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. 24 …Instead of a conventional landing gear, Johnson proposed using two skis and a reinforced belly rib…
  • p. 25 …a perceived shortcoming of the Lockheed design."' Another factor in the rejection of Kelly Johnson's…
  • p. 26 …interview by Donald E. Welzenbach, Corona del Mar. California. 20 May 1985 (S). Johnson, "Log for…
  • p. 27 …Gardner described Kelly Johnson's proposal and showed the drawings to Strong. After this meeting. Strong…
  • p. 30 …To make Kelly Johnson's revolutionary design a reality, one additional source of support was necessary…
  • p. 42 …When James Killian asked Land to head Project Three, Land had to make a major decision…
  • p. 48 …do the job in Johnson's airplane. And further, 1 overlaid a curve showing that with…
  • p. 57 …demanding, and Kelly Johnson agreed that such a move would save a lot of money. Lockheed…
  • p. 58 …a week after he had been authorized to begin the project, Kelly Johnson wrote a 23…
  • p. 69 …project staff) flew LIZ with Kelly Johnson in a small Beechcraft plane piloted by eed's…
  • p. 72 …This responsibility has placed a heavy burden on the Office of Security for establishing procedures to…
  • p. 79 …Batlin suggested the method used by Nazi war criminal Hermann Goering, a thin glass ampule containing…
  • p. 81 …Kelly Johnson used a "wet-wing" design for the U-2, which meant that fuel was…
  • p. 89 …Airspeed was such a critical factor that Kelly Johnson added a vernier adjustment to the throttle…
  • p. 162 …By late 1957, Johnson agreed that something had to be done. After a series of tests…
  • p. 276 RN Chapter 6 263 Johnson, "Archangel log," 17-24 CO5653421 UNCLASSIFIED Lockheed design for a hydrogen…
  • p. 324 …OXCART did win a temporary reprieve in late November 1967. The Johnson administration decided to keep…
005653421:
later, at press conferences in February and July 1964, President
Lyndon B. Johnson revealed the existence of the OXCART-type of
aircraft, although only in its military YF-12A (interceptor) and SR-71
(strategic reconnaissance) versions.
The two CIA reconnaissance aircraft have also been the subject
of a number of books, beginning with David Wise's and Thomas B.
Ross's The U-2 Affair in 1962 and then Francis Gary Powers'
memoirs, Operation Overflight, in 1970. Two recent books give many
more details about the U-2 and OXCART aircraft: Michael
Beschloss's Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev and the U-2 Affair
(1986) and William Burrows's Deep Black: Space Espionage and
National Security (1987). Although well written and generally ac-
curate, these books suffer from their authors' lack of access to
classified official documentation. By drawing upon the considerable
amount of formerly classified data on the U-2 now available to the
public, Beschloss has provided an accurate and insightful depiction of
the U-2 program in the context of the Eisenhower administration's
overall foreign policy, but his book does contain errors and omissions
on some aspects of the U-2 program. Burrows's broader work suffers
more from the lack of classified documentation, particularly in the
OXCART/SR-7l section, which concentrates on the Air Force air-
craft because little information about the Agency's aircraft has been
officially declassified and released.
After the present study of the Agency's overhead reconnaissance
projects was completed, a new book on the U-2 was published in the
United Kingdom. Chris Pocock's Dragon Lady: The History of the
U-2 Spyplane knclassified account of the
U-2 program. OCOCK nas Dent awe w Luihensate for his lack of ac-
cess to classified documents by interviewing many former
participants in the program, especially former pilots. Pocock is also
quite familiar with aircraft itself, for he had worked with Jay Miller
on the latter's excellent technical study of the U-2: Lockheed U-2
(1983).
E0129581.131d1[11>10<25Yrs
IS1
PQfORNRN
There has also been a classified official study of the U-2 and
OXCART programs. In 1969 the Directorate of Science and
Technology published a History of the Office of Special Activities by

Not linked to a story yet.

About this file

FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 406 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.