CIA A-12 PILOT, COL KENNETH S. COLLINS, Sr., thought the extensive physical and psychological screening was for a classified space program.

Collins was born in Leavenworth, Kansas, the grandson of a US Cavalry Sergeant who lost his life at Wounded Knee. Colonel Collins earned the Silver Star while flying an RF-86 over North Korea during the Korean War, completing 117 combat missions over North Korea and one classified mission over China.

Collins became one of 16 finalists in the Central Intelligence Agency’s vetting process for pilots to fly the Mach 3 A-12 reconnaissance plane of Project OXCART at Area 51.  In a sheep dipping process, Collins resigned his military commission to work for the Agency under the assigned call sign “Dutch 21,” and a pseudo name provided by the CIA. He flew his first A-12 flight on 6 February 1963.

On 24 May 1963 – near Wendover, Utah. Collins was flying A-12 Article 123 on a subsonic J-58 engine test flight at 25,000 feet altitude with Jack Weeks as the F-101 Chase pilot. Turning back to Area 51, they ran into heavy clouds and rain.

To get above the weather, Collins climbed up to 30,000 but was still in the heavy clouds. He waved Weeks off because of the dense clouds and turbulence. (The F-101 was prone to pitch-ups in slow flight).

All cockpit instrument readings appeared to be normal, but the flight controls were slow responding. Rechecking all the instruments, Collins saw the altimeter beginning to rapidly “wind” down, as did the airspeed indicator.

Having no visual references in the clouds, he was uncertain of his actual altitude and airspeed; the flight instruments were unreliable. Within seconds the airspeed decreased to 102 KIAS. Then the A-12 stalled and pitched up and over into an unrecoverable flat inverted spin. Having no positive idea of his real altitude, he choose to eject from the inverted aircraft. 

  After gathering up his chute when he reached the ground, he noticed a pickup coming across the desert towards him.  Once the vehicle arrived, he asked for a ride to the state police headquarters. The driver had seen Collin’s parachute. He offered to take Collins to the crash site. To keep the man from seeing the classified plane, Collins told the driver that he had been flying an F-105 aircraft with a nuclear weapon aboard.  

Once he arrived at police headquarters, he called a number that the CIA had given him for emergencies and reported his location.  He refused to tell the police the aircraft’s crash site because of its classified nature and the items it contained. When the CIA arrived, “Local law enforcement and the people that had given him a ride were warned with “dire consequences” to keep quiet about the crash. The CIA paid ranchers at the scene $25,000 and required them to sign secrecy agreements to not discuss what they’d seen.

His pilot packet was lost during ejection, causing an extensive but successful search on horseback to recover the packet’s money and documents. The CIA continued Collin’s cover story for the press, identifying the accident as an F-105, (not mentioning it having an atomic bomb aboard) where it remains so listed on official records today.

More about Colonel Collin’s Area 51 Career with the CIA
B&N ISBN: 9781987016703
Amazon ISBN-13: 978-1547084876
Smashwords ISBN: 9781370283231
Apple ID 1447815807
402 pages
The combination of the shootdown of the U-2 over Russia in 1960, Russia’s moving into Cuba, and the war in Vietnam placed a heavy load on the Central Intelligence Agency to develop a replacement spy plane, unlike anything the world had ever seen before. The CIA established its station at Area 51 under the CIA’s new Directorate of Science and Technology where it developed America’s first stealth plane, the A-12 Archangel. Designed with slide-rule technology, the CIA produced what is still today the fastest and highest-flying manned air-breathing aircraft ever.
The A-12 plane spent 18 months on a pylon situated on the dry Groom Lake during RCS, radar cross-section evaluations by the CIA’s special projects team at Area 51. It flew 2,850 secret flights out of Area 51 during the flight tests known as Project OXCART. From Area 51, CIA Director Helms deployed people and three planes to a CIA outpost in Kadena, Okinawa where the CIA operationally overflew North Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and North Korea during Operation BLACK SHIELD before the Air Force replacing it with the SR-71, the fourth member of the Blackbird family.

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