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.
“Headquarters”25 pages
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Secret NOFORN
Chapter 2
28 November 1955. The CIA's insistence on more stringent physical and mental examinations than those used by the Air Force to select pilots for its U-2 fleet resulted in a higher rejection rate of candidates. The Agency's selection criteria remained high throughout its manned overflight program and resulted in a much lower accident rate for CIA U-2 pilots than for their counterparts in the Air Force program. $ ^{52} $
## PILOT TRAINING
Even before the recruiting effort got under way, the Air Force and CIA began to develop a pilot training program. Under the terms of the OILSTONE agreement between the Agency and the Air Force, responsibility for pilot training lay with SAC. This essential activity was carried out under the supervision of Col. William F. Yancey, who was assigned to March AFB and flew to nearby Area 51 each day. Colonel Yancey was in charge of six SAC pilots who were to be trained by Lockheed test pilots to fly the U-2. Once they became qualified, these SAC pilots would become the trainers for the "sheep-dipped" former Reserve SAC pilots, who would fly U-2 missions for the CIA.
The original U-2 test pilot, Tony LeVier, trained several other Lockheed test pilots in the difficult art of flying the U-2. Eventually there were enough trained Lockheed pilots available to test the aircraft coming off the assembly line and also train the SAC pilots. Training was difficult because there was no two-seat model of the U-2. All instruction had to be given on the ground before takeoff and then over the radio once the craft was airborne. Almost 15 years elapsed before a two-seat U-2 was available for training new pilots. Despite the difficulties involved in training U-2 pilots, Colonel Yancey had a cadre of six qualified Air Force U-2 pilots by September 1955. These six were now ready to train the Agency's pilots. $ ^{53} $
Training pilots was not easy because the U-2 was a mixture of glider and jet. Although those chosen for the overflight program were all qualified fighter pilots, they now had to learn to fly the delicate U-2. Its large wings had tremendous lift but were also very fragile 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.