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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 4
164
mention of overflights by the United States. After the trip was over,
Khrushchev and other leading Soviet officials continued to make ex-
aggerated claims about the extent of their missile force, adding to the
confusion and concern within the US intelligence community. Thus in
November 1959, Soviet Premier Khrushchev told a conference of
journalists, "Now we have such a stock of rockets, such an amount of
atomic and hydrogen weapons, that if they attack us, we could wipe
our potential enemies off the face of the earth." He then added that
"in one year, 250 rockets with hydrogen warheads came off the as-
sembly line in the factory we visited." ' 2 Because the Soviet Union
had been launching at least one missile per week since early fall, US
policymakers placed great weight on his remarks.
Despite the intelligence community's intense interest in the
Soviet Union's nuclear and missile programs, President Eisenhower
did not authorize any more overflights of the Soviet Union during the
remainder of the year. On the other hand, he raised no objections to
(and • robabl welcomed)
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181
William E. Burrows, Deep Black: Space Espionage and National Security (New York:
Random House, 1987), p. 101.
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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.