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

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Chapter 5
the scale of imagery needed to obtain the highly technical data de­
sired by analysts. As a result, the Office of Special Activities asked
the Hycon Manufacturing Company of Pasadena, California, to adapt
its successful high-resolution 48-inch 9- by 9-inch format camera de­
veloped for the OXCART aircraft for use in the U-2R. This camera
was actually a very advanced version of the original B camera with a
new lens designed by James Baker. The new camera was designed to
resolve objects smaller than 4 inches.
Hycon began work on the HR-333 camera in 1966. Unlike the
OXCART camera, the new unit was to use the split 18- by 18-inch
format of the B camera, so the lens had to be redesigned. James
Baker's contribution to this effort was a 48-inch f/5.6 system that pro­
vided remarkably sharp imagery. Hycon completed the camera in
time for it to be installed in the first U-2Rs delivered to the Agency in
1968; it is known as the H camera.71
Replacement of the Original U-2s With U-2Rs
As the new U-2Rs began coming off the production line at Lockheed
_in-the autumn of 1968, CIA and the_ Department of Defense had to
decide who would get the new aircraft. At a meeting on 13
November, DCI Richard Helms and Secretary of Defense Robert
McNamara agreed that the Air Force and the Agency would each get
six U-2Rs. The six older U-2s remaining from the original 1954-55
production were to be kept in flyable condition and be used as re­
placements if newer models were lost.
Despite the greatly increased capabilities of the new model of
the U-2, the era of overflights of hostile territory was over. The U-2R
would have six years of useful service with the Agency, but its mis­
sions did not include penetration flights over hostile territory.
THE FINAL YEARS OF THE U-2
When the OXCART's brief operational career with the Agency ended
in 1968, the U-2 was once again the center of the Agency's manned
reconnaissance program. But by this time, reconnaissance aircraft had
declined in importance as collection systems. Overflights were a thing
of the past. Although Project TACKLE U-2s with Nationalist Chinese
" "OSA History-2," chap. 5. pp. 10-l2.
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