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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…
RN
Chapter 6
263
Johnson, "Archangel log," 17-24
CO5653421 UNCLASSIFIED
Lockheed design for a hydrogen-powered aircraft (the CL-400). The
committee examined two other Kelly Johnson designs at this
meeting—a tailless subsonic aircraft with a very-low-radar cross sec-
tion (the G2A) and a new supersonic design (the A-2)—and did not
accept either one, the former because of its slow speed and the latter
because of its dependence on exotic fuels for its ramjets and its over-
all high cost. The committee approved the continuation of Convair's
work on a ramjet-powered Mach 4.0 "parasite" aircraft that would be
launched from a specially configured version of the B-58B bomber.
The design was termed a parasite because it could not take off on its
own but needed a larger aircraft to carry it aloft and accelerate it to
the speed required to start the ramjet engine. The Convair design was
called the FISH.'
Two months later, after reviewing the Convair proposal and yet
another Lockheed design for a high-speed reconnaissance aircraft (the
A-3), the Land committee concluded in late November 1958 that it
would indeed be feasible to build an aircraft whose speed and altitude
would make radar tracking difficult or impossible. The committee,
therefore, recommended that DCI Dulles ask President Eisenhower to
approve further pursuit of the project and to provide funds for addi-
tional studies and tests.6
On 17 December 1958, Allen Dulles and Richard Bissell briefed
the President on the progress toward a successor to the U-2. Also
present were Land and Purcell from the advisory committee,
Presidential Science Adviser James Killian, and Air Force Secretary
Donald Quarles. DCI Dulles reviewed the results of the U-2 missions
to date and stated his belief that a successor to the U-2 could be used
all over the world and "would have a much greater invulnerability to
detection."
Bissell then described the two competing projects by Lockheed
and Convair, noting that the chief question at the moment was
whether to use air launch or ground takeoff. The next phase, he add-
ed, would be detailed engineering, at the end of which it was pro-
posed that 12 aircraft be ordered at a cost of about $100 million. (01295111.6(dlill>111<25Yrs
(Si
OSA History, chap. 20, p. 8 (TS Codeword);
September 1958.
"OSA Chronology. p. 21 (TS Codeword)
History, chap. 20, p. 8 (TS Cocleword); Jo
"OXCART Story," p. 3 (S); OSA
hangel log," 12 November 1958.
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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.