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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. 18 …This search soon led him to a British twin-engine medium bomber— the Canberra—built by…
  • p. 19 CO5653421 UNCLASSIFIED ."-ge""011-141 Chapter 1 6 '• Q.., ./ • „„, a • • ..a■ ...A • - at -... .441 RAF Canberra…
  • p. 22 …al- titude performance of the B-57 Canberra. By January 1954 all three firms had submitted…
  • p. 36 …The RAF equipped the new Canberra PR7 with Rolls- Royce Avon-109 engines and gave it…
  • p. 37 …altitude flight being made to the US Canberra, the B-57.3' The Intelligence Systems Panel…
  • p. 80 …production was needed to power specially configured Canberra RB-57Ds for the Air Force. The first…
  • p. 122 …a reconnaissance version of the twin-engine Canberra bomber, similar to the RAF overflight of Kapustin…
  • p. 175 …2 and an Air Force RB-57D Canberra. The two air- craft cruised along the Soviet…
Semipalatinsk Nuclear
Weapons Proving Ground,
22 August 1957
CO5653421 UNCLASSIFIED
S'erret-NC1BAL-
Chapter 3
138
EO 129581.6191111>101010<25Yrs
part of the world." The Soviet announcement made the intelligence
community want even more information on Tyuratam, and a second
U-2 piloted by flew over the area on 28 August 1957,
just one week alter the Soviet ICBM launch. This mission obtained
excellent vertical photographs of the main launch complex, and
photointerpreters soon determined that the Soviets had only one
launchpad at Tyuratam. The base was not photographed again until 9
July 1959, at which time it still had only one launch pad, although
two more were under construction."
On 20 and 21 August 1957, U-2s conducted the first overflights
of the Soviet nuclear testing grounds at Semipalatinsk, north-north-
west of Lake Balkhash. The first mission, piloted by
passed over part of the proving grounds, tlew on to
iNovoKuznetsk, and then proceeded to Tomsk, where it began its re-
turn leg that included coverage of a very large uranium-processing fa-
cility at the new city of Berezovskiy. In the second mission
flew directly over the Semipalatinsk proving g
only tour hours before a half-megaton device was detonated. In fact,
the U-2 unknowingly photographed the aircraft that was to drop the
"Is Russia Ahead in Missile Race, - US News and World Report, 6 September 1957. pp.
30-33.
" Mission folders 4058 (28 August 1957) and 4125 (9 July 1959), OSA records
ITS Codeword).
SlierdaL,
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.