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."

  • p. 134 …By the end of the month, foreign troops began evacuating Egyptian terri- tory, and the pressure…
"--ggettrt-NCIEQBa
Chapter 3
129
Chordwise wire I Spanwise wire
Ferrite beads Fiberglass member
Sbet
CO5653421 UNCLASSIFIED
absorption devices for the U-2. Once these devices were installed on " Trapeze " antiradar attachments
the operational U-2s, he explained, the "majority of incidents would to the U-2
be undetected.""
Work on methods of reducing the U-2's vulnerability to radar de-
tection had begun in the fall of 1956 as the result of President
Eisenhower's disenchantment with the overflight program following
Soviet detection and tracking of the first series of U-2 missions
as condu
this research under a project codenamed RAINBOW.
formerly of MIT, coiied the
theories of Harvard h sicist Edward Purcell into systems that could
be used on aircraft. radar-deception system consisted of a series
of attachments to t -2. First bamboo poles and later fiberglass
rods were attached to the wings, where they would not interfere with
the control surfaces. At the ends of these poles, completely circling
" Andrew J. Goodpaster. Memorandum of Conference with the President. 6 May 1957
(TS); "Record of Action—Meeting of May 6. 1957," WHOSS, Alpha, DDEL (TS).
ED 129581.6(dUll>111<25Yrs
(Si
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 above. 406 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.