Approved for Release: 2013/06/25
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Secret NOFORN
Chapter 6
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sufficient support. The JCS and the PFIAB supported the CIA’s advocacy of OXCART deployment. Top State and Defense Department officials, however, thought that the political risks of basing the aircraft in Okinawa—which would almost certainly disclose it to the Japanese—outweighed any gains from the intelligence the OXCART might gather. On 12 August 1966, the divergent views were presented to President Johnson, who upheld the 303 Committee’s majority opinion against deployment for the time being.⁵⁶
The CIA then proposed an OXCART overflight of Cuba in order to test the aircraft’s ECM systems in a hostile environment. On 15 September the 303 Committee considered and rejected this idea on the grounds that sending OXCART over Cuba “would disturb the existing calm prevailing in that area of our foreign affairs.”⁵⁷
With operational missions still ruled out, proficiency training remained the main order of business. This led to improvements in mission plans and flight tactics that enabled the detachment to reduce the time required to deploy to Okinawa from 21 days to 15. Records continued to fall to the OXCART. On 21 December 1966, a Lockheed test pilot flew an A-12 for 16,408 kilometers over the continental United States in slightly more than six hours, for an average speed of 2,670 kilometers per hour (which included in-flight refueling at speeds as low as 970 kilometers per hour). This flight set a record for speed and distance unapproachable by any other aircraft.⁵⁸
Two weeks later, on 5 January 1967, an A-12 crashed after a fuel gauge malfunctioned and the aircraft ran out of fuel short of the runway. Pilot Walter Ray ejected but was killed when he could not become separated from the ejection seat. To preserve the secrecy of the OXCART program, the Air Force informed the press that an SR-71 was missing and presumed down in Nevada. This loss, like the three preceding crashes, did not result from difficulties caused by high-speed, high-temperature flight but from traditional problems inherent in any new aircraft.
Proposals for OXCART operations continued to surface, and in May 1967 the CIA forwarded a detailed request to the 303 Committee to use the OXCART to collect strategic intelligence about a new
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⁵⁶ “OXCART Story,” p. 23 (S); *OSA History*, chap. 20, pp. 110-111 (TS Codeword).
⁵⁷ *OSA History*, chap. 20, p. 112 (TS Codeword).
⁵⁸ “OXCART Story,” p. 24 (S).
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Secret
Approved for Release: 2013/06/25