Approved for Release: 2013/06/25
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Secret NOFORN
Chapter 3
144
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U-2s flying well within international airspace above the Black Sea, as was the case on 27 October 1957, when electronic intelligence equipment on a U-2 flight over the Black Sea that never violated Soviet airspace revealed 12 attempts at interception by Soviet fighters.⁹³
The sole U-2 overflight of 1958 was conducted by a dirty bird from Detachment C. On 1 March 1958, mission 6011 overflew the Soviet Far East and photographed the Trans-Siberian Railroad, Sovetskaya Gavan’, the Tatar Strait, and a strange installation at Malaya Sazanka, which was eventually determined to be a structure for mating nuclear devices with their detonators. This was the first and only U-2 overflight of the Soviet Union staged from Japan.⁹⁴
On 5 March 1958, the Soviet Union delivered a vigorous protest concerning this mission, prompting President Eisenhower to tell Colonel Goodpaster on 7 March to inform the CIA that U-2 flights were to be “discontinued, effective at once.”⁹⁵ This standdown was to last more than 16 months, until July 1959. The Soviets had not been fooled by the antiradar devices carried by mission 6011, as was demonstrated by the detailed information about the mission contained in a Soviet aide-memoire delivered on 21 April 1958. It was clear that dirty bird aircraft were not effective and that Soviet radar operators had little difficulty in tracking them. At this point, the Agency abandoned the use of the antiradar devices on the U-2. As a substitute, Lockheed began working to develop a paint with radar-suppressant qualities, but this project also proved unsuccessful.
The U-2s were not the only cause for the Soviet protests that so vexed the President. On 27 June 1958,
Ten days later the Air Force began launching balloons designed to fly across the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. This new balloon project (known as WS-461L) had been authorized by President Eisenhower on 25 June after Deputy Secretary of Defense Donald Quarles argued that a small number of balloons should be
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⁹³ Mission folder 4061 (27 October 1957), OSA records, job 67-B-972, box 8 (TS Codeword).
⁹⁴ Mission folder 6011 (1 March 1958), OSA records, job 67-B-972, box 13 (TS Codeword).
⁹⁵ Andrew J. Goodpaster, Memorandum for the Record, 7 March 1958, WHOSS, Alpha, DDEL (TS, declassified).
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Secret
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Approved for Release: 2013/06/25