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."
“Nevers”24 pages
CO5653421 UNCLASSIFIED Sec NOFORN Cha 6 299 Although overflights of the Soviet Union appeared to be out of the question, the OXCART's eventual employment elsewhere in the world remained a strong possibility, particularly after the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 demonstrated the continuing need for manned strategic reconnaissance aircraft. Since satellites had not been able to supply the kinds of coverage needed, U-2s had carried out nu- merous overflights of Cuba. Nevertheless, the U-2 remained vulnera- ble to surface-to-air missiles (as had once again been demonstrated by the downing of a SAC U-2 during the Missile Crisis), and project headquarters had even briefly considered sending the A-12 over Cuba in October 1962, even though the aircraft still lacked the required J58 engines and would have had to use much less powerful ones." After the Missile Crisis ended, Air Force U-2s continued to photograph Cuba under a tacit superpower understanding that such monitoring of the withdrawal of the missiles would proceed without interference. But the possibility of future Soviet or Cuban action against the U-2s remained, raising the dismaying prospect that the United States would not be able to tell if the Soviet Union was reintroducing ballistic mis- siles into Cuba. -- Such fears became acute in the summer of 1964 after Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev told foreign visitors such as columnist Drew Pearson, former Senator William Benton, and Danish Prime Minister Jens Otto Krag that, once the US elections had been held in November, U-2s flying over Cuba would be shot down. Project head- quarters therefore began preparing contingency plans (Project SKYLARK) for the possible employment of OXCART over Cuba, even though the new aircraft was not yet ready for operations. On 5 August 1964, the Acting DC1, Gen. Marshall S. Carter, ordered the project staff to achieve emergency operational readiness of the OXCART by 5 November 1964, in case Premier Khrushchev actually carried out his threat to shoot down U-2s.52 To meet this deadline, the Office of Special Activities organized a detachment of five pilots and ground crews to conduct flights to val- idate camera performance and qualify pilots for Mach 2.8 operations. Simulating Cuban missions during training flights, the detachment " On 23 October 1962 Johnson noted in his "Archangel log": that the performance of an A-12 with 175 engines (as suggested by project headquarters for possible use over Cuba) would be "hardly spectacular.- " Johnson, "Archangel log," 17 August 1964 'OXCART Story." p. 19 (Si: USA History, chap. 20, p. 81 (TS Codeword) UNCLASSIFIED E0129581.131d1(11>10<25Yrs (SI
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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.