Approved for Release: 2013/06/25
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Secret NOFORN
Chapter 3
145
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launched to take advantage of a newly discovered change in the west-to-east jet stream. Normally, this fast-moving air current stayed at an altitude of 55,000 feet, but, during June and July, it turned abruptly upward over the Bering Sea just west of Alaska, climbed to 110,000 feet, and then reversed direction. One of the key arguments that convinced the President to approve the project was Quarles’s claim that the balloons’ “chance of being detected is rather small and their identification or shootdown practically nil.”⁹⁶
Release of the balloons took place from an aircraft carrier in the Bering Sea on 7 July 1958. Nothing was heard about them until 28 July, when Poland sent a note protesting the overflight of a US-made, camera-carrying balloon that had fallen to earth in central Poland. The loss of this balloon was because of human error. Each balloon was equipped with a timing device that would cause it to drop its camera and film payload after crossing the target areas. An Air Force technician aboard the aircraft carrier had calculated that the balloons should cross the Eurasian landmass in about 16 days. Thus, he adjusted regulators aboard the balloons to cause automatic descent after 400 hours aloft. When bad weather delayed the launch for three successive days, however, the technician forgot to reset the timing devices. As a result, one payload fell into Poland. None of the three WS-461L balloon payloads was recovered.⁹⁷
The Polish protest was quickly followed by a Soviet note protesting the balloons’ violation of the Soviet Union’s airspace. Several months later, the Soviets placed the US balloon and photographic equipment on display in Moscow for the world’s press. President Eisenhower was angry that the Defense Department’s assurances that the balloons would not be detected had proved false. Even worse, one of the balloons had been recovered by the Poles because the Air Force had disobeyed his instructions for the balloon project. When the Air Force had proposed the use of timers to bring down the balloons at the end of the mission, Eisenhower had said no, fearing that a malfunction could cause the balloons to come down prematurely. Furious at the Air Force’s insubordination, the President ordered General
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⁹⁶ Andrew J. Goodpaster, Memorandum for the Record, 25 June 1958, WHOSS, Alpha, DDEL (TS).
⁹⁷ Donald E. Welzenbach, “Observation Balloons and Weather Satellites,” *Studies in Intelligence* 30 (Spring 1986): pp. 26-28 (S).
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Approved for Release: 2013/06/25