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.
“The Advance”35 pages
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the scale of imagery needed to obtain the highly technical data desired by analysts. As a result, the Office of Special Activities asked the Hycon Manufacturing Company of Pasadena, California, to adapt its successful high-resolution 48-inch 9- by 9-inch format camera developed for the OXCART aircraft for use in the U-2R. This camera was actually a very advanced version of the original B camera with a new lens designed by James Baker. The new camera was designed to resolve objects smaller than 4 inches.
Secret NOFORN
Chapter 5
Hycon began work on the HR-333 camera in 1966. Unlike the OXCART camera, the new unit was to use the split 18- by 18-inch format of the B camera, so the lens had to be redesigned. James Baker's contribution to this effort was a 48-inch f/5.6 system that provided remarkably sharp imagery. Hycon completed the camera in time for it to be installed in the first U-2Rs delivered to the Agency in 1968; it is known as the H camera. $ ^{73} $
## Replacement of the Original U-2s With U-2Rs
As the new U-2Rs began coming off the production line at Lockheed in-the autumn of 1968, CIA and the Department of Defense had to decide who would get the new aircraft. At a meeting on 13 November, DCI Richard Helms and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara agreed that the Air Force and the Agency would each get six U-2Rs. The six older U-2s remaining from the original 1954-55 production were to be kept in flyable condition and be used as replacements if newer models were lost.
Despite the greatly increased capabilities of the new model of the U-2, the era of overflights of hostile territory was over. The U-2R would have six years of useful service with the Agency, but its missions did not include penetration flights over hostile territory.
## THE FINAL YEARS OF THE U-2
When the OXCART's brief operational career with the Agency ended in 1968, the U-2 was once again the center of the Agency's manned reconnaissance program. But by this time, reconnaissance aircraft had declined in importance as collection systems. Overflights were a thing of the past. Although Project TACKLE U-2s with Nationalist Chinese Not linked to a story yet.
FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 406 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.