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.
“Mission Control”27 pages
250 Sec, et PJOFORPJ Chapter 5 December 1963, France had announced its intention to detonate a hy drogen device over Mururoa Atoll in the Tuamotu Archipelago area of French Polynesia but had given no specific date for the event. The Committee on Overhead Reconnaissance had been following French nuclear developments since September 1963, when it had apprised the USIB of the need for overflights of this South Pacific area. At that time the USIB decided against recommending such overflights be cause of State Department concern about potential political difficul ties with France in the event the mission was discovered. Following reports of a buildup of French troops and technical personnel in neighboring Tahiti, the Special Group on 24 April 1964 approved a mission to overfly the atoll to check for activity. This re quired photography with a resolution better than the 3 to 5 feet possi ble with the standard B-model camera that had been in use since October 1956. Work on a very-high-resolution camera had begun in early 1963, when the Agency contracted with the Itek Corporation to modify for placement in the U-2 a camera that had been developed for the satellite program. Known as the Delta-II, or the 112A, this de vice could photograph a 28-kilometer swath with 26° convergent ste reoscopic lenses, resulting in a 70° lateral coverage and a ground resolution of 10 inches. This camera was installed in a Detachment H U-2 and used on two missions conducted over Indochina in late December 1963. Resolution was not as high as had been expected, and the unit was returned to Itek for modifications. By early 1964, the 112A had been reworked and was now known as the 112B. In tests it had proved capable of providing photography with resolution in the I 0- to 12-inch range. Detachment G conducted Operation FISH HAWK in May 1964 by sending two pilots, an NPIC photointerpreter. and a U-2G equipped with the Itek 112B camera to make the first operational U-2 flights from an aircraft carrier. On 19 May the U-2 took off from the USS Ranger and overflew the French atomic test area. As soon as the aircraft returned to the Ranger, the film was developed in the carrier's photo lab, and the NPIC photointerpreter then read out the film to see if the photography met the requirements for resolution and quality. A second U-2 flight carried out a similar mission on 22 May. The pho tography provided all the detail needed to identify the preparations for the nuclear test that occurred later that year.111 "' "U-2 Aircraft Carrier Operations: Project 'WHALE TALE,' Operation FISH HAWK,'. DS&T. 1964, pp. 17-25. See.et
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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.