This year marks the 50th anniversary of the second Taiwan Strait crisis in 1958. In a series of posts, I will provide declassified documents related to the U-2 coverage for the crisis.
In June of 1958, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) conducted massive military exercises near Zhoushan Archipelago (舟山群島) “to support the Arabs’ anti-imperialist struggle as well as to crack down on the Nationalist army’s frequent and reckless harassment”. The US military soon took note of it and requested photographic coverage of the military build-up:
James Q. Reber was named the Intelligence Requirements Officer of CIA’s U-2 project and the chairman of the Ad hoc Requirements Committee in late 1955.
CIA sent a U-2 from Naha, Okinawa, Japan, on June 19, 1958, for the reconnaissance mission. This mission, numbered 6012 and flown by Lyle Rudd, was the first ever U-2 mission over the populated areas of Communist China.
The Mission Coverage Summary contains 30 pages. Here I only provide those pages related to Chinese airfields. You can use the coordinates listed in the document to pinpoint the locations on Google Earth. This document shows that PLA had deployed about 300 MiG-15/17 in the covered area.
