00:00They were stunned by the size of the 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
00:56vehicle 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,
01:34and 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
02:19photos 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
02:41shut down 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
02:52on in an area.
02:54Number 8. 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
03:08up until 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. Number 7. U-2 spy plane photos. With ties to the infamous Area 51, the Lockheed
04:06U-2 spy 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. Its ability
04:22to achieve altitudes twice as high as conventional aircraft and fly nearly on the edge of space made
04:28the U-2 seem like something out of this world. It was also virtually untouchable by most missiles
04:34and aircraft of its era. As the Cold War arms race with the Soviet Union intensified, the U-2 was
04:40America's best hope for tracking their rival's growing nuclear arsenal. The spy plane was used
04:47throughout the 1950s and 60s to gather intel on the Soviets and others around the globe. In 1997,
04:54thousands of photos gathered by the CIA were declassified. This 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. Number 6. The SR-71 photos and blueprints.
05:13Marking its legacy in aerospace history as one of the most iconic planes ever made, the SR-71 Blackbird
05:20is a marvel of its time. It still holds the flight airspeed record to this day. Cruising at Mach 3.3 and
05:27over 80,000 feet in the air, the legendary plane was unarmed, relying solely on its incredible speeds
05:33and altitudes to evade any threats on its reconnaissance missions. Since being decommissioned,
05:37information on the historic piece of aviation has been declassified. Among the declassifications are
05:43lots of pictures of the aircraft on its secret missions, original Blackbird blueprints, and even
05:48the actual flight manual. Number 5. Declassified Moon Landing Photos. Many Americans witnessed the
05:55moon landing live on television. It is the farthest anyone has ever gone. Yet humankind's greatest
06:04adventure was also its riskiest. Well, sort of. They were actually watching a feed that was filmed on a
06:11slow-cam television and optically converted from a different camera to NTSC. This alone means many
06:18to question the authenticity of the footage for some skeptics, and 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, but most of these
06:37things can be explained. The 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
06:48the lunar surface. Number 4. Operation Crossroads Nuclear Test Footage. The Operation Crossroads
06:55nuclear test footage is something to behold. It's also some of the first drone footage ever showcased.
07:01Not since the discovery of gunpowder has the world wondered over the ability of man to create
07:06such an agent of destruction. The 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
07:17public, and most importantly, to the United States' adversaries. It showcased the sheer power that the
07:23United States had in its vast arsenal. The atomic spectacle was so widely acknowledged, it managed to find
07:29its 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
07:42destruction it wields.
07:43The expanding cloud of spray and fog several hundred feet high may be seen moving out from the center of the
07:50detonation. Number 3. Ivy Mike Nuclear Test Footage. With rumors and data suggesting the Soviets were
07:56successfully testing a nuclear device, the United States was fast at work creating the next big
08:02breakthrough in nuclear weaponry. The US military was developing a weapon so powerful it would make
08:07the atom bomb look like child's play. Unleashing 10.4 megatons of thermonuclear power, Ivy Mike was the
08:14world's first full-scale hydrogen bomb test. It yielded the power of 500 Fat Man atomic bombs and vaporized
08:22the Elugilab island in its entirety, leaving an underwater crater over 6,000 feet wide and over
08:28150 feet deep where the island once existed. The declassified footage shows the terrifying power of the
08:45hydrogen bomb, remaining a stark reminder of the looming threat of total annihilation.
08:51Number 2. Project Mogul Allegedly the actual source of the 1947 Roswell
08:56crash, Project Mogul was a Cold War sound detection spy program designed to detect nuclear explosions,
09:03observing Soviet bomb testing using microphones and radio arrays attached to high-altitude balloons.
09:10In New 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
09:31Roswell 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. Even his son, Jesse Marcel Jr.,
09:48recounts the time in 1947 when his father showed him the pieces of the craft himself.
09:54So, was Major Marcel a confused military man, who simply wasn't read in on what he was seeing,
09:59or was Mogul just an elaborate cover story?
10:03The Roswell debris was part of a different kind of balloon, one used in the top secret
10:08Project Mogul, essentially an airborne bugging device to listen out for possible Soviet nuclear
10:15tests and missile launches.
10:32Number 1. The Pentagon UFO Videos.
10:36The world was taken by storm in 2017, when the New York Times wrote about three videos showcasing possible
10:42UFOs documented by the United States military.
10:46The public has been able to see several astounding images of what certainly qualify as UFOs during
10:52encounters with the US Navy. Documented using high-end surveillance equipment
10:57and multi-million dollar fighter jets, the Go Fast, the FLIR, and the Gimbal were all
11:03officially 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
11:13ball against a wall. The combination of the New York Times breaking a massive story on the UFO
11:18phenomenon and the Department of Defense claiming the video is to be authentic UAP was a shocking
11:24revelation for the country, if not the world. The US government could not say for certain what is
11:30in this video, but it is something physically going by the window. Do you have any declassified photos
11:36or videos you would like to see featured next? Let us know in the comments. It's hard to imagine a world
11:42without GPS or satellite imagery, but in the 1950s when the CIA created its first photo reconnaissance
11:47satellite, codenamed Corona, the technology simply didn't exist.
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