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."
“Cabinet Office”2 pages
EO 129581.6101111>10<25Yrs (SI Baker interview (S): OXCART Story. - pp. 5-6 Si.( CO5653,421 UNCLASSIFIED ...Sacciat.AW-ORN- Chapter 6 282 The Hycon entry, designed by James Baker and known as the Type-IV camera, was a spotting camera with extremely-high-ground resolution. In fact, it was an advanced version of the highly reliable B camera developed for the original U-2 program. It used a 48-inch Baker-designed f15.6 lens to focus images onto 9.5-inch film. Like the B camera it could provide seven frames of photo g raphy covering a swath 41 miles wide with stereo overlap on 19 miles of the swath. The Hycon camera carried the largest film supply of the three cameras, 12.000 feet. It was able to resolve 100 lines per millimeter and provide a g round resolution of 8 inches. A version of this 48-inch Hycon camera. known as the H camera, later saw service in U-2R air- craft. Each of the three camera systems had unique capabilities and advantages, so all three were purchased for the OXCART. Before they could be effectively employed in the aircraft, however, new types of camera windows were needed. The OXCART's camera win- dows had to be completely free from optical distortion. Achieving this goal was difficult in a window whose exterior would be sub- jected to temperatures of 550T while the interior surface would be only 150'F. After three years and the expenditure of $2 million in re- search and development, the Corning Glass Works, which had joined this effort as a Perkin-Elmer subcontractor, solved the problem of producing a camera window that could withstand tremendous heat differentials. Its quartz g lass window was fused to the metal frame by an unprecedented process involving hi g h-frequency sound waves. 24 Later in the program, the OXCART received yet another camera system. In 1964 the Texas Instruments Corporation developed an in- frared camera for Project TACKLE U-2s that were being used to de- termine whether the People's Republic of China was producing weapons- g rade nuclear material. This stereo device, known as the FFD-4. was adapted for use in OXCART. The camera had an effective focal length of 50 inches and a 150-foot supply of 3.5-inch film. The camera's resolution was 3'C thermally, I milliradian spatially. and 60 feet on the ground. It could be used for both day and ni g ht imagery collection. UNCLASSIFIED
Not linked to a story yet.
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.