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
Secret NOFORN
Chapter 6
282
The Hycon entry, designed by James Baker and known as the Type-IV camera, was a spotting camera with extremely-high-ground resolution. In fact, it was an advanced version of the highly reliable B camera developed for the original U-2 program. It used a 48-inch Baker-designed f/5.6 lens to focus images onto 9.5-inch film. Like the B camera it could provide seven frames of photography covering a swath 41 miles wide with stereo overlap on 19 miles of the swath. The Hycon camera carried the largest film supply of the three cameras, 12,000 feet. It was able to resolve 100 lines per millimeter and provide a ground resolution of 8 inches. A version of this 48-inch Hycon camera, known as the H camera, later saw service in U-2R aircraft.
Each of the three camera systems had unique capabilities and advantages, so all three were purchased for the OXCART. Before they could be effectively employed in the aircraft, however, new types of camera windows were needed. The OXCART's camera windows had to be completely free from optical distortion. Achieving this goal was difficult in a window whose exterior would be subjected to temperatures of $ 5 5 0 ^{\circ} \mathrm{F} $ while the interior surface would be only $ 1 5 0 ^{\circ} \mathrm{F} $ . After three years and the expenditure of $ 2 million in research and development, the Corning Glass Works, which had joined this effort as a Perkin-Elmer subcontractor, solved the problem of producing a camera window that could withstand tremendous heat differentials. Its quartz glass window was fused to the metal frame by an unprecedented process involving high-frequency sound waves. $ ^{24} $
Later in the program, the OXCART received yet another camera system. In 1964 the Texas Instruments Corporation developed an infrared camera for Project TACKLE U-2s that were being used to determine whether the People's Republic of China was producing weapons-grade nuclear material. This stereo device, known as the FFD-4, was adapted for use in OXCART. The camera had an effective focal length of 50 inches and a 150-foot supply of 3.5-inch film. The camera's resolution was $ 3^{\circ} \mathrm{C} $ thermally, 1 milliradian spatially, and 60 feet on the ground. It could be used for both day and night imagery collection. 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.