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.
“The Advance”34 pages
175 hours on the ground. Originally scheduled for Thursday, 28 April, GRAND SLAM was canceled because of bad weather over the north ern Soviet Union. This had been the case for the past several weeks. When this flight was canceled, the U-2 returned to Adana before sun rise. That evening the U-2 flew back to Peshawar for another attempt to stage the mission early on the 29th, but bad weather again forced cancellation of the mission, and the U-2 returned to Adana. Because of continued bad weather over the target areas, no mission was planned for Saturday, 30 April. 20 Meanwhile, the plane ferried to Peshawar on 27 and 28 April had accumulated so many hours of flight time that it had to be removed from service for periodic maintenance. A different aircraft was, therefore, ferried to Peshawar on Saturday night, 30 April. This aircraft, article 360, had made a crash landing in Japan during the pre vious September (see chapter 5). Although it had been refurbished by Lockheed and now had the more powerful 175 engine that would give it greater altitude, pilots did not completely trust this aircraft and con sidered it a "hangar queen." As Powers noted in his memoirs, .. Its current idiosyncrasy was one of the fuel tanks, which wouldn't feed all its fuel." 27 The aircraft was equipped with a B-model camera. a System-YI electronic intelligence unit, and a System-lXB device, which generated false-angle information in response to the radar pulses used by some Soviet airborne-missile fire-control systems. Operation GRAND SLAM, mission 4154 and the 24th deep-pen etration overflight of the Soviet Union, began almost 30 minutes late on Sunday, I May 1960, a delay due to difficulty in getting takeoff approval from Washington. This delay was caused by communications problems that are typical at sunrise and sunset during spring and autumn, when the ionosphere will not support reli able communications. In attempting to relay the authorization mes sage, the radio operator in Adana was unable to reach the base in Peshawar, whose codename was HBJARGON. Realizing that neither the prearranged nighttime nor daytime frequencies were working, the operator began sending a message in the clear, using one of the guard frequencies in the transition area between the daytime and nighttime frequencies. The radio operators at Peshawar kept hearing the Morse '' Mission folder -115-1 ( I May 1960). OSA records (TS Codeword). " Powers. Operation Overflight, p. 76. Sect et N6f6RN Chapter 4 Se&ret
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Official release, from the pursue 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.