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

Secret NOFORN
Chapter 7
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The low level of overflight activity did not prevent the U-2 from accomplishing a lot in the four years it flew over the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Twenty-four U-2 missions made deep penetration overflights of the Soviet Union: six by Detachment A from Germany, three by Detachment C from the Far East and Alaska, and 15 by Detachment B from Turkey and Pakistan, including the unsuccessful Powers mission.

The amount of information these missions gathered was impressive. By the summer of 1960, the U-2 project had developed more than 1,285,000 feet of film-a strip almost 250 miles long. The U-2s covered more than 1,300,000 square miles of the Soviet Union, approximately 15 percent of its total area. Information from U-2 photographs was used to prepare 5,425 separate photoanalytical reports. $ ^{1} $

Numbers alone cannot describe the importance of the U-2 overflight project. In a 28 May 1960 memorandum, after Powers was shot down, DCI Allen W. Dulles described the program's accomplishments: "Five years ago, before the beginning of the U-2 program, . . half knowledge of the Soviet Union and uncertainty of its true power position posed tremendous problems for the United States. We were faced with the constant risk of exposing ourselves to enemy attack or of needlessly expending a great deal of money and effort on misdirected military preparations of our own." Dulles went on to describe the U-2's contribution in gathering information on four critical aspects of the Soviet Union's power position: its bomber force, its missile force, its atomic energy program, and its air defense system. $ ^{2} $

The first major contribution of intelligence collected from U-2 overflights was the exposure of the "bomber gap" as a myth. Contrary to the US Air Force's claims, the Soviet Union was not building a large force of long-range bombers. Armed with information from U-2 overflights, President Eisenhower was able to resist pressure to build a large US bomber fleet to meet a nonexistent Soviet threat.