My grandfather actually had the opportunity to go to Area 51 during his Air Force career. He was a navigator on an RB-47. From what he told me, him and a bus load of other Air Force personell were put on a bus with completely blacked out windows and drove for roughly 5 hours. When they stopped, armed men boarded the bus from both ends checking their papers. Then they unloaded the bus inside the hangars with the SR-71s, they did their thing, and got back on the bus. I never could get him to tell me exactly what they did, or how long they were there.
I also never have been able to get him to spill the beans on what they took pictures of over the USSR flying out of Incirlik AFB in Turkey.
He also told me that the easiest way to tell the difference between a CIA Sr-71 and a USAF Sr-71. The difference is that the CIA bird would have an army of ground crew in white lab coats inspecting every single bolt before takeoff. The USAF bird had just a crew chief and a hammer.
