The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance; the U-2 and Oxcart Programs, 1954-1974

Secret NOFORN
Chapter 3

to working closely with the British from his wartime experience and believed that their involvement in the U-2 program was a natural aspect of their alliance with the United States. $ ^{113} $

On the British side, participation in U-2 flights was a logical extension of the close cooperation that already existed between the two countries on the U-2 program. The direct involvement of the British also enabled them to conduct additional flights in areas such as the Middle East that were of more intelligence interest to the United Kingdom than to the United States. The British also may have reasoned that direct participation in the program was the best way to ensure that they had a right to share in the U-2's take. Otherwise, the United States might decide at some point to cut off the flow of U-2 photography, as it had done during the 1956 Suez Crisis.

By November 1958, British pilots had joined Detachment B, and arrangements had been made for the title to the aircraft they would be using to be transferred on paper to the British Government. In a final exchange of letters between President Eisenhower and Prime Minister Macmillan in December, the President summarized the lines of authority for the joint program: "British missions are carried out on your authority and are your responsibility just as our activities are authorized and controlled here in accordance with the procedures I have established. In this sense, it could be said that we are carrying out two complementary programs rather than a joint one." $ ^{114} $

Richard Bissell had achieved his goal of gaining another source of approval for overflights of the Soviet Union. In late 1959 and early 1960, this arrangement proved its value when British pilots conducted two highly successful missions over Soviet missile testing facilities at a time when President Eisenhower had not authorized an overflight for almost six months (see chapter 4). Most flights by the RAF pilots in Detachment B, however, took place in the Middle East, where the United Kingdom carried out 27 missions during the two years its pilots took part in overflights.

In Britain, the cover story for the RAF participation in the U-2 program was that British fliers were being trained to fly high-altitude weather-sampling missions for the RAF weather service. To support this cover, a U-2 was ferried to Watton RAF Base, England, in early