by Dwayne Day
Even so, the Soviets protested American “bombers” violating the airspace above their territorial waters. The State Department responded with aerial approach restrictions that eventually reached a distance of 40 miles.15 A 40-mile limit, of course, precluded any useful aerial photographic reconnaissance missions. But after the Soviet Union detonated an atomic device in August 194916 and communist forces swept to victory in China in October, the standoff restriction was reduced to 20 miles and, in the face of other provocations, the entire issue was reopened.
Soviet detonation of an atomic weapon well in advance of U.S. expectations greatly concerned American leaders. Curtis E. LeMay, by then commander of the Strategic Air Command (SAC), recommended that the United States employ pre-hostilities strategic overflight reconnaissance to detect Soviet preparation for a surprise attack and, more important, should adopt a preemptive war policy.17 At the prodding of MIT’s George Valley, the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board undertook an assessment of nearly nonexistent U.S. air defenses with the intention of identifying ways for improving them.18 Soviet action in Europe had already prompted the Truman Doctrine (economic and military assistance that helped Greece and Turkey repel communist insurgents), the Marshall Plan (economic assistance that helped rebuild the war-ravaged Western European infrastructure), and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Now, at the president’s direction, the National Security Council (NSC) began a sweeping evaluation of U.S. military preparedness and of the nation’s objectives, strategy, policies, and programs for national security with respect to the USSR.19
A few months later, on June 25, 1950, North Korean forces launched a surprise attack on the Republic of South Korea, and in November Chinese forces entered that conflict in force. The sequence and pace of these events, coupled with available intelligence of Soviet forces in Eastern Europe, prompted American political and military leaders to believe that their Soviet counterparts might launch an attack against Western Europe, possibly accompanied by a surprise aerial attack on the United States. On December 16 President Truman issued a Proclamation of National Emergency, called numerous National Guard units to active duty, and signed an executive order creating an Office of Defense Mobilization to control all executive branch mobilization activities including production, procurement, manpower, and transportation. On December 19 the president advised the nation that General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower would return to active duty as Supreme Commander, Allied Powers in Europe (SACEUR), in charge of NATO forces. While the JCS assessed existing war plans and alerted American commanders to the possibility of a global war,20 they also considered how aerial overflight reconnaissance might determine with greater certainty Soviet preparations for an atomic surprise attack.
The JCS chairman, General of the Army Omar N. Bradley, ordered a reassessment of aerial reconnaissance policy and then placed the issue before the president.21 Reliable information on the status of Soviet aerial forces in those regions of Eastern Siberia closest to the United States could be acquired only through reconnaissance overflight. In the Korean conflict, the USSR supported North Korea with its military aircraft operating from sanctuaries in the Soviet Far East. Under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, the United States, when engaged in a UN peace enforcement operation, could claim the right to overfly sanctuaries used by an unannounced co-belligerent state. Whether recognized as lawful or not, however, if the aircraft was shot down, it promised an international incident of the first magnitude. (An earlier incident happened in April 1950, when Soviet fighters downed an unarmed U.S. Navy reconnaissance aircraft in international waters off the coast of Latvia, in the Baltic Sea.)22
The threat of a surprise nuclear strike was taken seriously. National security considerations demanded that the political risks of overflights be accepted. In late December 1950, Air Force Vice Chief of Staff General Nathan Twining briefed President Truman to that effect. After examining the overflight plans and routes, the president approved two flights, one over Russia’s Arctic northern shore in eastern Siberia, and another over Russia’s southern shore nearer Japan.23 Shortly thereafter, on January 4, 1951, Headquarters USAF assigned this mission to one of SAC′s newest swept-wing jet-propelled bombers, an air-refuelable B-47B then scheduled for delivery in April 1951.24 Though initial plans called for two aircraft, only the fourth production aircraft was specially modified for reconnaissance overflights. In July it flew to Eielson AFB at Fairbanks, Alaska. While awaiting clear weather in early August 1951, this B-47B was destroyed by fire during refueling operations.25 Later attempts to overfly the eastern USSR depended on both the production of more B-47Bs and presidential approval.
Meanwhile, Truman initiated talks on intelligence gathering with British Labor Prime Minister Clement R. Atlee and his foreign minister, Ernest Bevan (succeeded in April 1951 by Herbert S. Morrison). The American and British leaders agreed to a joint aerial reconnaissance program to overfly the western USSR during the Korean hostilities. Under terms of the agreement, apparently secured in the spring of 1951, the Royal Air Force (RAF) would reconnoiter targets in the western USSR whenever intelligence demands dictated such action. These missions would be approved by the prime minister, who turned out to be the redoubtable wartime leader Winston Churchill, reelected in October 1951. To conduct these overflights, the RAF formed a secret three-aircraft “Special Duty Flight” in July 1951. Equipped with USAF RB-45Cs, these aircraft, on two separate nighttime missions, overflew the Baltic states, Belorussia, and Ukraine: once in April 1952, and again in April 1954.26
With communist and UN forces on the Korean peninsula locked in a military stalemate in early 1952, U.S. leaders received intelligence that the Soviet Air Force had begun moving bombers into Siberia. These Tupolev Tu-4 aircraft, essentially carbon copies of the Boeing B-29, were flying together in large numbers into and out of airfields at Dickson on the Kara Sea, at Mys Schmidta on the Chukchi Sea, and at Provideniya on the Chukotskiy Peninsula, just across the Bering Strait from Alaska. If loaded with the nuclear weapons then believed available to the Soviet Air Force, these Tu-4s could make one-way flights to strike the United States.27 The Office of the Secretary of Defense and the CIA again determined a need for Siberian overflights. On July 5 Headquarters USAF, which was party to these deliberations, directed SAC to modify two B-47B bombers for a special photoreconnaissance mission over “unfriendly areas.”28
On August 12, 1952, Secretary of Defense Robert A. Lovett delivered to President Truman memoranda from General Bradley and General Walter Bedell Smith, Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), requesting two reconnaissance overflights of Soviet Siberia from Eielson AFB. After discussion, the president approved the “Northern run” between Ambarchik on the East Siberian Sea and Provideniya on the Chukotskiy Peninsula, but disapproved as too dangerous a “Southern run” over Provideniya southwestward past Anadyr to Magadan, returning eastward over the Kamchatka Peninsula. His approval of a single reconnaissance overflight, Truman told Lovett, was contingent on the concurrence of “appropriate officials of the State Department.”29 Secretary of State Dean Acheson must have concurred, because on August 15 Headquarters USAF issued instructions for the mission. It was flown successfully in October.30 The overflight photography established that the Soviet Union was not massing Tu-4 bombers near Alaska.31 The world that Richard Leghorn had forecast was at hand. Overflight of the USSR or other unannounced co-belligerents opposing UN peace enforcement would be approved on a case-by-case basis when the security interests of the United States demanded it.
A few weeks after the Siberian overflight, in the national elections of November 1952, Americans selected Dwight D. Eisenhower as president. In January 1953 Eisenhower took the oath of office as the thirty-fourth president of the United States. The former Supreme Commander of Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe, who had directed the Normandy invasion during World War II and had served as the postwar SACEUR, appreciated the value of “pre-D-day photography.” As a commander-in-chief intent on thwarting,
if not eliminating, the threat of an atomic surprise attack, he embraced the concept and conduct of pre-hostilities strategic overflight reconnaissance. But the Korean Armistice, signed in July 1953, ended the Korean conflict and with it any legal justification for the overflights begun by his predecessor.
Eisenhower recognized the importance of strategic reconnaissance to national security, the political risks of continuing overflights for that purpose in peacetime, and the precedent set by President Truman. He decided to continue periodic reconnaissance overflights of the Sino-Soviet bloc. The revised effort, including RAF participation with the consent of his British wartime comrade Winston Churchill, comprised a major part of what was termed the SENSINT (Sensitive Intelligence) Program. (Another significant portion consisted of the reconnaissance flights around the periphery of the Sino-Soviet bloc states.) Between July 1953 and December 1956, when Eisenhower discontinued all military overflights of the USSR, the overflight component involved four USAF commands, elements of the RAF, and Republic of China (ROC) Air Force based on the island of Taiwan. In the case of the American air commands, once the president approved an overflight, authority to proceed passed from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Headquarters USAF, then through channels to the operational unit.32
Meanwhile, alerted to the existence of the new Soviet Myacheslav-4 intercontinental bomber (NATO code-named BISON),33 in March 1954 Eisenhower challenged James Killian, by now president of MIT, and other members of the Office of Defense Mobilization’s Science Advisory Committee to advise him of new ways to protect America from a sneak attack. Killian formed for this task a Technological Capabilities Panel (TCP). In August, panel members began a survey of U.S. defense preparedness and of new technology that might be applied to offensive, defensive, and intelligence operations.34 With the number of Soviet BISON bombers and nuclear weapons believed to be growing, the region of greatest concern in the USSR—from which such an aerial attack could be mounted and about which the least was known—was the Kola Peninsula in extreme northwest Russia above the Arctic Circle. Again, American and British leaders sought reliable intelligence about the type, number, and disposition of Soviet aerial forces.
On May 8, 1954, a few days after the RAF Special Duty Flight conducted its second nighttime mission, a SAC RB-47E embarked from Fairford RAFB on a daytime photographic overflight of the Kola Peninsula and various airfields east of Leningrad. Soviet MiG-17s attacked and damaged the reconnaissance aircraft during the mission.35 Before the month’s end the American-equipped RAF Special Duty Flight disbanded permanently.36 If such strategic reconnaissance overflights were to continue with acceptable risk, another kind of airplane clearly was required, one designed expressly to fly at extremely high altitudes, far above Soviet air defenses.
TECHNICAL AND INSTITUTIONAL IMPEDIMENTS
If, in the interests of national security and after weighing attendant risks, a U.S. president authorized reconnaissance overflights of Sino-Soviet territory, what kind of aircraft was best suited to the assignment? The Strategic Air Command controlled the lion’s share of Air Force reconnaissance assets because it possessed the only long-range jet-powered aircraft that could be refueled in flight and configured for deep-penetration electronic and photographic reconnaissance missions. None of these aircraft, however, was designed to operate above 45,000 feet altitude; all of them were thus susceptible to attack by air defenses. To assess the state of the art and to recommend new or improved reconnaissance technical collection systems, the Air Force turned to scientific consultants organized earlier to assist Air Force Development Planning. Among them were Carl F. J. Overhage, chief of Eastman Kodak’s Color Laboratory; James Baker and Edward Purcell from Harvard University; Edwin Land, president of Polaroid; Louis Ridenour of International Telemeter; and Allen F. Donovan of Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory. At the early 1952 request of the Air Force, these men, along with Richard Leghorn, who had been recalled to active duty in the Air Force during the Korean conflict, participated in what became known as the “Beacon Hill Study,” named for the Boston locale where they convened. In the years afterward, these same scientist-consultants would reappear on the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board and on other government panels.37
The seminal Beacon Hill Report appeared in June 1952. Having evaluated pre-hostilities reconnaissance requirements, the Beacon Hill group recommended improvements in sensors and identified vehicles that could fly them near or over Soviet territory. These included high-altitude balloons (then Project GOPHER),38 high-altitude aircraft, sounding rockets, and long-range Snark or Navaho air-breathing missiles employed as drones. Although aware of the contemporary reconnaissance satellite studies at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California, members of the Beacon Hill group perceived that this technology would require an enormous investment, including the development of launching rockets. Such machines could not be developed in time to meet current national intelligence demands. Both Leghorn and Land favored immediate development of balloons and aircraft that would operate at extreme altitudes of 70,000 feet or higher.39 (The subsequent development of intercontinental ballistic missiles and the launch of an artificial earth satellite prompted both Land and Leghorn to actively support immediate development of reconnaissance satellites.)40
Dr. Edwin “Din” Land, president of Polaroid. Land served as a key advisor to presidents and U.S. intelligence agencies during the height of the Cold War. (Photo courtesy of the National Reconnaissance Office)
At the Pentagon in early January 1953, Leghorn completed his work on an Intelligence and Reconnaissance Development Planning Objective (DPO) for Colonel Bernard A. Schriever, Assistant for Air Force Development Planning. At month’s end he left active duty to return to Eastman Kodak, removing himself temporarily from planning based on the pre-hostilities reconnaissance concepts he had helped formulate. The DPO called for high-altitude balloons and eventually earth satellites to provide wide-area searches of the Soviet Union, with close-area surveillance provided by high-altitude airplanes and second-generation satellites. To achieve close-area surveillance, the study identified a requirement for a special purpose, single-engine, lightweight (unarmored) reconnaissance airplane to be employed expressly for peacetime strategic reconnaissance at altitudes of 70,000 feet or higher.41
A few months later, on July 1, 1953, the Wright Air Development Center (WADC) issued six-month study contracts for such a special-purpose Air Force reconnaissance airplane to three East Coast firms: Bell Aircraft Company, Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corporation, and the Glenn L. Martin Company. The design requirements were the brainchild of Major John D. Seaberg. The closed procurement competition called for acquiring an airplane similar to the one Leghorn had urged the Air Force to embrace—a jet-turbine-powered aircraft that would perform “pre- and post-strike reconnaissance,” possess a flight radius of 1,500 miles unrefueled, and fly at an altitude of 70,000 feet or higher. In March 1954 WADC chose for development the twin-engine Bell entry, the X-16, over the single-engine Fairchild entry. To meet near-term reconnaissance needs, the service also selected for procurement a modified version of the twin-engine British Electric Canberra bomber (later known as the RB-57) offered under license by the Martin Company. The winning X-16 design featured two wing-mounted jet engines (the second engine perceived as a safety feature), an armor-plated pressurized cabin, an ejection seat, and a single carry-through wing spar that met military specifications (MilSpecs) and required high g-loading (the ability of an aircraft to make hard, high-speed turns).42
Officials at Lockheed Aircraft Corporation in Burbank, California, became aware of this competition and in late November 1953 closeted themselves with their premier designer, Clarence L. (Kelly) Johnson. In March 1954, about the time ARDC selected the X-16, Lockheed sent to the recently promoted Brigadier General Bernard Schriever an unsolicited proposal for a different kind of reconnaissance airplane. Called the CL-282, it did not contain an ejection seat and featured a single jet engine, an unpressurized cabin, bolted-on, high
-aspect “wet” wings, and a payload bay between them that could carry some 500 pounds in 15 cubic feet. It was designed to attain an altitude of 70,000 feet and fly for 2,000 miles at a restricted airspeed—not to exceed 390 knots (any greater speed would tear the wings off). This fragile, single-purpose, high-altitude vehicle would tolerate only very low maneuver loads—about 2.25 gs—far below the requirements of military specifications.43
Schriever was interested. Although the X-16 promised to meet MilSpecs, the CL-282 appeared to meet all requirements of the intelligence and reconnaissance DPO. He invited Kelly Johnson to Washington, D.C. In late March or early April 1954, Johnson and his Lockheed associates briefed Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Research and Development Trevor Gardner, Deputy Chief of Staff for Research and Development General Donald Putt, and others. Leaders of the Air Research and Development Command (ARDC), responsible for acquisition of the counterpart X-16, successfully opposed the unsolicited Lockheed proposal, but not before it came to the attention of former members of the Air Force’s Beacon Hill group now serving on James Killian’s TCP. Through Philip Strong and Schriever, it also came to the attention of the CIA.44
Schriever knew a bright Yale-trained economist named Richard M. Bissell Jr., who recently had joined the CIA as one of Allen Dulles’s principal managers. Late in May or in early June 1954, Schriever telephoned Bissell and invited him to the Pentagon. There, two members of Schriever’s staff, RAND economist Burton Klein and Captain Eugene Kiefer, both of whom had continued to work on refining the intelligence and reconnaissance DPO, briefed Bissell on the CL-282 and its technical prospects and potential. Klein, working on loan to Schriever, recalled, “Bissell was immediately impressed and showed great interest in this airplane.”45