Approved for Release: 2013/06/25
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Secret NOFORN
Chapter 2
85
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the People’s Republic of China. This project had its origins in a RAND Corporation study from 1951. By the end of 1955, the Air Force had overcome a number of technical problems in camera design and recovery techniques and had manufactured a large number of balloons for use in the project. President Eisenhower gave his approval on 27 December 1955, and two weeks later the launches from bases in Western Europe began. By the end of February 1956, the Air Force had launched a total of 516 balloons.⁶⁷
Project GENETRIX was much less successful than its sponsors had hoped. Once launched, the balloons were at the mercy of the prevailing winds, and many tended to drift toward southern Europe and then across the Black Sea and the desert areas of China. These balloons therefore missed the prime target areas, which lay in the higher latitudes. Large numbers of balloons did not succeed in crossing the Soviet Union and China, some because they were shot down by hostile aircraft, others because they prematurely expended their ballast supplies and descended too soon. Only 46 payloads were eventually recovered (one more than a year later and the last not until 1958) from the 516 balloons that had been launched. In four of these payloads the camera had malfunctioned, and in another eight the photography was of no intelligence value. Thus, only 34 balloons succeeded in obtaining useful photographs.⁶⁸
The low success rate of the Project GENETRIX balloons was not the only problem encountered; far more serious was the storm of protest and unfavorable publicity that the balloon overflights provoked. Although the Air Force had issued a cover story that the balloons were being used for weather research connected with the International Geophysical Year, East European nations protested strongly to the United States and to international aviation authorities, claiming that the balloons endangered civilian aircraft. The Soviet Union sent strongly worded protest notes to the United States and the nations from which the balloons had been launched. The Soviets also collected numerous polyethylene gasbags, camera payloads, and transmitters from GENETRIX balloons and put them on display in Moscow for the world press.⁶⁹
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⁶⁷ P. G. Strong, Attachment to Memorandum for DCI Dulles, “Project GENETRIX Summary.” 15 February 1956 (S).
⁶⁸ Final Report, Project 119L, 1st Air Division (Meteorological Survey) Strategic Air Command, 5 March 1956, D-582, General Summary (S, declassified 1979).
⁶⁹ *New York Times*, 10 February 1956, p. 1; *Omaha World Herald*, 11 February 1956, p. 1.
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Secret
Approved for Release: 2013/06/25