The Wizards of Langley (4 page)

Analysts predicted that deployment areas would be located near railroad tracks, given the large size of the missile. A February 2 mission revealed no missile sites, but the Air Force continued to insist that the Soviets had deployed up to 100 missiles. More U-2 flights would be necessary to settle the issue.

Within the CIA there was optimism that such flights, if they entered the Soviet Union in the vicinity of the Soviet-Afghanistan-Pakistan border,
could complete their missions unscathed. A March 14 memo noted three penetrations from that area between July 1959 and the February flight that were “accomplished without, to our knowledge, detection by the Soviet Air Defense system.” As a result, it was tentatively concluded that “if penetration can be made without detection, there is an excellent chance that the entire mission can be completed without recognition by the air defense system.”
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And the second U-2 mission of 1960, Operation SQUARE DEAL of April 9, which took off from Peshawar, Pakistan, successfully crisscrossed the railroad network at Sary Shagan. It also photographed Tyuratam, where a new launch area suggested that a new missile was about to appear.
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Even before the April 9 mission, Eisenhower had authorized another overflight. On May 1, Francis Gary Powers, the most experienced U-2 pilot with twenty-seven completed missions, including overflights of the Soviet Union and China, departed from Peshawar to carry out Operation GRAND SLAM—the twenty-fourth and most ambitious deep-penetration flight in the U-2 program—which was planned to fly across the Soviet Union from south to north. After overflying Tyuratam, Powers headed for Chelyabinsk, just south of Sverdlovsk. The primary target, Plesetsk, which communications intelligence suggested might be an operational ICBM facility, would come later.
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But Powers never made it to Plesetsk. On the morning of May 1, Bob King, Bissell’s special assistant, was woken by a phone call from a distressed duty officer repeating the message “Bill Bailey didn’t come home.” Four and a half hours into the mission, while Powers was above Sverdlovsk, an SA-2 antiaircraft missile had detonated at 70,500 feet and just behind Powers’s aircraft, disabling it. During a 1962 debriefing, he recalled feeling a sensation and looking up to see an orange flash and the plane seeming to disintegrate in the air.
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He ejected, and the Soviet recovery of pilot and plane forced Eisenhower to terminate overflights of the USSR.

In testimony shortly afterward, Dulles told a closed session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the U-2 program had established that the Soviet Union had developed a new medium-range bomber with supersonic capabilities, but “that only a greatly reduced long-range bomber production program is continuing in the Soviet Union.” The DCI also noted that the U-2 overflights had produced imagery of a number of long-range bomber airfields and confirmed the location of bases as well
as the deployment of bombers. In addition, it provided photographs of the nuclear weapons storage facilities associated with the bombers.
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Ground facilities associated with Soviet missile programs had also been a target of U-2 flights. The program also “provided us valuable insight into the problem of Soviet doctrine concerning ICBM deployment,” Dulles told his select audience. Aspects of the Soviet atomic energy program that were illuminated by U-2 photography included “the production of fissionable materials, weapons development and test activities,” as well as “the location, type, and size of many stockpile sites.” In addition, “the Soviet nuclear testing ground has been photographed with extremely interesting results more than once.”
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Although the May 1 shootdown ended U-2 overflights of the Soviet Union, the CIA still had a valuable asset. In early 1958, a U-2 spotted what the CIA would subsequently conclude was construction of Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor.
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In August of that year (by which time the program had been renamed CHALICE), in the wake of China’s shelling of the Taiwanese-held islands of Quemoy and Matsu, U-2s from Detachment C flew missions over China to monitor People’s Liberation Army troop movements—and found no signs of preparation for an invasion.
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Still, it was decided that the CIA would “maintain a greatly reduced and redeployed U-2 capability.” Approximately half of the CIA’s inventory of twelve U-2s would be turned over to the Air Force, and the detachment in Turkey would be closed down. In addition, it was “strongly believed that an appropriate way should be found to use the U-2 to complete the coverage of primary targets in China before air defenses there have been further improved.” The project would also receive a new code name—IDEALIST.
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U-2s were not the only planes overflying China in the 1950s under the direction of the CIA. In 1954, a small group of CIA and Air Force officers met with Navy officials to arrange for the purchase of seven P-2V7 Neptune maritime patrol aircraft, which had a range of about 4,000 miles. The CIA had chosen the plane because of its capabilities as well as the existence of Navy airfields worldwide. In addition, the small number of CIA Neptunes could easily be hidden in the much larger group of Navy Neptunes deployed throughout the world.
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Conversion of the planes from Navy patrol aircraft to CIA covert collectors was conducted first under the designation Project CHERRY (and later WILD CHERRY). The result was seven planes equipped with advanced
cameras for low-altitude photography and electronic intelligence (ELINT) gear. The planes were also given a new designation—the RB-69A.
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Initial operations with the modified Neptunes began in Europe in 1955 and continued into 1956. Wiesbaden, which became a U-2 base in 1956, received two of the planes, which were often flown by qualified Polish or Czechoslovakian defectors due to their knowledge of the local terrain and East European languages. In addition to flying peripheral missions, the planes were used to overfly parts of the western Soviet Union to collect data on power grids.
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In 1957, under a program designated ST/POLLY, RB-69A/Neptunes began flying out of Taiwan and near and into Chinese airspace, primarily to gather electronic intelligence on Chinese radars. The two Wiesbadenbased planes subsequently joined the five originally sent to Taiwan. A crew of twelve was standard for ELINT missions—pilot, copilot, flight engineer, radio operator, and eight ELINT system operators. The crews were handpicked by the Taiwanese Air Force and trained in the United States by the CIA. Missions were launched from Taiwan and, on occasion, South Korea. In addition to the safer peripheral missions were the overflights—which sometimes took the crews to Beijing or Canton, flying below 1,000 feet. The planes were also employed to drop espionage agents, leaflets, and supplies to agents.
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Richard Bissell and Kelly Johnson had no illusions that the U-2 would be perpetually invulnerable to Soviet countermeasures. All they hoped for was a couple of good years. The Soviet ability to detect and track the plane from the beginning was not expected, but they began thinking about a successor plane long before the May 1, 1960, Powers incident.

In August 1957, the Scientific Engineering Institute (SEI), a Boston-based CIA proprietary that had been working on ways to reduce U-2 vulnerability, began to investigate the possibility of designing an aircraft with a small radar cross-section. SEI soon discovered that supersonic speed dramatically reduced the chance of detection by radar. As a result, the CIA focused on designing a successor to the U-2 that would fly extremely high and fast and would employ radar-absorbing or -deflecting techniques. Both Lockheed and the Convair Division of General Dynamics were informed of the conclusion to guide their research on a possible U-2 successor.
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To assist him in evaluating proposals, Bissell once again called on Edwin Land to serve as chairman of an advisory group. Other members included TCP veteran Edward Purcell, Allen F. Donovan of the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory, and Bissell assistant Eugene P. Kiefer. The group often met in Land’s Cambridge office, at times with representatives of Lockheed, Convair, the Air Force, or the Navy attending.
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In September, the group rejected a Navy-Boeing proposal for a 190-foot-long, hydrogen-powered inflatable aircraft, as well as a Lockheed proposal for a hydrogen-powered aircraft, code-named SUNTAN. Two additional ideas from Kelly Johnson were also rejected—a tailless subsonic aircraft with a very low radar cross-section and a supersonic design designated A- 2. The group did approve Convair’s continuing to work on a ramjet-powered Mach 4 vehicle, code-named FISH, that would be launched from a specially configured Convair B-58B Hustler bomber.
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At a late November 1958 meeting, the panel reviewed the FISH program and Lockheed’s newest proposal, the A-3, and agreed that it was feasible to build an aircraft capable of flying fast enough and high enough to make radar detection exceedingly difficult.
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Eisenhower was already aware of the project via James Killian, who was serving as the first presidential science adviser. The President gave his approval for exploratory work after a December 17 briefing by Dulles and Bissell, with Land and Purcell in attendance. Lockheed and Convair were asked to submit detailed proposals, and they were provided funding for their research. The effort was designated Project GUSTO.
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At a July 1959 meeting, the Land panel rejected both the Convair and Lockheed proposals. Convair offered a FISH vehicle that would fly at Mach 4.2 at 90,000 feet, with a range of 3,900 miles. However, the technology of ramjet engines was unproven, and the B-58B had been canceled in June. Meanwhile, the susceptibility of Lockheed’s newest proposal, the A-11, to radar detection was considered too great.
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The following month, on August 20, the two contractors provided a joint Defense DepartmentCIAAir Force selection panel with the specifications for their proposed aircraft. One notable difference was in length, with Lockheed suggesting the 102-foot-long A-12, while Convair’s solution, the KINGFISH, was 79.5 feet. Projected speed—Mach 3.2—was identical for both planes. Lockheed’s proposal did promise better performance in terms of cruising altitude during the middle and final portions of the flight and range at cruising altitude (3,800 versus 3,400 nautical miles). The A-12 promised to reduce substantially the radar re
turn through an additive in the fuel, which decreased the ability of a radar to detect the afterburner plume. A second novel feature of the design was the plan to use titanium rather than steel in parts of the aircraft in order to reduce its weight.
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Some CIA representatives at first favored Convair’s KINGFISH design due to its smaller radar cross-section, but they were eventually convinced to side with Lockheed by Air Force members, who had visions of B-58Blike delays and cost overruns. In addition, because of Lockheed’s work on the U-2, the company had in place employees with the proper clearances and the security arrangements that would be required for a project that Bissell and Dulles insisted be, if possible, more secret than the U-2.
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Because of lingering concern about the A-12’s radar cross-section, Lockheed emerged as only the provisional winner—with the requirement that it demonstrate the A-12’s reduced vulnerability to radar by January 1, 1960. Project GUSTO was terminated, and Project OXCART was born.
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Lockheed’s antiradar studies of that summer resulted in the eventual cobralike appearance of the OXCART aircraft. Edward Purcell and John Parangosky, the CIA’s program manager for OXCART, had theorized that a continuously curving airframe would be difficult to track with radar because it would present few corner reflectors or sharp angles from which radar pulses could bounce off in the direction of the radar. The studies also resulted in a contract, signed in February 1960, that called for Lockheed to receive $96.6 million in return for twelve aircraft.
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Of course, at the time the contract was signed, Gary Powers had yet to be shot down. Whether the project would survive, in a climate where its use over the Soviet Union might be considered too risky, remained to be seen. In late May, Eisenhower told his military aide, Andrew Goodpaster, that he believed the project should go forward on low priority, for Air Force use in time of war. In a memo, Goodpaster noted that Eisenhower “did not think the project should now be pushed at top priority. In fact, they might come to the conclusion that it would be best to get out of it if we could.”
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In early August 1960, the U-2 was no longer flying over the Soviet Union, and the OXCART’s future was uncertain. Even if Kelly Johnson delivered the plane promised, it was far from clear that a president would permit it to overfly Soviet airspace. But another CIA-managed project was about to pay huge dividends and revolutionize U.S. intelligence capabilities.

Two and a half years earlier, on February 7, 1958, Killian and Land met with Eisenhower and Goodpaster at the White House to discuss the limited progress the Air Force was making in developing a photographic reconnaissance satellite.
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The primary objective of the program—first known as the Advanced Reconnaissance System (ARS), then as SENTRY, and finally as SAMOS—was to develop a satellite that would electronically scan the photographs obtained by its cameras and transmit the data back to a ground station, where it would be reconstructed into a picture. A subsidiary objective was to develop a satellite that would return its film back to earth in a canister.
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