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."
“Sea”17 pages
Chapter 1 9 005653421 UNCLASSIFIED produce a better aircraft more quickly. In July 1953, the Bell Aircraft Corporation of Buffalo, New York, and the Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corporation of Hagerstown, Maryland, received study con- tracts to develop an entirely new high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft. In addition, the Glenn L. Martin Company of Baltimore was asked to examine the possibility of improving the already exceptional high-al- titude performance of the B-57 Canberra. By January 1954 all three firms had submitted their proposals. Fairchild's entry was a single-en- gine plane known as M-195, which had a maximum altitude potential of 67,200 feet; Bell's was a twin-engine craft called the Model 67 (later the X-I6), which had a maximum altitude of 69,500 feet; and Martin's design was a big-wing version of the B-57 called the Model 294, which was to cruise at 64,000 feet. In March 1954, Seaberg and other engineers at Wright Field, having evaluated the three contend- ing designs, recommended the adoption of both the Martin and Bell proposals. They considered Martin's version of the 8-57 an interim project that could be completed and deployed rapidly while the more advanced concept from Bell was still being developed.'' Air Force headquarters soon approved Martin's proposal to mod- ify- the B-57 and was very much interested in the Bell design. But word of the competition for a new reconnaissance airplane had reached another aircraft manufacturer, the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, which submitted an unsolicited design. Lockheed had first become aware of the reconnaissance aircraft competition in the fall of 1953. John H. (Jack) Carter, who had recently retired from the Air Force to become the assistant director of Lockheed's Advanced Development Program, was in the Pentagon on business and dropped in to see Eugene P. Kiefer, an old friend and colleague from the Air Force's Office of Development Planning (more commonly known as AFDAP from its Air Force office symbol). Kiefer told Carter about the competition for a high-flying aircraft and expressed the opinion that the Air Force was going about the search in the wrong way by requiring the new aircraft to be suit- able for both strategic and tactical reconnaissance. Immediately after returning to California, Carter proposed to Lockheed Vice President L. Eugene Root (previously the top civilian official in the Air Force's Office of Development Planning) that The request for proposal, known as "Design Study Requirements. identification No. 53WC-I6507," has been reprinted in Miller, Lockheed U-2. pp. 10-11. 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.