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US Tested Soviet MiG Fighters At Mysterious Area 51

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  • US Tested Soviet MiG Fighters At Mysterious Area 51

    US TESTED SOVIET MIG FIGHTERS AT MYSTERIOUS AREA 51

    A Soviet-made MiG-21 fighter jet flies over Afghanistan.

    © RIA Novosti. A. Solomonov 23:37 30/10/2013
    http://en.ria.ru/world/20131030/184443185/US-Tested-Soviet-MiG-Fighters-at-Mysterious-Area-51.html

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    WASHINGTON, October 30 (RIA Novosti) - The United States covertly
    tested Soviet MiG fighter planes at the mysterious Area 51 site in the
    Nevada desert in the 1960s, including one plane secretly obtained by
    Israel, according to declassified US government documents published
    this week.

    The first of the Soviet fighters, a MiG-21, was loaned to the
    United States after Israeli secret intelligence services obtained
    the aircraft from an Iraqi air force captain who defected in 1966,
    according to George Washington University's National Security Archive,
    which published the declassified documents on its website Tuesday.

    The US Air Force held onto the MiG-21 for more than three months in
    1968 at Area 51, where specialists tested and examined the fighter
    to evaluate it against US fighter planes in air-to-air combat and
    to develop new tactics to defeat the Soviet jet, according to the
    documents.

    The operation to study the MiG-21 was designated "Fishbed-E"
    and concluded that the Soviet fighter has "excellent operational
    capability in all flight regimes," according to one of the declassified
    US Department of Defense documents.

    US specialists noted, however, some deficiencies, including poor
    forward and rearward visibility and "limited" performance when flying
    below 15,000 feet (4,572 meters).

    The aircraft was subsequently returned to the Israelis in April 1968.

    Area 51 was also home to two efforts to evaluate the MiG-17 in the
    1960s, according to the documents. Those operations, designated "Have
    Drill" and "Have Ferry," including flying the MiGs on a combined
    total of 224 sorties.

    For decades Area 51 has been the subject of countless conspiracy
    theories, including the existence of extraterrestrials, alien autopsies
    and whether the site even existed at all.

    But US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents declassified in
    August acknowledged that Area 51 did indeed exist and revealed that
    it was used as a base to test U-2 and other spy planes.

    Those documents were also published by George Washington University's
    National Security Archive after it obtained the report in response
    to a Freedom of Information request filed in 2005.

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