The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance; The U-2 and OXCART Programs, 1954-1974

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produce a bener aircraft more quickly. In July 1953, the Bell Aircraft
Corporation of Buffalo, New York, and the Fairchild Engine and
Airplane Corporation of Hagerstown, Maryland, received study con­
tracts to develop an entirely new high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft.
In addition, the Glenn L. Martin Company of Baltimore was asked to
examine the possibility of improving the already exceptional high-al­
titude performance of the 8-57 Canberra. By January 1954 all three
firms had submitted their proposals. Fairchild's entry was a singl.e-en­
gine plane known as M-195, which had a maximum altitude potc!ntial
of 67,200 feet; Bell's was a twin-engine craft called the Modd 67
(later the X- 16), which had a maximum altitude of 69,500 feet; and
Martin's design was a big-wing version of the 8-57 called the Model
294, which was to cruise at 64,000 feet. In March 1954, Seaberg and
other engineers at Wright Field, having evaluated the three contend­
ing designs, recommended the adoption of both the Martin and Bell
proposals. They considered Martin's version of the B-57 an interim
project that could be completed and deployed rapidly while the more
advanced concept from Bell was still being developed.
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Air Force headquarters soon approved Martin's proposal to mod­
•ify" the B-57 and was very much interested in the Bell design. But
word of the competition for a new reconnaissance airplane had
reached another aircraft manufacturer, the Lockheed Aircraft
Corporation, which submitted an unsolicited design.
Lockheed had first become aware of the reconnaissance aircraft
competition in the fall of 1953. John H. (Jack) Carter, who, had
recently retired from the Air Force to become the assistant director
of Lockheed's Advanced Development Program, was in the Pentagon
on business and dropped in to see Eugene P. Kiefer, an old friend
and colleague from the Air Force's Office of Development Planning
(more commonly known as AFDAP from its Air Force office
symbol). Kiefer told Carter about the competition for a high-flying
aircraft and expressed the opinion that the Air Force was going about
the search in the wrong way by requiring the new aircraft to be suit­
able for both strategic and tactical reconnaissance.
Immediately after returning to California, Carter proposed to
Lockheed Vice President L. Eugene Root (previously the top civilian
official in the Air Force's Office of Development Planning) that
'' The request for proposal. known as ··Design Study Requirements. ldentiticatic1n No.
53WC-J6j07:· has been reprinted in Miller, Lockheed U·Z, pp. 10- 11.
Chapter 1