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.
“Hill”15 pages
70 Sec,et NOfO"N Chapter 2 First flight of the U-2, 4 August 1955 With Kelly Johnson watching from a chase plane and giving a con stant stream of instructions, LeYie:r made three more unsuccessful landing attempts. With the light fading and a thunderstorm fast ap proaching from the mountains to the west, LeVier made one last ap proach using the method he had advocated: letting the aircraft touch on its rear wheel first. This time the U-2 made a near-perfect landing, which came just in the nick of tim<!. Ten minutes later, the thunder storm began dumping an unheard-of 2 inches of rain , flooding the dry lakebed and making the airstrip unusable:1 Now that the first problems in flying and landing the U-2 had been worked out, Kelly Johnson scheduled the "official" first flight for 8 August 1955. This time outsiders were present. includi ng Richard Bissell. Col. Osmond Ritla1nd, Richard Homer. and Garrison Norton. The U-2 flew to 32,000 feet and performed very well. Kelly Johnson had met his eight-month deadline." •• Ibid.. pp. 21 -22: Johnson, .. Log for Project X." 4 August 1955. .. Johnson. " Log for Project X," 8 August 1955. 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.