Documents / FOIA release
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."
“Terry”1 page
005653421 UNCLASSIFIED ""aeer. frearet-fifePt7M Chapter 3 134 EO 129581.61d1(1l>10425Yrs ED 129581.6M61>1045Yrs IS) The Agency then turned to the Navy, which granted permission for Detachment C to use the Naval Air Station at Atsugi, Japan. The Japanese Government received no notification of the proposed deployment be- cause at that time it had no control over activities involving US mili- tary bases in Japan. Deployment of Detachment C began in early 1957 but was complicated by a recent decision to permit the families of Project AQUATONE employees to accompany them on overseas tours. As a result, program managers had to find housing facilities on the base or in nearby communities. not an easy task in crowded Japan.`) Detachment C began conducting missions in June 1957 after several aircraft and pilots flew to Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks, Alaska. Air Force radar order-of-battle reports and NSA studies had revealed that the radar network in the Soviet Far East, with antiquated radar sets and personnel of a lower caliber than those in the western Soviet Union, was relatively ineffective. To take ad- vantage of these weaknesses, Detachment C staged three missions from Alaska into the Soviet Far East. The first. on 7/8 June (the air- craft crossed the international date line during the flight), was unable to photograph its target, the ICBM impact area near Klyuchi on the Kamchatka Peninsula, because of bad weather and, therefore, never entered Soviet airspace. A second attempt to photograph Klyuchi on 19/20 June was marred by a camera malfunction that ruined every third frame of photography. This flight was tracked by Soviet radars, but there was no attempt at interception. After a pause of almost three months during which Detachment C received a dirty-bird U-2, the de- tachment's third mission over Klyuchi on 15/16 September 1957 achieved excellent results. The radar-deception devices proved inef- fective, however, as the U-2 was tracked by Soviet radar and trailed by five fighters.'" EO 129581.6liifi1l>10<25Yrs Is) OS.- History. chap. 15. pp. 2. 16-19; chap. 16. p. I ITS Codeword). " Mission folders 6002 (8 June 1957), 6005 (20 June 1957). and 6008 (16 September 1957). OSA records TS Codeword). UNCLASSIFIED
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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.