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.
“Sea”26 pages
With Kelly Johnson watching from a chase plane and giving a constant stream of instructions, LeVier made three more unsuccessful landing attempts. With the light fading and a thunderstorm fast approaching from the mountains to the west, LeVier made one last approach using the method he had advocated: letting the aircraft touch on its rear wheel first. This time the U-2 made a near-perfect landing, which came just in the nick of time. Ten minutes later, the thunderstorm began dumping an unheard-of 2 inches of rain, flooding the dry lakebed and making the airstrip unusable. $ ^{43} $
Now that the first problems in flying and landing the U-2 had been worked out, Kelly Johnson scheduled the "official" first flight for 8 August 1955. This time outsiders were present, including Richard Bissell, Col. Osmond Ritland, Richard Horner, and Garrison Norton. The U-2 flew to 32,000 feet and performed very well. Kelly Johnson had met his eight-month deadline. $ ^{44} $ 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.