Documents / Official release
This is a Secret History Staff monograph by Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach of the Central Intelligence Agency, published in 1992. It gives a history of the CIA's manned overhead reconnaissance program from 1954 to 1974, covering the development and operation of the U-2 and the A-12 OXCART aircraft. It covers overflights of the Soviet Union, the 1960 downing of Francis Gary Powers, and later operations. One section is titled "U-2s, UFOs, and Operation BLUE BOOK."
From the source:Release of 2026-06-12 This CIA History Staff document chronicles the complete history of the U-2 and OXCART (A-12) high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft programs from 1954 to 1974, detailing their development, operations over the Soviet Union and other targets worldwide, the famous downing of Francis Gary Powers in 1960, organizational reforms following that incident, and the eventual transfer of operations from CIA to Air Force control. A more redacted version of this document has been available on CIA's public website.
“US Navy”15 pages
111 39 Sec, et NOFOAP4 Chapter 3 radar-absorbing materials and techniques proposed by Purcell. The ef fort, known as Project RAINBOW, got under way by the end of the year. THE END OF THE BOMBER GAP During the three-week period of 20 June to 10 July 1956, U-2s had made eight overflights beyond the Iron Curtain, including five over the Soviet Union. PID's photointerpreters were busy until the end of August with their initial evaluation of the photography obtained by these flights. Their efforts were complicated by the division's move on 9 July from Que Building to the Steuart Building, but, when the photo interpreters were finished, they were able to write "finis" to the controversy over Soviet bomber strength. Although the Air Force had claimed that the Soviet Union pos sessed almost 100 of the new Myasishchev-4 (Bison) heavy bombers, U-2 photography proved this assertion wrong. There were no Bison 6ombers at any of the nine long-range bomber bases photographed by the July missions. DCI Allen Dulles was particularly impressed by the photographs of the Soviet bomber bases, which in later years he called "million-dollar" photography. The actual value of the U-2 photos was probably even greater because, on the strength of their ev idence, the White House was able to deny Air Force requests for ad ditional B-52 bombers to "catch up" to the Soviets."0 Because of the need to protect the source of the information about Soviet bomber strength, the controversy surrounding this issue did not immediately die down. In November 1956, when the CIA began providing new Bison production figures based on U-2 photog raphy without identifying the source, some members of Congress unaware of the existence of the U-2-questioned the motivation be hind the reduced estimates. They suggested that either the earlier es timates of Soviet bomber strength had been inflated to increase Air Force appropriations or the new estimates had been reduced by White House direction in order to hold down military expenditures. •• Records of Scientific Engineering Institute (Project HTNAMABLE). OSA records (TS Codeword). ~• NP!C History, vol. I. p. 23 (S). Seeret
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Official release, from the pursue 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.