- 6 months ago
Secrets hidden for decades are now exposed... Join us as we examine the most jaw-dropping classified materials ever released to the public! From flying saucer prototypes to nuclear test footage that changed history, these declassified images reveal truths governments never wanted you to see. Which revelations shocked you the most?
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00They were stunned by the size of a cloud. By the time it got up into the upper stratosphere,
00:05it spread out across 30 miles. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're going over documents
00:11declassified by governments that we find the most shocking. When the U.S. government finally
00:17revealed Mac was right, it was not a weather balloon. Number 10, the Avrocar. With rising
00:27tensions in the early Cold War, the United States Air Force was desperate to get the upper hand on
00:32their communist counterparts. Influenced by rumors of German flying saucers, and created in an era
00:48obsessed with UFOs, the VZ9 Avrocar was designed by Avro Canada as a vertical takeoff and landing
00:55vehicle that could hover and reach unprecedented speeds. It was the Canadian contractor's attempt
01:13at creating a real flying saucer for the United States Air Force. Only, it was awful. It could
01:19barely hover three feet compared to its projected 10,000, and it only reached speeds of 35 miles
01:26per hour compared to its projected 300. Even with its failure, it's a prototype that stunned us,
01:33and has us wondering where they're hiding the real ones.
01:37In its current configuration, the Avrocar was operating successfully in the ground cushion
01:42at a height of three feet and speeds up to 30 knots.
01:45Number 9, the Pigeon Camera. With espionage efforts ever so vital in the Cold War, the CIA was inventing
01:53spy gadgets so ahead of their time, you would think they were science fiction. The Pigeon Camera is one
01:58of our older artifacts, where parts of the mission are actually still classified. But what I can tell
02:03you a little about is why we chose this animal and how it was deployed. Yet some were shockingly
02:07rudimentary. Like the Pigeon Camera. Part of a broader animal spy initiative codenamed Takana,
02:13the CIA equipped pigeons with tiny, lightweight cameras, capturing high-quality black-and-white
02:18photos of whatever they were flying over.
02:21With the camera attached to its breast, the pigeon would fly over a target area on its return home.
02:26With the pigeon being a common species, it was able to conceal itself as an intelligence collection
02:30platform among thousands of other birds. The problem was, they pretty much just did whatever
02:36they wanted when released, and were totally unreliable. The Pigeon Spy Program was unfortunately shut
02:42down before it could be fully operational. The CIA eventually declassified some images
02:47of the pigeons and their findings.
02:49The Pigeon Camera allowed the CIA to have a much more detailed view of what was going on
02:53in an area.
02:548. Corona Satellite Imagery Working under the public cover name, Discoverer,
02:59the Corona was the United States' very first spy satellite.
03:03Corona was America's first successful photoreconnaissance satellite, and it captured imagery from 1960 up
03:09until 1972. Operated by the Air Force and the CIA to gather intel on Soviet nuclear launch
03:15sites and production facilities, the reconnaissance platform captured hundreds of thousands of
03:20images. Many disproved a common theory that the Soviet nuclear arsenal had surpassed the
03:25United States by a wide margin, leading to a change in overall Cold War strategy moving forward.
03:31Corona was really important because it helped us better understand the buildup of Soviet military
03:36power in country. Many of the 800,000 images declassified in 1995 are now used in the environmental
03:43and archaeological fields, allowing scientists to study changes in the environment from the
03:4850s and 60s, when the pictures were taken, to the present day.
03:52Most importantly, Corona showed that the Soviet Union's bomber and missile buildup was not outpacing
03:57the Americans, as some had feared.
03:59Number seven, U-2 spy plane photos. With ties to the infamous Area 51, the Lockheed U-2
04:07spy plane, or the Dragon Lady, has undoubtedly contributed to countless UFO sightings.
04:13By 1957, unacknowledged U-2 flights were the source of half of all reported UFO sightings.
04:21Its ability to achieve altitudes twice as high as conventional aircraft and fly nearly on the edge of space
04:27made the U-2 seem like something out of this world.
04:31It was also virtually untouchable by most missiles and aircraft of its era.
04:35As the Cold War arms race with the Soviet Union intensified,
04:39the U-2 was America's best hope for tracking their rival's growing nuclear arsenal.
04:45The spy plane was used throughout the 1950s and 60s to gather intel on the Soviets and others around the globe.
04:52In 1997, thousands of photos gathered by the CIA were declassified.
04:58This included the Dragon Lady.
05:00The men were testing one of the most important tools of the Cold War.
05:07The U-2 spy plane.
05:09Number six, the SR-71 photos and blueprints.
05:13Marking its legacy in aerospace history as one of the most iconic planes ever made,
05:18the SR-71 Blackbird is a marvel of its time.
05:21It still holds the flight airspeed record to this day.
05:24Cruising at Mach 3.3 and over 80,000 feet in the air,
05:28the legendary plane was unarmed, relying solely on its incredible speeds and altitudes
05:33to evade any threats on its reconnaissance missions.
05:36Since being decommissioned, information on the historic piece of aviation has been declassified.
05:41Among the declassifications are lots of pictures of the aircraft on its secret missions,
05:46original Blackbird blueprints and even the actual flight manual.
05:50Number five, declassified moon landing photos.
05:53Many Americans witnessed the moon landing live on television.
05:57It is the farthest anyone has ever gone.
06:02Yet humankind's greatest adventure was also its riskiest.
06:07Well, sort of.
06:08They were actually watching a feed that was filmed on a slow cam television
06:12and optically converted from a different camera to NTSC.
06:16This alone means many to question the authenticity of the footage for some skeptics
06:21and if NASA even got to the moon at all.
06:24Thankfully, NASA has declassified the Apollo moon landing photos and they are nothing short of incredible.
06:32The lack of stars and waving of the flag with no atmosphere raised more suspicion,
06:36but most of these things can be explained.
06:38The scarcity of stars was due to the shutter speed of the camera used
06:42and there was a quote-unquote wave in the flag from the inertia of the astronauts twisting it into the lunar surface.
06:49Number four, Operation Crossroads nuclear test footage.
06:53The Operation Crossroads nuclear test footage is something to behold.
06:57It's also some of the first drone footage ever showcased.
07:00Not since the discovery of gunpowder has the world wondered over the ability of man to create such an agent of destruction.
07:07The pure power behind the test is a force to be reckoned with.
07:11The more than 20 kiloton blast shocked the world when its declassified footage was revealed to the public and, most importantly, to the United States' adversaries.
07:21It showcased the sheer power that the United States had in its vast arsenal.
07:25The atomic spectacle was so widely acknowledged, it managed to find its way into pop culture, like the 1998 film Godzilla, and even in multiple SpongeBob SquarePants episodes.
07:37It remains, to this day, one of the best examples of the dark reality of nuclear power and the destruction it wields.
07:44The expanding cloud of spray and fog several hundred feet high may be seen moving out from the center of the detonation.
07:51Number three, Ivy Mike nuclear test footage.
07:54With rumors and data suggesting the Soviets were successfully testing a nuclear device, the United States was fast at work creating the next big breakthrough in nuclear weaponry.
08:03The U.S. military was developing a weapon so powerful, it would make the atom bomb look like child's play.
08:09Unleashing 10.4 megatons of thermonuclear power, Ivy Mike was the world's first full-scale hydrogen bomb test.
08:17It yielded the power of 500 Fat Man atomic bombs and vaporized the Elugilab island in its entirety, leaving an underwater crater over 6,000 feet wide and over 150 feet deep where the island once existed.
08:32The test island seemed to be swept clean.
08:35The Elugilab is completely gone.
08:38Nothing there but water and what appears to be a deep crater.
08:42The declassified footage shows the terrifying power of the hydrogen bomb, remaining a stark reminder of the looming threat of total annihilation.
08:51Number two, Project Mogul.
08:53Allegedly the actual source of the 1947 Roswell crash, Project Mogul was a Cold War sound detection spy program designed to detect nuclear explosions, observing Soviet bomb testing using microphones and radio arrays attached to high-altitude balloons.
09:11In Mexico, a 48-year-old rancher named Mac Brazel had made a rather unusual discovery.
09:17A large area of wreckage including rubber strips, tin foil, a rather tough paper and sticks.
09:25This one shocks us because Major Jesse Marcel, the man photographed holding the remains of the Roswell wreckage, swore till his death that the Roswell crash was real and was indeed extraterrestrial.
09:37When the US government finally revealed Mac was right, it was not a weather balloon.
09:44It wasn't a Martian spaceship either.
09:46Even his son, Jesse Marcel Jr., recounts the time in 1947 when his father showed him the pieces of the craft himself.
09:53So, was Major Marcel a confused military man, who simply wasn't read in on what he was seeing, or was Mogul just an elaborate cover story?
10:02He said that the Roswell debris was part of a different kind of balloon, one used in the top-secret Project Mogul.
10:09Essentially, an airborne bugging device to listen out for possible Soviet nuclear tests and missile launches.
10:16Before we continue, be sure to subscribe to our channel and ring the bell to get notified about our latest videos.
10:22You have the option to be notified for occasional videos or all of them.
10:26If you're on your phone, make sure you go into settings and switch on your notifications.
10:30Number one, the Pentagon UFO videos.
10:36The world was taken by storm in 2017 when the New York Times wrote about three videos showcasing possible UFOs documented by the United States military.
10:46The public has been able to see several astounding images of what certainly qualify as UFOs during encounters with the U.S. Navy.
10:54Documented using high-end surveillance equipment and multi-million dollar fighter jets, the Go Fast, the FLIR, and the Gimbal were all officially acknowledged by the Pentagon as authentic and declassified for public viewing in 2020.
11:09This thing would go instantaneous from one way to another, similar to if you threw a ping-pong ball against a wall.
11:14The combination of the New York Times breaking a massive story on the UFO phenomenon and the Department of Defense claiming the video is to be authentic UAP was a shocking revelation for the country, if not the world.
11:27The U.S. government could not say for certain what is in this video, but it is something physically going by the window.
11:34Do you have any declassified photos or videos you would like to see featured next? Let us know in the comments.
11:40It's hard to imagine a world without GPS or satellite imagery, but in the 1950s when the CIA created its first photo reconnaissance satellite, codenamed Corona, the technology simply didn't exist.
11:53Thank you, and Baba Jank.
11:54You know, it must look like the phone, you know.
12:06Oh, my how the government would use something you would like today to see here.
12:10You can see it on the back of the sunshine bay, in the back of the Commonwealth.
Comments