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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…
Chapter 4
171
SA-2 surface-to-air missile
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005653421 UNCLASSIFIED
strengthened when the Soviet Union did not protest the 9 April mis-
sion. As Presidential science adviser George Kistiakowsky later re-
marked about the lack of protest, "This was virtually inviting us to
repeat the sortie."2'
Although President Eisenhower had authorized another over-
flight for April, he left the designation of its targets up to the experts
at the CIA. Of the three missions that remained under consideration.
one—Operation SUN SPOT—would overfly southern targets,
Tyuratam and Vladimirovka, while the other two would cover rail-
road networks in the north-central portion of the Soviet Union. The
intelligence community had been interested in this area ever since late
1959, when there were indications that the Soviets were building an
SS-6 launch facility there. This was the first indication that SS-6s
might be located anywhere other than Tyuratam testing facility, where
the missiles were launched from a general purpose launching pad.
The intelligence community was anxious to obtain photography of a
George B. Kistiakowsky. A Scientist at the White House (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press. 1976), p. 328.
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.