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

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23
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Chapter 1
The wide variety of programs discussed at the conference were
all products of the Air Force's all-out effort to find a way to collect
intelligence on the Communist Bloc. Some of the schemes went be­
yond the existing level of technology; others, like the camera-carrying
balloons, were technically feasible but involved dangerous political
consequences.
British Overflight of Kapustin Var
The British were also working on high-altitude reconnaissance air­
craft. In 1952 the Royal Air Force (RAF) began Project ROBIN,
which was designed to modify the Canberra bomber for high-altitude
reconnaissance. This project was probably inspired by Richard
Leghorn's collaboration with English Electric Company designers in
195 I, when they calculated ways to increase the altitude of the
Canberra. The RAF equipped the new Canberra PR7 with Rolls­
Royce Avon-109 engines and gave it long, fuel-filled wings. The
range of this variant of the Canberra was now 4,300 miles, and, on
29 August 1955, it achieved an altitude of 65,880 feet.n
Sometime during the first half of 1953, the RAF employed a
high-altitude Canberra on a daring overflight of the Soviet Union to
photograph the missile test range at Kapustin Yar. Because of ad­
vanced warning from either radar or agents inside British intelli­
gence, the overflight did not catch the Soviet Union by surprise.
Soviet fighters damaged and nearly shot down the Canberra.")
Rumors about this flight reached Washington during the summer of
1953, but official confirmation by the United Kingdom did not come
until February 1954. While on a six-week tour of Europe to study
aerial reconnaissance problems for the US Air Force's Scientific
Advisory Board, James Baker was briefed by RAF intelligence offi­
cials on the Canberra overflight of the Soviet Union. On 22 and 23
March 1954, he reported on it to the full Scientific Advisory Board
at Langley AFB, Virginia.
'" Van der Aart, Aerial Espionage, p. 18; Philip G. Strong, Chief, Operations Staff. OSI.
Memorandum for the Record. "Meeting of Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, 18-21
October 1953," 26 October 1953, OSI (OS WR) records, job 80R-0 1424, box I (TS,
downgraded to S).
~, Stewart Alsop, The Center, (New York: Popular Library. 1968), p. 194; Beschloss,
Mayday, pp. 78-79. Both of these books state that the project included the CIA. but there
is no evidence to support this assertion.
GeeFot