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
wanted no more part of it. The US Government rapidly withdrew its support, and the remaining remnants of the rebellion collapsed. Four years later, the Indonesians freed Pope after Attorney General Robert Kennedy personally appealed to President Sukarno.
When the revolt ended, the U-2s returned to Atsugi. On the way back, one of the planes, which was equipped with a System-V electronic intelligence unit, flew along the coast of China to gather data on Communist Chinese radars. $ ^{25} $
## China Offshore Islands Dispute of 1958
During the summer of 1958, tension between the People's Republic of China and Nationalist China (Taiwan) increased to such an extent that on 18 June Detachment C mounted a U-2 mission to film the Chinese mainland coast and adjacent island areas. On 11 August, People's Liberation Army (PLA) artillery began bombarding the offshore islands of Quemoy and Little Quemoy, where the Nationalists had stationed large numbers of troops to ward off any invasion. On 23 August the Communists increased the shelling. After five days of intense bombardment, which made resupply of the islands from Taiwan impossible, the PLA commander ordered the Nationalist garrisons to surrender, intimating that an invasion was imminent. The Nationalists refused to surrender and received support from the United States in the form of warships from the 7th Fleet, which began escorting Nationalist ships carrying supplies to the beleaguered garrisons.
Secret NOFORN
Chapter 5
During this period, Detachment C U-2s flew four missions over the mainland, searching for troop movements that would indicate that the PRC was planning to invade the islands. Photos from these missions showed no evidence of a PRC buildup, but the atmosphere in the region remained tense. Detachment C U-2s flew two more missions (9 September and 22 October) to monitor PRC troop movements and again found no indications of preparations for an invasion. The Offshore Islands Crisis receded in late October 1958 after the PRC learned that it would not receive support from the Soviet Union if the crisis escalated into a confrontation with the United States. $ ^{26} $ 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.