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.
“Mission Control”28 pages
## The Air Force Search for a New Reconnaissance Aircraft
With interest in high-altitude reconnaissance growing, several Air Force agencies began to develop an aircraft to conduct such missions. In September 1952, the Air Research and Development Command gave the Martin Aircraft Company a contract to examine the high-altitude potential of the B-57 by modifying a single aircraft to give it long, high-lift wings and the American version of the new Rolls-Royce Avon-109 engine. These were the modifications that Richard Leghorn had suggested during the previous year. $ ^{10} $
At about the same time, another Air Force office, the Wright Air Development Command (WADC) in Dayton, Ohio, was also examining ways to achieve sustained flight at high altitudes. Working with two German aeronautical experts—Woldemar Voigt and Richard Vogt—who had come to the United States after World War II, Air Force Maj. John Seaberg advocated the development of a new aircraft that would combine the high-altitude performance of the latest turbojet engines with high-efficiency wings in order to reach ultrahigh altitudes. Seaberg, an aeronautical engineer for the Chance Vought Corporation until his recall to active duty during the Korean war, was serving as assistant chief of the New Developments Office of WADC's Bombardment Branch.
By March 1953, Seaberg had expanded his ideas for a high-altitude aircraft into a complete request for proposal for "an aircraft weapon system having an operational radius of 1,500 nm [nautical miles] and capable of conducting pre- and post-strike reconnaissance missions during daylight, good visibility conditions." The requirement stated that such an aircraft must have an optimum subsonic cruise speed at altitudes of 70,000 feet or higher over the target, carry a payload of 100 to 700 pounds of reconnaissance equipment, and have a crew of one."
The Wright Air Development Command decided not to seek proposals from major airframe manufacturers on the grounds that a smaller company would give the new project a higher priority and 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.