Metz, France

Deployment of Detachment A to RAF Lakenheath
April 1956 - June 1956

Courtesy Central Intelligence Agency

The CIA began deploying personnel and equipment to RAF Lakenheath on 29 April 1956. On 30 April 1956, two U-2s were disassembled and transported to RAF Lakenheath where the first of three CIA detachments was formed. The first CIA U-2 detachment, consisting of two U-2A aircraft and pilots, was known publicly as the 1st Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, Provisional (WRSP-1). The "provisional" designation gave the U-2 detachments greater security because provisional Air Force units did not have to report to higher headquarters. To the pilots and Lockheed personnel it was simply "Det A" and although technically a CIA operation, almost all logistics and maintenance support was provided by the Air Force and Lockheed. By 4 May, all of the detachment’s personnel and equipment, including two aircraft, had arrived at RAF Lakenheath.

Shortly afterwards, the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA) released an unclassified U-2 cover story stating that a Lockheed-developed aircraft would be flown by the USAF Air Weather Service to study such high-altitude phenomena as the jet stream, convective clouds, temperature and wind structures at jet-stream levels, and cosmic-ray effects up to 55,000 feet.

The first U-2 flight from Lakenheath occurred on 21 May 1956. Due to political considerations, no operational missions were flown from Lakenheath, and on the 15th June, Detachment A moved to the American air base at Wiesbaden, West Germany.

Web Site Comments: - Communication with Marty Knudson and Carl Overstreet in May 2005 (original U-2 pilots with Det A), indicate that there are errors in the CIA file. First and foremost is the fact that the initial deployment to the UK saw Det A arrive at RAF Mildenhall. The Det was eventually moved to RAF Lakenheath (some 10-15 miles from Mildenhall). Lakenheath was a combined RAF and a USAF SAC base at the time. Another questionable point is that the CIA file indicates there were two U-2 aircraft and two U-2 pilots in the initial deployment. Knudsen and Overstreet indicate that there were four U-2 aircraft and six U-2 pilots that made the move to Wiesbaden.

Courtesy Chris Pocock - The U-2 Spyplane Toward the Unknown - ISBN: 0-7643-1113-1

In the first days of May (1956), four planes and their support gear were loaded into C-124s, which took off. As usual, only those who "needed to know" were aware of the destination.

On 1 May 1956 the first of four U-2s arrived at the USAF's Lakenheath base in East Anglia inside a C-124. My mid-May, they were reassembled and flying. Royal Air Force fighters were tasked to attempt to practive intercepts against the U-2s - they didn't get near.

For cover purposes, the first U-2 detachment which deployed to the UK was designated Weather Reconnaissance Squadron (Provisional)-1 (WRSP-1). Within the USAF. a provisional squadron did not have to file routine reports to higher headquarters. The real designation was Detachment A, or Det A for short.

Det A was an unorthodox mix of USAF and CIA people, and civilian contract employees. General LeMay had ensured that his own men from SAC took most of the USAF slots, including the unit commander, operations officer, and their deputies. About a dozen more USAF officers and a similar number of enlisted men worked in operations, mission planning, provided support aircraft, and so on. There were about 40 CIA staffers looking after administration, security, and communications. Since all of the maintenance - planes, sensors, life support systems - was done under contract, there were upwards of 60 more civilians assigned. Then there were the six "sheep-dipped" operational pilots. They weren't really sure who their boss was - the USAF Colonel who was officially the unit commander, or the GS-12 grade staffer from CIA who was the unit executive officer.

Det A's stay in Britain was short-lived. Shortly before it arrived, Soviet leaders Bulganin and Khrushchev paid a good will visit to the UK, arriving at Portsmouth dockyard on a Soviet Navy cruiser. Without permission, the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) dispatched a frogman to spy on the ship from beneath the water line. He was never seen alive again. The Soviets publicized the incident, an embarrasses Sir Anthony Eden dismissed Sir John Sinclair, the head of MI6, and told parliament that the operation had been conducted "without the authority or knowledge of ministers". The political fall-out extended to Project AQUATONE. On 18 May, just days before the first overflights were due, Eden called Eisenhower and withdrew his permission for them.

A disappointed Bissell told embarassed British military and intelligence officers that a base in Germany was a second option. The Brits said they would allow Det A to stay at Lakenheath, but for training flights and maintenance purposes only. No overflights! Bissell and Johnson flew home, pondering their options. Selwyn Lloyd told Eden that "should the active operations in Germany ever become the subject of any enquiry, the British government could deny all knowledge of them, since the presence of the special aircraft remaining at Lakenheath could be explained by reference to their meteorological mission. Although Bissel and comoany could not have realized it at the time, this episode set the pattern for many future political restraints on U-2 operations. Even when they were persudaded to grant basing rights, foreign governments were reluctant to give unrestricted permission for illegal overflights.

On 11 June, 1956, Det A was moved to the busy USAF and CIA base at Wiesbaden, near Frankfurt. Wiesbaden would be temporary, pending construction of suitable facilities at Giebelstadt airfield, 70 miles further east.

Courtesy Martin Shough

It is true that the CIA's official history of Project Aquatone indicates that Lakenheath's U-2s had been withdrawn from UK soil by June 1956 with the focus of operations moving to Germany and Turkey. This was due to a belated reversal of the decision of the Eden government in Britain to allow basing at Lakenheath, but this does not necessarily mean that the move was considered by all involved to be permanent, or indeed that requiring the removal of U-2 static basing from Lakenheath was ever the same thing as denying opportunistic use of the airfield for some operations. In fact the "official" retraction here may have concealed a play within a play.

Details of British involvement are still a closely guarded secret, but it is known that soon after planning began in the US the CIA's Aquatone project director Richard Bissell conceived the idea of a "private" arrangement with the RAF, under which the British would have authority to run their own U-2 missions without reference to the White House [Ranelagh, 1986]. The reason for this was Eisenhower's extreme caution and his insistence that CIA come to him to seek specific approvals with rigid time constraints for every single flight. When it became clear to Bissell that political anxieties threatened even to curtail the programme, alongside arguing CIA's case he sought more flexibility via his deal with the RAF and he got it in return for sharing with Britain not only intelligence but planes.

Bissell now arranged a similar deal with Chancellor Adenauer in Germany (France was left out owing to mistrust of French security) and a U-2 base was also set up at Wiesbaden, Headquarters of US Air Forces Europe, but in this case the operation remained under direct CIA control.

The U-2 operation was manned by civilians - civilian pilots, mechanics and guards - When we drove by their little hangar (located in the middle of the airfield next to the runway you never saw a uniform - that's not to say they weren't military men wearing civilian clothes. They could have been - No one was allowed near them I know. This is accurate, except that Detachment A had supposedly already left the UK for Giebelstadt by early June, and this would appear to mean that both U-2s and all the logistical support would have gone with them.

Perkins had been at Lakenheath since September 1953. He would have been present when the two U-2s of the "1st Weather Reconnaissance Squadron (Provisional)" were shipped in and assembled on-site in April 1956 (travel orders for a lengthy list of Department of Air Force civilian U-2 personnel from Watertown, Nevada "to Lakenheath, England for permanent duty" on or about May 1, 1956 are available on this web site) and Perkins could easily have been misremembering the length of their brief stay.

On the other hand, perhaps the official history of this small corner of Richard Bissell's private intelligence empire has even now an unpublished chapter, because whereas it is widely stated that Detachment A arrived at Lakenheath with two aircraft, the censored CIA history (which, according to CIA historian Don Welzenbach himself in an interview with Paul Lashmar, was witheld specifically in order to conceal the extent of UK participation) suggests a different story. The phrase "together with all [deleted] U-2s" occurs in connection with the redeployment of Detachment A. It has been pointed out to me privately that this phrase implies a number larger than two. Also, why censor the number unless it implies something you wish not to be discovered? This suggests the possibility that if two U-2s were "overtly" redeployed to Giebelstadt, Germany, in June 1956, one (or more) U-2s did indeed remain based at Lakenheath under an arrangement with the RAF for continuation of UK operations which were effectively compartmented away from the Washington executive.