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.
“Cooper”11 pages
Secret NOFORN
Chapter 5
228
Lan-chou, PRC, 23 February 1962
for air order of battle. In addition to the primary targets already described, the initial series of Project TACKLE missions obtained photography of the submarine construction facilities at Shanghai and Wu-ch'ang, which showed a low level of activity. Other photographs revealed tremendous expansion of the industrial complexes at Nanking and Ch'ang-sha and the presence of a previously unknown industrial area at Chiang-yu. $ ^{40} $
Encouraged by the success of the first TACKLE missions, COMOR recommended in May 1962 that Detachment H cover as many as possible of the highest priority industrial and airfield targets in northeast China and the missile test ranges in north China. COMOR noted that, with the exception of the areas around Peiping and the Shuangchengzi missile test range, the chances of a U-2 being downed were low. The USIB concurred with COMOR's recommendations, and Detachment H therefore conducted three more overflights of the PRC during the month of June. $ ^{41} $ 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.