Death of Tony LeVier; his Area 51 role
From: UKdragon@aol.com
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998 22:53:44 -0800
|
Famed Lockheed test pilot Tony LeVier died last Saturday. I think he was 84.
His accomplishments were many, and his exploits were legion.
His relevance to this list is that he claims the credit for choosing Groom
Lake as the most suitable site for flight testing the U-2. The rest, as they
say, is history.
As some readers may know, I offer a revisionist interpretation, based on a
couple of archive documents. These suggest that Col Ozzie Ritland, assigned to
the CIA's U-2 program from the Pentagon, played the major role in determining
where the U-2 should be flight-tested.
I've just read David Darlington's book AREA 51 THE DREAMLAND CHRONICLES. The
author interviewed LeVier, who not surprisingly stuck by his version of
events. After all, he had been dining out on that story for years! LeVier's
account of subsequent early U-2 flight testing also differs in some
significant details from from others of Kelly's early flight test group out at
the Ranch, whom I have interviewed.
But hey, that shouldn't detract from the memory of one of the great test
pilots. Tony was still entertaining audiences, formal and informal, with his
splendid recollections of an amazing career, until a few weeks before he died.
May he rest in peace.
Regards
Chris Pocock "Information is useless without Intelligence"
UKdragon@aol.com
[ Area 51: The Dreamland Chronicles...
http://www.ufomind.com/catalog/d/darlington/ ]
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Created: Feb 11, 1998
