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."
“Burbank”8 pages
Semipalatinsk Nuclear Weapons Proving Ground, 22 August 1957 CO5653421 UNCLASSIFIED S'erret-NC1BAL- Chapter 3 138 EO 129581.6191111>101010<25Yrs part of the world." The Soviet announcement made the intelligence community want even more information on Tyuratam, and a second U-2 piloted by flew over the area on 28 August 1957, just one week alter the Soviet ICBM launch. This mission obtained excellent vertical photographs of the main launch complex, and photointerpreters soon determined that the Soviets had only one launchpad at Tyuratam. The base was not photographed again until 9 July 1959, at which time it still had only one launch pad, although two more were under construction." On 20 and 21 August 1957, U-2s conducted the first overflights of the Soviet nuclear testing grounds at Semipalatinsk, north-north- west of Lake Balkhash. The first mission, piloted by passed over part of the proving grounds, tlew on to iNovoKuznetsk, and then proceeded to Tomsk, where it began its re- turn leg that included coverage of a very large uranium-processing fa- cility at the new city of Berezovskiy. In the second mission flew directly over the Semipalatinsk proving g only tour hours before a half-megaton device was detonated. In fact, the U-2 unknowingly photographed the aircraft that was to drop the "Is Russia Ahead in Missile Race, - US News and World Report, 6 September 1957. pp. 30-33. " Mission folders 4058 (28 August 1957) and 4125 (9 July 1959), OSA records ITS Codeword). SlierdaL, UNCLASSIFIED
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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.