Approved for Release: 2013/06/25
---
Secret NOFORN
Chapter 5
253
---
the scale of imagery needed to obtain the highly technical data desired by analysts. As a result, the Office of Special Activities asked the Hycon Manufacturing Company of Pasadena, California, to adapt its successful high-resolution 48-inch 9- by 9-inch format camera developed for the OXCART aircraft for use in the U-2R. This camera was actually a very advanced version of the original B camera with a new lens designed by James Baker. The new camera was designed to resolve objects smaller than 4 inches.
Hycon began work on the HR-333 camera in 1966. Unlike the OXCART camera, the new unit was to use the split 18- by 18-inch format of the B camera, so the lens had to be redesigned. James Baker’s contribution to this effort was a 48-inch f/5.6 system that provided remarkably sharp imagery. Hycon completed the camera in time for it to be installed in the first U-2Rs delivered to the Agency in 1968; it is known as the H camera.⁷³
Replacement of the Original U-2s With U-2Rs
As the new U-2Rs began coming off the production line at Lockheed in the autumn of 1968, CIA and the Department of Defense had to decide who would get the new aircraft. At a meeting on 13 November, DCI Richard Helms and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara agreed that the Air Force and the Agency would each get six U-2Rs. The six older U-2s remaining from the original 1954-55 production were to be kept in flyable condition and be used as replacements if newer models were lost.
Despite the greatly increased capabilities of the new model of the U-2, the era of overflights of hostile territory was over. The U-2R would have six years of useful service with the Agency, but its missions did not include penetration flights over hostile territory.
THE FINAL YEARS OF THE U-2
When the OXCART’s brief operational career with the Agency ended in 1968, the U-2 was once again the center of the Agency’s manned reconnaissance program. But by this time, reconnaissance aircraft had declined in importance as collection systems. Overflights were a thing of the past. Although Project TACKLE U-2s with Nationalist Chinese
---
⁷³ “OSA History-2,” chap. 5, pp. 10-12.
---
Approved for Release: 2013/06/25