UNORTHODOX: AIRPLANE AND MAN

• Document Type: FOIA
• Keywords: STUDIES IN INTELLIGENCE
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 0000621349
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 11
• Document Creation Date: June 22, 2015
• Document Release Date: October 8, 2009
• Case Number: F-2009-00665
• Publication Date: September 1, 1988

APPROVED FOR RELEASED
DATE: 09-23-2009
TITLE: Unorthodox: Airplane and Man
AUTHOR: Donald E. Welzenbach and Nancy Galyean
VOLUME: 32 ISSUE: Fall YEAR: 1988
 AW
V
FN'~T E L -L I G E N C 7
A collection of articles on the historical, 0 iOTal. ..
All statements of fact, opinion or analysis expressed in Studies in Intelligence are those of
the authors. They do not necessarily reflect official positions or views of the Central
Intelligence Agency or any other US Government entity, past or present. Nothing in the
contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Government endorsement of an
article's factual statements and interpretations.
 UNORTHODOX: AIRPLANE AND MAN
Donald E. Welzenbach
Nancy Galyean
On Wednesday, 12 May 1954, a quiet, close-mouthed man left the
Pentagon and returned to his office at the Central Intelligence Agency's original
home at 2430 E Street, NW. There he began drafting a memorandum for the
record, "Special Aircraft for Penetration Photo Reconnaissance." With that
document, he was setting in motion an activity which would have world-
shaking ramifications. Philip Grandin Strong, Chief of the Office of Scientific
Intelligence's Operations Staff, signed his memorandum and started it on its
way to the Office of the Director of Central Intelligence, Allen W. Dulles.
Strong wrote:
The following information was secured today in the Office of the
Under Secretary of the Air Force.
1. Overflight is now under consideration in the Air Staff as a
separate problem. It has been recognized that existing Air Force
equipment is not adequate for penetration overflights.
2. Proposals for special reconnaissance aircraft have been
received in the Air Staff from Lockheed, Fairchild, and Bell. Each of
these proposals recognizes that the present bottleneck is the high-
altitude engine. Consequently, the Special Assistant for Research, Air
Force, has been pressing General McCormick, Deputy Commander,
ARDC, (Air Research and Development Command) to establish on
the most urgent basis the test facilities necessary to check engines such
as the J-73 at altitude ranges between 70,000 and 80,000 feet.
3. The Lockheed proposal is considered to be. the best. It has
been given the type designation of CL-282 and in many respects is a
jet-powered glider based essentially on the Lockheed Day fighter XF
104. It is primarily subsonic but can attain transonic speeds over the
target with consequent loss of range. With an altitude of 73,000 feet
over the target, it has a combat radius of 1720 nautical miles but the
altitude over target would be reduced to 71,500 feet.' The CL-282
can be manufactured mainly with XF 104 jigs and designs. It has,
however, a special wing and a slightly different nose assembly. It has
no landing gear, being launched from a cart. It can take off within a
thousand feet and lands on a reinforced belly rib. It is powered with
a J-73 engine and at varied altitude has speeds between 450 and 500
knots. The prototype of this plane can be produced within a year
from the date of order. Five planes could be delivered for operations
within two years.
 S ET
Unorthodox
4. The Bell proposal is a more conventional aircraft, having
normal landing gear. As a result, its maximum altitude over target is
69,500 feet and the speed and range are not as good as the Lockheed
CL-282.
5. The Air Staff has received information (Note: Of doubtful
accuracy) that the British have already overflown Kapustin Yar with
a Mark 1 Comet. As this information indicated that this plane had
been attacked by Russian interceptors, the chances are that there is
confusion with the Ferret, interception of which we are already
aware. The information received also indicated that the British plan
further overflights of Kapustin Yar.
6. It is felt in the Air Staff that two factors are essential to the
securing of NSC approval for penetration overflights:
a. A technical solution by Department of Defense which is
near the ultimate in reconnaissance aircraft.
b. A friend in court when Defense makes its presentation, i.e.
strong support from the DCI.
How did an Agency executive become the conduit for an Air Force project
that, unknown to him at the time, had been turned down by the Pentagon?
Strong, a reserve Marine colonel, had been associated with intelligence
most of his adult life. He arrived at the Agency in 1950 from the State
Department, where he had been Chief of Acquisition and Distribution
Division, a remnant of an Office of Strategic Services unit, and where he began
an association with Air Force advisory committees that gave him an entree to
high-level Pentagon officials. When he moved to CIA in 1950, Strong continued
to attend meetings of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (AFSAB) and
several other panels investigating ways to use new technologies to collect
intelligence on the Soviet Union. One of his assignments was on a unique
Intelligence Systems Panel (ISP), chaired by the renowned optical expert James
G. Baker of Harvard University. This was the key link which brought Strong to
the office of Air Force Under Secretary Trevor Gardner in May 1954.
Momentum
Strong's memorandum eventually arrived at the desk of Richard M.
Bissell, Jr., who was serving as Special Assistant to the DCI for Planning and
Coordination.2 Bissell thought the Lockheed plane had merit and told Strong to
get some topflight scientists to advise on the matter. However, the CL-282
concept apparently made little impression on Bissell, because he promptly
forgot about it. Bissell may have considered the spyplane as just one more in a
series of ideas, some of them far-fetched, with which Strong bombarded his
superiors.3
Strong's memorandum caused DCI Dulles to send a memorandum on 29
May 1954 to Air Force Chief of Staff Nathan Twining requesting that the Air
2 Chief, Support Staff/SI, Memo for ADSI, 13 May 54, TS 115292, p. 6. Downgraded to Secret.
Interview with Richard Bissell, 5 October 1984.
2 ET
 Unorthodox 3~
Force take the initiative in obtaining the decisions necessary to permit
overflight of the Soviet guided-missile test range at Kapustin Yar. Dulles'
memorandum reinforced the sense of urgency about gaining overhead recon-
naissance and maintaining contact between CIA and Air Force officials who
had met on a number of occasions to explore the possibilities of the proposal.4
Strong, taking advantage of his contacts on interagency panels, went about
drumming up support for the CL-282 high-altitude aircraft. He mentioned the
Lockheed project to fellow ISP member Allen Donovan of Cornell Aeronauti-
cal Laboratory, formerly the Curtiss-Wright Research Laboratory, during a
conversation, probably late in May.
In his turn, Donovan told ISP Chairman Baker about Strong's bit of
intelligence on a new aircraft. Baker suggested that Donovan, an aeronautical
engineer and sailplane enthusiast, go to southern California to search out
whatever ideas on high-altitude flight might be available from the many
aircraft firms there. At this point, neither Donovan nor Baker had seen a
drawing of the Lockheed plane. Strong was the only ISP member who knew
what it looked like. At some point in mid-1954, Strong apparently obtained a
copy of the Lockheed drawing. Donovan was unable to make the west coast
trip until late July, when he had other business there. He finally got to
Lockheed's Skunk Works in Burbank on Monday, 2 August 1954, and Kelly
Johnson showed him conceptual drawings of the CL-282. Donovan thus
became the CL-282's next champion. When the ISP reconvened on 24
September 1954, Donovan recommended Kelly's plane to Chairman Baker.
Between the time of Donovan's trip to the west coast, in late July-early
August, and the ISP meeting in late September, Polaroid President Edwin H.
(Din) Land, also a member of the ISP, traveled to Washington to begin work as
Chairman of the Project Three Group (Intelligence) of the Technological
Capabilities Panel (TCP). This panel, headed by MIT President James R.
Killian, Jr., was organized at the specific request of Killian's close friend,
President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
The TCP's main task was to assess the nation's defenses against a surprise
attack by the Soviets. Eisenhower's concern was heightened by the paucity of
hard intelligence about Soviet capabilities and intentions, and the reportedly
growing Soviet fleet of intercontinental BISON bombers. While Land was in
Washington in August 1954 organizing his Project Three panel, Strong showed
him drawings of the CL-282. As soon as Land saw them, he picked up the
telephone and called Jim Baker, another Project Three member, to tell him:
"Jim, I think I have the plane you are after." 5 At the time, Baker, an astronomy
professor at Harvard who also designed special-purpose lenses for the Air
Force, had taken up residence in the Alban Towers at 3700 Massachusetts
Avenue for the six-month duration of the Project Three study so he could
continue working on his lens designs when he was not involved in TCP
activities. It was not clear to Baker at this time that the plane Land was telling
a Memo for RM Bissell from PG Strong, "Subject: Overflight of Kapustin Yar," 15 Oct 54,
Downgraded to Secret.
Interview with Edwin H. Land, 20 Sep 84.
 \01 " T Unorthodox
him about was the same plane Donovan had spoken to him about in late May
or early June and had seen during his recent California trip. After Land showed
Baker Strong's copy of Kelly Johnson's conceptual drawing, Baker returned to
his apartment and began designing a camera and lens system that would fit in
the Lockheed craft.
Toward the end of August, Land conferred with Bissell about the aircraft.6
Once again, Bissell was not overly enthused about the subject, but he asked a
young Air Force officer assigned to his staff, Lieutenant Douglas E. Ashford, to
put together a general status report on aerial reconnaissance programs. In early
September, Bissell sent Ashford's report to DDCI Charles Pearre Cabell, an Air
Force lieutenant general. In his cover memorandum, Bissell called Cabell's
attention to a "specialized aircraft called the Lockheed CL-282."
By late October 1954, Land's five-member TCP panel had drafted a
complete program for an overhead reconnaissance effort based on the CL-282.
Convinced that any overflights should be conducted by civilians in unarmed,
unmarked aircraft rather than by military personnel in military planes, Land
and Killian met with President Eisenhower to gain approval for assigning
project management to the CIA with Air Force assistance. Kelly Johnson began
work within days of hearing that the plane had been approved. He did not even
wait for a signed contract. In less than two years the U-2, as the CL-282 was
renamed in 1956, was flying operational missions over the Soviet Union.7
The First 35 Years
Philip Grandin Strong was born on 4 January 1901 in Englewood, New
Jersey. His father, Benjamin- Strong, served as-Governor-of the New York
Reserve Bank from 1914 until his death in 1928. The elder Strong, who held
numerous foreign decorations, including the Grand Cross of the Legion of
Honor, was responsible for a gold fund of $100 million raised to meet financial
obligations during World War I. By the time of his death, his bank's gold
reserves were almost 10 percent of all the gold in the world. During the early
1920s, he conferred with West European bankers and financiers informally,
helped stabilize currencies, and warned of the dangers of American isolation-
ism.
Philip Strong's mother, Margaret, committed suicide in 1905, when Philip
was four years old.8 At the age of nine, Phil Strong was sent to the Fessenden
School in West Newton, Massachusetts, and later the Hill School in Pottstown,
Pennsylvania. In 1918, Strong enrolled in Princeton University, where he
joined the varsity swimming team; he left without graduating in 1920.
After spending a few months in Europe, Strong joined the Citizens'
National Bank of Oneonta, New York, as a teller in 1921. Two years later, he
t' Land interview, 20 Sep 84.
7 J.R. Killian, Jr., on Sputniks, Scientists, and Eisenhower: A Memoir of the First Special
Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1977,
p. 68.
" Lester V. Chandler, Benjamin Strong, Central Banker, The Brookings Institution, Wash-
ington, DC., 1958, p. 30.
 moved to New York City to work in the credit department of Hamilton
National Bank. In February 1926, Strong was given a commission in the Marine
Corps Reserve. He also acquired an aircraft pilot's license that year. The small,
low-budget military forces of the United States between the two world wars
evidently could not provide a more permanent career for him, one which
might have appealed to his restless temperament. Despite his father's example,
banking had little appeal for Phil Strong.
In 1928, after another brief stay in Europe, Strong became an assistant to
the president of the Scientific Production Corporation, a railway equipment
manufacturer. In August of that year, he married Emma Thompson Smith of
Ballston Spa, New York, and, in October, his father died, leaving a trust fund
to his children.
In 1930, Strong left the Scientific Production firm to work for Alma Draft
Gear Corporation, an Austrian venture-capital attempt to introduce new
railway equipment in the United States. This endeavor failed and the firm
ceased its US operations in 1932.
During the Great Depression, Phil Strong moved west, where he could
supplement his income from the trust fund by working, first as a mill hand and
later as a foreman, in an ore-concentration plant of Pacific Coast Borax
Company in Amargo, California. While employed by Borax, Strong was
granted six-months' leave to attend classes in chemistry, mathematics, miner-
alogy, metallurgy, geology, and Spanish at the Mackay School of Mines in Reno,
Nevada. During this period, Strong became estranged from his wife, Emma,
and they were divorced in Reno in November 1932. Strong left the Borax
company in 1935 after a serious accident which injured his back. By this time,
he had become a captain in the Marine Reserve and was recalled to active duty
in September 1935 to attend staff training courses at the Reserve Section
Headquarters in Quantico, Virginia. A good marksman, he led the Marine
Reserve Rifle Team at national matches during 1935 and 1936.
Adventurer
By then, Strong was 35 years old with hardly a settled career. His trust
fund, while not large, permitted him a measure of freedom. His active duty
with the Marines ended, in January 1937 he embarked on yet another trip to
Europe, only this time he kept traveling east and ended up going around the
world. As he described it on his application for federal employment in 1947:
The year 1937 was spent in travel which included the following
countries and areas: Germany, Poland, East Prussia, Danzig, Lithua-
nia, Latvia, Estonia, Russia (including Leningrad, Moscow, Kharkov,
Caucasia, Trans-Caucasia including Tiflis & Baku), Iran, Irak, Syria,
Lebanon, Palestine, Aden, Bombay, Ceylon, Singapore, Java
(including Betavia, Soerabaja, and various Indonesian ports), Philip-
pine Islands (including Mindanao, Cebu, Negros & Luzon), and Hong
Kong. In Germany, the travel included close contact for the purposes
of observation with various Youth Organizations. In Russia, by
traveling "hard class," I was able to secure considerable knowledge of
parts of the country visited. Some time was spent in Iran in contact
 Unorthodox ET
General C.B. Vogel, commander of the First Marine Amphibious Corps. In his
new assignment, he had to plan the embarkation of the First Corps from
California to Noumea, New Caledonia, in December 1942.
Major Strong was transferred to Vice Admiral Willis A. Lee's staff as Chief
Intelligence Officer, Flag Marine Officer, and Staff Legal Officer. At the time
he joined Lee's staff, according to Strong's government application forms, there
was practically no intelligence information except that received by radio.
During the next 27 months, Strong "built up a reference library on all areas of
the Pacific, supervised the use of captured enemy documents, prisoner
interrogations, and radio intercepts; provided daily summary reports and spot
intelligence" to Admiral Lee.
It was a busy period, during which Strong participated as Admiral Lee's
representative in planning a number of major Pacific campaigns. He also acted
as personal representative of Admirals Lee and Marc A. Mitscher in revising
procedures for supplying intelligence to the Combatant Fleet by the Joint
Intelligence Center. In all, Strong was involved in some 27 air-sea actions and
two major fleet battles. By 1944, Strong was a lieutenant colonel and had been
awarded the Legion of Merit (Combat).
In March 1945, Strong was reassigned to Camp Pendelton, California, as
an executive officer in the Marine Training and Placement Command. He
returned to intelligence work briefly as World War II came to a close, serving
as assistant chief of staff, G-2 (Intelligence) and G-3 (Counterintelligence) for
Lt. Gen. Holland Smith, commanding general of the San Diego area.
After Japan surrendered, Strong was placed on terminal leave until
January 1946 and returned-to inactive duty status. By this time, he was 45 years
old and had been bitten by the "intelligence bug." He spent almost ten months
looking for the."right" job. The Second World War had demanded large
numbers of intelligence officers, but the postwar foreign affairs bureaucracy
and military services could not accommodate all the talented and unusual
people they had trained, people who, like Strong, had found a calling in
intelligence work. Eventually, Strong was able to find a position at the State
Department in late June 1946 as the Chief of Acquisition and Distribution
Division. His responsibilities included procuring and disseminating intelligence
materials and foreign publications and coordinating with other government
agencies. He functioned as a liaison member of the State Department's Science
Policy Survey Group and coauthored "Science and Foreign Relations" and its
classified supplement, "Scientific Intelligence," published by State in 1950.
Nonetheless, Strong appears to have found this job rather limiting, because he
began applying to the Central Intelligence Agency the following year.
In mid-1942, before Strong left for duty in the Pacific, he attended a party
in Washington given by his sister where he met Walter L. Pforzheimer, who
was in military intelligence. Later that year, Pforzheimer introduced Strong to
Gilbert Huntting and his Swedish wife, Margot. Strong and Margot Huntting
began a correspondence which lasted through the end of the war. By the time
Strong returned to Washington in late 1945, the Hunttings had divorced and
 Unorthodox
Strong began courting the Swedish beauty in earnest. In December 1946, Phil
Strong married Margot Berglind Huntting; Walter Pforzheimer was best man
at the ceremony.
With a strong recommendation from Pforzheimer, Phil Strong became a
CIA employee on 3 October 1950 as a physical scientist and Chief of
Production Branch in the Plans and Production Staff of the Office of Scientific
Intelligence. Seven months later, he transferred to OSI's? Operations Staff,
which he headed during 1952 and 1953.
In 1953, Strong began an association with the. Air Force's Scientific
Advisory Board that would ultimately lead him to the Office of the Under
Secretary of the Air Force on 12 May 1954. Strong's relationship with the
community of scientists in Boston was bolstered by his association with the
Boston Scientific Advisory Committee, a group of engineers and physicists from
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard, and other New England
universities, which advised CIA on technical matters.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, it was the Boston scientific community
that fueled the Pentagon with vital ideas for defensive and offensive systems.
Most of these scholars had participated in MIT's Radiation Laboratory effort
during World War II where the British invention of radar was perfected and
sonar was developed. Radiation Laboratory, a larger effort than the Manhattan
Project, was headed by Dr. Lee A. DuBridge. James Killian, then an assistant
to MIT President Karl Compton, was responsible for coordinating the federal
government's funding of this project.
As a member of AFSAB, Strong was able to keep abreast of all the
advanced projects being funded by the Air Force. He was also aware of a whole
range of ideas being proposed by subcommittees and ad hoc units which
needed funding. During the mid-1950s, Strong was the pipeline through which
the Agency learned of numerous Pentagon intelligence collection projects. (It
should be remembered that the Defense Intelligence Agency was not estab-
lished until 1 October 1961.) During the 1950s, each military service had its
own G-2 intelligence unit and engaged in all types of intelligence collection. By
this time, Strong had become a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve and used
his influence to gather information in the Pentagon, where he had a desk,
telephone, and services of a secretary.
Strong forged firm relationships throughout the intelligence community
during the mid-1950s that earned his membership on a number of committees
and working groups. Quiet though he was, Strong was an inveterate "snoop"
and used his membership on government-wide units to ferret out secret
projects. His secretary kept a cardfile for each project by codename, by subject,
and by funding unit." Strong set little store by compartmentation, if it meant
that some agency or Pentagon unit might be keeping something from him.
Indeed, his papers in the Agency archives are one of the few locations for
information on CIA's involvement in an infamous Air Force balloon project.
These same holdings also provided the bulk of the information that gave rise to
the "family jewels" revelations during the stewardship of DCI William E.
9 Interview with) I10 Oct 83.
 Unorthodox S RET
Colby in 1975. Strong was not on the distribution for many of these documents,
and some were from Pentagon and Agency officers who were unaware that he
possessed them.
For more than a decade, Strong was the Agency representative on the
AFSAB. In 1955, he was named the CIA member of National Security Council
Working Group 5520; the next year he added membership on the Nuclear
Energy Working Group. During 1956 and 1957, he was a member of the Ad
Hoc Requirments Committee which produced the targeting requests for U-2
overflights. In the fall of 1957, he served for three months as chairman of the
Intelligence Advisory Committee's Working Group on Defense Against Ballis-
tic Missiles. From February to June 1958, Strong was detailed as Chairman of
the US Communications Intelligence Board's ELINT Task Force.
Strong was retired from the Marine Corps Reserve in 1957 as a brigadier
general. In July 1958, he was appointed Deputy Assistant Director of Scientific
Intelligence (Collection), a position he held for the next five years. In late 1963,
when OSI was transferred from the Directorate of Intelligence to the Direc-
torate of Science and Technology, Strong was moved to the staff of the Deputy
Director for Intelligence, and in February 1964 he became the Deputy Chief
of the Collection Guidance Staff.
Strong retired from the Agency on 17 April 1964 and was awarded the
Distinguished Intelligence Medal by DCI John McCone for his "important
contributions to the development of programs which have resulted in major
intelligence gains to the United States." Strong and his wife, Margot, moved to
a farmhouse in rural Vermont, where they lived until 1968, when Margot
became ill with cancer. The Strongs then returned to the Washington area,
where Margot died on 7 January 1970. Brigadier General Philip Grandin
Strong (USMCR, Ret.) died in Washington, D.C., on 12 November 1971 and
was buried in Arlington Cemetery.
One of CIA's "legends," Strong remains an impressive but enigmatic
figure. He does not seem to fit the current profiles of what CIA employees
should be. It is hard to imagine recruiting anyone like him today.
T gar is a zs