Approved for Release: 2013/06/25
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Secret NOFORN
Chapter 4
168
In authorizing another overflight of the Soviet Union, President Eisenhower directed that it be conducted before 30 March. Because of complications in getting permission from Pakistan to use the airfield at Peshawar, however, the mission could not be staged in March, and the President agreed to extend his deadline until 10 April 1960. One day before the expiration of this deadline, a U-2 equipped with a B-camera took off from Peshawar on the last successful overflight of the Soviet Union, Operation SQUARE DEAL. As had been the case during the previous two overflights, a second U-2 flew a diversionary mission along the Soviet-Iranian border. After leaving Peshawar, mission 4155 headed first for Saryshagan, where it obtained the first pictures of two new Soviet radars, the HEN HOUSE and HEN ROOST installations. The U-2 then flew to the nuclear testing site at Semipalatinsk. Returning to the Saryshagan area, it crisscrossed the railroad network there and then proceeded to Tyuratam, where it photographed a new two-pad, road-served launch area that suggested a new Soviet missile was in the offing.¹⁸
In his memoirs Nikita Khrushchev remarked that this U-2 should have been shot down, “but our antiaircraft batteries were caught napping and didn’t open fire soon enough.” Khrushchev explained that Soviet missile designers had developed a high-altitude antiaircraft missile and batteries of this missile had been deployed near known targets of the U-2.¹⁹
The CIA already had strong indications of improvements in the Soviet air defense system, and early in 1960 the Development Projects Division had asked Air Force experts at the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) for a frank assessment of Soviet capabilities against the U-2. On 14 March 1960, Col. William Burke, acting chief of the DPD, relayed the ATIC assessment to Richard Bissell:
> The greatest threat to the U-2 is the Soviet SAM. Although the ATIC analysis concedes a remote possibility that the SAM may be less effective than estimated, their present evaluation is that the SAM (Guideline) has a high probability of successful intercept at 70,000 feet providing that detection is made in sufficient time to alert the site.²⁰
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¹⁸ Mission folder 4155, 9 April 1960, OSA records, job 67-B-328, box 6 (TS Codeword).
¹⁹ Nikita S. Khrushchev, *Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament* (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1974), pp. 443-444.
²⁰ Memorandum for Richard M. Bissell, Deputy Director (Plans), from Col. William Burke, Acting Chief, DPD, “Evaluation of Proposed CHALICE Operations,” 14 March 1960, IC Staff, COMIREX records, job 33-T-123A, box 10, “CHALICE (General)” (TS Codeword).
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Secret
Approved for Release: 2013/06/25