by Dwayne Day
A few weeks later the TCP began its secret assessment of the nation’s offensive forces, air defenses, and intelligence capabilities. Word of Lockheed’s proposed CL-282 already had reached members of the TCP’s intelligence committee, including Alan Donovan and James Baker, just returned from his Air Force consultant’s visit to the RAF. Chaired by Polaroid’s Edwin Land and composed mostly of individuals who had served previously in the Beacon Hill Group, Land’s TCP intelligence committee soon became convinced that this high-altitude airplane, believed to be nearly invisible to radar, was the nation’s best answer to acquiring pre-hostilities strategic overflight reconnaissance at minimum risk.46
Eisenhower at that moment was ready to consider a proposal for a novel reconnaissance airplane that operated at extreme altitudes. Soviet fighters had attacked and nearly shot down the Air Force RB-47E that had flown over the Soviet Kola Peninsula a few months before. Military aircraft might again perform such provocative and illegal missions, but they increased the risk of triggering the conflict he sought to avoid. In late 1954, to provide the nation warning of surprise attack, the president decided to build and send these unarmed, single-engine Lockheed airplanes over the “denied areas” of greatest concern. At the operating level, except for Richard Bissell, Trevor Gardner, and Generals Bernard Schriever and Donald Putt, the leadership of the CIA and of the Air Force mostly opposed purchase of the CL-282. Eisenhower nonetheless determined that the CIA would direct this crucial project, with the airplane procured in the greatest secrecy outside of established channels. The Air Force would provide the needed technical support. (The project was started with Schriever’s knowledge, although he learned of it later.)
On November 24, 1954, the president met at the White House to discuss the proposition with the secretaries of state and defense, the secretary of the Air Force, the DCI, and senior Air Force officers. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles “indicated that difficulties might arise out of these operations, but that ‘we could live through them.’ ” All agreed to proceed with the project in secrecy along the lines of shared management.47 For this joint civil-military project, the CIA would provide the funding, overall direction, and security procedures. The Air Force would provide the facilities infrastructure, trained technical personnel, and, eventually, pilots. If these decisions marked the impending demise of military aircraft overflights of the USSR, they unquestionably established strategic overflight reconnaissance as a national policy.
OVERFLIGHT AT EXTREME ALTITUDES: THE GENESIS OF CORONA
At the CIA, Allen Dulles named Richard Bissell director of Project AQUATONE, as the CL-282 effort was called. Bissell had the work under contract with Lockheed by the end of 1954.48 The first of the famous aircraft, renamed the “U-2,” was test-flown in Nevada eight months later. AQUATONE’s Air Force Deputy Director, Colonel Osmond J. Ritland, supported Bissell from his office in the Pentagon, while Colonel Marion C. Mixson worked directly with Bissell at the CIA.49 Elsewhere in Washington, in preparation for a Four-Power Summit Conference scheduled in Geneva, Switzerland, in July 1955, President Eisenhower assigned responsibility for arms control and disarmament proposals, including prospective methods for policing future agreements, to his special assistants Harold Stassen and Nelson Rockefeller.50
Any aerial reconnaissance overflight of another state without authorization of course remained an illegal and hostile act unless national leaders agreed to it beforehand. On July 21, 1955, at the Geneva summit conference, President Eisenhower advised Soviet leaders of just such a plan. Devised primarily by Nelson Rockefeller, assisted by Max Milliken and Walt Rostow of MIT, it became an unannounced addition to a disarmament proposal.51 The absence of trust and the presence of “terrible weapons” among states, he asserted, provoked in the world “fears and dangers of surprise attack.” To eliminate those fears, he urged that the Soviet Union and the United States provide “facilities for aerial photography to the other country” and conduct mutually supervised reconnaissance overflights.52 Before the day ended, First Secretary of the Communist Party Nikita Khrushchev privately rejected the president’s plan, known eventually as the “Open Skies” doctrine, as an obvious attempt to accumulate target information. Immediately following the Geneva conference, Harold Stassen assembled another group of experts to consider the subject further and to evaluate other arms limitation proposals.53
Shortly after returning to the United States, on July 29, 1955, the president publicly announced plans for launching “small unmanned, Earth circling satellites as part of the U.S. participation in the International Geophysical Year” (IGY), scheduled between July 1957 and December 1958. His statement avoided any hint at the principal underlying purpose of this enterprise, which was to establish the principle in international law of “freedom of space,” with all that that implied for strategic reconnaissance conducted at altitudes above the “airspace” to which the states beneath claimed exclusive sovereignty. Crafted early in 1955 in response to TCP recommendations by Donald H. Quarles, Eisenhower’s assistant secretary of defense for research and development, this initial U.S. space policy established a precedent during the IGY and would become a cardinal principle of public space law—incorporated in international treaties a decade later. It paved the way for the launch and operation of the first American reconnaissance satellites in 1959–60.54 (See chapter 5 on the subject of freedom of space.)
In August 1955, at the invitation of World War II hero and presidential confidant James Doolittle, Richard Leghorn became a member of the Stassen/Rockefeller arms control and disarmament group, serving on the “aerial inspection” subcommittee. Now aware of the U-2 project, Leghorn viewed strategic reconnaissance as a potential “inspection system” that would serve two critical functions: to forewarn of surprise attack and to supervise and verify arms-reduction and nuclear test-ban agreements.55 President Eisenhower and other key administration officials also embraced this view before the first U-2 mission ventured into Soviet airspace.
In the meantime, after a prolonged gestation period, the Air Force completed testing of its balloon reconnaissance system. This effort mounted aerial cameras in gondolas suspended beneath large polyethylene balloons for flight at very high altitudes (greater than 70,000 feet). The balloons, launched from Western Europe, were intended to drift over the USSR on prevailing winds and to be recovered in Japan or Alaska. This effort perfected methods of flying balloons at constant-pressure altitudes, parachutes capable of supporting a 600-pound load descending from high altitudes, and an aerial recovery system that employed C-119 cargo airplanes equipped with grappling lines and winches able to snatch the gondola packages in mid-air.56 The camera employed in this project was designed and engineered for the Air Force by Walter Levison and Francis Madden at Boston University’s Optical Research Laboratory. Weight constraints precluded a standard trimetrogon installation, and the two men fashioned a novel lightweight camera that used a 9, × 9-inch film format, equipped with two separate 6-inch Metrogon lenses that viewed the earth obliquely. The lenses provided a 10-degree overlap at the center and the camera covered the ground from horizon to horizon. Various firms manufactured some 2,500 of these BU “duplex cameras” for the project.57
This initial balloon reconnaissance project, known as GENETRIX (WS-119L), was executed in early 1956. Teams from the Strategic Air Command launched the balloons from bases in West Germany, Scotland, Norway, and Turkey beginning on January 10. Between that date and February 6, when President Eisenhower terminated the effort in the face of strong Soviet protests, 516 balloons were released to sail over Russia on the prevailing winds. The U-2 aircraft was about to begin flight operations, however, and, not wanting to alert Soviet leaders to its high-altitude capabilities, administration officials directed the Air Force to ballast the GENETRIX balloons to prevent them from ascending to altitudes greater than 50,000 feet. As a result, numerous balloons with their camera packages were shot down; only sixty-seven reached the recovery area, and of these only forty-four were
retrieved.58
Walter Levison, who developed the WS-461L balloon camera and proposed that the camera be modified for use in a reconnaissance satellite. Levison’s camera design was used on the CORONA satellite. (Photo courtesy Walter Levison)
A few months after Eisenhower terminated that phase of GENETRIX, he approved the first flight of Project AQUATONE. On July 4, 1956, a camera-equipped U-2 took off from Wiesbaden, West Germany, to survey the USSR’s naval shipyards and especially its submarine construction program. It overflew Poland, Belorussia, Moscow, Leningrad, and the Soviet Baltic states. Contrary to American expectations, Soviet radar detected and tracked this first U-2 at its 70,000 feet altitude.59 This overflight caused considerable consternation among the post-Stalin Kremlin leaders. Strategic reconnaissance, to be sure, furnished not only indications and warning but also targeting data for a nuclear attack. According to his son, Sergei, Soviet Communist Party Chairman Nikita Khrushchev rejected the 1955 Open Skies proposal because he believed Americans were
really looking for targets for a war against the USSR. When they understand that we are defenseless against an aerial attack, it will push the Americans to begin the war earlier … [and] if in this fear of each other the Americans realized that the Soviet Union would become stronger and stronger, but was weak now, this [intelligence] might push them into a preventive war.
The event triggered Kremlin orders for new surface-to-air missiles and high-performance fighters, and accelerated work to perfect an intercontinental ballistic missile.60
U.S. leaders in 1956 might have been seeking the U-2 to collect intelligence of Soviet military capabilities that would warn them of an impending nuclear Pearl Harbor. But the flights forcefully reminded Khrushchev and other Kremlin officials of the Luftwaffe reconnaissance overflights that preceded Germany’s surprise attack on the USSR in 1941. Fears of a surprise attack among Soviet authorities were essentially mirror images of those shared by their American counterparts.
In the months that followed, President Eisenhower approved only a small number of U-2 overflights. These assayed Soviet nuclear production and test facilities and the number, kind, and disposition of its military forces. The intelligence thus acquired might also dispel or confirm American intelligence concerns that “bomber” and “missile” gaps existed between the two superpowers. Soviet scientists and engineers, in the meantime, successfully tested an ICBM in August 1957 and, two months later, launched the world’s first artificial earth satellite, Sputnik I. In addition to its profound psychological impact among the publics of Western nations, Sputnik’s orbiting of the earth did indeed establish the international precedent of “freedom of space” and of the eventual right of overflight in outer space that the president and his advisors had desired. But the media clamored for space projects with which to surpass the Russians. Without divulging the intent of his IGY-generated space project and its clandestine policy, the president had to decide who would control and direct U.S. astronautical activities, now certain to be much larger and more diverse than anyone had imagined.
Working with his advisors and the Congress, Eisenhower answered these questions between late 1957 and 1961. The answers turned primarily on issues of national security.61 The issue of first concern arose a few weeks after the October 4 launch of Sputnik I. On October 24 the President’s Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities (PBCFIA) submitted one of its periodic reports to Eisenhower. Formed by executive order the year before to review and report to the president on activities of the government’s intelligence organizations,62 this eight-member board was chaired by the ubiquitous James Killian and included among its members Edwin Land. The PBCFIA report recommended an evaluation of overhead reconnaissance systems, including satellites.63
The U.S. Navy and Army Air Force had begun studies of earth satellites in 1945–46. The RAND Corporation had continued them for the U.S. Air Force after 1947. On March 1, 1954, RAND issued a concluding Project Feed Back report which recommended that the Air Force begin a reconnaissance satellite project. Simultaneously, the Defense Department Study Group on Guided Missiles advised the Air Force that the design and construction of an ICBM was technically feasible, and that if such a program was pressed vigorously, ICBMs would become available by 1960. The group recommended that the program begin immediately. On February 16, 1954, the Air Force transmitted these findings and recommendations to Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Development Donald Quarles. Endorsed by the Eisenhower administration, by year’s end Bernard Schriever found himself in charge of the Western Development Division (WDD), the ARDC organization created specifically to build the nation’s ICBM.64 Starting on parallel tracks, the military satellite and its potential booster would soon converge on the West Coast—all under Schriever’s direction.
At the ARDC’s Detachment 1 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB), the RAND Feed Back report particularly impressed Major Quenten A. Riepe who, along with Captain James S. Coolbaugh, promoted the project at ARDC and at Headquarters USAF. The Air Force’s Geophysics Laboratory and the Rome Air Development Center in New York supported this effort. In November 1954, ARDC issued System Requirement Number 5, which called for competitive system design studies of a reconnaissance satellite. On March 16, 1955, Headquarters USAF issued General Operational Requirement (GOR) Number 80 (SA-2c). GOR 80 approved construction of, and provided technical requirements for, a reconnaissance satellite.65
A satellite vehicle schematic diagram from the RAND “Project Feed Back” report, March 1954. RAND engineers envisioned a nuclear-powered satellite with a television camera. (Courtesy of RAND)
At ARDC’s Detachment 1 in the spring of 1955, Riepe directed a four-member team that worked on the reconnaissance satellite project. In addition to Riepe and Coolbaugh (now technical director, but specializing in auxiliary power and propulsion), it consisted of First Lieutenant John C. Herther (guidance and stabilization) and Captain William O. Troetschel (communications, command and control). Lieutenant Colonel William G. King replaced Riepe as the satellite project director in mid-August and, shortly thereafter, the Detachment 1 satellite team awarded small contracts to various firms for improvements in guidance systems and auxiliary power. Funding was obtained with which to pay four firms for a one-year competitive design study of a reconnaissance satellite, and three responded positively: Radio Corporation of America, Glenn L. Martin Company, and the Lockheed Aircraft Company. On the West Coast, made aware that the reconnaissance satellite project would affect directly the procurement of ICBMs, Schriever arranged in October to transfer the Air Force reconnaisance satellite office from WPAFB to his own WDD in Los Angeles.66
The original WS-117L team on March 4, 1956, shortly after their arrival at the Western Development Division, Los Angeles. Standing (left to right): Capt. William O. Troetschel; Edwin Kolb; 1st Lt. John C. Herther; Lt. Col. William G. King; Russell Johnson; James Suttie; Joseph Fallik; Capt. James S. Coolbaugh; and Capt. Frank S. Jasen. Kneeling: Fritz Runge; Capt. Richard P. Berry; Navy Capt. Robert C. Truax; Robert Copeland; Lt. Col. George P. Jones; Lt. Col. George Harlan.
Except for Lieutenant Colonel King, who was placed in charge of the Snark Project and remained at WPAFB, the satellite team moved to Los Angeles in February 1956. King, however, ensured that his team would remain together, be assigned to WDD, and not report to Ramo-Wooldridge, the firm that oversaw ballistic missile developments for Schriever. At the urging of Trevor Gardner, Undersecretary of the Air Force for Research and Development, Schriever named Commander Robert C. Truax, USN, as director of the Air Force Reconnaissance Satellite Office. Air Force Colonel Frederic C. E. (Fritz) Oder succeeded Truax in August, but Truax stayed on as his deputy. The Lockheed Aircraft Corporation won the satellite design competition in June and received a letter contract in October 1956. It would develop space reconnaissance and missile early warning satellites for the Air Force in what was now called the Weapons System (WS) 117L Program. By 1957, work on WS-117L was underway at Lockhee
d’s newly formed Missiles and Space Division, then located in Palo Alto, California.67
The Air Force WS-117L program represented the nation’s only reconnaissance satellite effort in 1957; it continued to labor under strict funding restrictions imposed by Secretary of the Air Force Donald Quarles.68 Planning for space reconnaissance featured a second stage booster-satellite to be launched into a near polar orbit by an Atlas ICBM adapted for that purpose. At first designed for a long-life mission of one year at an atmospheric drag-free altitude of 300 miles, the WS-117L Lockheed “Agena” satellite, as it later became known, was based on the 1954 RAND Feed Back study and was originally conceived to be gravity gradient-stabilized. That is, the vertically oriented Agena moved on orbit with its fixed, nose-mounted Eastman Kodak strip camera pointed toward the earth, thus aligning the long axis of the satellite’s mass distribution perpendicular to the earth. (The WS-117L “pioneer” version of the Eastman camera was designed to deliver a resolution of 100 feet at the earth’s surface; a more advanced version promised a resolution of 20 feet.) The gravity gradient stabilization scheme eliminated the need for fuel and associated weight required for gas jets, and made possible long-lived, very high-altitude orbital operations. It required only electricity for momentum-wheel damping with rate-sensing gyroscopes. Power was to be supplied by batteries recharged through solar cells. Film would move across the camera slit in the opposite direction of vehicle motion. The exposed film was to be processed on board, scanned electronically with a CBS “flying-spot scanner,” and the video signal transmitted to Earth when the satellite passed within sight of a ground station in the United States. There, the signal could be reformed into a photographic image of the original scene.