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."
“Sea”17 pages
- p. 16 …An RB-29 lost in
the Sea of Japan on 13 June 1952 was probably also…
- p. 38 …off to about 6
percent of its sea-level thrust.
Finally, low structural load factors, like…
- p. 75 …with a boiling point of 300T at sea level.
Manufacturing this special fuel required petroleum byproducts…
- p. 80 …heavier
and delivered only 10,200 pounds of thrust at sea level; the resulting
--soarer
UNCLASSIFIED
- p. 89 …that they could not be
flown at sea level faster than 190 knots in smooth air…
- p. 98 …southern Europe and
then across the Black Sea and the desert areas of China. These bal…
- p. 102 …working on a cover story for over-
seas operations. It was important to have a plausible…
- p. 120 …neanteagon •
724744 (8009071 4-92
Finland
Baltic
Sea
ükranian
Italy
ROME
IUMIS
Tunisia Mediterranean Sea
UNCLASSIFIED
- p. 139 …Soviet border from the Black Sea to the Caspian
Sea and on to Afghanistan. The System…
- p. 146 …aircraft made a run over the Black Sea. 'I here were a total of
nine DB…
- p. 148 …space launch taciitty east of
the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan. None of the mission planners was…
- p. 158 …it turned
abruptly upward over the Bering Sea just west of Alaska, climbed to
110,000…
- p. 166 …the Soviet border and over the Black
Sea without entering Soviet airspace. In late August, as…
- p. 215 …F"••• N.
' :\ ■
Caribbean Sea
Ceyrnen Islands
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.r,
Unttad )
' ^
Gulf
of
Mexico NORTH ATLANTIC
OCEAN…
- p. 216 …Isle of
P,floo
Caribbean Sea
•••
Corn. Islands
IWO
Janss
—
200 kilometers
100 200 Miles
".!
SgsgalgOidaRte…
- p. 217 SAM Sites in Cuba, August 1962
Caribbean Sea
Gulf
of
Mexico
NORTH
A TLANTIC
OCEAN
9…
- p. 316 …Shortly before Leningrad, the A-12
would head west-southwest down the Baltic Sea, skirting the…
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
Not linked to a story yet.
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.