Documents / FOIA release

The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance; the U-2 and Oxcart Programs, 1954-1974

Central Intelligence Agency · 1900-01-01 · 406 pages · text by OCR

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.

  • p. 18 …This search soon led him to a British twin-engine medium bomber—the Canberra—built by…
  • p. 19 Secret NOFORN Chapter 1 6 RAF Canberra Mark-PR3 division in Baltimore, headed by Lt. Col…
  • p. 22 …high-altitude performance of the B-57 Canberra. By January 1954 all three firms had submitted…
  • p. 36 …The RAF equipped the new Canberra PR7 with RollsRoyce Avon-109 engines and gave it long…
  • p. 37 …altitude flight being made to the US Canberra, the B-57. $ ^{41} $ ## The Intelligence Systems Panel…
  • p. 80 …production was needed to power specially configured Canberra RB-57Ds for the Air Force. The first…
  • p. 122 …a reconnaissance version of the twin-engine Canberra bomber, similar to the RAF overflight of Kapustin…
  • p. 175 …2 and an Air Force RB-57D Canberra. The two aircraft cruised along the Soviet border…
  • p. 372 …310, 313, 321, 327, 329, 332, 333 Canberra 5, 9, 23-24, 67, 109, 117, 162…
  • p. 401 …General 61 oxygen mask 62 RB-57D Canberra 162 Third Air Force 89 US deterrent force…
Chapter 5

255

Subsequent missions in support of Federal agencies included COMPASS TRIP in fiscal year 1973, when Agency U-2s photographed poppy fields that had been planted by the Bureau of Narcotics in order to provide a standard for comparison with satellite imagery. In the following year, U-2s assisted the Corps of Engineers in conducting a geological survey.

## Overseas Deployment Exercises and Missions

With the exception of the Chinese Nationalist-piloted U-2s of Detachment H, all of the Agency's U-2 assets were concentrated in Detachment G in California. To test the ability of Detachment G to respond to a crisis in Europe or the Middle East, the Agency staged an overseas deployment exercise known as SCOPE SAINT each year (unless there was an actual operational deployment, as was the case in 1970, 1973, and 1974). The first of these exercises, SCOPE SAINT-I, took place on 9 October 1968, when Detachment G deployed a U-2G to the

The U-2 conducted several training flights and then returned to California. SCOPE SAINT-II followed in April 1969 and demonstrated the feasibility of employing a C-141 aircraft to accompany a

Earthquake damage, San Fernando Valley, 1971

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About this file

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.