The Pilots Who Landed at Area 51

by Brian Dunning
September 23, 2025

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Doing this show for a living, I get exposed to all kinds of weird topics, and to those who believe weird things. Obvious to all who listen to this show is that that includes UFOs and UFOlogists, and since many of them believe that the US government keeps aliens and/or their spaceships at the famous classified test facility popularly known as Area 51, I tend to get all the weird Area 51 beliefs also. One of these, which I've heard more times than I can count, is that anyone attempting to enter Area 51 is immediately killed, and that unauthorized aircraft approaching too close are immediately shot down. Today we're going to point the skeptical eye at pilots who are said to have landed their planes at the forbidden air base, and find out what did — and didn't — happen to them.

One of the points that authors commonly make about Area 51 is that its biggest secret is that it was never secret. That's completely true. Lockheed advertised for people to come and work there when the site was first established in 1955. Its FAA airport designation, XTA, is in the navigation databases. The entire place has always appeared in full detail in all the public mapping systems like Google Maps and Apple Maps; you can even scroll through the historical imagery and see new facilities appear at the same time their testing programs began, such as the newest hangars at the south end of the base, widely believed to be used for the RQ-180 remotely piloted stealth UAS. And using websites like FlightRadar24.com, you can even track the movements of all the planes in the Janet fleet in real time; those are the 737s of the chartered airline that the Air Force uses to move civilian employees and other personnel between Las Vegas (LAS) and sites in the Nevada Test and Training Range, such as Area 51, Tonopah Test Range (XSD), Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake (NID), Edwards AFB (EDW), and others. If someone is trying to keep Area 51 secret, they're not doing a very good job.

But it's still a classified facility, and it is highly secure. You cannot approach by land or by air without being detected. You certainly can't go there. Many have tried, few have succeeded; the standard case is some yo-yo driving or hiking in, ignoring the fences or signs, thinking they're going to get inside. They don't.

This happens pretty regularly. If you drive toward the place in your car, they know you're coming — they have multiple types of security systems, including motion detectors buried next to all the approach roads, and even inside the perimeter; these are sensitive enough to detect hikers as well as vehicles. People have found these sensors and posted videos to YouTube, so we know these systems are out there.

They alert a security force popularly known as the "camo dudes." They work for a private security company contracted by the Air Force. They are quick to arrive in either white pickups or Jeep Cherokees, and quick to apprehend anyone they catch. Sorry to disappoint the conspiracy theorists; but such trespassers are never just killed. They are instead detained until the Lincoln County sheriff's deputy can get there. They are typically cited for trespassing on a military facility, which carries a hefty fine and possible imprisonment, depending on the circumstances. You can see this for yourself; bodycam footage from the deputies has been posted to YouTube also.

But today we want to focus on the more extraordinary cases: people who have flown in and landed their planes, either on the runways or on dry Groom Lake itself. Now it's fair to start off by pointing out that this hasn't happened nearly as often as some people think. Everyone has a story they've heard; even military pilots know someone who knows someone who did it. Several times a year, Nellis AFB holds a two-week combat training exercise called Red Flag, with pilots from all the American forces and usually from other countries too participating. They all have stories about Red Flag pilots who tried it. The truth is much less facetious.

Colloquially they call it "The Box" or "Red Square" — officially it's Restricted Area 4808 North. Violating The Box means severe disciplinary action and probable loss of flight privileges; it's a career move that few fighter pilots would be willing to risk. If it's ever happened, no accounts have been published due to operational security. If they'd actually landed, we'd probably know about it, as a number of former employees from Area 51 have written books that detail a few such accounts. The only accounts about Red Flag guys are informal anecdotes, usually hearsay, and never giving names or dates.

So now let's have some fun and check out the few times this is confirmed to have happened.

1957: Edward K. Current, Jr.

This honor of the very first known incursion fell onto this poor guy who was doing a cross-country checkout to get a private pilot's license — and coincidentally, was an employee for Douglas Aircraft. Lost and low on fuel, he did as he'd been taught, and landed safely at what looked like an abandoned airfield on a dry lake. He thought he was the luckiest guy ever, until a few minutes later when he had all kinds of guns pointed at him.

A while later he was released, given fuel, and took off. But fate was not his friend that day, as shortly thereafter, his engine gave out and he crashed near the town of Mercury.

The incident prompted Groom Lake — most of it, anyway — to be added to the Nevada Test site, removing public access and finally giving it some kind of security.

1959: Three NASA employees

Groom Lake had been identified by NASA as an acceptable emergency landing site for their new X-15 space plane. With permission, they had tested the surface and found it strong enough to safely handle the X-15's weight.

But if a flight was to be conducted following a rain storm, the emergency landing sites would have to be retested. One time, X-15 pilot Forrest Petersen and two other NASA guys did so, and since the part of Groom Lake they were interested in was outside of that newly established secure boundary, they didn't bother asking for clearance — they just came right in and landed their big old Douglas R4D, a plane heavy enough to simulate the weight of an X-15. They taxied around looking at the depth of their tire tracks to determine the site's suitability.

Before long, they noticed a group of Jeeps speeding out toward them. Deeming discretion to be the better part of valor, they booked it and took off to get out of there as fast as they could, successfully getting airborne before the Jeeps could reach them. Once they returned to their own base at Edwards, they got yelled at, but suffered no other disciplinary action.

You might wonder why there would be animosity between the Air Force and NASA. Well, that's an enormous can of worms that we're not going to open today, and which reached its climax with the Apollo program. Suffice it to say that cameras on an X-15 were perfectly capable of photographing U-2s and A-12s at Area 51, and on more than one occasion, inadvertently did.

1960: Robert Wilcox

In this case, he didn't actually land there, but did the next closest thing. This pilot was training in an F-100C Super Sabre when his plane suffered a major hydraulic failure. The airstrip at Area 51 being the only one in sight, he aimed the plane toward it, but quickly realized he wouldn't make it; and punched out. The plane crashed on one side of Groom Lake, and he parachuted into the hills beyond the other side. When base personnel reached him, they saw he was uninjured, and since he was far enough away that he hadn't seen anything classified, they drove him out onto the lakebed where a rescue helicopter from Nellis was able to land and pick him up.

Following this incident, R-4808 was established, giving the base further protection from military pilots getting too close.

1963: Anthony Bendell and wingman

A British RAF officer, Anthony Bendell, was leading a flight of three F-105 Thunderchiefs as part of the officer exchange program. One of the other planes developed an oil pressure problem, so Bendell ordered the third plane back to Nellis while he stayed with the problem plane, and watched him safely make an emergency landing on a runway at Area 51. But before Bendell could head back to Nellis himself, a pair of F-101 Voodoo fighters appeared. Upon hearing his British accent over the radio and determining he clearly wasn't American, they forced him to land as well. As he taxied, they ordered him not to look to his left. So, of course, he instinctively looked to his left — and saw a classified A-12 spy plane.

Both pilots were separately and extensively interrogated. Eventually Bendell was allowed to return in his F-105 to Nellis, while the student pilot was placed on the next Janet back to Las Vegas. As they'd both acted properly during a legitimate emergency, neither was disciplined.

1960s: Two civilian incidents

These two cases are known only from remarks made by A-12 pilot Dennis Sullivan, who was stationed at Area 51 when they happened, during a public talk he gave at the National Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas in October, 2005. Unfortunately he gave no dates, but given his position, I'm willing to call them "likely true" — while also being careful to remember that pilots love to tell tall tales.

One time, a guy was taking his girlfriend for a flight out of Las Vegas, but became lost and ran low on fuel, and landed when he saw runway lights at Area 51. When security guards detained them and questioned them, the girlfriend began beating the pilot with her purse for being such an idiot.

Another time, a student pilot who was doing a solo cross-country checkout flight got lost and landed there for the same reason, and it turned out he was a former Air Force navigator! His story was verified and his plane was refueled and he was sent on his way.

1977: Civilian Beech Bonanza

During a sensitive ground test of the HAVE BLUE prototype of the F-117 stealth fighter, the weather came in and cloud cover dipped low. To everyone's surprise, a civilian Beech Bonanza appeared out of nowhere and directly overflew the base, and the prototype. They had it tracked and the pilot was later found and debriefed, but the reason he'd gotten away with it was the low cloud cover. He hadn't intended any intrusion, but the ceiling pushed him lower and lower until he was below radar coverage — so they never saw him coming! A Lockheed skunkworks engineer on hand quipped "I don’t know why we are trying so hard to make a stealth airplane; why don’t we just build a bunch of those?"

2016: Navy P-8A Poseidon crew

During a Red Flag exercise, this Navy patrol and reconnaissance aircraft based on the Boeing 737 was providing battlespace-wide information on airborne threats. But at some point, either accidentally or otherwise, its electronic surveillance gear got pointed at Area 51 — even though the plane itself never went into The Box. Data was seized and reprimands were issued, but due to the complexity of the environment, it could not be demonstrated that the crew did anything intentionally.

2023: 70-yr-old Mooney M20F pilot

One day someone on Reddit posted a screenshot of what he happened to be watching on the FlightAware flight tracking website: a 1967 Mooney private plane, tail number N3770N, overflying Area 51. He later landed in Concord, CA, where the tower advised him that he'd been instructed to telephone Nellis AFB.

This soon made it from Reddit to the Daily Caller news website, which posted a statement from Nellis that included "Any attempt to illegally access the area is highly discouraged."

The pilot's name was not published, though the plane's owner is easy to look up by its tail number, and two names were bandied about on Reddit. As my business is something other than repeating Internet rumors about suspected criminal actions, I will refrain from giving those here — though since the Daily Caller reported he was 70 years old as of that date in 2023, I leave it to the curious to investigate on their own.

And, that's it. No records of anyone getting shot down or extrajudicially executed. Of course, I can already tell that some of the feedback I get on this episode will be that of course there are no records of the shootdowns and killings, because the military would have erased them. And thus, once again, to the conspiratorial mind, a lack of evidence is proof of the conspiracy. As science communicators, we just can't win — just as Area 51 will always be plagued by yahoos and weirdos trying to sneak in.

Special thanks to Peter W. Merlin, author of this episode's primary source, the exceptional 2023 magnum opus Dreamland: The Secret History of Area 51, and who provided substantial additional information on very short notice, and otherwise bent over backwards to be helpful. BD

By Brian Dunning
Follow @BrianDunning