (and I’ve seen pictures of them), but then extrapolatesto them building flying saucers for Russia, which seems very implausible. That’s a BIG leap from Flying Wings to Flying Saucers, and we don’t have any credible flying saucers now, even with sixty years of private engineering and engineering in other countries. My understanding is that Flying Wings themselves are incredibly unstable, which is why they weren’t used practically, and that the B-2 is only flyable because it has computer correction to prevent instabilities from making the plane crash. Furthermore, she incorrectly cites Kenneh Arnold, the original “Flying Saucer” reporter from 1947. His original eport said that what he saw were cresent-shaped (which would actually bolster her case if she was saying that he saw experimental Soviet ships near Mt. Rainier), not saucer-shaped. He changed his story later to bring it in line with everyone’s expectations. Add to that her description of saucer-shaped craft _hovering_ and flying around near Groom Lake, and that they had Cyrillic Lettering on them, and my own belief in her accuracy is severely strained. There have been years of reporting on the Roswell Incident in the Skeptical Inquirer and elsewhere that make an extremely good case that this was, in fact, a SkyHook balloon 9not a mere weather balloon), but she seems to swallow the idea that this is a cover-up story pretty completely. I predict a lot of controversy about this book, at least inthe pages of SI. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/33 "2011-06-10T19:22:28Z")
Quoth **Bryan Eckers** : > [@](#): > > Their “flying disk” was a prototype stealth fighter called the Horton Ho 229, a jet-propelled flying wing that actually looked really nifty. So in other words, Horton Doesn’t Hear a Ho? And **Justin\_Bailey** , you’re assuming that the government considers fueling whacko conspiracy theories to be a bad thing. Quite the contrary, they actually encourage it, as it makes their job considerably easier. The more attention is focused on aliens and flying saucers and Mengelian midgets, the less is left over to focus on U2s and F117s and nuke-listening microphones. ---
**Author:** ![scissorhead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f4b2a3/32.png) [@scissorhead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scissorhead)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/34 "2011-06-10T20:53:19Z")
Sigma - 4. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/35 "2011-06-10T21:18:03Z")
> [@scissorhead](#): > > Sigma - 4. The leech flies at dawn. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/36 "2011-06-10T21:41:53Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > But that’s what causes people to go nuts. Well, no – they were pretty much already nuts. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/37 "2011-06-10T21:57:58Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > And **Justin\_Bailey** , you’re assuming that the government considers fueling whacko conspiracy theories to be a bad thing. Quite the contrary, they actually encourage it, as it makes their job considerably easier. The more attention is focused on aliens and flying saucers and Mengelian midgets, the less is left over to focus on U2s and F117s and nuke-listening microphones. Too true. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2011, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/38 "2011-06-10T23:21:29Z")
Did the Horten brothers develop that cool Nazi plane in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”? Really, this thing sounds like it came from the pages of the “National Inquirer”. No supporting evidence, and a mountain of BS:mad: ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2011, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/39 "2011-06-11T02:06:21Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Add to that her description of saucer-shaped craft _hovering_ and flying around near Groom Lake, and that they had Cyrillic Lettering on them, and my own belief in her accuracy is severely strained. Wait… the Russians specifically bread midget faux-alien pilots as part of their plan to panic the US government into thinking we were being invaded by aliens… and then went and put Cyrillic writing all over their faux-alien flying saucers? I think I may have detected a minor flaw in their diabolical ploy. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Arky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/87869e/32.png) [@An\_Arky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Arky)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2011, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946/40 "2011-06-11T02:12:16Z")
Mmmmmm…breaded midget faux-alien pilots. I like to dip them in remoulade sauce. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/area-51-no-ets-but-the-truth-is-even-weirder/584946.md?page=3)