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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…
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.