Documents / FOIA release
This is a 1992 CIA History Staff monograph by Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach, originally classified Secret NOFORN and approved for release in 2013. It covers the CIA's manned overhead reconnaissance program from 1954 to 1974 and the two aircraft it developed, the U-2 and the A-12 OXCART. The history covers the U-2 overflights of the Soviet Union, the 1960 downing of Francis Gary Powers and later operations in Asia and Latin America. It also includes a section on U-2s, UFOs and Operation BLUE BOOK.
“Nevers”34 pages
Secret NOFORN
Chapter 3
shutter ruined much of the photography of one of the flights. The third mission (2023), on the following day, included the Crimean Peinsula. $ ^{31} $
The film from the first overflight (4 July) was flown to the United States immediately after the U-2 landed at Wiesbaden. Several members of the Photo Intelligence Division were on hand when the film was developed to check on the results. Also present was James Baker, who had accepted an offer by project officials to get a firsthand look at how the new A-2 lenses were working. $ ^{32} $
The photos from July overflights were generally good, despite occasional problems caused by cloud cover. The huge amount of film taken by these missions provided more information about the Soviet Union's ability to track and intercept U-2s. Photointerpreters examining the films eventually discovered the tiny images of MiG-15s and MiG-17s beneath the U-2s in various pursuit and attack attitudes: climbing, flipping over, and falling toward Earth. It was even possible to determine their approximate altitudes. These photographs showed that the Soviet air defense system was able to track U-2s well enough to attempt interception, but they also provided proof that the fighter aircraft available to the Soviet Union in 1956 could not bring down a U-2 at operational altitude. $ ^{33} $
One problem with early U-2 photography became apparent only after the first films were developed. If there was surface water on the runway at Wiesbaden when the U-2 took off, the camera windows became begrimed. Although the water dried during the flight, the oily scum it left behind degraded the photographic image. To combat this problem, AQUATONE ground crews took brooms and spent several hours before takeoff sweeping puddles of water from the runway to be used by the U-2. Kelly Johnson eventually designed a jettisonable cover for the camera windows, which was released at the same time as the pogos so that it could be recovered and reused. $ ^{34} $ Not linked to a story yet.
FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 406 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.