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
## DELIVERY OF THE FIRST OXCART
The first A-12, known as article 121, was assembled and tested at Burbank during January and February 1962. Since it could not be flown to the Nevada site, the aircraft had to be partially disassembled and put on a specially designed trailer that cost nearly $100,000. The entire fuselage, without the wings, was crated and covered, creating a load 35 feet wide and 105 feet long. To transport this huge load safely over the hundreds of miles to the site, obstructing road signs were removed, trees were trimmed, and some roadbanks had to be leveled. The plane left Burbank on 26 February 1962 and arrived at Area 51 two days later.
After the fuselage arrived in Nevada, its wings were attached and the J75 engines were installed, but the aircraft was still not ready to be tested. This new delay was caused by leaking fuel tanks, a problem that would never be solved completely. Because the A-12's high speeds heat the titanium airframe to more than $ 5 0 0 ^{\circ} \mathrm{F} $ , Lockheed designers had to make allowances for expansion. When the metal was cold, the expansion joints were at their widest. In the fuel tanks, these gaps were filled by pliable sealants, but the fuel for the A-12's engines acted as a strong reducing agent that softened the sealants, causing leaks. Thus, when fuel was first poured into the aircraft, 68 leaks developed. Lockheed technicians then stripped and replaced all the sealant, a tedious and time consuming procedure because the sealant required four curing cycles, each at a different temperature over a period of 30 to 54 hours. The engineers were never able to discover a sealant compound that was completely impervious to the jet fuel while remaining elastic enough to expand and contract sufficiently. The A-12's tanks continued to leak, so when it was fueled, it only received enough fuel to get airborne. The plane would then rendezvous with a tanker, top off its tanks, and immediately climb to operating altitude, causing the metal to expand and the leaks to stop. $ ^{30} $
## CHANGES IN THE PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Richard Bissell, whose concern for the viability of the U-2 in 1956 had led to the establishment of Project OXCART and who had directed its growth all along, was no longer in charge when the first 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.