Approved for Release: 2013/06/25
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Secret NOFORN
Chapter 3
94
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THE DEPLOYMENT OF DETACHMENT A TO LAKENHEATH
The first Agency U-2 detachment, consisting of four aircraft and pilots, was known publicly as the 1st Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, Provisional (WRSP-1). The “provisional” designation gave the U-2 detachments greater security because provisional Air Force units did not have to report to higher headquarters. WRSP-1, known within the Agency as Detachment A, began deploying to the United Kingdom on 29 April 1956. By 4 May, all of the detachment’s personnel and equipment, including four aircraft, had arrived at Lakenheath.²
Shortly after deployment, on 7 May, the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA) released an unclassified U-2 cover story stating that a Lockheed-developed aircraft would be flown by the USAF Air Weather Service to study such high-altitude phenomena as the jet stream, convective clouds, temperature and wind structures at jet-stream levels, and cosmic-ray effects up to 55,000 feet.³
Before overflights could begin from Lakenheath, however, several incidents occurred that dampened Prime Minister Eden’s interest in having the U-2s on British territory. In mid-April 1956, a Soviet naval squadron brought Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin on an official visit to the United Kingdom. Although the ships were docked in Portsmouth Harbor, a British counterintelligence operative and underwater expert, retired Royal Navy Commander Lionel Crabb, apparently undertook a mission to examine the hulls of these vessels but vanished in the process. His headless body was later found washed up on a beach. This so-called Frogman Incident caused an uproar in Parliament and a protest from Moscow that soured relations between the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. To avoid further deterioration of Anglo-Soviet relations, the Prime Minister wrote to President Eisenhower on 16 May asking that overflights be postponed. Only two days later, a U-2 on a training flight from Lakenheath inadvertently penetrated the British radar network, causing RAF fighters to scramble. Afterward the Air Ministry made a public announcement that a special NACA aircraft was conducting high-altitude research in the United Kingdom. At about the
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² Ibid., pp. 17-18 (TS Codeword).
³ Press Release of 7 May 1956 (U) in *OSA History*, chap. 7, annex 60 (TS Codeword).
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Secret
Approved for Release: 2013/06/25