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.
“RAF”18 pages
overflights of Cuban territory. He argued that the loss of an aircraft on a mission that combined both types of flights would make it difficult for the United States to stand on its rights to fly over international waters. Bundy and Carter therefore agreed to split the proposed reconnaissance program into four missions: two overflights and two peripheral flights, all planned for maximum safety. The overflights were thus designed to be quick "in-and-out" operations across the narrow width of the island instead of flights along the entire length of Cuba, as had been the case previously. (As the map on page 202 illustrates, the 5 September mission was the last one to fly along the length of the island.) As an additional precaution, flightpaths would be laid out to avoid known SAM sites. Although these changes greatly reduced the danger to the U-2, they slowed the gathering of information on the Soviet buildup by reducing each mission's coverage.9
To ensure that the photographs taken by these missions were of the highest quality, the CIA decided to conduct flights only when the weather along the flight routes was less than 25 percent overcast. Weather proved to be a major problem during the month of September. Unfavorable forecasts (along with a brief standdown of U-2 overflights after the loss of the Nationalist Chinese U-2) prevented the launching of any missions from 6 through 16 September. Moreover, when mission 3091 finally flew on 17 September, the favorable weather forecast proved inaccurate and heavy clouds prevented the mission from obtaining usable photography. Bad weather continued to rule out missions until 26 September, when mission 3093 covered eastern Cuba and found three additional SAM sites. Three days later mission 3095 flew over the Isle of Pines and Bay of Pigs area, finding one more SAM site and a coastal-defense cruise missile site. $ ^{10} $
The cautious series of U-2 flights in September had turned up many more SAM sites but no concrete evidence of the presence of surface-to-surface missiles. Growing impatient with the restrictions 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.