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."
005653421 UNCLASSIFIED Chapter 2 52 A-2 camera •7, U-2s equipped with the A-1 camera system also carried a Perkin-Elmer tracking camera using 2.75-inch film and a 3-inch lens. This device made continuous horizon-to-horizon photographs of the terrain passing beneath the aircraft. Because the A-1 system was new, it also included a backup camera system, a K-17 6-inch three-camera trimetrogon unit using 9-inch film. While the A-1 system was still being developed, James Baker was already working on the next generation of lenses for high-altitude reconnaissance. Baker was a pioneer in using computers to synthesize optical systems. His software algorithms made it possible to model lens designs and determine in advance the effects that variations in lens curvatures, glass compounds, and lens spacings would have on rays of light passing through a lens. These "ray-tracing" programs re- quired extensive computations, and, for this he turned to the most modern computer available, an IBM CPC (card-programmed calcula- tor) installation at nearby Boston University." Ibid., chap. 1, pp. 7-8 (TS Codeword). cret UNCLASSIFIED
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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.