The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance: The U-2 and OXCART Programs, 1954–1974
Pedlow · Welzenbach, CIA History Staff
Summary and citation · read the original at the source
In one page
This is the CIA's own internal history of its two spy-plane programmes, written by agency historians Gregory Pedlow and Donald Welzenbach in 1992 and released to the public through declassification review. The site keeps it for one passage. When the U-2 began flying above 60,000 feet in the mid-1950s, airliners cruised at 20,000 feet and military aircraft below 40,000, and nobody believed manned flight was possible that high. After sunset at airliner altitude the U-2 was still in sunlight, and its silver wings caught the sun. Pilots and air-traffic controllers began reporting fiery objects. The Air Force's Operation Blue Book collected the reports, and its investigators regularly telephoned the Agency's project staff in Washington to check sightings against U-2 flight logs — which let them dismiss most reports without telling the letter-writers what had really been overhead. The history's own figure is that U-2 and later OXCART flights accounted for more than half of all UFO reports.
Why it matters hereChapter 1 is about telling a real signal from a mundane one, and this is the primary document showing that an official explanation can itself be the cover: the Air Force gave answers it knew were incomplete because the true cause was classified. It is also why chapter 13 insists on naming the test rather than trusting the institution.
What it claims
01High-altitude testing of the U-2 led to an unexpected side effect — a tremendous increase in reports of unidentified flying objects — because once U-2s started flying above 60,000 feet, air-traffic controllers began receiving increasing numbers of UFO reports.Chapter 2, U-2s, UFOs, and Operation BLUE BOOK, p. 72
Settled physics02The optical mechanism is stated plainly in the history: when the sun dropped below the horizon for an airliner at 20,000 feet, a U-2 at 60,000 feet still had a far more distant horizon, so its silver wings caught and reflected the sun and appeared to the airliner pilot 40,000 feet below to be fiery objects — and at the time no one believed manned flight was possible that high, so no one expected to see anything there.Chapter 2, pp. 72–73
Settled physics03Operation BLUE BOOK investigators regularly called on the Agency's Project Staff in Washington to check reported UFO sightings against U-2 flight logs, which enabled them to eliminate the majority of the UFO reports — although they could not reveal to the letter writers the true cause of the sightings.Chapter 2, p. 73
Settled physics04U-2 and later OXCART flights accounted for more than one-half of all UFO reports during the late 1950s and most of the 1960s.Chapter 2, p. 73
Settled physics05The programme ran behind a deliberate, inter-agency cover story — high-altitude weather research for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics — approved at the end of March 1956 by senior CIA officials and every agency involved, and retained as the line to be used even in the scenario where a pilot was captured.Chapter 2, The U-2 Cover Story, pp. 89–90
Settled physics06The history is itself an artefact of secrecy and its slow undoing: written inside the Agency in 1992 as a classified study, it reached the public only through declassification review — this copy under Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel appeal 2014-004, declassification date 19 September 2016.Title page and declassification stamp
Settled physics
The way in
https://www.archives.gov/files/declassification/iscap/pdf/2014-004-doc01.pdfA US Government work, written inside the CIA in 1992 and released through declassification review; the copy read here is the ISCAP appeal 2014-004 release held by the National Archives, and the CIA FOIA reading room carries its own copy.
How to cite it
Pedlow, Welzenbach, CIA History Staff (1992) The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance: The U-2 and OXCART Programs, 1954–1974. https://www.archives.gov/files/declassification/iscap/pdf/2014-004-doc01.pdf
Where it sits in the curriculum