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."
“Hill”13 pages
005653421 UNCLASSIFIED 55 Realizing that the 240-inch lens was both too large and too heavy for the camera bay, Baker scaled the lens down to a 200-inch f/16. 0 system. This was still too big. Further reductions followed, re- sulting by July 1955 in a 120-inch f/10.9 lens that met both the weight and space limitations. Later in the year, Baker decided to make the mirrors for the system out of a new, lightweight foamed silica mate- rial developed by Pittsburgh-Corning Glass Company. This reduced the weight significantly, and he was able to scale up the lens to a 180-inch f/13.85 reflective system for a 13- by I3-inch format. In the past, the calculations for such a complex camera lens would have taken years to complete, but thanks to Baker's ray-tracing computer program, he was able to accomplish the task in just 16 days. When a C camera built by Hycon was flight-tested on 31 January 1957, project engineers discovered that its 180-inch focal length, which was five times longer than that of the B camera, made the camera very sensitive to aircraft vibration and led to great difficulty in aiming the C camera from altitudes above 68,000 feet. The engi- neers, therefore, decided to shelve the camera. More than five years later, a redesigned C camera was employed during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, but the results were not very satisfactory. The failure of the C camera design was not a serious setback to the high-altitude reconnaissance program, because the B camera proved highly successful. Once initial difficulties with the film-trans- port system were overcome, the B camera became the workhorse of high-altitude photography. An improved version known as the B-2 is still in use. Both of the earlier A-model cameras were phased out after September 1958. During the period when he was designing lenses for the CIA's overhead reconnaissance program, James Baker was also working on classified lens designs for the Air Force and unclassified designs for the Smithsonian Institution. To protect the security of Baker's work for the Agency, Herbert Miller of the Development Projects Staff told Baker to work on lenses for the U-2 in the open and not make any effort to classify the documents connected with the project. Miller be- lieved that by not calling attention to the effort through the use of spe- cial security measures, the project could be completed faster and still not be compromised. This "hiding in the open" strategy proved very successful."' Ibid. 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.