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."
“Headquarters”18 pages
271 --"*Svegat,, CO5653421 UNCLASSIFIED Chapter 6 important design features that contributed to a small radar return were fiberglass engine inlets and wings whose leading edges were made of - Pyroceram.14 Lockheed's new entry was much like its first, but with several modifications and a new designator, A-12. It, too, would employ two of the powerful 158 engines. Lockheed's major innovation in reducing radar return was a cesium additive in the fuel, which decreased the radar cross section of the afterburner plume. This improvement had been proposed by Edward Purcell of the Land committee. Desiring to save weight, Kelly Johnson had decided not to construct the A-12 out of steel. Traditional lightweight metals such as aluminum were out of the question because they could not stand the heat that would be gen- erated as the A-12 flew at Mach 3.2, so Johnson chose a titanium alloy. On 20 August 1959, Lockheed and Convair submitted their pro- posals to a joint Department of Defense, Air Force, and CIA selection panel. As the table shows, the two aircraft were similar in performance Convair KINGFISH " Convair Division, General Dynamics Corporation, "K14GFISH Summary Report.- 1959 (S). Kelly Johnson was very skeptical of the Convair design. noting in the Archangel project log on 1-20 August 1959: "Convair have promised substantially reduced radar cross section on an airplane the size of our A-I2. They are doing this, in my view, with total disregard for aerodynamics. inlet and afterburner performance." UNCLASSIFIED
Not linked to a story yet.
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.