American Aerial Covert Operations During the Early Cold War PDF Download

Author: John J. Carter
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780773440678
Category : Aerial reconnaissance, American
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Can there be a transparency about covert national security policies? This book provides readers with more knowledge of this dilemma, and thereby gives them a fighting chance to work for at least its partial resolution by showing how Truman and Eisenhower utilized covert military operations to swing the tides of the early Cold War.

Author: Michael E. Haas
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 9780788149832
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Presenting a fascinating insider's view of U.S.A.F. special operations, this volume brings to life the critical contributions these forces have made to the exercise of air & space power. Focusing in particular on the period between the Korean War & the Indochina wars of 1950-1979, the accounts of numerous missions are profusely illustrated with photos & maps. Includes a discussion of AF operations in Europe during WWII, as well as profiles of Air Commandos who performed above & beyond the call of duty. Reflects on the need for financial & political support for restoration of the forces. Bibliography. Extensive photos & maps. Charts & tables.

Author: Theresa B Tabak
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1612510140
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 517

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Book Description
Dino A. Brugioni, author of the best-selling account of the Cuban Missile crisis, Eyeball to Eyeball, draws on his long CIA career as one of the world's premier experts on aerial reconnaissance to provide the inside story of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's efforts to use spy planes and satellites to gather intelligence. He reveals Eisenhower to be a hands-on president who, contrary to popular belief, took an active role in assuring that the latest technology was used to gather aerial intelligence. This previously untold story of the secret Cold War program makes full use of the author's firsthand knowledge of the program and of information he gained from interviews with important participants. As a founder and senior officer of the CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center, Brugioni was a key player in keeping Eisenhower informed of developments, and he sheds new light on the president's contributions toward building an effective and technologically advanced intelligence organization. The book provides details of the president's backing of the U-2's development and its use to dispel the bomber gap and to provide data on Soviet missile and nuclear efforts and to deal with crises in the Suez, Lebanon, Chinese Off Shore Islands, Tibet, Indonesia, East Germany, and elsewhere. Brugioni offers new information about Eisenhower's order of U-2 flights over Malta, Cyprus, Toulon, and Israel and subsequent warnings to the British, French, and Israelis that the U.S. would not support an invasion of Egypt. He notes that the president also backed the development of the CORONA photographic satellite, which eventually proved the missile gap with the Soviet Union didn't exist, and a variety of other satellite systems that detected and monitored problems around the world. The unsung reconnaissance roles played by Jimmy Doolittle and Edwin Land are also highlighted in this revealing study of Cold War espionage.

Author: Gregory Pedlow
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1634508513
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
The CIA’s 2013 release of its book The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance 1954–1974 is a fascinating and important historical document. It contains a significant amount of newly declassified material with respect to the U-2 and Oxcart programs, including names of pilots; codenames and cryptonyms; locations, funding, and cover arrangements; electronic countermeasures equipment; cooperation with foreign governments; and overflights of the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, and other countries. Originally published with a Secret/No Foreign Dissemination classification, this detailed study describes not only the program’s technological and bureaucratic aspects, but also its political and international context, including the difficult choices faced by President Eisenhower in authorizing overflights of the Soviet Union and the controversy surrounding the shoot down there of U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers in 1960. The authors discuss the origins of the U-2, its top-secret testing, its specially designed high-altitude cameras and complex life-support systems, and even the possible use of poison capsules by its pilots, if captured. They call attention to the crucial importance of the U-2 in the gathering of strategic and tactical intelligence, as well as the controversies that the program unleashed. Finally, they discuss the CIA’s development of a successor to the U-2, the Oxcart, which became the world’s most technologically advanced aircraft. For the first time, the more complete 2013 release of this historical text is available in a professionally typeset format, supplemented with higher quality photographs that will bring alive these incredible aircraft and the story of their development and use by the CIA. This edition also includes a new preface by author Gregory W. Pedlow and a foreword by Chris Pocock. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Author: Gregory W. Pedlow
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 0788183265
Category : Aerial reconnaissance
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
A comprehensive & authoritative history of the CIA's manned overhead reconnaissance program (MORP), which from 1954 to 1974 developed & operated 2 extraordinary aircraft, the U-2 & the A-12 OXCART. Describes not only the program's technological & bureaucratic aspects, but also its political & international context. The MORP, along with other overhead systems that emerged from it, changed the CIA's work & structure in ways that were both revolutionary & permanent. The formation of the Directorate of S&T in the 1960s, principally to develop & direct reconnaissance programs, is the most obvious legacy of the events in this study.

Author: Wolfgang W. E. Samuel
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496822811
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 took the American military by surprise. Rushing to respond, the US and its allies developed a selective overflight program to gather intelligence. Silent Warriors, Incredible Courage is a history of the Cold War overflights of the Soviet Union, its allies, and the People's Republic of China, based on extensive interviews with dozens of pilots who flew these dangerous missions. In 1954 the number of flights expanded, and the highly classified SENSINT program was born. Soon, American RB-45C, RB-47E/H, RF-100s, and various versions of the RB-57 were in the air on an almost constant basis, providing the president and military leadership with hard facts about enemy capabilities and intentions. Eventually the SENSINT program was replaced by the high-flying U-2 spy plane. The U-2 overflights removed the mysteries of Soviet military power. These flights remained active until 1960 when a U-2 was shot down by Russian missiles, leading to the end of the program. Shortly thereafter planes were replaced by spy satellites. The overflights were so highly classified that no one, planner or participant, was allowed to talk about them—and no one did, until the overflight program and its pictorial record was declassified in the 1990s. Through extensive research of existing literature on the overflights and interviews conducted by Wolfgang W. E. Samuel, this book reveals the story of the entire overflight program through the eyes of the pilots and crew who flew the planes. Samuel's account tells the stories of American heroes who risked their lives—and sometimes lost them—to protect their country.

Author: Stephen Lee McFarland
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 96

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Book Description
Except in a few instances, since World War II no American soldier or sailor has been attacked by enemy air power. Conversely, no enemy soldier orsailor has acted in combat without being attacked or at least threatened by American air power. Aviators have brought the air weapon to bear against enemies while denying them the same prerogative. This is the legacy of the U.S. AirForce, purchased at great cost in both human and material resources.More often than not, aerial pioneers had to fight technological ignorance, bureaucratic opposition, public apathy, and disagreement over purpose.Every step in the evolution of air power led into new and untrodden territory, driven by humanitarian impulses; by the search for higher, faster, and farther flight; or by the conviction that the air way was the best way. Warriors have always coveted the high ground. If technology permitted them to reach it, men, women andan air force held and exploited it-from Thomas Selfridge, first among so many who gave that "last full measure of devotion"; to Women's Airforce Service Pilot Ann Baumgartner, who broke social barriers to become the first Americanwoman to pilot a jet; to Benjamin Davis, who broke racial barriers to become the first African American to command a flying group; to Chuck Yeager, a one-time non-commissioned flight officer who was the first to exceed the speed of sound; to John Levitow, who earned the Medal of Honor by throwing himself over a live flare to save his gunship crew; to John Warden, who began a revolution in air power thought and strategy that was put to spectacular use in the Gulf War.Industrialization has brought total war and air power has brought the means to overfly an enemy's defenses and attack its sources of power directly. Americans have perceived air power from the start as a more efficient means of waging war and as a symbol of the nation's commitment to technology to master challenges, minimize casualties, and defeat adversaries.

Author: Robert Hopkins
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781902109503
Category : Aerial observation (Military science)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Few aviation subjects have been shrouded in more secrecy or been more controversial than Cold War aerial reconnaissance. Former reconnaissance pilot Robert S. Hopkins, III, offers new insights into strategic intelligence flights during the early years of the cold war. Primarily undertaken by RB-50s and RB-47s of the Strategic Air Command and by CIA U-2s, other Western nations such as Britain, Sweden, and Taiwan were equally committed to gathering intelligence about the Soviet Union and its allies, and conducted their own peripheral and overflight missions. Hopkins challenges longstanding beliefs that the flights served to prevent war, curtailed needless defense spending, and were undertaken by rogue generals bent on starting World War III. For the first time he shows the Soviet perspective on the flights, and makes a compelling case that reconnaissance flights did not have a sustained adverse effect on Soviet relations with the West. Using newly-declassified materials, interviews with crews and policy makers, and his own experience flying strategic reconnaissance missions, Hopkins links the daily operations of courageous fliers with decisions by presidents and prime ministers that decided the outcome of the Cold War.

Author: Ingard Clausen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Astronautics, Military
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Overview: Provides a history of the Corona Satellite photo reconnaissance Program. It was a joint Central Intelligence Agency and United States Air Force program in the 1960s. It was then highly classified.

Author: Serhii Plokhy
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190061014
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
The full story of the first and only time American and Soviets fought side-by-side in World War II At the conference held in in Moscow in October 1943, American officials proposed to their Soviet allies a new operation in the effort to defeat Nazi Germany. The Normandy Invasion was already in the works; what American officials were suggesting until then was a second air front: the US Air Force would establish bases in Soviet-controlled territory, in order to "shuttle-bomb" the Germans from the Eastern front. For all that he had been pushing for the United States and Great Britain to do more to help the war effort--the Soviets were bearing by far the heaviest burden in terms of casualties--Stalin, recalling the presence of foreign troops during the Russian Revolution, balked at the suggestion of foreign soldiers on Soviet soil. His concern was that they would spy on his regime, and it would be difficult to get rid of them afterword. Eventually in early 1944, Stalin was persuaded to give in, and Operation Baseball and then Frantic were initiated. B-17 Flying Fortresses were flown from bases in Italy to the Poltava region in Ukraine. As Plokhy's book shows, what happened on these airbases mirrors the nature of the Grand Alliance itself. While both sides were fighting for the same goal, Germany's unconditional surrender, differences arose that no common purpose could overcome. Soviet secret policeman watched over the operations, shadowing every move, and eventually trying to prevent fraternization between American servicemen and local women. A catastrophic air raid by the Germans revealed the limitations of Soviet air defenses. Relations soured and the operations went south. Indeed, the story of the American bases foreshadowed the eventual collapse of the Grand Alliance and the start of the Cold War. Using previously inaccessible archives, Forgotten Bastards offers a bottom-up history of the Grand Alliance, showing how it first began to fray on the airfields of World War II.