'Project Oxcart' known as the A-12 was the first stealth plane built in Burbank, CA by thousands at Locheed and kept in secrecy - then later transported to A51/Groom Lake. It was the predecessor to the Blackbird.
http://roadrunnersinternationale.com/transporting_the_a-12.h...
Predecessor actually. It came first.
Yes. Between this and secret Apple product launches, so much for the common anti-conspiracy argument that says: "Do you think a fake moon landing would have been kept secret while requiring so many people working on it?"
:-)
President Johnson couldn't resist blabbing about the SR-71 in 1964, only one year after A-12 operations had begun and 2 years before SR-71 operations began.
The U-2 began operations in 1957 and was revealed to the world, along with the equally secret mission of overflying the Soviet Union, in the Gary Powers incident in 1962.
The F-117 was introduced in 1983 and was revealed in 1988.
It's possible that there are additional still secret projects that operated out of Groom Lake, but I find it interesting that most of the super secret projects there were only completely secret for a period of a few years.
It was only classified internaly as secret, probably to get funding without filling reports.
Everyone knew where the damn base was. But officially there was a lot of money being assigned to keep it 'hidden'.
Its just gov bureocracy/money shenanigans.
Also, A only implies B when there is some actual connection between A and B.
"...large groups of people can work on unknown projects without the public finding out" I completely agree. I have heard the opposite line of reasoning used to "refute" actual evidence many too many times.