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
Chapter 5 Lhasa, Tibet, November 1959 Although the plane was equipped with a camera, it carried no film and did not have a full load of fuel, which made it considerably lighter than an operational U-2C. As a result, the plane reached 76,400 feet—the highest altitude achieved by any of the original U-2 aircraft. In the process, however, the aircraft consumed more fuel than was called for in the test flight plan, causing the engine to flame out during the return to base. The pilot then made an emergency wheels-up landing at a glider-club strip near Fujisawa, south of Atsugi. The crash did not cause any injuries or serious damage to the aircraft, but it did bring unwanted publicity to the U-2 program. Much of the publicity resulted from the actions of Detachment C's security unit, whose conspicuous Hawaiian shirts and large pistols drew the
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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.