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.
“F-104”5 pages
Secret NOFORN
Chapter 5
242
The entire U-2 overflight program was temporarily halted in early November 1967 after an Air Force U-2 in Vietnam was discovered to have cracks in its wing. All Air Force and CIA U-2s were ordered back to Lockheed for ultrasonic inspection of the wings and other stress points to check on metal fatigue. Upon completion of this inspection, both the Air Force and the Agency resumed their overflight activity. $ ^{64} $
## The End of U-2 Overflights of Mainland China
Project TACKLE mounted a mission over northeastern China on 13 December 1967 and an overflight of central China on 5 January 1968. Later that month the Far East became very tense when North Korea seized the US electronic intelligence ship Pueblo on 23 January. One 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.