Approved for Release: 2013/06/25
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Secret NOFORN
Chapter 3
135
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DETACHMENT B FLIGHTS FROM PAKISTAN
The most important series of overflights in the summer of 1957 were those that Detachment B staged to gather intelligence on the Soviet Union’s guided missile and nuclear programs. President Eisenhower had approved these overflights at the meeting on 6 May 1957, pro-
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The airfield at Peshawar, a more desirable location, was not available because of repair work. Detachment B at Ankara ferried four of its U-2s, two of which were dirty birds, to Lahore. A C-124 brought in eight pilots and ground crews to prepare for missions over the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) beginning on 4 August (Operation SOFT TOUCH). During a 23-day period, these aircraft made nine flights: seven over the USSR and two over the PRC. Although one of the seven flights over the USSR was a failure because the camera malfunctioned after taking only 125 exposures, the remaining missions over Central Asia were a complete success, producing a bonanza of information that kept scores of photointerpreters busy for more than a year.⁸²
The 5 August flight, a dirty bird piloted by Buster Edens, was the first to photograph the major Soviet space launch facility east of the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan. None of the mission planners was certain just where the range was located, so the U-2 pilot followed the rail lines in the area. As a result, the plane did not pass directly over the rangehead and obtained only oblique photography.
Although known in the West today as Tyuratam, this missile installation had no name when it was first photographed in August 1957. In preparation for a briefing to President Eisenhower on the SOFT TOUCH photography, Dino Brugioni, an assistant to PID chief Arthur Lundahl, examined all the existing maps of the area to see if he could find a place name for the missile base. Only one map, made by the Germans during World War II, showed a community in the vicinity of the missile facility. The settlement’s name was Tyuratam, which means “arrow burial ground” in the Kazakh language, and this
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⁸² *OSA History*, chap. 12, pp. 19-20 (TS Codeword); *NPIC History*, vol. 1, pp. 159-161 (S).
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Secret
Approved for Release: 2013/06/25