Documents / FOIA release
CIA/CSI/ History Staff Monograph, The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance: The U-2 and Oxcart Programs, 16 July 2002.
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, written in 1992 and approved for release in 2011. It covers the CIA's manned overhead reconnaissance program from 1954 to 1974 and its two aircraft, the U-2 and the A-12 OXCART. It follows their development, the overflights of the Soviet Union, the downing of Francis Gary Powers in 1960, and later operations. One section is titled "U-2s, UFOs, and Operation BLUE BOOK."
“Nevers”24 pages
- p. 13 …Without their help a good deal of this story could never have
become known. The assistance…
- p. 44 …the CL-282; in fact, there may never have been
a formal decision as such. In…
- p. 74 …fly, Lockheed engineers had to solve
problems never before encountered. Among these problems was the
need…
- p. 84 …Flight tests continued, with the U-2 ascending to alti-
tudes never before attained in sustained…
- p. 102 …put aside for further thought
(which it never received), and Bissell's weather research cover re…
- p. 138 …Then in January 1960, the commander of Detachment B,
raised an important question that had never…
- p. 147 …Peninsula, because of bad weather and, therefore, never
entered Soviet airspace. A second attempt to photograph…
- p. 159 …Six of the men on board were
killed and the remaining 11 were never heard from…
- p. 160 …Although this new Berlin crisis never became as threatening
as the blockade of 1948-49, President…
- p. 165 …The Air Force never equipped its orig-
inal U-2s with the J75 engines."
Detachment C…
- p. 189 …Powers never made it past Sverdlovsk. Four and a half hours into
the mission, an SA…
- p. 208 …very
good reason, and such a situation never developed, in part because
satellite photography gradually began…
- p. 210 …Since this never happened, Francis Gary Powers' flight on I
May 1960 proved to be the…
- p. 223 …Responsibility for photo-
graphic coverage of Cuba remained with the Air Force; Agency pilots
never flew…
- p. 264 Sratrt.11/Qt2.1....31■1
Chapter 5
251
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There was never another Agency…
- p. 290 …the OXCART aircraft for its own use. never adopted the laminated
vertical stabilizers.'4
THE OXCART…
- p. 294 …Scott employed concepts never be-
fore used in camera systems. These included the use of a…
- p. 298 …As it turned out, the J58 was
never used in a Navy aircraft.
OSA History. chap…
- p. 299 …This new delay was caused by leaking fuel tanks, a problem
that would never be solved…
- p. 313 …even
though the SKYLARK contingency plan was never put into effect.
Since U-2s continued to…
- p. 316 …Moreover, the Soviets never operated the radars in the tracking and
locktin modes, a fact that…
- p. 326 …collector of strategic intelligence, the
OXCART was never used for this purpose. Its brief deployment was…
- p. 328 …Yet, the President never went so far
as to eliminate the overflight program. As Commander in…
- p. 333 …its speed and altitude have never been equaled. The development of
this aircraft also led to…
Colonel Goodpaster with
President Eisenhower
CO5653421 UNCLASSIFIED
Chapter 3
98
take it as a certainty that no pilot would survive.., and that al-
though they would know where the plane came from, it would be
difficult to prove it in any convincing way."
CIA assurances that the U-2 would probably not be detected, and
that a crashed U-2 could not be traced back to the United States,
helped overcome the President's worries about overflights. The most
important reason why President Eisenhower decided to send recon-
naissance aircraft over the Soviet Union, however, was the urgent
need for accurate intelligence to confirm or disprove claims of Soviet
advances in long-range bombers and missiles. The initial sighting of
the new Soviet Bison bomber in the spring of 1954 had been followed
by reported si ghtings of more than 30 of these bombers in the spring
and summer of 1955 (in reality these were sightings of the same
group of 10 aircraft that circled around out of sight and made several
passes during a Soviet air show). Soon members of Congress were
calling for investigations into the relative strength of the US and
" Quoted in Beschloss, Mayday, p. 118.
UNCLASSIFIED
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About this file
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.