CIA Project OXCART

CIA PROJECT OXCART

AREA 51, NEVADA

By

TD Barnes

Copyright 2024 - TD Barnes

The CIA’s A-12 Blackbirds lined up at Area 51

Table of Contents

Foreword

Chapter 1 Project GUSTO

Chapter 2 Preparation for Transport

Chapter 3 - Convoy Preparations

Chapter 4 - Forming the Convoy

Chapter 5 - On-The-Road

Chapter 6 – Corporate Support

Chapter 7 – Special Projects

Chapter 8 – Sheep-dipping the Pilots

Chapter 9 – Targeting the Ox

Chapter 10 – Operation BLACK SHIELD

Chapter 11 – The Variants

Postscript

About the Author

Dedication

I dedicate this condensed account of the Central Intelligence Agency project OXCART at Area 51 to the memory of Lockheed engineer Dorsey G. Kammerer, who served at the Lockheed Skunk Works from its inception. Under the likes of the famous Lockheed engineer Kelly Johnson, Kammerer too participated as an engineer on the teams that built the P-38 Lightning, the P-80 Shooting Star, the F-104 Starfighter, the U-2 Angel, the A-12 Archangel and the other variants, the YF-12, M-21/D-21, and the SR-71 Blackbirds. I also dedicate this book to my friend, Central Intelligence Agency A-12 pilot Frank Murray who inspired and collaborated in portions of this more comprehensive version of his Oxcart Convoy story. Former CIA security officer Tom Stanks also contributed his experiences during the convoy of the A-12 Articles from Burbank, California to Area 51, Nevada. Last, but not least, I dedicate this book to Jason Owen, Dorsey Kammerer's grandson who provided me with the Kammerer scrapbook containing the otherwise unknown photos and documents included in this book and now in the possession of the historians at Area 51 and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Special Recognition

I especially recognize Big John Parangosky, a.k.a. Thomas P. Mclninch who first compiled the then classified Oxcart Story. In the mid-1950s and during the Cold War, Parangosky joined the CIA’s highly classified IDEALIST program management, where he participated in all aspects of the U-2 reconnaissance plane’s development, flight testing at Groom Lake, aka Area 51, Nevada, and its early deployments. Parangosky served as the CIA’s OXCART program executive officer and program manager, overseeing the CIA’s A-12 reconnaissance plane’s first test flight at Groom Lake on April 30, 1962, its operational certification in November 1965, and deployment overseas as part of operation BLACK SHIELD. In 1967, in recognition of his performance and contributions to the A-12 Program, Parangosky received the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, one of the CIA’s highest awards. The Nevada Aerospace Hall of Fame inducted Parangosky into the NVAHOF in 2014. Last, but not least, kudos to the spouses and family who supported those serving at Area 51, not knowing where he worked for what he did for near half a century. Sadly, many families will never know even that their loved one worked at the Area, much less for the CIA.

Foreword

Much of the world today is combating the spread of Islamic terrorism. The same fear existed as Communism spanned the globe-following World War II. Vast areas of Europe and Asia lay in ruin, and with 80 million people dead, the balance of power shifted, redrawing many borders and spawning a new war, the Cold War, as the Allies carved up the territories they occupied, each seeking to exert its influence around the world as much as possible. Europe quickly divided into regions of Western and Soviet domination, splitting the country in two. East Germany went to the Communists as Russia, the largest country in the world, invaded Poland and Budapest and sought revenge for the millions of Russians killed during Operation Barbarossa, the most massive German military operation of World War II.

The world remained in a state of political and military tension between the dominant powers in the Western and the Eastern Blocs. In 1950, the United States’ war of ideals, culture, power play, and espionage once again entered a shooting war, a domestic conflict between North and South Korea that became a proxy war between superpowers in the East and West. The United Nations, with the United States providing the principal military force, came to the aid of South Korea while the principle Communist powers, which included the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union, provided military assistance to the North.

President Harry S. Truman attempted to assuage the concerns of the war-weary American public by describing this undeclared war as an international police action. Nonetheless, those who fought considered it a war, a bloody war that ended in a stalemate (without a formalized peace treaty) in July 1953, with some 36,574 Americans killed, 7,984 missing in action, 4,714 of them listed as prisoners of war, many believed taken to the Russian-dominated Soviet Union.

To a much greater extent than Communist China, the Soviet Union became the most significant threat to Western democracy and as an existential threat to the United States. Around the globe, time after time, the Soviets opposed the US, either as a proxy enemy combatant or as an adversary at the United Nations. Moreover, the Soviet Union, an ideological adversary became a powerful military opponent with a nuclear arsenal.

US officials feared and prepared for a preemptive nuclear attack preceding a possible invasion. American citizens took precautions to protect themselves from exposure to radiation and made preparations for a nuclear winter. They built fallout shelters in their cities and their backyards, stocking them with food, water, and survival necessities. Air raid sirens sprouted up in cities and towns across nationwide, and the warbling sounds of Civil Defense klaxons heralded monthly drills. The US established the National Emergency Alarm Repeater (NEAR) program to supplement the existing siren warning systems and radio broadcast in the event of a nuclear attack. American schools conducted duck and cover drills where students took cover beneath their school desks with instructions not to look at the blinding light of the nuclear fireball.

High-ranking government officials had nuclear-proof bunkers into which to retreat. Crucial military facilities were built deep inside mountains and sealed behind thick steel blast-proof doors. Everywhere citizens knew to look for the ominous placarded yellow and black trefoil warning signs that identified public fallout shelters stocked with food and water. Throughout America, citizens prepared for an apocalyptic nuclear sneak attack or surprise invasion by the Soviet Union.

In 1955, the United States became embroiled in a military conflict in Southeast Asia. As with Korea, it started as a civil war in 1950 but this time in Vietnam, then known as French Indochina. American involvement began with the US providing military advisors and support to the French troops against communist forces in North Vietnam. A decisive defeat in 1954 effectively ended a century of French colonial rule and split Vietnam in two.

In many ways, the civil war resembled the Korean conflict, wherein the North Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong (also known as the National Liberation Front) fought to reunify their country. Also, like what happened in Korea, it immediately became another Cold War proxy conflict between the superpowers. The US government viewed its involvement in the war as a way to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam—as part of a more comprehensive containment policy aimed at stopping the spread of communism by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist allies who did so by providing advisors and material support to the North. The communist countries supported the North while the US, South Korea, Australia, Thailand, and other anti-communist allies supported the South. The war continued to escalate throughout the 1960s and ended with a North Vietnamese victory in April 1975. By that time casualties included 58,315 Americans dead, 303,644 wounded, and more than 1,600 listed as missing in action. Estimates of Vietnamese military and civilian casualties vary from 966,000 to 3.1 million, plus thousands more in neighboring Cambodia and Laos.

As the Cold War heated up, it became increasingly vital for US military leaders to understand their adversaries' capabilities. The closed societies of the Communist nations made it nearly impossible to collect intelligence at ground level. Therefore, it became necessary to observe them from above, which the US Air Force and Navy attempted by flying ferret flights, reconnaissance missions over the Soviet Union only to lose over 200 pilots and crews to Russian antiaircraft guns. Ferret flights, as the reconnaissance missions had been nicknamed, dated back to World War II, when converted bombers carrying electronic equipment located enemy radar stations. Cold war ferret flights, made by the Navy and Air Force, had a similar purpose: pinpointing the location and capabilities of the enemy’s radar. In the event of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, the information would be critical to the US Strategic Air Command bombers, which would have to jam, destroy, or evade radar to strike Soviet targets.

Flying unarmed and at night along the Soviet borders or even hundreds of miles inland, the ferret crews did not try to hide from the enemy radar; instead, they would get deliberately caught. Then they could listen to the enemy response through radio, radar, and other signals. The plan was to capture the information, then get out before fighters scrambled or missiles launched.

Surveillance crews jammed into cramped compartments, where they huddled over radar screens and electronic monitoring devices, told that if they were shot down, they were on their own. They couldn’t expect rescue. Because the ferret missions were top secret, the families knew nothing about the nature of the flights—or what happened when they went wrong

Most aircraft flown on ferret flights, like the PB4Y-2 Privateer, the RB-50, and the RB-29, were variants of piston-powered World War II-era bombers, but some were newer jet aircraft. One of the Air Force’s favorites, the RB-47E carried one camera in the nose and up to six in the modified bomb bay, as well as sensors,  to gather electromagnetic signals.

*Secret Casualties of the Cold War

Gary Powers wasn’t the only one. More than 200 airmen were shot down while spying on the Soviet Union.

The PBY4 Privateer and other aircraft used for ferret flights carried crews on espionage missions; many didn’t return. (Naval History and Heritage Command)

Near the gates of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland, a C-130 Hercules sits in National Vigilance Park, on a small sliver of land sandwiched between a gas station and a parking lot. The aircraft is painted to represent Air Force 60528, which was shot down by four MiG-17s on September 2, 1958, after entering the Soviet airspace. On the NSA website, a grainy gun-camera image from one of the MiGs shows the C-130 ablaze; it crashed 28 miles inside the Armenian border, and all 17 crew members killed.

When the families of the victims received notification of the crash, they weren’t told of the crew’s actual mission—spying on the Soviets—or what happened to them. They heard a cover story of a routine mission gone awry. Although the Soviets denied shooting down the aircraft (they claimed it fell onto their territory), a few weeks after the crash, they returned the remains of six individuals. They provided no information about the other 11 crew members.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a US excavation team searched previously classified files for clues to what had happened to the rest of the crew. They visited the crash site in Sasnashen, Armenia, in 1993. Had the others survived the crash, and perhaps been taken prisoners of war? The team interviewed the MiG-17 pilot who shot down the C-130 and asked if he’d seen anyone bail out of the aircraft. He hadn’t. They asked other witnesses: No one had seen parachutes.

Team members interviewed a General Sozinov who was at the site minutes after the crash. He said the aircraft burned for eight hours; survivors were unlikely. When they visited the site, they found hundreds of skeletal fragments; with these, they were able to identify two other crew members. They concluded the others had died there as well. The remains arrived back to the United States, and on September 2, 1998, the families of Air Force 60528 gathered at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia for their loved one's burial with full military honors.

The case of Air Force 60528 is unusual—not because the U.S. government withheld the truth about its purpose for nearly 40 years, but because the crew members’ remains were ultimately recovered and returned, and their memories honored. For the crews of at least 30 other lost reconnaissance airplanes, there has been no recovery, no return,