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."
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-"gircr"11T141440,atj, Chapter 2 71 005653421 UNCLASSIFIED LeVier made an additional 19 flights in article 341 before mov- ing on to other Lockheed flight test programs in early September. This first phase of U-2 testing explored the craft's stall envelope, took the aircraft to its maximum stress limit (2.5 g's), and explored its speed potential. LeVier soon flew the aircraft at its maximum speed of Mach 0.85. Flight tests continued, with the U-2 ascending to alti- tudes never before attained in sustained flight. On 16 August LeVier took the aircraft up to 52,000 feet. In preparation for this flight, the 42-year-old test pilot completed the Air Force partial-pressure suit training program, becoming the oldest pilot to do so. Testing at even higher altitudes continued, and on 8 September the U-2 reached its initial design altitude of 65,600 feet.4' On 22 September 1955, the U-2 experienced its first flameout at 64,000 feet—more than 12 miles up. After a brief restart, the .1571 P-37 engine again flamed out at 60,000 feet, and the aircraft descended to 35,000 feet before the engine could be relit. Engineers from Pratt & Whitney immediately set to work on this problem. The P-37 model engine had significantly poorer combustion characteris- tics than the preferred but unavailable P-31 version and therefore tended to flame out at high altitudes. Combustion problems usually became apparent as the U-2 began the final part of its climb from 57,000 to 65,000 feet, causing pilots to refer to this area as the "bad- lands" or the "chimney." Flameouts bedeviled the U-2 project until sufficient numbers of the more powerful P-31 engines became avail- able in the spring of 1956.46 Meanwhile, with the airworthiness of the U-2 airframe proven, Lockheed set up a production line in the Skunk Works, but delivery of even the second-choice J57/P-37 engines became a major problem. Pratt & Whitney's full production capacity for these engines for the next year was contracted to the Air Force for use in F-100 fighters and KC-135 tankers. Colonel Geary, with the help of a colleague in the Air Force Materiel Command, managed to arrange the diversion of a number of these engines from a shipment destined for Boeing's KC-135 production line, making it possible to continue building the U-2s.47 OSA Chronology, p. 7 (TS Codeword); Miller, Lockheed U-2, p. 22. OSA History, chap. 8, pp. 12-14 (TS Cocleword). Geary interview (S). 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.