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.
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To prevent pilots from becoming dessicated during the long missions—a condition aggravated by their having to breathe pure oxygen—provision was made for them to drink sweetened water. This was accomplished by providing a small self-sealing hole in the face mask through which the pilot could push a strawlike tube attached to the water supply. Project personnel also pioneered in the development of ready-to-eat foods in squeezable containers. These were primarily bacon- or cheese-flavored mixtures that the pilot could squeeze into his mouth using the self-sealing hole in the face mask. Despite all these precautions, U-2 pilots normally lost 3 to 6 pounds of body weight during an eight-hour mission. $ ^{36} $
Food and water were not the only items provided to pilots on overflight missions; they also received a suicide pill. During the early 1950s, tales of Soviet secret police torture of captured foreign agents
Pilot undergoing prebreathing 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.