Approved for Release: 2013/06/25
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Secret NOFORN
Chapter 5
196
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overflights of the Soviet Union during the Berlin Crisis in the summer and fall of 1961. On 14 September 1961, Kelly Johnson noted in his project log:
> Have had request from Mr. Bissell to propose ways and means for increasing safety of the U-2 on probable overflights. . . . It seems that President Kennedy, who publicly stated that no U-2’s would ever be over Russia while he was president, has requested additional flights. Some poetic justice in this.²
One week later Colonel Geary called to order Lockheed to upgrade six older U-2s into U-2Cs with the more powerful engines on a priority basis, even if it meant taking people off the work on the successor aircraft in order to speed up the conversions.
Shortly thereafter, the resumption of overflights became a major topic of discussion within the intelligence community. On 25 September 1961, the Committee on Overhead Reconnaissance prepared a detailed “Justification for U-2 Photography over the USSR,” which argued in favor of U-2 missions over selected, high-priority targets such as ICBM complexes. The COMOR paper stated that satellite photography did not provide sufficient detail to answer many critical questions about the Soviet ICBM program. To back up this contention, the report placed U-2 and satellite photography of the same Soviet targets side by side, clearly demonstrating the far superior resolution of the U-2’s cameras. Not all members of COMOR supported the resumption of overflights, however. When COMOR formally recommended this course of action to the USIB on 1 October 1961, the State Department and CIA members dissented, having found “insufficient justification for resuming U-2 overflights of the USSR at this time.”³
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² Johnson, “Log for Project X,” 14 September 1961. In preparation for the possible resumption of overflights, Kelly Johnson began thinking about what to do in a worst case scenario like that of 1 May 1960. He noted in the project log on 21 September 1961:
> One of the greatest technical problems and, of course, a great moral one, is how we insure destroying the aircraft and the pilot should the mission fail. I have proposed a time-altitude fusing setup for multitude bombs, that looks like it should do the trick. Beerli [Col. Stanley Beerli, USAF, Director of the Office of Special Activities] doesn’t want anything to do with this, but we will go ahead and develop it in case someone decides it is necessary.
³ Memorandum for USIB from COMOR, “Justification for U-2 Photography over the USSR,” 25 September 1961, IC Staff, COMIREX records, job 33-T-123A, box 10, “COMOR (General)” (TS Codeword); Memorandum for USIB from COMOR, “Requirements for Resumption of U-2 Overflights of the USSR,” 1 October 1961, IC Staff, COMIREX records, job 33-B-119A, box 1 (TS Codeword).
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Secret
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Approved for Release: 2013/06/25