Approved for Release: 2013/06/25
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Secret NOFORN
Chapter 1
23
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The wide variety of programs discussed at the conference were all products of the Air Force’s all-out effort to find a way to collect intelligence on the Communist Bloc. Some of the schemes went beyond the existing level of technology; others, like the camera-carrying balloons, were technically feasible but involved dangerous political consequences.
British Overflight of Kapustin Yar
The British were also working on high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft. In 1952 the Royal Air Force (RAF) began Project ROBIN, which was designed to modify the Canberra bomber for high-altitude reconnaissance. This project was probably inspired by Richard Leghorn’s collaboration with English Electric Company designers in 1951, when they calculated ways to increase the altitude of the Canberra. The RAF equipped the new Canberra PR7 with Rolls-Royce Avon-109 engines and gave it long, fuel-filled wings. The range of this variant of the Canberra was now 4,300 miles, and, on 29 August 1955, it achieved an altitude of 65,880 feet.³⁹
Sometime during the first half of 1953, the RAF employed a high-altitude Canberra on a daring overflight of the Soviet Union to photograph the missile test range at Kapustin Yar. Because of advanced warning from either radar or agents inside British intelligence, the overflight did not catch the Soviet Union by surprise. Soviet fighters damaged and nearly shot down the Canberra.⁴⁰ Rumors about this flight reached Washington during the summer of 1953, but official confirmation by the United Kingdom did not come until February 1954. While on a six-week tour of Europe to study aerial reconnaissance problems for the US Air Force’s Scientific Advisory Board, James Baker was briefed by RAF intelligence officials on the Canberra overflight of the Soviet Union. On 22 and 23 March 1954, he reported on it to the full Scientific Advisory Board at Langley AFB, Virginia.
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³⁹ Van der Aart, *Aerial Espionage*, p. 18; Philip G. Strong, Chief, Operations Staff, OSI, Memorandum for the Record, “Meeting of Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, 18-21 October 1953,” 26 October 1953, OSI (OSWR) records, job 80R-01424, box 1 (TS, downgraded to S).
⁴⁰ Stewart Alsop, *The Center*, (New York: Popular Library, 1968), p. 194; Beschloss, *Mayday*, pp. 78-79. Both of these books state that the project included the CIA, but there is no evidence to support this assertion.
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Approved for Release: 2013/06/25