Posted on 08/30/2013 10:57:10 PM PDT by nickcarraway
On Feb. 21, 1955, Richard M. Bissell, a senior CIA official, wrote a check on an agency account for $1.25 million and mailed it to the home of Kelly Johnson, chief engineer at the Lockheed Company's Burbank, Calif., plant. According to a newly declassified CIA history of the U-2 program, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive, the agency was about to sign a contract with Lockheed for $22.5 million to build 20 U-2 aircraft, but the company needed a cash infusion right away to keep the work going. Through the use of "unvouchered" funds — virtually free from any external oversight or accounting — the CIA could finance secret programs, such as the U-2. As it turned out, Lockheed produced the 20 aircraft at a total of $18,977,597 (including $1.9 million in profit), or less than $1 million per plane. In other words, the project came in under budget, a miracle in today's defense contracting world.
A source of deep pride for the U.S. intelligence community, the U-2 program survived the May 1, 1960, shoot-down of Francis Gary Powers over the Soviet Union, and the plane went on to spy for the CIA until 1974 — and the Air Force still operates the latest version today. Nevertheless, the agency has been holding back information about the U-2 for years. At a 1998 CIA-sponsored symposium to celebrate the U-2 program, one of the conference speakers was asked to refrain from mentioning how Chinese Nationalist pilots, based in Taiwan, flew agency U-2s over and near the People's Republic to gather intelligence on the PRC, including its nuclear programs. The speaker ignored the request, but that did not stop the CIA from maintaining that such information should remain officially classified.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
“and the plane went on to spy for the CIA until 1974”
They were operating them through the 80s because i used to see them fairy constantly coming into Burbank right past where I kept my airplane in the middle of the night with no lights for maintance at the Skunk Works.
I think some are still flying but for NOAA or NASA doing scientific research.
Or is that for the NSA? Same difference, I guess.....
I thought this was about the band U2 being on the CIA payroll.
The Dragon lady
Obama is operating them now.
I think SR-71 was opening for them.
What a great designer. Kelly Johnson was a freaking aeronautical demigod.
Global Hawk cannot compare IMHO
Lost PTO power and skipped off a sand bank in the dark.
Would have made it with eyes.
Skipped into the face of another dune.
RIP
The U-2 was certainly useful, but was not a success at photographing the USSR, as Gary Powers discovered. Only satellites were successful at that.
On Google Earth I see some of them on the flight line at Beale AFB.
You take one loss in 50 years and dis the program?
Satellites are on a fixed pattern.
U-2’s have been lost over Cuba, China, and North Vietnam as well as the Soviet Union.
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