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/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. 11 …At great risk, US Air Force and Navy aircraft had been conducting peripheral reconnaissance and shallow…
  • p. 16 …As a result, in the late 1940s, the US Air Force and Navy began trying to…
  • p. 17 …Two months later, on 7 October 1952, Soviet fighter aircraft stalked and shot down a US…
  • p. 72 …agreement with the Air Force and the Navy (which at that time was also interested in…
  • p. 147 …turned to the Navy, which granted permission for Detachment C to use the Naval Air Station…
  • p. 180 …The Army, Navy, and CIA, however, doubted that any had been deployed, because none could be…
  • p. 223 …by Air Force and Navy reconnais- sance aircraft. President Kennedy used NPIC photographs to illustrate his…
  • p. 273 …Charyk, and his Navy counterpart, Garrison Norton. Designers from several air- craft manufacturers also attended some…
  • p. 283 …This engine had originally been developed for the Navy's large, jet-powered flying boat, the…
  • p. 297 …The need for additional buildings on the base was met by the Navy. Three surplus Navy…
  • p. 298 …After hearing Bissell and Holcomb's suggestion that the J58 might be used in future Navy…
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Chapter 3
129
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CO5653421 UNCLASSIFIED
absorption devices for the U-2. Once these devices were installed on " Trapeze " antiradar attachments
the operational U-2s, he explained, the "majority of incidents would to the U-2
be undetected.""
Work on methods of reducing the U-2's vulnerability to radar de-
tection had begun in the fall of 1956 as the result of President
Eisenhower's disenchantment with the overflight program following
Soviet detection and tracking of the first series of U-2 missions
as condu
this research under a project codenamed RAINBOW.
formerly of MIT, coiied the
theories of Harvard h sicist Edward Purcell into systems that could
be used on aircraft. radar-deception system consisted of a series
of attachments to t -2. First bamboo poles and later fiberglass
rods were attached to the wings, where they would not interfere with
the control surfaces. At the ends of these poles, completely circling
" Andrew J. Goodpaster. Memorandum of Conference with the President. 6 May 1957
(TS); "Record of Action—Meeting of May 6. 1957," WHOSS, Alpha, DDEL (TS).
ED 129581.6(dUll>111<25Yrs
(Si
UNCLASSIFIED

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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.