Documents / FOIA release

/specialCollection/MissileGap/1992/1992-04-01.pdf

Central Intelligence Agency · 406 pages · text from the file's own layer

This is a CIA History Staff monograph by Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach, published in Washington in 1992 and approved for release in 2011. It covers the CIA's manned overhead reconnaissance program from 1954 to 1974, which developed and flew the U-2 and the A-12 OXCART. It traces the U-2's development, the overflights of the Soviet Union, the downing of Francis Gary Powers on 1 May 1960, and later operations. One section is titled U-2s, UFOs, and Operation BLUE BOOK.

  • p. 134 …By the end of the month, foreign troops began evacuating Egyptian terri- tory, and the pressure…
E0 12958 1.6(dll11>1010101045Yrs
(SI The first Agency U-2 detachment, consisting of ircraft and
pilots, was known publicly as the 1st Weather xeconnaissance
Squadron, Provisional (WRSP-1). The "provisional" designation
gave the U-2 detachments greater security because provisional Air
Force units did not have to report to higher headquarters. WRSP-1,
known within the Agency as Detachment A, began deploying
)n 29 April 1956. By 4 May. all of the detachment s
, personnel and equipment, including aircraft, had arrived at
Shortly after deployment, on 7 May, the National Advisory
Committee on Aeronautics (NACA) released an unclassified U-2
cover story stating that a Lockheed-developed aircraft would be flown
by the USAF Air Weather Service to study such high-altitude phenom-
ena as the jet stream, convective clouds, temperature and wind struc-
tures at jet-stream levels, and cosmic-ray effects up to 55,000 feet.'
Ibid.. pp. 17-18 (TS Codeword).
Press Release of 7 May 1956 (U) in OSA History, chap. 7. annex 60 (TS Codeword).
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 406 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.