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
QEP RN Chapter 7 316 CO5653421 UNCLASSIFIED EO 129581.61111111>101010<25Yrs (Si The low level of overflight activity did not prevent the U-2 from accomplishing a lot in the four years it flew over the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Twenty-four U-2 missions made deep penetra- tion overflights of the Soviet Union: six by Detachment A from Germany, three by Detachment C from the Far East and Alaska, and 15 by Detachment B7 picluding the unsuc- cessful Powers mission. The amount of information these missions gathered was impres- sive. By the summer of 1960, the U-2 project had developed more than 1, 285,000 feet of film—a strip almost 250 miles long. The U-2s covered more than 1,300,000 square miles of the Soviet Union, ap- proximately 15 percent of its total area. Information from U-2 photo- graphs was used to prepare .eparate photoanalytical reports.' Numbers alone cannot describe the importance of the U-2 over- flight project. In a 28 May 1960 memorandum, after Powers was shot down, DC1 Allen W. Dulles described the program's accomplish- ments: "Five years ago, before the beginning of the U-2 program, ... half knowledge of the Soviet Union and uncertainty of its true power position posed tremendous problems for the United States. We were faced with the constant risk of exposing ourselves to enemy attack or of needlessly expending a great deal of money and effort on misdi- rected military preparations of our own." Dulles went on to describe the U-2's contribution in gathering information on four critical as- pects of the Soviet Union's power position: its bomber force, its mis- sile force, its atomic energy program, and its air defense system.' The first major contribution of intelligence collected from U-2 overflights was the exposure of the "bomber gap" as a myth. Contrary to the US Air Force's claims, the Soviet Union was not building a large force of long-range bombers. Armed with information from U-2 overflights, President Eisenhower was able to resist pressure to build a large US bomber fleet to meet a nonexistent Soviet threat. EO 129581.6(dll1k10<25Yrs (Si ' DCI Allen W. Dulles, Memorandum for Brig. Gen. Andrew J. Good aster. "Statistics Relating to the U-2 Program." 19 August 1960, Operation tiles, OSA re- cords,L ITS Codeword) The original draft of this document was probably written by James Q. Reber. It was then 1:•revised by DCI Dulles. "Accomplishments of the U-2 Program," 27 May 1960, Operation • les,USA records, ITS Codeword). ret 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.