Approved for Release: 2013/06/25
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Secret NOFORN
Chapter 2
65
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[figure]
*Pilot undergoing prebreathing*
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To prevent pilots from becoming dessicated during the long missions—a condition aggravated by their having to breathe pure oxygen—provision was made for them to drink sweetened water. This was accomplished by providing a small self-sealing hole in the face mask through which the pilot could push a strawlike tube attached to the water supply. Project personnel also pioneered in the development of ready-to-eat foods in squeezable containers. These were primarily bacon- or cheese-flavored mixtures that the pilot could squeeze into his mouth using the self-sealing hole in the face mask. Despite all these precautions, U-2 pilots normally lost 3 to 6 pounds of body weight during an eight-hour mission.³⁶
Food and water were not the only items provided to pilots on overflight missions; they also received a suicide pill. During the early 1950s, tales of Soviet secret police torture of captured foreign agents
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³⁶ Information supplied by James Cunningham and former U-2 pilots Carmine Vito, Hervey Stockman, Jacob Kratt, and Glendon Dunaway to Donald E. Welzenbach, May 1986.
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Secret
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Approved for Release: 2013/06/25