U-2 timeline
1946-1948
Richard S Leghorn MIT graduate advocates development of high resolution photo reconnaissance of a potential enemy using high altitude aircraft.
March 1950
The RAF starts flying the Canberra PR3.
June 1950
North Korea invades South Korea.
1951
BEACON HILL REPORT
Because SAC could not get reliable information on targets within the Soviet Bloc Major General Gordon P Saville added 15 reconnaissance experts to an existing project on air defense known as Project LINCOLN then under way at MIT.
April 1951
Lieutenant Colonel Leghorn became the head of the Reconnaissance systems Branch of the Wright Air Development Command at Dayton Ohio.
Fairchild's participation in NEPA is cancelled.
Early 1952
Lt.Col Leghorn transfers to the Pentagon to work for Colonel Bernard A Schriever Assistant for Development Planning to the Air Force's Deputy Chief of Staff for Development. In this new position he becomes responsible for planning the Air Forces reconnaissance needs for the next decade. He works with Charles F (Bud) Wienberg and Eugene P. Kiefer. Both of them had previously worked at Wright Field in Ohio.
September 1952
ARDC awards contract Martin Aircraft Company to modify the B-57 with high lift wings and powering it with the new American version of the Rolls Royce Avon-109 engine. Meanwhile WADC has two German aeronautical engineers, Woldemar Voigt and Richard Vogt researching ways to achieve sustained high altitude flight. USAF Major Seaberg an aeronautical engineer for Chance Vought Corporation until being recalled to serve in the Korean War, was serving as assistant chief of the New Development Office of WADC's Bombardment Branch.
07 October 1952
The Soviet Union shoots down a US RB-29 flying over Hokkaido.
January 1953
Eisenhower becomes President he voices his dissatisfaction with the quality of the intelligence estimates of Soviet strategic capabilities and the paucity of reconnaissance of the Soviet Bloc.
March 1953
Seaberg had expanded his ideas for a high altitude aircraft into a complete proposal for "an aircraft weapon system having an operational radius of 1,500 nm [nautical miles] and capable of conducting pre and post strike reconnaissance missions during daylight, good visibility conditions. cruise at high subsonic speeds at an altitude of 70,000 ft or higher, carrying a payload of 100 to 700 pounds and have a crew of one.
05 March 1953
JOSEPH STALIN DIES.
July 1953
Bell Aircraft Corporation of Buffalo New York and Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corporation of Hagerstown Maryland are awarded study contracts to develop entirely new high altitude reconnaissance aircraft. Glenn L Martin Company of Baltimore was asked to examine the possibility of improving the performance of the B-57 Canberra.
The Intelligence Systems Panel (ISP) is created Land, Overhage, Donovan, Miller, Edward L Allen and Philip Strong (P&W 21)
August 1953
The Soviets test a Hydrogen Bomb.
03 August 1953
The ISP has its first meeting at Boston University (P&W 22)
FALL 1953
Lockheed first becomes aware of the competition to build a spy-plane, when John H Carter recently retired from the Air Force to become assistant director of Lockheed's Advanced Development Program When he visits his former work place to see Eugene P Kiefer, in the Pentagon's Air Force Office of Development and Planning (AFODP). Kiefer informs Carter about the competition. The Carter upon returning to California he informs Lockheed V.P. L. Eugene Root, the former top civilian official in the (AFODP). Lockheed also submits a design.
Early 1954
Kelly Johnson begins working on the project.
January 1954
Bell, Fairchild and Martin all had submitted their proposals. They were the Bell X-16 which had a maximum altitude of 69,500 ft, Fairchild submitted a single engine design called the M-195 with a maximum altitude of 67,200 ft and Martin's big wing version of the B-57 known as model 294. The Air Force approved both the B-57 and the Bell X-16 thinking that the B-57 was an interim project that could be completed and deployed rapidly while the more advanced concept from Bell was still being developed.
March 1954
Early in the month Kelly Johnson submits design CL-282 to the Office of Brig Gen Bernard A Schriever's (ODP). Where it is studied by Eugene Kiefer and Bud Wienberg. Schriever then asks Lockheed to submit a specific proposal.
27 March 1954
The Technologies Capabilities Panel meets with Eisenhower. The President informs them about the discovery of the Soviet Bison Bomber.
April 1954
Kelly Johnson submits a detailed description of the CL-282 and a proposal for the construction and maintenance of 30 planes. Johnson notes that the civilians were more interested than the generals. The design was also presented to SAC commander, General Curtis LeMay by Eugene Kiefer. LeMay walks out on Kiefer saying that his B-36's could do the job and he was only interested in planes that had wheels and guns.
12 May 1954
Gardner, Ayer and Norton meet in the Pentagon with the Chief of Operations Staff in the Office of Scientific Intelligence Philip G Strong, who considers the plane to be the best proposal. He promises to run it by Richard Bissell. Strong then persuades DCI Dulles to ask the Air Force to overfly the USSR. Dulles supported the idea of the USAF overflying the USSR but not the CIA.
18 May 1954
The CL-282 is evaluated by Major Seaberg at Wright Air Development Command (WADC).
24-25 May 1954
The ISP meets at Boston University to discuss the modifications being made to the B-57. It was determined that the modifications if the plane was built to military specifications it would not result in a plane with the ability to fly in excess of 65,000 ft. They needed a plane that could fly over 70,000 feet for the entire mission.
Summer of 1954
Newspapers and Magazines start publishing articles highlighting the growing airpower of the Soviet Union. Pictures of the Bison are prominently featured in these stories.
26 July 1954
Eisenhower authorizes Killian to recruit and lead a panel of experts to study "the country's technological capabilities to meet some of its current problems
02 August 1954
Donovan meets with L Eugene Root an old Air Force acquaintance who was now a Lockheed Vice President.
Early September 1954
Bissell has a young USAF officer put together a general status report on air reconnaissance programs.
13 September 1954
The Technological Capabilities Panel (TCP) begins meeting for the next twenty weeks.
24 September 1954
Bissell forwards this 16 page study to the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (DDCI), USAF Lt. Gen Charles Pearre Cabell
24-25 September 1954
The ISP meets Allen Donovan makes a strong case for the CL-282
Early October
The Project Three group drafted a complete program for an overhead reconnaissance effort based on the CL-282. Because it was feared that overflight with military aircraft could start WW3. They argued for civilian overflights in unarmed, unmarked aircraft with the CIA in control of the program. The military should only conduct such flights in times of war.
October 1954
WADC appeals to Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Development Lt. Gen. Donald L Putt to oppose the CL-282 program.
19 October 1954
In response to WADC's attack on the CL-282 Allen Donovan of the Intelligence Systems Panel met with General Putt.
Late October
The Project Three panel ( Land, James Baker, Edward Purcell of Harvard, Chemist Joseph W Kennedy of Washington University, St Louis Mathematician John W Tukey of Princeton & Bell Laboratories and Allen Latham, Jr of Arthur D Little, Inc an engineer and former treasurer of the Polaroid Corporation), meet with DCI Dulles and USAF Special Assistant for Research and Development Trevor Gardner. Dulles was reluctant to take on the CL-282 project.
Early November
Land and Killian met with the President to discuss high altitude reconnaissance. They agreed that the new program should be controlled by the CIA and not the military.
05 November 1954
Land writes to DCI Dulles strongly urging the CIA to undertake the CL-282 program. He also set forth the TCP's idea for forming an interagency task force or office to develop and coordinate collection requirements for the covert over-head reconnaissance effort.
17 November 1954
Kelly Johnson receives a phone call from Trevor Gardner asking him to come to Washington for a meeting. Johnson had to be persuaded to undertake the project. Lockheed's management instructed him not to commit to any program during the visit just get the information and return.
18 November 1954
Major John Seaberg, from the Wright Air Development Command, gives a briefing on the CL-282 project at a meeting with fifteen scientists of the Technological Capabilities Panel. This meeting along with the knowledge that President Eisenhower wanted this plane convinced the USAF to support the project. This forced the Air Force to abandon the X-16 program.
19 November 1954
Kelly Johnson returns to California and wrote in his Project Log, "I was impressed with the secrecy aspect and was told by Gardner that I was essentially being drafted for the project. It seemed in fact that if I did not talk quietly I might have to take a leave of absence from my job at Lockheed to do this special project.
23 November 1954
The Intelligence Advisory Committee (IAC) approved DCI Dulles request to undertake the CL-282 project.
24 November 1954
Dulles signs a three page memorandum drafted by DDCI Cabell, asking the President to approve the overhead reconnaissance project. He then meets with the Secretaries of State and Defense and senior Air Force Officials. Dulles and Cabell present the document to the President. He gave his verbal approval and designates that the Project be managed by the CIA and that the Air Force's role was to assist the CIA.
December 1954
James Baker had his preliminary design for folding the optical path using three mirrors , a prism and an f/20 lens system
02 December 1954
Dulles orders Bissell to go to the Pentagon with Herbert Miller, chief of the Office of Scientific Intelligence's Nuclear Energy Division and Executive Officer of the overflight project, to represent the organizational meeting for the U-2 project.
03 December 1954
The meeting is held at the Pentagon. They sat down with Air Force Officials Trevor Gardner and Lt. General Donald L Putt. They put together a "Project Staff" and renamed their Project AQUATONE. The Project Staff/Development Projects Staff consisted of Bissell, Miller and the staff of Bissell's Office of the Special Assistant to the DCI.
Kelly Johnson pulled together a team of engineers by pulling engineers off other Lockheed Projects. Their work week went from 45 hours to 65 hours in a short period of time.
Mid- December 1954
Eisenhower authorized DCI Dulles to use [money] from the Agency's Contingency Reserve Fund to finance the U-2 project.
22 December 1954
The agency signed a letter contract with Lockheed, using codename Project OARFISH.
January 1955
James Baker flys out to California to consult with Kelly Johnson on the weight and space limitations of the U-2's payload compartment.
21 February 1955
Richard Bissell writes Kelly Johnson a check and mails it to his house.
March 1955
DCI Dulles and Air Force Chief of Staff Nathan Twining meet to discuss how the Air Force CIA partnership would work. Twining wanted SAC headed by Curtis LeMay to have full control of the project once the planes and pilots were ready to fly. Dulles opposed this relationship. The talks dragged on for months. Eisenhower settled the dispute saying, "I want this whole thing to be a civilian operation. If uniformed personnel of the armed services of the of the United States fly over Russia, it is an act of war - legally- and I don't want any part of it".
02 March 1955
Formal contract SP-1913 is signed. All of the air frames were to be built in the period between July 1955 to November 1956.
April 1955
Bissell's staff developed and the Deputy Director for Support approved the first table of organization for Project AQUATONE.
12 April 1955
Richard Bissell, Lt.Col Kelly Johnson and Col Osmund Ritland flew to Area-51 which was an abandoned air strip from World War II.
29 April 1955
Richard Bissell signed an agreement with the Air Force and Navy in which the services agreed that the CIA "assumed primary responsibility for all security" for the overhead reconnaissance project AQUATONE.
May 1955
James A Cunningham, Jr, a former Marine Corps pilot came to work for the Project Staff as a administrative officer from the Directorate of Support. Two other officers came to work for the project at this time as well. Their names were redacted. There were the Finance Officer and the Contracting Officer.
27 June 1955
Col. Osmund J Ritland becomes Bissell's deputy.
July 1955
The CL-282 is given the designation U-2. And the Runway at Area-51 had been constructed (Johnson 124).
25 July 1955
Kelly Johnson delivers the first U-2 known as Article 341.
27 July 1955
Preliminary taxi trials begin.
01 August 1955
Test Pilot LeVier accelerates the plane to 70 knots.
04 August 1955
The first planned flight of the U-2 occurs.
08 August 1955
The first Official Flight of the U-2.
29 August 1955
The RAF's Canberra PR-7 reaches an altitude of 65,880 feet.
08 September 1955
The U-2 reached its initial design altitude of 65,600 feet.
22 September 1955
The U-2 experiences it's first flameout at 60,000 feet having to descend to 35,000 feet to relight the engine.
Autumn 1955
The Air Force conducts bailout experiments at high altitude using balloons.
03 October 1955
Regularly scheduled flights of the Military Air Transport Service (MATS) begin between Burbank and AREA-51 using USAF C-54.
17 November 1955
A MATS flight crashes killing all 14 people aboard the plane including the project security supervisor.
mid-January 1956
SAC officials are so impressed with the plane they also wanted to purchase a fleet of these planes.
25 February 1956
Khrushchev delivers his secret speech denouncing Stalin.
15 May 1956
The first fatality connected with the flying the U-2 occurred.
28 May 1956
DCI Allen Dulles meets with President Eisenhower to discuss the U-2's readiness for operations. Eisenhower still had not made a decision on overflights.
11 June 1956
Bissell moves U-2 detachment A to Wiesbaden Germany. The planes are then refitted with J-57/P31 engines. They are more powerful.
20 June 1956
Mission 2003 the first Overflight of Eastern Europe.
02 July 1956
Missions 2009 and 2010 were flown over Eastern Europe by Detachment A. Bissell and Cabel give President Eisenhower a briefing on the first overflight mission over Eastern Europe. He is informed that the U-2 was observed on radar but the altitude they observed it at was 42,000 feet. Eisenhower wanted to know if the planes were tracked. He worried that the CIA had lied to him about U-2's ability to fly undetected.
04 July 1956
Mission 2013 First overflight of the USSR by U-2 article 347. It overflies a number of Soviet Bomber bases in an effort to find out if the bomber gap exists.
05 July 1956
Mission 2014 overflies Moscow for the first time using filters to see through cloud cover.
09 July 1956
Missions 2020 and 2021 are flown
10 July 1956
Mission 2023 is flown. The Soviets send the U.S. Embassy a note protesting the overflights. The note claimed that a twin engine had over flown the Soviet Union. That evening Colonel Goodpaster calls Richard Bissell telling him to stop all overflights.
19 July 1956
President Eisenhower meets with Allen Dulles. The President was very unhappy because he had been told that the U-2 would fly undetected. The President had lost enthusiasm for the program. He noted that if the US had been subject to the same activity the reaction would be severe.
Early August 1956
Richard Bissell meets with the Land Committee to discuss ways in which to make the U-2 less observable to RADAR. Project Rainbow got under way by the end of the year.
03 August 1955
Dulles and Twinning met at SAC HQ in Omaha to sign the basic agreement titled "Organization and Delineation of Responsibilities- Project OILSTONE
31 August 1956
The second fatal of Article 354 crash occurs during a night flying exercise.
September 1956
U-2 detachment B operates out of Turkey. They kept track of developments of the Suez Crisis.
17 September 1956
DDCI Cabell and Richard Bissell went to the White House to ask for permission to conduct more Soviet overflights.
The loss of Article 346 occurs while on its takeoff ascent from Lindsey Air Force Base.
20 November 1956
President Eisenhower renews overflight of the Soviet Bloc. Mission 4016 is flown.
10 December 1956
The pilot known as the Lemon Drop Kid is nearly poisoned to death while overflying the Soviet Union.
19 December 1956
Loss of article 357 on 19 December 1956 the result of pilot hypoxia caused by a leak in his oxygen supply.
31 January 1957
Camera C is flight tested. Project engineers discovered that the 180 inch focal length of Camera C made the camera very sensitive to aircraft vibration. It made it hard to aim at altitudes above 68,000.
02 April 1957
The wallpaper stealth coating is flight tested on the U-2. This caused the plane known as article 341 to crash because its engine overheated. The pilot was killed. Kelly Johnson has an idea to install a hydraulic pylon to test radar cross sections at AREA-51.
06 May 1957
Richard Bissell reports back to the President on the progress of to reduce the U-2's radar cross section. Eisenhower approves Detachment B overflight of Baikonur Cosmodrome with dirty birds.
08 June 1957
A new U-2 detachment C is formed at Eielson AFB Alaska.
21 July 1957
Mission 4030 was the first operational deployment of a Dirty Bird. It flew over the Soviet Union. There were a total of 9 Dirty Bird missions flown over the USSR.
31 July 1957
A Dirty Bird mission flown is flown over the Black Sea.
04 August 1957
OPERATION SOFT TOUCH BEGINS
05 August 1957
A dirty bird photographs Baikonur Cosmodrome.
20,21 August 1957
U-2's conducted the first overflights of the Soviet testing grounds at Semipalatinsk
23 August 1957
DDCI Cabell, Richard Bissell and the Air Force Chief of Staff Twining met with President Eisenhower to report the results of Operation SOFT TOUCH. Bissell asks for permission to overfly the Soviet Union again. Eisenhower denies his request.
27 October 1957
A U-2 ELINT mission over the Black Sea had 12 attempts at interception by Soviet fighters.
Late 1957
Kelly Johnson agreed something had to be done. After a series of tests over Edwards AFB, Lockheed began coating the U-2s with a standard blue-black military specification paint on top and a lighter cloud-blue paint below. Subsequent tests ______ revealed that the U-2s were less conspicuous when painted all over with a matte-finish blue-black color, which helped them blend with the dark canopy of space.
01 March 1958
The sole overflight mission of 1958 was conducted by a dirty bird from Detachment C. Mission 6011 overflew the Soviet Far East and photographed the Trans-Siberian Railroad, Sovetskayn Gavan, the Tatar Strait, and a strange installation at Malaya Sazanka, which was eventually determined to be a structure for mating nuclear devices with their detonators. This was the first and only U-2 overflight of the Soviet Union staged [redacted].
21 April 1958
The NAVY makes their proposal to use balloons (Kelly 135).
07 July 1958
The Navy releases balloons from the deck of a carrier in the Bering Sea. This effort failed when the timers for descent went off too early. The failure was blamed on an Air Force technician.
29 July 1958
Eisenhower orders Goodpaster to tell the Air Force "the project is to be discontinued at once and every cent that has been made available as part of any project involving crossing the Iron Curtain is to be impounded and no further expenditures are to be made". Two days later Eisenhower followed up this order with a formal memorandum to Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy telling him that "there is disturbing evidence of a deterioration in the processes of discipline and responsibility within the armed forces". He cited in particular, "unauthorized decisions which have apparently resulted in certain balloons falling within the territory of the Communist Bloc" and overflight routes "that contravened my standing orders".
01 December 1958
Aviation Week carried a signed editorial which said:
On page 28 of this issue we are publishing the first account of Soviet nuclear powered bomber prototype along with engineering sketches in as much detail as available data permits. Appearance of this nuclear powered military prototype comes as a sickening shock to the many dedicated U. S. Air Force and Naval aviation officers, Atomic Energy Commission technicians, and industry engineers who have been working doggedly on our own nuclear aircraft propulsion program despite financial starvations, scientific scoffing and top level indifference, for once again the Soviets have beaten us needlessly to a significant technical punch.
01 January 1959
Richard Bissell becomes the CIA director of plans.
October 1959
Lee Harvey Oswald defects to the USSR.
02 February 1960
The President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities meets. Board member James Doolittle urged the President to use overflights of the Soviet Union to the maximum degree possible. The President refused on the grounds that it would ruin his ability to negotiate at the next summit meeting.
?? February 1960
Another U-2 overflight of the USSR occurs. The mission does not reveal a single missile site, but the analysts did discover a new Soviet bomber, dubbed the BACKFIN, at Kazan.
mid February 1960
President Eisenhower reviewed plans for four additional U-2 missions. President agrees to allow one more mission to be flown in March before the 30th. Because of complications in getting permission from Pakistan to use the airfield in March Eisenhower extends the deadline to April 10th.
01 March 1960
DCI Dulles was disturbed by the President's continued restrictions on the U-2. He writes a memorandum to the National Security Council asserting that the cardinal objective of obtaining information on the Soviet missile deployment could be better achieved if the U-2 program was given freer rein.
14 March 1960
The Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) writes an assessment of the Soviet Air Defense System's capabilities against the U-2. It was entitled "Evaluation of This report is then relayed to Richard Bissell by Col. William Burke acting chief of the Development Projects Division (DPD).
"The greatest threat to the U-2 is the SAM. Although the ATIC analysis concedes the remote possibility that the SAM may be less effective than estimated, their present evaluation is that the SAM (Guideline) has a high probability of successful intercept at 70,000 feet providing that detection is made in sufficient time to alert the site".
28 March 1960
President Eisenhower consents to a follow on flight to Operation SQUARE DEAL. This infamous flight would be known as Operation GRANDSLAM. This mission was peculiar in that he let the CIA experts pick the flight plan he did not micromanage it as usual.
09 April 1960
Operation SQUARE DEAL takes place. This is the last successful overflight of the Soviet Union. As had been the case in the last two overflights a second U-2 flew a diversionary mission along the Soviet-Iranian border. Mission 4155 with a U-2 equipped with a B-camera headed first for Saryshagan, where it obtained the first pictures of two new Soviet Radars the HEN HOUSE and HEN ROOST installations. Next it flew to the nuclear testing site at Semipalatinsk. Returning to the Saryshagan area, it crisscrossed the railroad network there and then proceeded to Tyuratam, where it photographed a new two pad, road served launch area that suggested a new Soviet missile was in the offing. During this mission the U-2's ELINT collection unit (System VI) indicated Soviet tracking at a very early stage of the Mission.
01 May 1960
Operation GRAND SLAM mission 4154 and the 24th deep penetration overflight of the Soviet Union
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