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."

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research results were tested by another firm known as
Edgerton, Germeshausen & Grier (EG&G), which was also composed
of MIT faculty members. Under an Air Force contract to evaluate ra-
dars, EG&G operated a small testing facility
Although Kell))naa peen
closely involved with the radar deception project since its early days,
he cooperated reluctantly because he disliked adding attachments that
made his aircraft less airworthy. (Johnson's dislike of the antiradar at-
tachments was reflected in the unofficial nickname for aircraft that
had been so modified—"dirty birds.") After Lockheed mechanics
had mounted the various RAINBOW devices on the prototype U-2, a
Lockheed test pilot would fly the plane over EG&G's1
installation. This was little more than a series of rAuar sets ana a
trailer containing instrumentation. EG&G technicians could thus re-
cord and evaluate the U-2's radar returns as it traversed a specified
course over their facility!'
This method of testing radar-deceptive modifications proved
both time consuming and dangerous. During a test flight on 2 April
1957, the -wallpaper" modification acted as insulation around the
not far from
" References to EG&G programs for the U-2 are contained in the later Convair contracts
for Projects FISH and KINGFISH, OSA records 'TS Codeword).
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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.