Approved for Release: 2013/06/25
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Secret NOFORN
Chapter 5
240
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With their demands met, Nationalist Chinese officials again consented to overflights by Detachment H, and operations resumed in February 1965 with three missions over the mainland. By this time US interest in the People’s Republic of China was very high because of the PRC’s development of nuclear weapons. The Special Group, therefore, approved an extensive reconnaissance program directed against the PRC. By the end of the year, Detachment H had flown 30 missions, the highest annual total during the entire program.
The level of activity declined during 1966, with only 10 missions flown over the mainland. Detachment H also suffered the loss of two more aircraft and pilots in crashes during training missions in 1966. In the fall of that year, joint US–Nationalist Chinese relations in the field of overhead reconnaissance were further strained by the unilateral US decision to kill the longstanding program of low-altitude nighttime overflights of the mainland (STPOLLY).⁶¹
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⁶¹ Ibid., chap. 19, annex 120, pp. 22-24; chap. 17, p. 69 (TS Codeword).
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Secret
Approved for Release: 2013/06/25