CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF 

NATIONAL RECONNAISSANCE

JANUARY 2012
A History of Satellite Reconnaissance 

The Perry Gambit & Hexagon Histories

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF 

NATIONAL RECONNAISSANCE

CHANTILLY, VA

JANUARY 2012
Preface

Coinciding with the commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the National Reconnaissance Office 

(NRO), the Director of the NRO, Mr. Bruce A. Carlson, publically announced the declassification of the 

Gambit and Hexagon imagery satellite systems on 17 September 2011. This announcement constituted 

the NRO’s single largest declassification effort in its history. The Gambit and Hexagon programs were 

active for nearly half of the organization’s history by the time of the declassification announcement. 

Their history very much represents the NRO’s history—one that is defined by supremely talented 

individuals seeking state of the art space technology to address difficult intelligence challenges. 

The United States developed the Gambit and Hexagon programs to improve the nation’s means 

for peering over the iron curtain that separated western democracies from east European and Asian 

communist countries. The inability to gain insight into vast “denied areas” required exceptional systems 

to understand threats posed by our adversaries. Corona was the first imagery satellite system to 

help see into those areas. It could cover large areas and allow the United States and trusted allies 

to identify targets of concern. Gambit would join Corona in 1963 by providing significantly improved 

resolution for understanding details of those targets. Corona provided search capability and Gambit 

provided surveillance capability, or the ability to monitor the finer details of the targets.

For many technologies that prove to be successful, success breeds a demand for more success. 

Once consumers of intelligence—analysts and policymakers alike—were exposed to Corona and 

Gambit imagery, they demanded more and better imagery. Consequently, the Air Force, who operated 

the Gambit system under the auspices of the NRO, entertained proposals for an improved Gambit 

system shortly after initial Gambit operations commenced. They received a proposal from Gambit’s 

optical system developer, Eastman Kodak, for three additional generations of the Gambit system. 

Ultimately the Air Force settled on only developing the proposed third generation because the proposed 

second generation offered minimal incremental improvement and the fourth generation appeared 

technologically unachievable at the time. The third generation became known as Gambit-3 or Gambitcubed while it was under development. Once it replaced the first generation, it simply became Gambit. 

The new Gambit system, with its KH-8 camera system, provided the United States outstanding imagery 

resolution and capability for verifying strategic arms agreements with the Soviet Union.

Corona was expected to serve the nation for approximately two years before being replaced by 

more sophisticated systems under development in the Air Force’s Samos program. It turned out that 

Corona served the nation for 12 years before being replaced by Hexagon. Hexagon began as a 

Central Intelligence Agency, (CIA) program with the first concepts proposed in 1964. The CIA’s basic 

goal was to develop an imagery system with Corona-like ability to image wide swaths of the earth, 

but with resolution equivalent to Gambit. Such a system would afford the United States even greater 

advantages monitoring the arms race that had developed with the nation’s adversaries. The system that 

became Hexagon faced three major challenges. The first was development of the technology, which 

was eventually overcome by the Itek and Perkin-Elmer Corporations. The second was bureaucratic, 

deciding how the CIA and Air Force would cooperate in building such a system because they each 

had strengths and weaknesses in the development of national reconnaissance systems. The third 

challenge was to secure the resources that were required to build the most complicated and largest 

reconnaissance satellites at the time. By 1971 the NRO overcame the challenges to successfully 

launch the Hexagon satellite and fulfill, or even exceed, expectations for unparalleled insight into 

capabilities of United States adversaries.

At the time of the Gambit and Hexagon declassification announcement, the NRO released a 

number of redacted documents and histories on its website to the general public on the stunning 

Gambit and Hexagon systems. Two of the histories are contained in this volume. They are histories 

of the Gambit and Hexagon systems written by Air Force historian, Robert L. Perry. 

Perry wrote five volumes of history related to the National Reconnaissance Office. They include 

volumes on the NRO’s involvement in the Samos and Corona Programs as well as histories of early 

national reconnaissance efforts. The former Office of History of the NRO released a redacted and 
edited version of Perry’s history of early NRO management. The history provided unique insight into 

early management of national reconnaissance systems just prior to the formation of the NRO and in 

the organization’s early years. 

When Perry prepared individual volumes on the Gambit and Hexagon programs, they constituted 

the third volume of his series. The volume was broken into Part A for Gambit and Part B for Hexagon. 

The histories were released in redacted forms when details about the KH-7, KH-8, and KH-9 programs 

were released several years ago. The versions in this publication have been reviewed based on 

updated guidance in conjunction with the programmatic declassification of the Gambit and Hexagon 

systems. 

For many years, Perry’s histories have proven to be a significant resource for not only those 

concerned about the history of national reconnaissance, but for the practitioners of national 

reconnaissance as well. Perry’s work captured the difficulties associated with the development 

of early national reconnaissance systems, and more importantly, the strategies for meeting those 

challenges. A reader of a Perry history cannot help but come away with a better understanding of 

national reconnaissance programs, their management, and how to be more effective in their own job.

Perry’s histories also serve as exemplars of the art and craft of historians. They are rich in detail, 

well-sourced, and written with engaging prose. This is true for the Gambit and Hexagon histories. Perry 

devotes considerable effort to telling the stories of each program based on the documentary evidence 

available to him at the time of the writing and those he was able to speak to about the programs. As a 

consequence, Perry’s readers come away with insight into the technological opportunities presented by 

pursing both programs, the organizational tension that arose between the Air Force and CIA because 

of competing approaches for imagery satellites, and the force that human determination is for dealing 

with unknowns and set-backs that are hallmarks of efforts to acquire large, sophisticated technological 

systems.

We must include a couple of editorial notes to the reader. First, with respect to redacted material, 

we have edited the volumes to smooth the flow of language in the volume, rather than indicate where 

material was redacted. In some cases, that meant removing entire sentences. Readers of this 

volume can find the unedited, redacted versions at NRO.gov if they are interested in reviewing where 

information was redacted. Second, we have preserved Perry’s references to other volumes in his 

national reconnaissance history series. Redacted versions of all volumes are available at NRO.gov. 

We hope over time to complete a similar effort to this for the remaining Perry histories. 

Perry completed his Gambit and Hexagon histories in the early 1970’s. The systems would continue 

to serve the nation until the middle of the 1980’s. Although these histories do not cover the entire 

length of Gambit and Hexagon service, they cover a significantly important part—the development 

and initial operation of the systems. The systems became reliable means for addressing difficult 

intelligence challenges once they became operational. They provided the nation reliable vigilance 

from above until the next generation of imagery satellites advanced the United States intelligence 

collection capabilities.

James D. Outzen, Ph.D.

Chief, Historical Documentation and Research

The Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance
Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance

The Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance (CSNR) is an independent 

National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) research body reporting to the NRO Deputy Director, 

Business Plans and Operations. Its primary objective is to ensure that the NRO leadership 

has the analytic framework and historical context to make effective policy and programmatic 

decisions. The CSNR accomplishes its mission by promoting the study, dialogue, and 

understanding of the discipline, practice, and history of national reconnaissance. The CSNR 

studies the past, analyzes the present, and searches for lessons-learned.

Contact Information: Please phone us at 703-488-4733 or email us at csnr@nro.mil

To Obtain Copies: Government personnel can obtain additional printed copies directly 

from CSNR. Other requestors can purchase printed copies by contacting:

Government Printing Office

732 North Capitol Street, NW

Washington, DC 20401-0001

http://www.gpo.gov

Published by

National Reconnaissance Office

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance

14675 Lee Road

Chantilly, Virginia 20151-1715

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-937219-03-1
Table of Contents

A History of Satellite Reconnaissance : The Perry Gambit History

Gambit Preface..............................................................................................................................10

Gambit Origins and Development.........................................................................................12

 Endnotes..............................................................................................................................36

Gambit - 1 Operations.....................................................................................................................39

 Endnotes..............................................................................................................................58

The development and Operation of Gambit-3

 Background and Nomenclature.................................................................................60

 The Origins of Gambit-3.................................................................................................60

 Development Flights......................................................................................................69

 Policy, Administration and Further Development...........................................75

 Flight Program-Vehicles 7 to 22...............................................................................79

 Flight History of Gambit-3 Block II (Double-Bucket)......................................83

 Endnotes..............................................................................................................................88

A History of Satellite Reconnaissance : The Perry Hexagon History

Hexagon Preface.........................................................................................................................96

Introduction and Background...........................................................................................98 

Evolution of a System..............................................................................................................101

Hexagon: Program Onset to first Flight........................................................................108

Hexagon: Initial Operations..................................................................................................121

Hexagon: Program Reorganization and Product Improvement (1971 - 1973)........128

 Endnotes............................................................................................................................132
A History of Satellite Reconnaissance 

The Perry Gambit History

Robert L. Perry

November 1973

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 
10

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

Gambit Preface

Gambit was conceived while Dwight David 

Eisenhower was President of the United States. 

Thirteen years later, when this preface was written, 

the system still was the principal reliance of the United 

States government for surveillance of areas to which 

that country was denied access. It was, of course, a 

vastly different system from that first proposed shortly 

after Gary Powers’ U-2 ran afoul of a Soviet antiaircraft 

missile in May 1960. At the time of that incident, the 

United States had no operational reconnaissance 

satellites and of the two developmental systems 

with apparent neartime potential, Samos E-1 was 

conceptually flawed and the other, Corona, had 

experienced a frustrating succession of operational 

failures. Four additional photo-satellites (Samos 

E-2, E-3, E-4, and E-5) were at some stage between 

invention and first launch; none was ever to return a 

single photograph of Soviet territory to American photo 

interpreters, although that preposterous outcome 

could not then have been foreseen by any rational 

participant.

U-2 penetrations had provided some useful 

insights into the research and development status 

of Soviet missile and aircraft programs by 1960, but 

the United States desperately needed information 

about the characteristics, numbers, and placement of 

operational ballistic missiles in the Soviet inventory. 

Notwithstanding the urgency of that need, President 

Eisenhower chose to disapprove plans for further U-2 

operations over Russia rather than chance a nuclear 

weapons confrontation. In any case, the vulnerability 

of the U-2 was all too apparent. Lacking credible 

information about Soviet capabilities, the United States 

had in 1958 undertaken an enormous expansion 

and acceleration of its own ballistic missile program, 

hopeful that American industry could overcome what 

was generally assumed to be a substantial Soviet 

advantage in nuclear weapons delivery capability. 

No Corona satellite had yet functioned correctly; in 

mid-1960 that program was forced to retreat from 

launching operationally configured payloads to a 

resumption of engineering test flights, sans cameras, 

in the hope that malignant defects in orbital and 

recovery functions might be identified and eliminated.

In the near panic that followed the discovery that 

U-2 aircraft could no longer safely overfly the Soviet 

Union, intelligence specialists devised three major 

new photo-reconnaissance programs: Oxcart (the 

Mach 3, 100,000-foot-altitude aircraft that became 

better known as the A-11 “Blackbird” and later fathered 

the SR-71 and F-12 programs), Samos E-6 (designed 

originally to replace the languishing Corona satellite), 

and Gambit. Political constraints finally kept Oxcart 

from fulfilling its considerable promise and Samos 

E-6 was technically deficient, like its five Samos 

predecessors. Stubborn CIA and Air Force program 

managers working with Itek, Lockheed, and General 

Electric engineers rescued Corona and by late 1960 

had collected the evidence needed to demonstrate 

that Soviet missile rattling was mostly hollow bluster. 

But in the end it was Gambit that brought back the 

information needed to proportion the Soviet-American 

nuclear missile balance—though that event did not 

become reality until three years after the crisis that 

fostered the program. And notwithstanding the periodic 

appearance of programs and proposals for programs 

to supplement or supplant Gambit, that system grew 

and prospered so mightily that 10 years after its first 

flight it still was the principal reliance of United States 

surveillance effort.

This volume contains the history of the Gambit 

program from conception in 1960 to tenth anniversary 

of first flight, in 1973. Like other volumes in this 

series, it is designed to stand alone in being fully 

comprehensible without reference to other sources, 

but because the several discrete elements of the 

National Reconnaissance Program are inextricably 

interrelated, the reader may find it advisable to 

consult one or another of those volumes for detailed 

information about events that impacted on Gambit 

without being integrals of the program.

This history was prepared under terms of a 

contract between the Director, Special Projects, 

National Reconnaissance Office (Director, Program 

A), and Technology Service Corporation, of Santa 

Monica, California. The principal author, Robert 

Perry, began research and wrote draft histories of 

the early years of Gambit while employed first by 

the United States Air Force and later by The Rand 

Corporation. He undertook revision and expansion 

of those sections and the addition of Gambit-3 and 

Gambit flight histories in 1972, in association with 

Robert A. Butler, a consultant to Technology Service 

Corporation. At various times, parts of the manuscript 

have been reviewed by members of the staff of the 

National Reconnaissance Office and of Program 

A. The reviewers and suppliers of both data and 

documents are so numerous that it is not practical to 

list them here. Most are mentioned in source notes 

following the individual chapters. To acknowledge 

their invaluable assistance in this way is plainly 

an inadequate response, but there is no feasible 

alternative. In any case, for such errors and oversights 

as may have survived the scrutiny of contributors and 

reviewers, the author is entirely responsible.
12

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

GAMBIT 

ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT

Like much of the National Reconnaissance 

Program, Gambit was the product of technical and 

political ferment and international tensions that peaked 

during the Spring and Summer of 1960.* The need 

for new sources of high resolution reconnaissance 

photography had become critical in the aftermath 

of the U-2 affair and with the enforced suspension 

of U-2 operations over the Soviet Union. Generally, 

policy-making officials in the Department of the Air 

Force and the Department of Defense had become 

thoroughly disenchanted with what they had seen of 

the existing Samos program. Continued emphasis 

on “concurrency” as a program mode and a stubborn 

Air Force emphasis on readout rather than recovery 

techniques severely prejudiced the Air Force case, 

since both approaches were unacceptable to most 

officials above the level of the Air Staff. The pressures 

of international politics had made it quite difficult for 

the Eisenhower administration to openly sponsor 

a new or accelerated satellite reconnaissance 

development. Finally, attractive proposals for new 

orbital reconnaissance systems had appeared 

during the summer of 1960. Adding body to the 

mixture were the facts that until mid-August the 

Corona had not returned any photographs whatever, 

while the only other capsule-recovery system then 

under development, Samos E-5, was regarded with 

something less than undiluted enthusiasm by much of 

the technical community. 

In March 1960, Eastman Kodak (EK) had 

privately submitted to the CIA and separately to 

the Reconnaissance Laboratory at Wright Field a 

proposal to develop a 77-inch (focal length) camera 

for satellite reconnaissance. In June the company 

proposed a 36-inch camera system to provide 

convergent stereo coverage of Soviet territory. EK 

called the latter system “Blanket.” 

A month later, on 20 July, Eastman submitted a 

modified proposal which essentially integrated the 

77-inch camera with the stereo features and film 

recovery techniques embodied in “Blanket.” That 

variant was called “Sunset Strip.”** Dr. E. H. Land, one 

of the key industry authorities in the reconnaissance 

program, personally brought the Eastman proposal 

to the attention of Air Force Undersecretary J. V. 

Charyk, who was rapidly becoming the dominant 

figure in the Pentagon struggle for control of the Air 

* The resume that follows is largely an encapsulation of Chapter VI of Volume 

ILA. For that reason, source citations have been used only when new material 

was employed.

** A then-popular television series was titled “77 Sunset Strip.”

Force satellite reconnaissance effort. Charyk opened 

direct contact with Eastman Kodak shortly thereafter. 

He was particularly interested in the Eastman 

approach because it embodied two major elements 

toward which he was favorably predisposed: a filmonly recovery scheme, like Corona, and a very highacuity, long focal-length camera. 

In the meantime, reconnaissance specialists of 

The Rand Corporation had renewed their efforts to 

induce the Ballistic Missile Division (BMD), immediate 

sponsor of the Samos program, to develop a spinstabilized reconnaissance system along the lines of 

a 1957 Rand proposal. In response to a request from 

BMD, Rand in June 1960 began working with Space 

Technology Laboratories (STL) on a plan to develop 

a system which by taking maximum advantage of 

available technology could be made operational in 

the near term. BMD interest stemmed largely from 

Charyk’s earlier sponsorship of such an approach. 

On 7 July 1960, a group of Rand and STL 

specialists quietly assembled at the invitation of 

Colonel Paul Worthman of BMD, the sub-rosa Air 

Force manager of the Corona activity, to discuss 

details of a newly conceived variant of the original 

spin-stabilized satellite. Rand had concluded that it 

would be perfectly feasible to orbit a reconnaissance 

satellite in the guise of a standard ballistic missile 

reentry body. Its real function would be hidden under 

the explanation that the orbiting body was being used 

in tests of a ballistic missile warning system. Rand’s 

recommendation to STL covered a 1500-pound 

satellite carrying a 36-inch (focal length) camera 

system using spin stabilization to provide panoramic 

coverage at a ground resolution of about 17 feet. If the 

satellite were oriented so as to have its lens pointing 

directly downward while over latitude 55 North it 

would provide useful coverage of all of the northern 

hemisphere lying between 40 and 70 degrees.1

By early August 1960, STL had shaped the earlier 

scheme into a semi-formal proposal. It differed from 

the earlier scheme in being based on a camera with a 

24-inch focal length and in certain other minor details. 

Apart from re-introduction of the spin stabilization 

mode after a lapse of two years, its chief attraction lay 

in the premise of operations that could be conducted 

most circumspectly— even though there was a degree 

of unreality in the notion that a pretense of warhead 

detection tests long could be maintained for a vehicle 

which remained in a relatively stable orbit instead of 
13

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

reentering steeply, as an actual warhead would do.* 

By 25 August 1960, when the President approved the 

establishment of a tightly controlled secretariat-level 

satellite reconnaissance organization, there were three 

leading candidates for sponsorship as “new” systems. 

The E-6 program—based on “Blanket” concepts—had 

proceeded toward source selection while the question 

of who would control the total program, and at what 

level, was being resolved. “Sunset Strip” was being 

given very serious consideration—but most privately. 

Unlike E-6, which was rather widely known because 

of the source selection proceedings, “Sunset Strip” 

had unfolded very quietly. Nevertheless, the general 

structure of Eastman’s proposal was treated as 

normal, highly classified information at Wright Field, at 

BMD, and in various Pentagon offices concerned with 

satellite reconnaissance. The third possibility, “Study 

7,” as STL’s proposal was called, had been handled 

as near-covert.

President Eisenhower approved the concept of a 

clandestine reconnaissance satellite development in 

the course of the National Security Council meeting of 

25 August. Theoretically, it would have been possible 

to select any one of the three possible systems for 

covert development, even E-6, since by that time 

Corona experience had twice demonstrated that a 

widely known proposal could be officially “terminated” 

while actually being covertly continued. But because 

a great many people knew of the pressure that had 

been applied to bring on the development of a new 

reconnaissance system during the summer of 1960, 

it seemed unrealistic to assume that everybody who 

was witting of earlier activity would uncritically accept 

an announcement that no new system was being 

developed. Thus a covert E-6 program was not a real 

possibility.

On 20 September 1960, very shortly after the 

Secretary of the Air Force Samos Project Office 

(SAFSP) had legally come into being at BMD, 

* With allowances for minor differences, there were only three combinations of 

basic elements which could result in a useful panoramic satellite reconnaissance 

system. A three-axis-stable vehicle with a panning lens and fixed-position film 

was one; its chief practitioner was Corona. Use of a stable vehicle in conjunction 

with a moving mirror or lens arrangement and film movement synchronized with 

lens or mirror movement was a second; the E-6 approach of late 1960 was 

representative. The third technique was spin stabilization, based on a fixed 

position lens that rotated around the longitudinal axis of the spinning satellite and 

relied on moving film for both panoramic effect and image motion compensation. 

Although spin stabilization had first been conceived in combination with a 

technique of film recovery in 1956 and had been the principal ingredient of The 

Rand Corporation’s “family of recoverable reconnaissance satellites” proposed 

in August-November 1957, no such system had ever been developed. Spin 

stabilization had briefly been the favored approach to what became Corona and 

the short-lived “Program ILA.” A variant of spin stabilization, but using television 

techniques rather than film, was the basis of Program 35 (Program 417), the 

cloud-cover surveillance satellite which began development in 1961.

Charyk met with Brigadier General Robert E. Greer 

(the program’s new military director), Colonel Paul 

E. Heran (chairman of the E-6 source selection 

board), and Lieutenant Colonel James Seay (Greer’s 

procurement advisor). After considering all the options, 

they agreed that the best course was to continue both 

E-6 and “Sunset Strip,” which had been funded at a 

relatively low cost “study” level for the past several 

weeks. Undersecretary Charyk, with the specific 

approval of the President, decided the 77-inch system 

should be developed covertly. How that should be 

done remained to be determined.** For the moment, 

the only major action was to finance “Sunset Strip” 

through the balance of the year.

“Study 7,” renamed Bolero, was briefly continued, 

but in early November Charyk had ruled against 

any immediate development of a spin-stabilized 

reconnaissance satellite. By that time the notion that a 

“Sunset Strip” program could be concealed under the 

veneer of E-6 activity had evolved; the covert effort 

had acquired the code name Gambit. 

The general premise was that E-6 and Gambit 

would be made to resemble one another in outward 

details and that the same set of contractors would 

be used in both programs. The E-6 source selection 

board thus became the shell within which Gambit 

contractors were chosen. Since Eastman was the 

originator of the Gambit camera concept and for a 

variety of very practical reasons had to be picked to 

carry on that effort, E-6 camera development was 

assigned to Eastman Kodak. (That would probably 

have been the outcome of E-6 source selection in any 

case.) General Electric, the most experienced firm in 

the area of reentry capsules, won the Gambit award 

and the assignment to develop a capsule for E-6. 

One of the early problems encountered by program 

managers arose from the need for specifying a 

satellite vehicle which would house both Gambit and 

E-6 equipment. The Gambit camera was considerably 

larger, which meant that the E-6 had to be housed in 

a low-density structure that offended the engineering 

sense of E-6 vehicle designers.

Concealment of Gambit intentions proved less 

difficult than had initially been feared. General Greer 

arranged to have Eastman’s “Sunset Strip” study 

contract terminated with the explanation that because 

of the E-6 decision no further development of a 77-

inch camera was required. Simultaneously Greer’s 

office drew up a “black” agreement which authorized 

EK to continue the “Sunset Strip” work as a covert 

program—the Gambit camera development. General 

Electric, which like Eastman had previous experience 

** See Chapter V (Volumn I of the Perry History’s) for a considerably more 

detailed account of the considerations affecting the covert program decision. 
14

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

in “black” programs, emulated the camera contractor 

in concentrating all Gambit-related activity in a secure 

facility. Indeed, for the first weeks of Gambit activity 

the matter of screening Corona efforts from General 

Electric’s Gambit people, and Gambit from Corona, 

was of as great concern as the concealment of Gambit 

from most of the Air Force. 

General Electric used the story of an alternate 

reentry vehicle for E-6 as its initial cover. Eastman 

Kodak relied on a “proprietary information” screen—a 

device of particular effectiveness because Eastman 

was notorious for ferociously guarding its new 

industrial developments. Aerospace Corporation, 

which was to perform a limited systems engineeringtechnical direction function in both Gambit and E-6, 

concealed its Gambit activity under rigid need-toknow rules. Such controls were also imposed on the 

two main centers of Air Force activity, the program 

office complex in Los Angeles and Charyk’s special 

staff in the Pentagon. There was some early difficulty 

in choking off the rather casual circulation of Gambit 

knowledge within the headquarters of the Air Research 

and Development Command and in the Air Materiel 

Command structure, leading to a couple of episodes of 

knuckle rapping, but by early 1961 an effective “black” 

environment had been built around the program. 

Perhaps more important to the surprising success 

of the cover effort, a great deal of effort was then 

being expended in developing the recovery systems 

for E-5 and E-6 in secure but “white” settings. To 

the outside world it seemed obvious that the new 

Samos organization would be intent on the E-5 and 

E-6 programs, so any puzzling activity at one of the 

contractor plants was attributed to these interests 

rather than to anything new. Inside General Greer’s 

organization, where relatively few people initially knew 

of Gambit, normal human preoccupation with the tasks 

of the moment proved a highly successful insulator 

against random curiosity. Most of the Air Force shared 

the uncritical assumption that “the establishment” 

could not accommodate effective internal secrecy 

and that because procurement and contracting had 

always been open matters—and “security” a special 

sort of club to which most cleared Air Force personnel 

were admitted without qualification—no large-scale 

development effort could possibly be concealed.

The use of E-6 as a cover for Gambit had 

certain disadvantages that were recognized early. 

In December 1960 General Greer began to worry 

the question of how to conceal Gambit if E-6 were 

cancelled. Termination of E-6 on the grounds of 

technical inadequacy or budget pressure was not 

likely for the moment, but there seemed a real 

possibility that the politically vulnerable “overt” 

satellite reconnaissance effort might be wiped out in 

the aftermath of an agreement with the Soviets. In 

that event it would be impossible to launch a Gambit 

payload under the pretense that it was an E-6. For 

that matter, such an elementary task as construction 

of Gambit reentry vehicles at General Electric would 

be difficult to conceal once the excuse of an E-6 

alternate disappeared.*

Even while the program was first taking shape, 

then, General Greer had recognized that eventually 

he would have to invent cover other than E-6—

some other ostensible payload and some other 

apparent mission—to hide Gambit. The problem 

continued to trouble him for several months. Among 

all the space programs being conducted by NASA 

and the Air Force, only those contained within the 

reconnaissance effort were significantly concealed. 

Routine security screened several of the “military 

satellites,” but experience had demonstrated that 

for a reconnaissance program “routine security” 

was not enough. The apparent susceptibility of any 

acknowledged satellite reconnaissance program 

to cancellation on political grounds was particularly 

acute in 1960-1961. A solution more permanently 

satisfactory than that of pretending to be an E-6 had 

to be found for Gambit.2

In the event, only until the early months of 1961, 

was it feasible to pretend that Gambit activity was 

part of the E-6 program. The external configurations 

of the two remained very much alike for a time, most 

of the subsystems planned for E-6 were more or less 

adaptable to Gambit, and the on-orbit performance 

requirements of the two were similar. But by March of 

1961 it was clear that the E-6 design was becoming 

fixed and that Gambit, still in gestation, was taking a 

different form. Maneuver capability greater than that 

of E-6 was added to Gambit, propulsion arrangements 

(for on-orbit operations) changed, and considerably 

less of the E-6 development became applicable to 

Gambit. By June of 1961, continuing evolution of the 

Gambit satellite had caused it to lose most of its outward 

resemblance to E-6, the internal arrangements were 

almost totally different, and relatively few of the E-6 

components remained applicable. 

In such circumstances the academic concern 

General Greer had voiced six months earlier became 

a real problem. Not only was there a marked technical 

dissimilarity between the two systems, but the 

possibility of a politically motivated cancellation of both 

E-5 and E-6 seemed greater. The desirable solution, 

* It may be argued that the CIA had done all those things in Corona without 

arousing suspicion, but in fact Corona was tightly concealed under “Discoverer” 

for its first four years, and in any case CIA expenditures were not matters of 

public record, as was the case for all Air Force Samos costs in 1960.
15

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

suggested in Greer’s notes of December 1960, was 

total disassociation from the original Samos program. 

Since it was not at all feasible to hide Gambit under 

a scientific satellite label (the suggestion horrified the 

CIA, ultra-sensitive to anything that might invite close 

scrutiny of Discoverer and thus threaten compromise 

of Corona), and none of the other in-progress space 

programs of either the Air Force or NASA afforded proper 

camouflage, there was no easy or obvious option.

While mulling over the contradictions between 

needs and possibilities, General Greer conceived an 

approach based in part on his earlier analysis of the 

problem of covert procurement. In November 1960 he 

had begun “black” contracting under the philosophy 

that since “everybody” knew it was impossible for the Air 

Force to buy anything expensive without going through 

established review and approval channels, one might 

do quite a lot of unsuspected buying and contracting 

by merely obtaining a direct authorization. It occurred 

to him that the solution to the Gambit quandary might 

be found in the same thesis. He thereby invented the 

concept of the “null program,” a development with no 

known origin and no specified goal. If such a program 

were conducted under the aegis of a highly classified 

payload, it should be entirely possible to purchase 

boosters, upper stages, and launch services through 

normal channels. Because “everybody” knew that 

the entire reconnaissance satellite program was in 

Greer’s keeping, the assignment of “null program” 

responsibility to the regular Space Systems Division 

(SSD) organization would serve to convince most 

observers that it had to have some objective other than 

reconnaissance. Vague references to precise land 

recovery (a real but secondary objective of Gambit at 

the time) might serve to induce suspicion that the “null 

program” actually had a “bombs in orbit” goal.* Putting 

such a cover into effect required devious scheming 

and a high degree of ingenuity, but by June 1961 the 

plan had been reduced to specifics and generally 

approved by Undersecretary Charyk.3

In July the first moves toward establishing an 

activity called “Program 307” were taken. Through 

the Air Staff, SSD received authorization to buy four 

“NASA type” Agena B’s for launches starting in January 

1963—the Agenas to be assigned to no particular 

space program “for the present.” In August, Charyk 

sent a memorandum to the Air Force Chief of Staff 

which emphasized the need to protect the USAF’s 

* The author ran across the formal documentation on the “null program” (then 

called Program 206) early in 1962, several months before being exposed to 

the real workings of SAFSP. Even though he was firmly convinced that parking 

nuclear weapons in orbit was a most irrational project, he concluded that the 

Air Force was actually proceeding along that line. Any other explanation of the 

obvious facts was, as General Greer had cannily anticipated, too illogical to 

deserve serious thought. (R.P. —July 1964)

“capability to do future space projects” and which 

affirmed the desirability of ordering six Atlas boosters 

(configured to accept Agena B’s) to be used starting 

in February 1963. Again there occurred the phrase 

about “not assigned to a particular space project.“4

Apparently the matter seemed so mundane to the 

Air Staff that the authorizing teletype managed to get 

lost somewhere in the Pentagon-AFSC headquarters 

maze. Nearly two weeks were needed to straighten 

out the resulting confusion and even then it proved 

necessary to apply considerable pressure before 

organizational inertia could be overcome.5

Having gotten a small batch of Atlas and Agena 

vehicles on order, SAFSP moved to the next 

business—formal creation of a “null project.” On 25 

September 1961, the Air Force vice chief of staff 

directed General B. A. Schriever, AFSC commander, 

to establish “Project Exemplar.”** That code phrase, 

which was classified confidential, was defined as 

covering four launches from the Pacific Missile 

Range, starting in February 1963. The authorizing 

message noted that the Secretary of the Air Force 

had separately ordered the necessary Agenas and 

Atlases “on an unassigned basis.” “They are hereby 

assigned Exemplar,” the teletype read.6

In a further exchange of teletypes, all written well 

in advance in General Greer’s complex, the special 

projects office established the fact that “Exemplar” 

had a goal that was classified top secret. Plans to 

include specific references to the procurement 

authorizations for the Atlas and Agena purchases had 

to be put off because nobody in the Pentagon could 

locate the relevant documents; they had been lost in 

the course of an Air Staff reorganization during the 

summer of 1961. The “white” correspondence also 

stated requirements for the usual sort of elaborate 

documentation-development plans, cost projections, 

and the like-that had become customary for new 

programs. The absence of such paraphernalia would 

presumably have alarmed the “normal” procurement 

establishment, though such “documentation” was 

completely redundant to the SAFSP procedures.7

By mid-November the basic plan had been very 

largely put into effect, only a few of the loose ends 

remaining. Gambit now consisted of a succession of 

elements, some covert, some within the normal military 

classification system. All of the “white” elements were 

gathered under “Exemplar”—which for reasons of 

administrative convenience had the additional and 

unclassified nickname “Cue Ball.”***

** The original code word was “Quicksilver, “ changed because it had been 

used previously. 

*** “Cue Ball” was chosen to add spice to conjectures about orbiting bombs and 

means of returning them to precise sites on the earth.
16

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

Colonel Q. A. Riepe, who had been associated 

with the satellite reconnaissance program at intervals 

since 1953, was named the “Cue Ball” program 

director. His assumption of technical responsibility for 

Gambit from Colonel Paul Heran (E-6 program director 

and original custodian of the Gambit development) 

was not complete until February 1962, however. 

A complex network of nominal and actual reporting 

channels linked “Cue Ball” to General Greer. (Greer 

then had an additional duty assignment as Vice 

Commander of the Space Systems Division, although 

his primary responsibility was for the reconnaissance 

mission.) All contacts between “Cue Ball” and the 

SAFSP structure were to remain “black,” as were 

all Gambit budget and programming matters. “Cue 

Ball” was the cover for booster procurement, launch 

services, and certain other non-sensitive aspects of 

Gambit that could be handled through normal military 

channels, thus providing a means of deceiving 

those channels about the true purpose of “Cue Ball.” 

Nowhere was there an explicit description of the “Cue 

Ball” payload or mission. Persistent inquirers who 

had some plausible justification for more information 

were told that “another organization outside SSD is 

responsible for the payload.” The Atomic Energy 

Commission was the obvious suspect since NASA, 

the only other candidate, was notoriously antagonistic 

to classified work.* The intention of the deception was 

to create a vague impression that the payload was 

either a bomb or something related to manned space 

flight.

“Cue Ball” was organized along the lines of a 

conventional SSD program, although such “normal” 

channels and reporting lines were for cover purposes 

only; actual relations with higher authority would 

go (“in the black”) to and through Greer’s SAFSP 

office. It was particularly important, as General Greer 

emphasized frequently in the early stages of setting 

up “Cue Ball,” that personnel prominently associated 

with the reconnaissance effort not be seen with 

“Cue Ball” personnel and that the “Cue Ball” people 

avoid any contaminating association with satellite 

reconnaissance. Not all “Cue Ball” assignees were 

cognizant of Gambit, so internal office security was 

another problem.**8

Misdirection continued successfully through 

Charyk’s approval of the “Cue Ball” development plan 

and his formal authorization of initial funding. Key 

individuals at various stations in the headquarters 

* It does not seem to have occurred to anyone that the CIA might have been 

nominated. 

** An odd difficulty popped up shortly after “Cue Ball” was created. Some of the 

reconnaissance program personnel who had become accustomed to treating all 

aspects of Gambit as thoroughly “black” insisted on so handling “Cue Ball”—a 

tendency which endangered the security of the whole elaborate scheme.

USAF and AFSC structures had been alerted to 

the scheme and were presumably prepared to see 

that the various budget, priority, and precedence 

authentications emerged promptly and satisfactorily. 

But in the slow weeks after Charyk’s directive 

appeared, some of the carefully laid plan began 

to flake away. Initially, all had gone well. Charyk’s 

directive came out on 24 November and within three 

days the Air Staff had taken the actions necessary for 

the official start of program activity. On 13 December, 

however, a message from the Pentagon to AFSC 

specified approval of an initial program, and when a 

non-briefed officer went to the budget branch to clear 

up the “misunderstanding” he was told that there 

were no dollars available for “System 483A”—the 

nomenclature assigned to “Cue Ball” for processing 

purposes. In the meantime, of course, Gambit had 

begun to run through what remained of its money. A 

succession of quick telephone calls patched together 

an interim solution, while the larger question of how 

to get affairs in proper order was being worked out in 

more detail.9

The original confusion was not entirely cleared up 

until February 1962—by which time the complications 

of working with an involved “classical” structure in the 

Air Staff had further diffused the outlines of the original 

“Cue Ball” plan. Though the end result was probably 

all to the good, it did not seem so at the time. 

As part of the cover plan, General Greer had 

decided to have “Cue Ball” broken up into two 

elements, Program A and Program B. “A” would 

include the first four Atlas Agena vehicles and 

“B” the remaining six needed for the approved 

10-launch effort. Through AFSC channels, General 

Greer conjured up a memorandum justifying a total 

10-vehicle program on the assumption of one success 

in each of three test configurations. Such a justification 

went to Undersecretary Charyk, in the open. Having 

apparently become somewhat foggy on the precise 

details of the cover scheme, Charyk questioned 

the need. A quick briefing straightened out the 

misunderstanding. Separately, Greer induced SSD to 

ask if SAFSP would be interested in supporting work 

on precise land recovery, and Greer replied with a 

more accurate measure of his interest, thus providing 

for the dollars lacking in the original December 1961 

authorization. By 1 February, therefore, all again 

seemed to be well.10

Unfortunately, optimism was premature. 

Experience of the past two months had demonstrated 

that it was extremely difficult to transfer program 

money from the line item called “advanced research 

and components” (where it appeared in the Air Force 

budget when actually intended for Gambit purposes) 
17

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

to the “support system 483A” line item. Then, within 

the Air Staff there still were some objections to a 

10-vehicle launch program supporting something 

called “Cue Ball,” and about which little was known, 

when projects which seemed to have a much 

more valid requirement were “being underfunded.” 

Additionally, and unhappily, in a sycophantic flush 

of enthusiasm for a program which appeared to 

have so much secretariat support, the Systems and 

Logistics element in the Air Staff had put the “Cue 

Ball” Pentagon project office in a very conspicuous 

organizational spot where it could not avoid attracting 

unwanted attention. One or a combination of these 

circumstances would surely focus more light on “Cue 

Ball” than was desirable. The reports and briefings 

required of a “normal” system were troublesome 

enough, but if people became interested in “Cue 

Ball,” and set about “straightening out” the program, 

a lot of rather vulnerable explanations might become 

necessary. Alternatively, and equally undesirable, 

many more nonparticipants would have to be briefed 

on the real purpose of “Cue Ball, “ thus violating the 

basic precept of Gambit security.

Faced with this situation, Undersecretary Charyk 

directed that all money for SAFSP use, including the 

“Cue Ball” fund, be carried under a 698AJ line item 

entry. (Vela Hotel, the nuclear-test detection system 

program, was the only non-reconnaissance program 

so funded.) The number identified “advanced system 

development.” Programming entries for “Cue Ball,” 

originally listed under 483A (“supporting system”), 

were changed to 698AL. The E-6 program was carried 

as 698AN, but also funded as part of 698AJ. Whatever 

else might have been achieved, the nomenclature at 

least had become incomprehensible.

Charyk’s decision was not wholly popular, partly 

because the association of 698AL with General Greer’s 

projects could be rather easily established. But since 

the original scheme for subduing Pentagon interest 

in “Cue Ball” had become unworkable, it seemed as 

good an approach as any.

At least one officer on Charyk’s staff felt that “the 

limited view of the SP [SAFSP] security types as to 

the requirements for cover and deception...” was also 

a factor in a security situation which he characterized 

as “just a couple of steps from disaster.” But somehow 

disaster did not follow, even though no changes 

of any consequence were made in either views or 

procedures.11

In retrospect, the involved convolutions of Gambit 

deception and occasional alarms that the “cover” was 

disappearing seemed overdone. General Greer’s 

original premise, that nobody would suspect the 

existence of a “null program” because the very concept 

was inconceivable to any normal staff activity, proved 

sound. There was an additional contributor to the 

success of the various moves that put “Cue Ball” in the 

same funds and program categories as other “Greer 

programs” without bringing on a security disaster: 

those on the inside of Gambit tended to seek complete 

normality as an avenue to inconspicuousness without 

appreciating that the regular Air Force establishment 

had been conditioned to accept uncritically any 

decision handed down, no matter how irrational. 

Rationality was not inherent in development decisions, 

nor logic a necessary ingredient of programming. Most 

of the Air Staff saw nothing peculiar in an arrangement 

that put Vela Hotel, the “Samos” program (as it was still 

called), and a supposed “bombs in orbit” development 

in a common category called “advanced systems.” Nor 

did the average staff officer wonder whether something 

might be hidden under such an arrangement. As Greer 

had reasoned more than 15 months earlier, since 

there was no precedent for what he had done, it would 

generally go unsuspected.* 

Gambit had by early March 1962 made a partial 

transition from a covert program to a special-security 

program. The distinction was by no means clear, nor 

was it widely appreciated, but the key to the matter was 

that Gambit did not pretend to be anything else, and 

that such pretense represented the boundary between 

covert and highly secure developments. It was true 

that Gambit inhabited a covert atmosphere, and that 

procurement techniques and manufacturing practices 

invented for covert programs continued to be used, 

but in reality Gambit was a highly classified program 

without a publicly specified payload. There were two 

layers of security between the 206 (“Cue Ball”) project 

office and the real payload; peeling away the first 

uncovered nothing more than the second, since the 

“tight security payload” story was entirely true. What 

mattered was that a very special security category 

insulated the true program goal—high resolution 

satellite reconnaissance.

The real covert reconnaissance program, Corona, 

still maintained an elaborate facade of scientific inquiry 

even though it was becoming constantly more difficult 

to devise excuses for not producing at least some 

* The expedient of combining “Cue Ball” with other “advanced system 

developments” apparently was proposed by Major David Bradburn of General 

Greer’s staff. He wanted to include a few other miscellaneous items to further 

mislead speculation; Agena was one he suggested. The “comptroller” of the 

“black” programs, also wanted to add some ARPA and NASA programs. The 

final decision apparently was a compromise to avoid calling too much attention 

to the reprogramming actions involved, though to some on Charyk’s staff the 

affair seemed to take place in a spotlight on an empty stage.12 (Ten years 

later, before a standing-room audience, Major Bradburn, then a brigadier 

general, became the fifth man to occupy the post established for Greer.)
18

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

scientific information from a “scientific satellite program” 

now in its second year of successful recoveries.* 

All the while the management and security 

structures of the Gambit program were evolving toward 

the “Cue Ball”-Program 206 arrangement, meaningful 

development continued. Between November 1960 

and January 1961, the formal contracts with Eastman 

went from draft to signature. There were no real 

obstacles, although for a time Undersecretary Charyk 

balked at Eastman’s demand for a seven-percent 

profit on what was essentially a time and materials 

contract. Greer felt that the fee was not excessive, 

basing his judgment both on the precedent of U-2 

experience and on Eastman’s “unique capability,” 

and after he secured the concurrence of other high 

officials (including the Assistant Secretary of the Air 

Force for Financial Management and the Air Force 

General Counsel), the contract was so arranged.** 

By mid-1961, the concept of Gambit development, 

and its technical details, had been worked out in detail. 

Essentially, Gambit differed from E-6 (to which it still 

maintained a technical likeness) in having substantially 

higher ground resolution, in possessing a capability 

for photographing specific targets which were off the 

immediate orbital track, and in being intended for land 

recovery. The land recovery approach, which had been 

an integral of the original presentation to President 

Eisenhower in August 1960, was intended to overcome 

what were considered increasingly hazardous aspects 

of sea recovery. There was a great deal of concern in 

1961 for the possibility that a Soviet ship or submarine 

might reach a floating Corona capsule before rescue 

forces arrived or that a capsule might descend, intact, 

into non-friendly territory. Recovery of such a capsule 

might well precipitate a grave international crisis—

while failure to regain possession might be the excuse 

for a new U-2 incident, but an echelon or two higher 

on the scale of risk.*** 

Because of its need for higher resolution, Gambit 

would fly somewhat lower than E-6. A photographic 

altitude of 90 miles was generally considered 

desirable. The resolution requirement imposed a need 

for accurate orbit maintenance over a period of several 

* A rather significant reorientation in security thinking was in progress during 

1962. It led, in time, to the practice of obscuring all military space flight goals 

by confining released information to a terse announcement of the identity of 

the booster and upper stage. Under such scant camouflage Corona functioned 

effectively and unnoticed for another 10 years.

** Probably the two key factors in the fee decision were the original National 

Security Council directive of 25 August, which ordered that Samos “take” be 

processed by “the same agency that processed U-2 take”—Eastman Kodak, 

and the complete absence of alternatives. Moreover, as Eastman pointed out, 

the firm was currently drawing a fee elsewhere. 13

*** A Corona capsule did survive an unplanned reentry, in Venezuela, several 

years later—and nobody noticed. 

days, for more precise altitude control than in E-6, and 

for an ability to rotate the camera section about the 

vehicle’s roll axis. Land recovery implied extremely 

precise deboost velocities and reentry programming. 

The attitude control system, then in a status of 

advanced design, was a two-axis gimballed platform 

on which were mounted infrared horizon scanners 

and an integrating gyroscope. The horizon sensors 

measured pitch and roll error; the gyro measured yaw 

error. Control movements were dependent on several 

jet-nozzle apertures, with a blend of nitrogen tetroxide 

and hydrazine fuel providing the impulse. The system 

was originally designed to permit as many as 600 roll 

reorientations during each mission. 

A set of four rocket engines, each capable of 

producing 50 pounds of thrust, would provide for orbit 

maintenance. Six more such rockets were located in 

the aft section of the reentry vehicle. After reorientation 

of the satellite by 180 degrees and a 60-degree 

pitchdown had been completed, the reentry vehicle 

would be separated from the vehicle midsection and 

the engines fired. A velocity meter signaled shutdown.14

On 1 August 1961, at about the time the shift from 

an E-6 cover to a “null program” was beginning and 

several months after the E-6 had been committed to 

fabrication, Eastman completed the basic design of 

the Gambit payload system—the camera, cassette, 

and associated flight instruments. Design of the orbital 

vehicle was very nearly complete. Launch in January 

1963 still seemed feasible. Two months later, after 

considerable thought and a succession of detailed 

studies, Undersecretary Charyk approved the use 

of the Wendover AFB area (Utah) for land recovery 

operations. He also introduced two complicating 

requirements: provisions for both north-to-south and 

south-to-north photography (north-to-south was the 

conventional approach), and for rapid launch—on four 

days or less notice. The quick-launch capability was 

not considered essential for early shots, however.15

The “Cue Ball” program office had been formally 

established on 10 October 1961 with an initial 

complement of 18 officers and 8 clerks. By that time, 

six Atlas boosters and four Agenas were on order 

and arrangements to obtain four more of each were 

pending. The various elements of normal development 

program documentation either had been completed or 

were well along toward completion. Arrangements for 

special facilities were being made: pad, launch complex, 

and assembly buildings modifications at Vandenberg 

had been scheduled and the State Department had 

opened negotiations for an additional up-range station, 

needed both for controlling the orbital vehicle and for 

safeguarding the proposed land recovery process.16
19

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

Nevertheless, Gambit was not in an entirely happy 

situation. In January 1962, the Samos E-5 program 

was finally cancelled after a succession of launch, 

on-orbit, and recovery system failures. Corona was 

in one of its periodic spasms of operational difficulty, 

and the proposal for a Lanyard development was 

receiving generally friendly attention. (Lanyard was a 

re-engineered, single-camera E-5 system in Corona 

vehicles.) The need for Gambit—or for a system with 

comparable on-orbit photographic potential—was 

even more marked than had been the case a year 

earlier. Various proposals for somehow accelerating 

Gambit development were being considered at 

precisely the time when the design weight of the 

Gambit system had overtaken the payload lofting 

potential of the Atlas-Agena. (In order to reduce weight, 

the six forward-firing rockets of the orbital vehicle 

were deleted in January 1962. This compromise 

had the effect of restricting orbit adjust maneuvers 

to those based on velocity increases—going from 

a lower to a higher orbit.) Perhaps more significant, 

Gambit development was now far enough along to 

begin suffering the consequences of earlier errors 

and oversights. Vehicle stability was rapidly becoming 

a critical item in early 1962, the first major technical 

difficulty to cause real concern.17

Undersecretary Charyk, who was under constant 

pressure to get quick and effective results in the 

satellite reconnaissance program, wanted both to 

accelerate the pace of Gambit development and to 

improve its product. He spent 9 February 1962 in 

Los Angeles discussing those needs with Greer and 

Riepe. They concluded that program acceleration 

was impractical unless a considerable degradation 

in photography was also acceptable. Moreover, it 

was then becoming clear that problems of mission 

planning and on-orbit control would be more difficult 

than originally anticipated—and substantially more 

complex than anything previously attempted in 

satellite reconnaissance. Gambit would differ from 

all predecessors in being committed to a computerdesigned operational procedure, since the precision 

requirements were deemed too great to be satisfied by 

the sort of target designation and on-orbit procedures 

employed in Corona and planned for E-6.18

Further, the infrared horizon sensors which General 

Electric was developing were causing particular 

concern. GE’s preferred single-scan sensor seemed 

incapable of providing the required accuracy within the 

time limits of the development program. Rather than 

being able to accelerate Gambit availability, GE had to 

caution that delayed vehicle delivery was probable. A 

program slip of about four months seemed inevitable, 

moving the prospective first launch date from February 

1963 to May of that year.

General Electric’s proposal for correcting the 

defect was to go to a “body bound” stabilization system, 

essentially abandoning—at least for early flights—

the concept of a stable-platform sensor separate 

from a camera that rolled into appropriate aiming 

positions. Aerospace Corporation estimated that such 

an expedient would double the smear potential of 

the system, degrading its resolution quite markedly. 

Although Charyk asked for a precise evaluation of 

the resulting degradation, he privately told Greer to 

find an alternative solution, preferably one involving 

development of a different (back-up) sensor.19

General Greer had suggested that option on 

28 February, shortly after the initial disclosure of 

General Electric’s development problems. He also, 

but somewhat reluctantly, endorsed and forwarded 

Colonel Riepe’s proposal for an expanded test 

program, one involving more qualification tests, 

the construction of more spares for the engineering 

development program, the inclusion of complete hotfiring tests in the schedule, the provision of a backup development for major elements of the command 

system, funding an expansion of GE’s industrial 

facilities, and the addition of three reentry vehicles 

to the basic test program. All those changes seemed 

certain to further delay the availability of the first 

Gambit.

Similar but far less sweeping recommendations 

affecting Eastman Kodak’s program went forward 

simultaneously. EK, though having trouble, was in 

less difficulty than General Electric. The chief camera 

program change which Greer sponsored involved the 

development of additional manufacturing processes 

for lightweight optics. 

To the greater question of whether an attempt 

should be made to maintain schedules at the expense 

of system degradation, Greer provided a blunt answer: 

by going to an Agena-derived stabilization system it 

would be possible to provide for a vehicle with limited 

accuracy and system flexibility that would meet the 

February 1963 launch date. But Greer opposed 

such an option unless the schedule was a sole and 

overriding consideration, since the development had 

no future and any resulting photographs would be 

degraded. Rather than make such a compromise, the 

general favored accepting a four-month slip in first 

launch.20

With reluctance equal to Greer’s, Charyk accepted 

the prospect of further schedule slippage, On 19 

March 1962, he directed that a limited-accuracy dualscan infrared system being developed by General 

Electric remain the primary reference for the first three 

flights but that a more sophisticated dual-scan system 
20

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

be used thereafter. He also approved starting work 

on a backup single-scan system and cancelled GE’s 

study of body-bound earth-reference techniques. 

He accepted Greer’s recommendation that nothing 

immediately be done about adapting the Agenaoriented Corona stabilization technique to Gambit.21

The options thus adopted encouraged some 

optimism about meeting schedules and performance 

requirements should the primary development 

systems encounter further difficulty. There was 

general agreement that the earliest possible date 

for initial launch would be May rather than February 

1963.22

Decisions on these matters had to be made and 

put into effect by mid-March; Charyk was under orders 

to report to the President on the status and prospects 

of Gambit at that time. The undersecretary began his 

19 March 1962 report by recalling that the objective 

of Gambit, “to produce satellite photography having a 

ground resolution of from two to three feet,” was being 

given “an overriding priority.” 

He noted that the performance requirements 

of the system pushed the state of the satellite arts 

in three specific areas: lightweight optics, vehicle 

stability, and the complexity of orbital operations. 

For practical purposes, the limits of optical resolution 

were decided by the surface quality of the primary 

mirror and the scanning mirror. Gambit mirrors were 

larger, made to closer tolerances, and lighter than in 

any previous system. Thermal gradients between the 

reflecting surfaces and the rear supporting surfaces 

had forced consideration of metal rather than glass 

backing, further complicating the problem.

The performance of the Gambit camera depended 

as much on vehicle stability as on any inherent 

photographic quality. Pointing had to be extremely 

precise, requiring extreme accuracy in the horizon 

sensors and a stable platform gyro system that would 

allow the sensors to stay locked on the horizon while 

the vehicle rolled to point toward targets on either 

side of the orbital track. Because the ground swath 

width of Gambit cameras was only 10 miles, more 

photographs would be taken from a canted than from 

a vertical position. 

The complexity of orbital operations derived from 

the inability of the launch system to put the orbital 

vehicle on a predetermined orbit with the precision 

required by the narrow swath width. Command 

programming had to be changeable in flight, and 

further complexity derived from the need to set highly 

accurate roll positions for photography on either side 

of the vehicle’s track.

Charyk’s report was relatively optimistic, although 

he refrained from any predictions of complete 

success in meeting either schedules or resolution 

requirements. He forecast a first flight date in May 1963 

and operational readiness by August of that year. And 

he concluded by summarizing the measures taken to 

insure the readiness of Gambit at the earliest possible 

date,* appending the note that additional funds would 

be needed to see the “insurance program” through.23

Certain other measures were taken during March 

1962 to improve prospects of program success. At 

Greer’s insistence, General Electric reorganized its 

Gambit management to provide more meaningful 

attention from high corporate executives and to 

improve laboratory, assembly, manufacturing, and 

test procedures. Concurrently, the general put Space 

Technology Laboratories under contract to solve the 

orbital operations problem. STL would receive funds 

for computer work on orbit selection, mission profiles, 

and operational analysis. Charyk also approved these 

actions in March.24

Separately, the West Coast group arranged 

with Eastman Kodak to begin a backup program 

supporting General Electric’s infrared sensor 

development. Unlike most other work of such nature 

in support of Gambit, this particular EK effort became 

a “white” subprogram. (The justification was a need for 

improved horizon sensors to support space programs 

generally. Equipment tests were to be conducted in 

the Discoverer program.)

One key reason for making the scanner work 

at EK “white” was the need for close correlation of 

Eastman and GE developments. The feasibility of 

such contacts was enhanced by the fact that General 

Electric was moving all its Gambit work to a special 

facility at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. (Corona and 

Lanyard subsystems were to remain at GE’s Chestnut 

Street shops, in Philadelphia.)

The facility problem, in conjunction with an 

alarming increase in General Electric’s cost estimates, 

caused a minor crisis in Gambit program affairs in 

April and May 1962. In part, the reluctance of the 

Department of Defense to finance an expansion 

of GE facilities, including those needed for Gambit 

production, arose from an expectation that space 

and equipment released from the cancelled Advent 

communication satellite program could be diverted to 

other uses, including Gambit.25 General Greer felt that 

nothing of value to Gambit would emerge from the 

Advent termination in time to be useful. Charyk had 

* These were essentially the actions approved in his separate 19 March 

directive to General Greer and were based on Greer’s 28 February 

recommendations.
21

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

another opinion, and a fair amount of argument was 

necessary to change his mind. Eventually, on 31 May 

1962, the necessary formal approval was received 

and the facility construction at Valley Forge was able 

to continue, but for about a month before approval was 

received the question—and the soundness of Gambit 

delivery schedules—seemed very much in doubt.26

Another aspect of the apparent reluctance to 

commit additional money to General Electric was 

the steady increase in estimated program costs. 

Between April 1961 and April 1962, GE’s estimates 

had gradually climbed. The contractor explained 

away some of the puzzling increases as arising from 

unanticipated technical difficulties but also conceded 

to “just some bad estimating.” Neither Greer nor 

Charyk was particularly happy about a contract 

performance which the general charitably described 

as “...somewhat less than expected.”27

Equally important to the trend of Gambit 

development were technical questions which had 

persistently bothered General Greer through the 

early months of 1962. They stemmed, in the main, 

from Greer’s long-held conviction that the need for 

land recovery of film capsules had been considerably 

overemphasized. The original Gambit program 

directives had specified land recovery as one of the 

prime development objectives, for reasons which had 

seemed more than sufficient to the high administration 

officials who had conceived and pushed the notion. In 

the climate of 1960, when Corona recovery had been 

infrequent, uncertain, and expensive, land recovery 

seemed a useful option. But land recovery was more 

complicated than air catch in several ways, and the 

very grave risks inherent in such an approach had 

continued to trouble Greer. On several occasions 

during the first 18 months of Gambit development he 

had raised the issue in discussions with Dr. Charyk. In 

each instance, however, Charyk had acknowledged 

the question and reconfirmed the requirement. All 

of those discussions were informal. Only once did 

the question of an alternative to the original land 

recovery scheme receive consideration at the level 

of the program office. In January 1962 a member of 

the Aerospace Corporation’s Program 206 contingent 

advised Colonel Riepe that air retrieval was “being 

considered,” but that it was quite impractical.28 The 

very considerable weight of the 206 recovery capsule 

as it then existed exceeded the air-catch capacity of 

recovery aircraft.

By July of 1962, General Greer’s concern had 

put down roots more substantial than an academic 

distrust of land recovery as a technique. The Gambit 

system was then essentially 500 pounds over 

design weight, and most of the overweight derived 

from complications introduced by the land recovery 

requirement. Moreover, the reasons for distrusting 

air-sea recovery modes had become much less 

valid since 1960. Successful Corona recoveries 

were proving to be less difficult as time passed. The 

anticipated danger of losing a capsule to a Soviet 

trawler or submarine had largely dissipated; overwater recovery plans contained provisions for dealing 

with virtually every imaginable contingency, while the 

possibility that a slightly misdirected land-recovery 

capsule might descend in either Canada or Mexico—

or might drive into some populated area of the western 

United States—had not diminished.

Equally important, the disabilities arising from 

land recovery had not been appreciably lessened in 

the intervening years. Indeed, in many respects they 

had come into sharper focus. Over-water recovery, 

as developed in the Corona program, seemed a 

very simple process when compared to the planned 

land recovery scheme. In its descent toward the 

sea, a Corona reentry vehicle could safely shed all 

sorts of accessories—hatch covers and the ablative 

cone being the most obvious. Such jetsam fell into 

the ocean without danger to anything below, and 

then sank into the secure obscurity of a cluttered sea 

bottom. A land recovery vehicle could shed nothing 

that might come to earth as a lethal projectile or which, 

if discovered, might breach the security of the satellite 

reconnaissance effort. Everything that re-entered with 

a land-recovery vehicle had to remain with it. Finally, 

experience with the E-5 and E-6 reentry vehicles, and 

particularly the latter, did encourage great optimism 

about the feasibility of recovering bulky, weighty 

capsules.

Toward the end of July 1962, General Greer 

again raised the question of the desirability of land 

recovery with Undersecretary Charyk. Although 

still dubious, Charyk agreed that Greer should look 

into alternatives. In point of fact, the most desirable 

alternative had occurred to Greer some days earlier. 

Thoroughly familiar with Corona, he had concluded 

that it might be entirely feasible to modify the Gambit 

vehicle to accept a Corona-type recovery capsule. 

After mulling over the idea, he decided that was the 

sensible and logical way out of the current dilemma. 

Having broached the thought to Charyk and gotten 

agreement that the idea had merit, he went directly 

from Washington to the General Electric facility in 

Philadelphia. Hilliard Paige, GE’s senior satellite 

program official, was absent when Greer arrived, so 

the general settled down at Paige’s desk and wrote a 

longhand memo authorizing GE to do a quick study of 

the feasibility of “gluing the Discoverer capsule on the 

front end of Gambit.”29
22

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

Encouraged by preliminary findings, General 

Greer induced Charyk to formalize the inquiry. On 

28 July the undersecretary agreed that a major 

policy decision was necessary on “the question of 

land recovery in the entire satellite reconnaissance 

program.” He acknowledged doubts about the 

wisdom of relying too fully on “ . . . the more complex 

and larger vehicles being developed toward land 

recovery” and asked for a “white paper” on the merits 

and shortcomings of land recovery. He also suggested 

a study of the feasibility of designing a capsule which 

could be retrieved in any of several different modes as 

individual mission circumstances dictated. Later that 

day Charyk added a requirement for a broader study 

of simplifying Gambit to provide “possible alternative 

modes of operation” including sea recovery.30

Apart from Greer himself, at least one other 

senior officer in the West Coast establishment had 

given serious thought to the land recovery problem 

during the early summer of 1962. Colonel Paul 

Heran, director of the E-6 program (which was 

then entering its flight test phase and had begun to 

encounter problems in recovery techniques), had 

looked into land recovery options for his satellite and 

had concluded that while the technique was feasible 

for E-6 it was not particularly attractive. Charyk was 

familiar with this conclusion as well as with Greer’s 

severally expressed reservations. On 30 July 1962, 

General Greer discussed the Corona-capsule idea 

with Colonel J. L. Martin, Charyk’s principal staff officer 

for the satellite program, in Washington. By the start of 

the following week he had received an advance report 

from GE, in Philadelphia. He promptly advised Martin 

and Charyk that a relatively minor modification to the 

Discoverer capsule would provide “a vastly simpler 

scheme for recovering record data on certain special 

projects.” He asked for authority to start GE on a full 

investigation and, if there were no technical obstacles, 

to buy and modify sufficient capsules for the Gambit 

launches.31

In the meantime, Greer had assigned to Colonel 

Riepe the task of responding to Dr. Charyk’s formal 

query of 28 July. Riepe was cognizant of Corona, but the 

Gambit people who worked for him were not. Moreover, 

they were, like all good project people, convinced that 

their current approach was best. Thinking chiefly in 

terms of modifying the current Gambit capsule for 

air-catch recovery, as had been suggested—and 

dismissed as “impractical”—six months earlier, they 

displayed neither optimism nor enthusiasm. They 

pointed out that the current deceleration parachute 

was totally unsuited to an air-catch operation and that 

the capsule had been designed to sink if it came down 

at sea. The heat shield was specifically designed for 

land impact, as was the basic structure of the recovery 

capsule itself. Moreover, the command and control 

system intended for Gambit was integrated with a 

capsule design built around the philosophy of small 

dispersion errors; it would be unsuitable for a capsule 

susceptible to relatively wide dispersion. Then there 

were considerations involving facilities: negotiations 

for the command and control station had been pressed 

(though with no particular success), and a start had 

been made toward the construction of buildings on the 

Wendover range, in Utah.

On the other hand, more than 600 pounds of orbital 

weight could be chopped by going to an overwater 

recovery mode. The elimination of the land recovery 

requirement would also permit earlier testing with less 

risk, would reduce requirements for orbit adjust, and 

would (at least in theory) enhance the probability of 

recovering film, since over-water recovery techniques 

were by then well proven. Such reasoning was based 

on the little that Gambit people knew about the details 

of the Discoverer recovery vehicle.32

Some among General Greer’s people believed 

that land recovery should be continued at almost any 

cost, considering its eventual adoption inevitable. In 

his summary study, forwarded to Charyk on 4 August 

1962, the general took the opposite view, noting that 

many of the original motives for developing a land 

recovery capsule had been invalidated by the passage 

of time. The enormous expense of maintaining a sea 

recovery force to back up air catch operations had 

been a point in favor of land recovery in 1960, when 

the first Discoverer recoveries were successful, but 

with the refinement of air catch techniques the need 

for such elaborate surface forces had disappeared; 

air catch with limited ship and frogman backup had 

been well proven in the previous several months. 

The danger of capsule capture, the probability of 

loss, and the logistics of an air-catch technique had 

become less significant and techniques improved, 

while development of a land-recovery capsule had 

underscored new problems: weight, complexity, 

reliability, and performance penalties. In retrospect, 

the disabilities of land recovery seemed to have 

overtaken any earlier advantages. So, said General 

Greer, it was his conviction that the mobile air-sea 

recovery mode was “far simpler and has overwhelming 

operational advantages over fixed base recovery.”* 

He predicted that the continued evolution of guidance 

* Such opinions were supported by extensive comparison tables which showed 

the air-sea techniques to be best on the basis of all possible considerations. 

Land recovery showed up as the least promising technique, with island 

recovery next lowest. Among the factors considered in the study were all-night 

and all-weather operations, the dangers of dropping a capsule into a neutral 

country, requirements for precision, the status of several recovery techniques, 

the use of multiple capsules, the ability to conceal a recovery operation, and 

hazards to population.
23

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

systems would further reduce logistic requirements 

and increase accuracy, making multiple recoveries 

feasible in the process. (The general was also 

thinking in terms of a capsule suitable for use in any 

of several recovery modes—land, island, sea, and aircatch—with fewer specialized requirements than the 

contemporary land recovery designs.)33

On 6 August, Captain Frank B. Gorman (USN), 

General Greer’s plans chief, summarized the status of 

various recovery techniques in a special presentation 

to Undersecretary Charyk. Almost simultaneously, 

General Greer was mulling over a problem of funding 

which bore directly on the newly pregnant question 

of continuing land recovery plans; he recommended 

on 14 August that requests for facilities’ funds for the 

Wendover range be withdrawn from the fiscal 1963 

budget totals, concluding that they would be extremely 

difficult to defend in the existent climate. Ten days 

later, Colonel Riepe made a separate presentation 

to Charyk on recovery matters and at its conclusion 

received instructions to plan for initial systems tests 

over the Pacific rather than over the Wendover range. 

The undersecretary also decided that development 

activities related to the original land-recovery capsule 

should be reduced to a minimum expenditure rate, 

accepting the probability of program slippage if it 

were later reinstated.34 Separately, Charyk authorized 

Greer to begin immediate development of a Coronatype recovery system for Gambit, planning on a June 

1963 first flight date.35

For two weeks following Charyk’s 24 August 

decision, both the new and the old approaches to 

recovery were kept in being. In that interval, the 

undersecretary consulted with CIA members of the 

National Reconnaissance Organization. The situation 

was complicated by the fact that all matters involving 

use of the Corona capsule were in CIA custody; 

the agency maintained a jealous control of Corona 

security, opposing as a matter of policy all proposals 

for broadening the dissemination of information on the 

Corona recovery system. Although to many observers 

CIA’s caution seemed to verge on the psychotic, 

there was no denying that the use of the “Discoverer” 

capsule system in a non-CIA reconnaissance system 

would increase the chance of compromising Corona. 

Memories of the U-2 incident were too fresh to 

encourage any laxity. In 1962, the consequences of 

a disclosure that the “science oriented” Discoverer 

program had always been a CIA-sponsored 

reconnaissance scheme were too frightening to 

contemplate. The agency therefore insisted from the 

start that any provisions for using the Corona capsule 

configuration in Gambit had to begin with thorough 

protection of all aspects of Corona security. General 

Electric, which made the “bucket” for the CIA, agreed 

that use of the Corona equipment in connection with 

Gambit could easily jeopardize the four-year-old 

cover story unless some means could be concocted 

for concealing the origin of the capsule.

On 18 September, General Greer and 

Undersecretary Charyk met in Los Angeles to settle 

the main question. Charyk had by that time come to 

the viewpoint that land recovery was a sophistication 

of reconnaissance techniques which, though highly 

desirable, might take another decade to perfect. 

He still felt that operational costs, system efficiency, 

and security would benefit from land recovery, but 

he agreed that it was not immediately essential or 

feasible. General Greer commented mildly that land 

recovery was a useful emergency capability, but one 

not necessary in the current situation. He added, as an 

aside, that he had never firmly believed that the land 

recovery mode would be used for the first Gambit. 

The need to recover was too compelling to risk the 

additional complications of an entirely new technique 

when a proven recovery system was readily available.

Charyk capitulated, approving use of the H-30 

(Corona) capsule on the first ten Gambit shots 

and withholding a decision on later launches. He 

authorized cancellation of current studies on precise 

land recovery but added the proviso that Greer 

should undertake a study of modifying the H-30 for 

land recovery as an option to be considered after the 

first ten firings of Gambit.* The approved plan, then, 

involved adapting the original H-30 to the first ten 

Gambits and developing a mildly modified H-30, with 

a capacity for emergency land recovery, for later use.36

General Electric suggested several possible 

ways to hide the fact that Corona equipment was 

being used in Gambit and on 18 September, the day 

of the actual decision to proceed along the Corona 

capsule route, CIA recommended adoption of one of 

these. To the Greer people on the West Coast, the 

GE-CIA recommendation seemed unduly complex; 

they proposed a compromise. On 28 September, CIA 

agreed. The final procedures (which were complex 

because they were designed to keep knowledge of 

Corona from the Gambit people who would be using 

* Negotiations for a, tracking station site had to be terminated once the need 

for land recovery had disappeared. An amicable break off of discussions was 

complicated, unhappily, by one of those periodic lapses in communication that 

troubled the government. The project office believed that conversations through 

the State Department, had been discontinued in August. It later developed that 

several agencies involved in the affair had not been advised that the need for a 

station no longer existed. As a result, a formal agreement was very nearly signed 

before the kinetic energy of the original conversations could be harmlessly 

drained away. Final orders cancelling the station proposal were issued on 

20 September 1962. A further refinement of Gambit station requirements, in 

February 1963, led to the abandonment of earlier plans for using the Annette 

Island site (in Alaskan waters) as a Doppler radar tracking site.
24

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

the device) provided for design of the H-30 for Gambit 

within GE’s Chestnut Street establishment and the 

performance of qualification tests at Valley Forge. All 

of the “white” components would be made and tested 

at Chestnut Street and all “black” work conducted at 

Valley Forge. The purpose of the arrangement was to 

keep non-Corona people from learning that for more 

than three years the CIA-purchased Discoverer series 

of satellites had actually been carrying reconnaissance 

devices.37

The effect of the transition from a land-recovery 

system to the Corona recovery system included a 

slippage of at least one month in launch schedules. At 

that cost, the very troublesome weight difficulty that had 

earlier afflicted Gambit was eliminated, the complexity 

of the early design was materially reduced, and the 

requirement for a separate recovery force within the 

continental United States could be cancelled. On the 

whole, it seemed a worthwhile exchange.38

Dr. Charyk was not entirely happy with the outcome, 

however. His reluctance to abandon land recovery as 

a Gambit objective almost certainly stemmed from 

his original commitments to that mode during the 

Samos realignment period of 1960 and from the fact 

that the President and the National Security Council 

had been encouraged to expect a land-recovery 

system to become operational during 1963. Although 

he accepted the inevitability of the change, he never 

displayed any special fondness for the thought that 

the original Gambit concept had been modified. Greer, 

more pragmatic, was well pleased with the course 

events were taking. Not merely had the uncertainties 

of Gambit film recovery been reduced by the change 

in recovery techniques, but it appeared that the whole 

of the Gambit system had been markedly simplified.39

In the wake of E-5 and E-6 experience, simplicity was 

a virtue for which he had a marked respect.

Prompted in part by hard questioning during a 

meeting with the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board 

and the “special group” of the National Security Council, 

Dr. Charyk in early October 1962 questioned the 

adequacy of project-office-level management. Charyk 

characterized Gambit as “imperative” and urged that 

it be pressed with a “maximum sense of urgency, 

noting that the “extreme political sensitivity of any 

other method of obtaining such photography” made it 

essential that “no reasonable steps should be omitted 

to guarantee its success at the earliest possible time.” 

Discouraged about the rate of Gambit progress Charyk 

specifically suggested to Greer the appointment of an 

extremely able project manager and the start of an 

exhaustive technical review to locate any problems 

remaining in the Gambit program. Resolution better 

than the two-foot requirement of 1960 was desirable, 

he emphasized. He also cautioned that money was not 

unlimited and that greater management talent rather 

than more funds should be applied to the program.40

In all probability, the prevalence of over-runs, 

particularly at General Electric, the threat of new 

schedule slippages, and the increasing cost of the 

Gambit program prompted Charyk’s sudden outburst of 

concern for the validity and future of the development. 

Such factors certainly were at the heart of his indirect 

suggestion that Colonel Riepe be relieved—a 

suggestion that he separately discussed with General 

Greer by telephone. Charyk, who had made efficient 

management his fetish at the time he acquired custody 

of the satellite reconnaissance function, tended to 

ascribe most of Gambit’s contemporary difficulties 

to deficiencies in management at the program office 

level. He was particularly concerned at the possibility 

of further schedule slippages since Gambit offered the 

most promising approach to the task of discovering, 

at any given time, whether the Soviets were actively 

preparing their military forces for use.

The coincidence of Charyk’s anxiety with the start 

of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 could scarcely be 

ignored; even though the United States did not have 

clear evidence that Soviet nuclear-warhead missiles 

were being emplaced in Cuba until the second week of 

October, concern for that possibility had been mounting 

since the previous August. Obviously, it would have 

been much easier to deal effectively with a Soviet 

missile threat in Cuba if the administration had detailed 

information on the degree of Soviet preparation for 

quick use of strategic striking forces. This, then, was a 

central consideration in Charyk’s desire to accelerate 

Gambit progress and to improve the quality of Gambit 

products. The prospect of program delay rather than 

acceleration, and of photographic degradation rather 

than improvement, certainly influenced him to suggest 

the assignment of a new program office chief.41

General Greer, who had to decide the fate of both 

the program and its immediate manager, was scarcely 

indifferent to the circumstances that had moved Charyk 

to such a position. The E-6 program was in grave 

technical trouble in October 1962, having experienced 

four failures in as many flight attempts. Nor was there 

available any convincing evidence on which to base 

a rebuttal of Charyk’s stand. Through a succession of 

misfortunes mostly originating in the pre-1961 Samos 

program, it had been necessary to cancel each of 

the major photo-oriented reconnaissance programs 

originally assigned to SAFSP except E-6 and Gambit. 

And E-6 had taken on a distinctly unhealthy cast. 

True, the most obvious defect in Gambit design had 

been eliminated with the decision to adopt air-catch 

recovery techniques and the Corona recovery vehicle. 
25

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

But the prospect of program slippage because of faulty 

attitude control development could not be banished 

and there was no ready means of insuring that the 

rather complex Gambit camera system would function 

with complete propriety during its early flight trials.

On 5 October, Greer told Charyk “with some 

reluctance’’ that the most certain way to strengthen 

Gambit management along the lines Charyk had 

indicated would be to transfer official custody of the 

program from SSD to SAFSP.* He reaffirmed his desire 

to keep Colonel Riepe in charge of Gambit development. 

Moving the program into SAFSP, he told Charyk, 

would give the development the benefit of prestige 

that adhered to any effort identified with the secretary’s 

office, although it seemed possible that identification of 

Gambit with reconnaissance objectives might follow. 

In Greer’s eyes, that was not a disqualifying handicap. 

He reminded the undersecretary that the United States 

had constantly maintained the basic legality of satellite 

reconnaissance under international law and that the 

nation had never denied either the existence or the 

employment of orbiting camera systems. The chief 

purpose of concealment now, he suggested, was 

to cloak the scope and operational success of such 

operations. That much could be done within SAFSP. 

The remote possibility that national policy might shift, 

in which case it would be difficult to continue any 

effort even indirectly associated with reconnaissance 

objectives, was the chief argument against moving 

Gambit.

The general was not optimistic about the prospect 

of improving the quality of Gambit photography, at 

least in the first several flights. He told Charyk that 

the original definition requirement, two to three feet in 

resolution, would very probably be satisfied—though 

he observed that not all experts agreed with him on that 

score. The mirror was the critical item, being chiefly 

responsible for both distortion and light loss which 

reduced resolution. Greer cautioned that results from 

the first few flights might not bear out his conviction 

that Gambit would prove itself; past experience with 

“new” space vehicles (into which category the General 

Electric orbital control vehicle certainly fell) was not 

such as to encourage undiluted optimism. 

As for priorities and emphasis, General Greer 

noted separately that “...it is difficult to convince 

either contractors or military personnel involved in 

administration of this program that it enjoys any special 

priority or importance. The one infallible indicator of 

status—timely and adequate funding—is and had been 

consistently absent since the turn of the fiscal year.“42

* The desirability of shifting 206 into the SAFSP structure had been examined in 

some detail as early as July 1962. By October, Colonel J. W. Ruebel, General 

Greer’s special assistant, had worked out the basic details of the transfer plan 

later adopted and had composed a “rationale” for public consumption.

Although General Greer had essentially reacted 

to Charyk’s message of 3 October by defending the 

status quo, he thereafter set afoot major changes 

which, within 60 days, markedly altered both the 

configuration and the character of Gambit. On 30 

October he announced to members of the 206 

program office that Colonel William G. King was 

assuming management responsibility for their project 

and that Colonel Riepe had been detailed to a new and 

demanding SSD program.43 Four weeks later, Colonel 

Riepe was officially named director of Program 437, 

identified by Air Force headquarters as an extremely 

high priority project aimed at the early development 

of a useful satellite interceptor.44 General Greer had 

earlier discussed SSD’s need for an experienced 

space program manager with SSD’s commander, 

Major General B. I. Funk, and with Colonel Riepe’s 

knowledge had worked out a transfer arrangement.45

King, who had been intermittently associated 

with satellite reconnaissance for nearly 10 years, had 

special qualifications for the Gambit assignment. As 

Samos program director during 1959 and 1960, he 

had been a participant in the bloody infighting that 

accompanied the Samos reorganizations. He had 

been one of the first to recognize the superiority of 

film recovery over readout techniques for Samos and 

had been notably outspoken in his support of recovery 

as a technique. Since cancellation of the E-5 program 

the previous winter, he had served mostly as a special 

plans officer for General Greer, conducting detailed 

studies and comparative analyses of the various 

systems proposed and in development, although he 

had also retained responsibility for the slow-paced 

Valley program, an early effort to develop a search 

system with resolution potential.

Admittedly, the Gambit program was a bit out of 

hand when King took it over. Riepe had reacted to 

Charyk’s continued pressure for insuring a first flight 

success by creating an elaborate test regime which 

had substantially increased the cost and complexity 

of the development. There were indications that 

Charyk did not have a high regard for Riepe’s ability, 

General Greer, who thought well of him, nevertheless 

conceded that in his dedication to the assignment 

Riepe had tended to overelaborate the program and 

the program office. In the circumstances of October 

1962, simplification of both seemed necessary. King’s 

job, then, was to devise and put into effect measures 

for restoring full confidence in program success—a 

commodity not always abundant that fall.

Immediately after taking over the program, 

Colonel King discovered that the adaptation of the 

Corona capsule to Gambit uses had gone thoroughly 

off course. The situation had its origin in a series of 
26

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

basic misunderstandings complicated by a lack of 

knowledge in the program office and among GE and 

EK engineers.

Greer’s original intent, confirmed by Charyk, was 

to “glue on” the Corona recovery vehicle. Elaborate 

or extensive modification of either the capsule or the 

orbital midstructure was neither intended nor desired. 

Because of the rigid compartmentation of programs, 

however, only Colonel Riepe among the Gambit 

program office people had a reasonably full knowledge 

of the Corona program. Corona provided two years 

of carefully concealed experience with unpressurized 

operation. Reasonably enough, lacking any indication 

that unpressurized operation was possible, Gambit 

people concluded that pressurization of the film 

cassette, a basic feature of Gambit, would have 

to be continued in the new recovery capsule. The 

chief difference between the two cassettes, once 

pressurization requirements had been sorted out, lay 

in the greater film width of Gambit, a factor that General 

Electric’s engineers must certainly have taken into 

account in responding to Greer’s July inquiry on the 

feasibility of converting Gambit to a Corona recovery 

vehicle.

In the course of changing over from land recovery 

to air catch, the Gambit office had eventually 

authorized General Electric to develop a recovery 

vehicle essentially capable of accepting the original—

pressurized—Gambit take-up cassette and film chute. 

Because the unit was substantially larger than the 

Corona cassette film chute package, General Electric 

had scaled up the Corona capsule, making it deeper 

and increasing its base diameter. Such changes 

presented the program office with what was neither 

a Corona nor a Gambit capsule, but something 

resembling the former in external configuration while 

being nearer the latter in overall size and internal 

arrangements. It was, for practical purposes, so 

significantly different from the original Discoverer 

capsule as to require proof testing. Colonel Riepe’s 

inquiry about the procedures to follow in scheduling a 

drop test program first brought the matter of capsule 

configuration forcefully to the attention of General 

Greer’s immediate staff. Obviously there was no 

justification for drop-testing Corona capsules. There 

was a good case for the argument that no need for 

such a major modification of the Corona recovery 

capsule could be demonstrated, that pressurization—

which was the cited justification for the modification—

was entirely unnecessary. 

As it happened, one of Kodak’s senior people in 

the Gambit program was aware of the fact that the 

requirement for pressurizing any part of an orbital 

camera system had long since been invalidated. F. C. 

E. Oder, deeply involved in the early Corona effort, had 

retired from the Air Force and joined EK. Imbued with 

the security consciousness of the Corona activity and 

no longer active in that program, he did not consider 

himself entitled to pass his information to fellow 

workers at Rochester. Major John Pietz (of Greer’s 

staff) solved that difficulty by flying to the New York 

plant and briefing a select few EK people on Corona. 

Thereafter, EK could work on an unpressurized 

cassette design with some confidence that it would 

not fail because of the lack of a pressurization feature. 

But by this time (mid-October 1962), GE was well 

along in the final design of a bigger Corona-style 

reentry vehicle. A full-scale mock-up had been built, 

substantial sums added to the contract totals, and an 

extensive test program planned.

One of Colonel King’s first moves after moving into 

Gambit management was to advise General Greer 

that he thought the design of the adapted capsule 

represented much more of a change than Greer had 

intended. Greer, who had ordered that changes to the 

Corona capsule should be minimal, was disconcerted. 

He forcefully endorsed Colonel King’s suggestion that 

the original intent of the modification be reinstated 

and that the rapidly burgeoning General Electric 

development effort be stopped in its tracks. King met 

with key GE officials two days later and defined the 

objective of the capsule change in terms of General 

Greer’s appreciation of the need. Cross-briefing 

of Gambit people on Corona, a continuation of the 

process earlier begun at Eastman Kodak, eliminated 

any excuse based on technical uncertainty.

The episode apparently was partly the 

consequence of a semantic gap. Colonel Riepe and 

the 206 program office people considered that the 

modifications General Electric proposed to make 

were “minor” in the terms of General Greer’s original 

instructions. The problem was compounded by a 

general lack of Corona information among Gambit 

people, both in the program office and on contractor 

staffs. If pressurization was either essential or highly 

desirable, a “big” capsule was inevitable, and in the 

absence of knowledge to the contrary it was not illogical 

of Gambit program people to continue to believe in 

a need for pressurization. In Colonel King’s view, the 

new GE version of the Corona capsule represented a 

sharp departure, a more than-minor change. General 

Greer, it developed, agreed with King.46

The main issue was finally disposed of early 

in December 1962. Stating his preferences plainly, 

General Greer told Colonel King: “The name of the 

game is to adopt it [the Corona capsule] for 206 without 

introducing a change external or internal which will 

result in failure on the first try or otherwise prejudice its 
27

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

reliability.” King responded with the advice that he had 

imposed an ‘’absolute minimum” change policy and 

that earlier changes in the external configuration had 

arisen from too strict interpretation of instructions that 

adoption of the Corona recovery system was to have 

a minimum effect on the payload.47 As it happened, 

the payload was the least risky element of the system, 

command and control representing the most difficult.

By that time, Colonel King had made it entirely 

clear to both GE and EK that system changes were 

to be minimal. Deviations from the original external 

configuration of the Corona capsule had to be 

cleared personally by King before approval. By all 

indications, the external changes would be slight. The 

general policy, King added, was to use flight-proven 

components wherever possible, keeping all change 

at a minimum but altering the details of payload 

configuration as essential to the requirement for 

limiting external change.48 Early in November, while 

Colonel King was in the early stages of sorting out the 

technical complications of Gambit and subjecting them 

to a detailed analysis, General Greer reactivated the 

suggestion of transferring the entire 206 program to 

SAFSP. Answering earlier objections, he explained to 

Charyk that such a move did not imply “surfacing” the 

development and acknowledging its reconnaissance 

objectives, that the payload would remain covert and 

procurement “black.” Moreover, the cover plan devised 

in SAFSP promised to perpetuate the legend that 206 

(“Cue Ball”) was in some way related to a bombs-inorbit program. The explanation for transfer from SSD 

to SAFSP need not be either complex or particularly 

sophisticated; a straightforward statement that 

because of program priority it was being put under the 

direct control of the Secretary of the Air Force would 

satisfy those unknowing that covert programs were 

conducted within the Air Force. Greer expected that 

others aware of the existence of clandestine activities 

would deem it unthinkable to move a concealed 

reconnaissance program into a reconnaissance 

organization and would be more firmly convinced than 

ever that 206 had some mission other than satellite 

reconnaissance.

“Children or half-wits, if they care, will most likely 

reason directly to the correct deduction, i.e., if it’s 

assigned to SAFSP, it’s reconnaissance. In as much as 

we will do nothing to confirm this,” commented Greer, 

“and we will insure that some actions are apparently 

inconsistent with this hypothesis, I think there is a 

good chance of fooling-or at least confusing—the 

professional espionage agent, who is presumably 

neither a child nor a half-wit.” 

There was another consideration, which General 

Greer did not specifically identify in his correspondence 

with Undersecretary Charyk but which certainly 

influenced his judgment on transferring Gambit to 

SAFSP. A Department of Defense Directive—DOD 

Dir 5200.13—originally published in March 1962 and 

revised later that year, had placed all military space 

programs in a “no publicity on payloads” and “special 

access, must-know” category. Individual access 

lists were to be maintained for each program and 

information on each program was to be confined to 

those having been granted a “specific need to know” 

recognition. Random numbers were substituted 

for the previously used popular names and launch 

announcements were restricted to a bare statement 

of the type of booster and the date of the operation. 

In those circumstances, it was no longer possible 

to identify a “Samos” payload solely from the fact of 

launch security; all military space launches were to 

be conducted under tight security provisions. Thus 

it was increasingly difficult to come by information 

about most Air Force space programs (though in point 

of fact, 5200.13 was rather casually administered 

within the fraternity of those having general access 

to classified information), and to a degree all cover 

stories had become somewhat redundant.49

The arguments were effective. By 20 November 

Charyk had concurred in the “desirability” of 

transferring 206 to SAFSP. Major General 0. J. 

Ritland, who was then part of the Air Force Systems 

Command headquarters staff,* was called in to brief 

General Funk on the realities of the situation.50

That much out of the way, Greer and King set 

about changing the technical character of Gambit. 

Since the questionable stability of General Electric’s 

orbital control vehicle currently was the most dubious 

aspect of the development, they conceived the idea 

of leaving the orbital vehicle attached to the Agena 

second stage through the whole of the first mission. 

The Agena, which had a generally reliable stabilization 

and control system but one considered insufficiently 

precise for Gambit operations, could stabilize the 

Gambit camera long enough to secure operating 

experience and proof of system feasibility. Greer and 

King, with memories of E-5 and E-6 cancellations 

caused by on-orbit failures, were determined that 

the first Gambit flight should return at least one good 

picture. That achievement in the E-2, E-5, and E-6 

projects might well have insured their continuance, 

at least temporarily. Greer was adamant that nothing 

* In 1962, the Air Force Systems Command embarked on a determined 

campaign to return control of satellite reconnaissance to “normal” Air Force 

channels. “Loss” of Gambit represented a defeat in that campaign. Charyk 

later quashed the whole activity, but it experienced a brief revival after his 

departure in early 1963.
28

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

of the sort would be said of Gambit. Charyk was not 

convinced that the “one picture above all” outlook was 

the correct one, but it seemed possible that he could 

be brought around.

There was more to “hitchup,” as the notion of 

keeping the orbital control vehicle attached to the 

Agena was called, than met the unwitting eye. An 

elaboration of the scheme involved use of the rolljoint coupling invented for Lanyard. Should the orbital 

control vehicle prove generally unreliable, it might be 

possible to introduce the Lanyard roll joint between 

the Agena and the payload end of Gambit, eliminating 

reliance on the stability and control elements of 

General Electric’s orbital control vehicle.

On 29 November, General Greer took the results 

of a preliminary analysis of the “hitchup” and “roll joint” 

ideas to a meeting with Undersecretary Charyk. The 

undersecretary showed interest. On his return to Los 

Angeles, Greer drafted an authorization for continued 

study of these options and sent it to Washington 

for endorsement. Later that day (30 November) the 

second major change to Gambit in two months was 

tentatively approved.

The chief difficulty in the latest idea was devising 

a non-compromising means of bringing the roll joint 

part of the technique into the Gambit program. As 

was the case with the Corona reentry capsule, the roll 

joint was quite unknown to most Gambit people and 

because of the security compartmentalization that 

existed within the reconnaissance program structure 

it seemed highly unwise to disclose the existence 

of Lanyard to large numbers of Gambit workers. So 

“Charyk’s” message of 30 November, actually written 

by General Greer, contained the “suggestion” that 

Greer contact Lockheed about the roll joint as “... he 

[Charyk] believes a similar idea was once proposed 

and possibly designed in connection with another 

space program.”

The kernel of the cover story here outlined was 

that Lockheed would be empowered to “develop” the 

earlier “idea,” delivering finished roll joints to Gambit 

as though they were new items with no relationship to 

any other reconnaissance program. The scheme was 

so simple it seemed foolproof.51

In his conversation with Dr. Charyk on 29 

November, General Greer had promised that 

additional measures for insuring the success of the 

first Gambit flight would be proposed in the course 

of a fullscale program review on 14 December. On 

that date, he, Colonel King, several program people, 

and a team from Aerospace Corporation not only 

reviewed the program but proposed still another 

technical innovation. (Charyk had earlier approved a 

contract technique change which eased the financial 

pressure on the first six flight vehicles, agreeing 

that they could be purchased on a cost-plus-fixedfee basis with the seventh and later Gambits being 

funded on an incentive fee basis.) The latest change 

provided for incorporating “Lifeboat” provisions in 

Gambit. “Lifeboat” was another technique originated 

in the Corona program; it involved the provision of 

independent reentry command circuitry (including 

a receiver), a separate magnetrometer, and its own 

stabilization-gas supply. All were independent of the 

main systems. If the primary reentry systems became 

inoperative for any reason, “Lifeboat” could be 

separately actuated. The magnetrometer used lines 

of magnetic force around the earth as a longitudinal 

stabilization reference, permitting the device to place 

the Agena (or any other suitably equipped orbital 

vehicle) in a proper attitude for the start of de-boost, 

relying entirely on its own gas supply for attitude 

control and a taped command sequence for the 

recovery process. In several experiences with Corona 

vehicles, “Lifeboat” had proved highly reliable.

On 19 December, the undersecretary formally 

authorized the “Lifeboat,” “hitchup,” and “roll joint” 

expedients for Gambit. “Lifeboat” was to be a 

permanent part of the total system, “hitchup” was 

to be incorporated in the first four vehicles (but a 

determination on use would be made on a flight-byflight basis), while “roll joint” was to be developed “as 

a bona fide operational substitute for the OCV [orbital 

control vehicle] roll system.”52

At the time that these additions were made, 

General Greer approved a proposal by Colonel King 

to delete rather substantial portions of the elaborate 

test program earlier scheduled. There was no real 

alternative if the launch schedule, now specifying first 

flight in July, was to retain any validity. Both King and 

Greer were uncomfortably aware that reducing the 

number and scope of development tests was risky. 

They were also aware, however, that another contract 

overrun or a new schedule slippage represented an 

equally grave danger to long-term program stability. 

Experience—not always the best criterion, but in this 

instance the only one available—seemed to indicate 

that the simplest and most direct technical approaches 

worked best for reconnaissance satellites. Although it 

was possible that pruning away tests might lead to 

the failure of some major component, the program 

innovations of September-December 1962 provided 

considerable insurance against a major catastrophe. 

Air-catch and use of the H-30 capsule overcame 

objections to the faults of the original Gambit recovery 

technique, and Lifeboat provided greater assurance 

of recovery success. Hitchup represented a feasible 
29

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

means of increasing the probability that the camera 

system would have a chance to display its abilities 

without succumbing to the frailties of an unproven 

stability and control system. Roll joint was a safeguard 

against the long-term unsuitability of the GE orbital 

control vehicle. On these counts, Gambit was a much 

more realistic program in late December 1962 than 

had been the case four months earlier.53

Finally conceding that the most vital initial objective 

of Gambit was to return one good picture (Greer’s 

frequently stated goal), Dr. Charyk nevertheless 

insisted that all flights subsequent to the first had to be 

programmed to return useful pictures of pre-selected 

intelligence targets. He specifically rejected the 

concept of a step-by-step approach to an operational 

configuration through research and development 

improvements. His philosophy was the key to the 

reason for incorporating the roll joint development:* if it 

were necessary to rely on roll joint because of the failure 

of the GE orbital control vehicle, the GE effort could 

be discontinued. Degradation of picture quality was a 

probable consequence, but the degree of degradation 

could not be accurately estimated in advance. Theory 

had it that the greater delicacy and precision of roll 

obtainable through the GE vehicle was essential to 

Gambit operation. The roll joint system could provide 

only 100 stereo pairs of pictures of selected targets 

during a single mission, about one-third to one-fourth 

of the current expectation for the GE vehicle, and 

one-sixth of the original requirement. Roll joint was 

designed to permit shooting at angles as great as 

30-degrees from the vertical, with intermediate settings 

every five degrees. In late 1962, Gambit experts were 

not optimistic about the prospect of compensating for 

smear and image-motion-compensation errors when 

roll joint was in use; in the event, more than a year 

later, experience was to show that they had been 

far too pessimistic about the stability capabilities of 

the Agena and too exacting in their requirements for 

camera stability in Gambit.54

* Roll joint development, from a technical standpoint, presented no special 

difficulty. It existed, and worked, as part of Lanyard. But getting it from the 

Lockheed Corona works to the Gambit assembly building was something of a 

problem. Contract authority originated in a change order to the existing Lanyard 

contract. The basic pattern devised to get the H-30 capsule from Corona 

to Gambit channels was adapted thereafter. Fabrication was “in the white;” 

assembly, test, and qualification were “black” processes. Aerospace people 

were told only that Lockheed had proposed the roll joint to Greer somewhat 

earlier and that the firm was so well advanced in a hardware sense, because 

of such earlier work. Thus there would be no need to brief any new Aerospace 

people on Corona. Some Lockheed people would need Gambit briefings, but 

that was inescapable. Documents and correspondence relating to roll-joint 

origins would remain in Corona channels until delivered to SAFSP, at which 

point all references to the Lockheed organization and to Corona associations 

would be deleted from the documents. Thus “sanitized,” the paper could go 

into Gambit channels. Risk of compromising Corona was negligible.

The first 19 Gambits would cost money, of which 

most had been expended by December 1962. (Some 

more was budgeted against flight and operation costs 

through June 1965.)55 In such a context, measures 

which would hold down costs were in order. There 

was no ignoring the need for program insurance 

applicable to several aspects of the total program. 

General Greer’s instructions to King in October had 

emphasized three critical goals: staying within the 

budget, staying on the schedule, and obtaining one 

good picture. The prospect that Lanyard could fill the 

role earlier reserved for Gambit was but one reason for 

discernible concern at the possibility that Gambit might 

be terminated if it encountered major difficulties. In the 

reconnaissance program, none of the ordinary reasons 

for avoiding program cancellation situations had much 

weight. No embarrassment could result because news 

of a cancellation would be confined to a small circle of 

familiars. Neither the public nor Congress would have 

occasion to carp at a program cancelled, a factor of 

some importance to the normal program management 

structure and one of the more important influences in 

continuing programs which in a totally rational world 

would probably have been terminated. Either budget 

overruns or significant schedule slippages could 

degrade Gambit’s prospects.

By early January 1963, Colonel King had pared 

off money in fiscal 1963 and in fiscal 1964 program 

fund requirements. (The total largely represented cuts 

in engineering work not essential to program success, 

the purchase of fewer spares, a reduction in the 

requirement for post-flight data reduction, tightened 

quality control, elimination of much documentation 

earlier called for, simplification of reentry vehicle tests, 

and a reduction in qualification tests.) King proposed 

that program funding be further reduced by eliminating 

some of the work earlier scheduled, and suggested to 

General Greer several areas which seemed ripe for 

attention. Some additional funding might be gained by 

cancelling parallel efforts and alternative subsystem 

developments.

Although Greer was attracted by the possibility of 

reducing program costs, he was reluctant to adopt all of 

the measures suggested by his new Gambit manager. 

Although agreeing that it was feasible to cut a rather 

extensive vendor reliability program “to the minimum 

essential” and to employ an earlier scheduled ground 

test system in the flight program, he was extremely 

dubious about the wisdom of halting work on an 

alternate horizon sensor since there still was some 
30

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

uncertainty about the utility of those then programmed.* 

He expressed similar reservations about King’s 

proposal to halt work on an alternate velocity meter. 

But in both instances, he told the colonel, if it appeared 

that funding the work into an indefinite future would 

cause invalidation of established budget ceilings, he 

would be quite willing to reconsider his decisions.57

Unexpected funds problems rose to plague Gambit 

shortly after the question of what to cut and how deeply 

had apparently been resolved. In reviewing his budget, 

Colonel King discovered that the Agena cost estimates 

given to Dr. Charyk in December “were grossly low.” 

The total of costs for the modified program would be 

higher than planned, chiefly because of configuration 

differences which had not been adequately weighed in 

costing the adoption of Agena vehicles based on the 

Discoverer program. Because of the earlier budget 

overhaul, however, the deficiency was substantially 

less of a problem than it might otherwise have been.58

Funding difficulties were scarcely unique in 

satellite reconnaissance. There were times, however, 

when Gambit seemed to have its own special affinity 

for such difficulty. Colonel King remarked at one point, 

early in 1963, that the program had been stigmatized 

as a high cost development and GE as a high cost 

producer—and that both characterizations might be 

justified. He told General Greer, “It is my feeling that 

* The horizon sensor problem, then more than a year old, was being attacked 

from three directions. The EK infrared system which had earlier been funded 

because it seemed to offer an attractive alternative to GE’s dual-scan sensor 

had not proceeded as well as hoped. By December 1962 it was clearly a high 

risk development which promised rather less improvement over the GE system 

than earlier hoped. It was also, at that time, at a stage where major redesign 

seemed necessary if it was to satisfy original goals. Nevertheless, it still 

seemed to promise greater inherent accuracy than anything else available— 

if it could be perfected. The GE scan system was making satisfactory progress 

but in King’s opinion would encounter both schedule slippages and overruns 

before 1963 ended. The third alternative, the Barnes system, promised to be 

lowest in cost and at least as good in performance as either of the others. 

King had urged Greer to approve cancellation of the EK program, continuation 

of the Barnes development and use of the Barnes scanner on the fourth 

and subsequent Gambit flights, and proposed to delay a decision on the GE 

program until the outcome could be more precisely estimated. General Greer 

agreed with the suggestion that the Barnes scanner be programmed for the 

fourth and subsequent Gambits but did not favor cancelling the EK effort for 

at least another month (after February) and felt that the GE system should 

continue to receive support. The uncertainty was not finally eliminated until 

September 1964, when Colonel King again urged adoption of the Barnes 

sensor. By that date both the GE and EK versions had proved their utility, but 

each was more costly and neither was better than the Barnes sensor. The 

Barnes model had other advantages; it was lighter, simpler, had the lowest 

power requirements, and operated over the widest temperature range of the 

three. After discussing the situation with Colonel King in some detail, General 

Greer agreed to such an assessment. On 17 September 1964, then, King 

notified GE that Barnes sensors would be furnished by the government for 

installation in the Gambit vehicle. A key factor in the decision was the ability 

of the Barnes sensor to function effectively in a winter environment, a feature 

which neither the EK nor GE models could satisfactorily demonstrate. 56

we may have outlined a program to the contractor 

that is inherently expensive; our scheme of managing, 

reviewing, and presumably safeguarding a high degree 

of success is a big order to be swallowed. Certainly it 

isn’t the cheapest way of doing all things. We may have 

built such a super foundation that we cannot afford the 

remainder of the structure.”59

Yet despite such obstacles, which were both very 

real and very important, Gambit continued pretty much 

on schedule. In late 1962 the main uncertainties which 

affected expectations of operational success concerned 

the vehicle stability and film recovery aspects of the 

program. Those areas received greatest attention, 

through conversion to the Corona capsule, adoption 

of hitchup, roll joint, and lifeboat options, and the 

concentration of effort on horizon scanner development. 

In other respects, the program was doing quite well. 

The camera, in particular, seemed to be coming along 

nicely. Even before the stability expedients were 

adopted, camera operating tests had demonstrated an 

equivalent 2.7-foot ground resolution at better than 115 

lines per millimeter. The only problem that appeared to 

offer any particular difficulty was the motor speed drive, 

and it was far from insurmountable. A mirror mounting 

problem, that had earlier given trouble (and which was 

similar to a problem then holding up Lanyard), had 

been essentially solved by November 1962.60

One additional change in the basic configuration 

of Gambit was recommended in January 1963 and 

approved for adoption on 28 February. This was a 

stellar-index camera, earlier treated as “purely an 

auxiliary package” but now considered quite important. 

The National Photographic Interpretation Center made 

the original recommendation, CIA’s Herbert Scoville 

endorsed it, and Charyk approved its inclusion. The 

camera itself was to be that developed for the CoronaMural. Because of procurement and installation delays 

arising from the advanced stage of completion of the 

first lot of Gambit payloads, the fourth Gambit was the 

first which could be scheduled to incorporate a stellarindex system. Each installation would cost.61

By virtue of circumstances, the fourth Gambit vehicle 

became the first in what was essentially a re-modified 

configuration. Hitchup capability was provided in all 

of the first six, but Lifeboat was an Agena installation 

in the first three, being shifted to the GE vehicle 

thereafter, and roll-joint capability was scheduled to be 

incorporated starting with the fourth system—as was 

the stellar-index camera. Early in March, funds for a 

total of 10 Gambits were provided (only six were then 

financed) and that month the earlier requirement for 

19 was reconfirmed (but not completely financed) and 

an additional six Gambits were authorized to provide a 

quick-reaction and standby capability.62
31

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

The standby requirement had appeared rather 

suddenly, in mid-March 1963, although its origin could 

readily be traced to the Cuban Crisis of the previous 

October. The Gambit schedule in effect since early 

program approval had envisaged one launch every 40 

days. By March 1963, the several high level agencies 

that maneuvered national policy in accordance with 

intelligence inputs had concluded that provisions 

should be made for launching a second Gambit in 

the event any primary mission was not successful. 

Second, the intelligence community saw a need for 

an emergency crisis reaction capability for the rapid 

launch of reconnaissance satellites. Once the basic 

need had been defined, what remained was a series 

of unanswered questions concerning potential: how 

much notice was required, what additional facilities 

would have to be built, would additional vehicles be 

needed, were there options on launch systems?

Colonel King’s office responded to the original 

query of 12 March 1963 with the information that a 

backup capability could be provided by May 1964, that 

at least three and preferably four additional launch pads 

at Vandenberg would have to be modified to accept the 

Gambit-configured Agena, and that additional orbital 

vehicles were the critical items from a time standpoint. 

The answer was sufficiently comprehensive to permit 

the issuance of the 27 March order for six additional 

Gambits. (Authorizations for pad modification, which 

were included with the procurement approval, involved 

changing at least two launch pads to a dual configuration 

capable of accepting either thrust-augmented ThorAgenas or Atlas-Agenas in a Gambit configuration.) 

The end objective of this program expansion was 

to satisfy plans for “a minimum intelligence cycle 

capability for coverage of the very highest priority 

special tasks, including only sufficient orbital duration 

to achieve the specific coverage...” Resolution at the 

level of the Gambit system, and in stereo, was desired. 

The problem, General Greer learned, “...is not to locate 

targets, but to inspect in detail activities at selected 

known targets.”63

Further complications of the already complex 

problem thus outlined lay in a subsequent directive to 

study the use of tandem recovery capsules in Gambit 

to permit early recovery of a portion of the film while 

continuing the remainder in orbit until it was specifically 

needed. Corona was on the way to that configuration 

in 1963.

By early May, study of the problems of 

supplementary launch, standby, and quick reaction had 

been sufficient to show that a high launch rate could be 

maintained by keeping at least three pads in a Gambit 

configuration and by building up a modest stockpile 

of boosters and Gambit systems. The chief difficulties 

lay in procurement, since the only way to accumulate 

spares was to accelerate production rates or to reduce 

the frequency of launches. Either promised to be costly. 

There was some indication that fundamental changes 

in the Gambit program might ultimately be needed, 

including provision for both multiple recoveries and 

for an Atlantic Ocean recovery force. 

Although the basic actions needed to provide a 

standby capability had been approved early in March, 

it was not until May that a persistent uncertainty 

over funding arrangements was eliminated. In some 

degree, the difficulty arose because Pentagon 

officials did not fully appreciate the intricacies of 

contract negotiations, particularly when they involved 

a manufacturer (General Electric) who apparently felt 

that the need for continued production was sufficiently 

great to elicit particularly generous terms. In order to 

keep the contractor responsive, General Greer had 

broken Gambit into blocks; General Electric was not 

aware of the total programmed and Greer did not 

propose to give the firm such information until the 

unit price became reasonable. Nevertheless, in order 

to maintain the required rate of production, Greer 

had to have in his funding reserve sufficient money 

to finance the complete approved production order. 

To accountants who looked at the General Electric 

situation without knowing these facts, it appeared that 

Greer’s organization had a comfortable reserve of 

uncommitted money. In actuality, what seemed to be 

a “reserve” was required for technical contingencies 

and for satisfying vehicle requirements not yet formally 

on contract. Once these facts were made sufficiently 

plain, the funding difficulty began to diminish.64

Another pending uncertainty, involving the 

possibility of tandem recovery vehicles for Gambit, 

remained unsettled. The notion seemed feasible 

if certain rather substantial changes were made in 

the Gambit system and if a degree of photograph 

degradation were acceptable in the case of systems 

“stored in orbit” for considerable periods. But the cost 

was a bit high, reaching for development and for 

each vehicle. In general configuration, the proposed 

Gambit tandem system rather closely resembled a 

similar design evolved for SPAS-63 (“Spartan”), a 

Lanyard-category variant of the recently cancelled 

E-6.* None of its elements were technically unrealistic, 

though reliability might be low. In any event, General 

Greer’s judgment was that nothing serious should 

be attempted in the matter of tandem-configuration 

Gambits until the original system had been well 

proven.65

By the time such matters had been resolved, 

attention was turning toward the impending first 

launch of Gambit. Booster-payload assembly had 

begun in February, after some delay because of the 

late arrival of prime components and the need to 

incorporate hitchup provisions. In order to protect 

schedules, Colonel King had agreed that it would be 

permissible to put the missing components into the 

total system during functional testing. 

* See Perry History Volume I, Chapter IX
32

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

The command decoder had to be modified late in 

January 1963 to eliminate a conflict between command 

reception and execution. Subsequently, system tests 

disclosed the existence of some electromagnetic 

interference problems not previously suspected, 

but fixes proved possible without delaying the test 

program appreciably. The Agena for flight number 

one passed final acceptance tests at Sunnyvale on 

21 March, slightly later than desired but still within the 

boundaries of the desired launch timing schedule. 

Early in April, Eastman Kodak located and corrected 

three sources of focus error in the camera system 

and later that month static tests of the assembled 

system showed resolution superior to that required 

of the Gambit system. (The focus problem was not 

critical for the first flight since it was used only during 

a roll maneuver, and hitchup was to be employed 

throughout the period of camera operation on the 

maiden flight.) All seemed to be going rather well.66

Then, during the late afternoon of 11 May, a faulty 

valve in combination with a deficient fuel loading 

sequence caused a loss of internal pressure in Atlas 

190D, that being used in checking out procedures 

for the first Gambit flight. The booster collapsed 

on its stand, dumping both the GE orbital vehicle 

and the Agena on the concrete hardstand. The GE 

vehicle was severely damaged, the Agena to a lesser 

degree. Surprisingly, there was neither explosion nor 

fire, although 13,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and a 

full load of fuel sloshed over the stand and the nearby 

terrain. Equally fortunate, the payload did not split 

open, so there was no compromise of Gambit security. 

But the camera system was rendered permanently 

useless, a large part of the optics being demolished, 

and the recovery vehicle was so battered that further 

use seemed imprudent. Neither the camera nor the 

orbital vehicle were scheduled for the first Gambit 

test; the Agena, however, was supposed to be used 

in that launch. 

Through a quick scavenging operation the 

program office secured an Agena to replace that 

damaged in the accident, using considerable overtime 

work to adapt the space booster to hitchup.* But hope 

for meeting the 27 June launch date lessened as 

the degree of launch stand and vehicle damage was 

assessed.67 There was a possibility of further delay 

in a requirement from the undersecretary’s office 

* Agena damage proved to be less than originally estimated. Undersecretary 

Brockway McMillan, who had replaced Charyk in that post in March 1963, 

initially directed that the repaired vehicle not be used in the early Gambit 

program but General Greer subsequently urged its reinstatement. He reported 

that exhaustive tests had disclosed almost no harm to the vehicle and that 

having been subjected to even more thorough checks than most Agenas it 

was qualified for its intended use. McMillan accepted the recommendation. 

The Agena in question was numbered 4701.

that the Agena and Atlas for the first Gambit shot be 

subjected to the same sort of “tiger team” pre-flight 

check that had resulted in a perfect booster operation 

record during E-6 launches the previous year. Both 

through SSD channels and in his own right, General 

Greer set up special review procedures to insure the 

basic reliability of the booster elements, assuring 

McMillan in mid-June that every conceivable means 

of assuring reliable operation had been employed. No 

program delay resulted.68

While boosters were attracting attention, final 

checks of the orbital control vehicle on a vibration stand 

uncovered subsystem faults which incapacitated the 

command programmer. Fixes and a re-test required 

two weeks, setting the launch date back to 10 July. As 

it happened, some delay was by then inevitable, the 

Agena modification to a hitchup mode having taken 

several days longer than predicted and pad repairs 

having continued until 22 May—which left too little 

time for a complete pre-flight checkout before the 

original 27 June launch deadline.69

One other set of developments had been 

continuing parallel to the technical aspects of launch 

preparation. These involved security and deception. 

For several months the process of closing off all 

avenues to information on the true mission of Gambit 

had been accelerating, not because the dense 

blanket of security and misdirection surrounding 

the project had ever been thinned in any degree, 

but because the extension of project activity to the 

launch complex at Vandenberg and the prospect of a 

recovery operation required a number of out-in-theopen arrangements and some measure of physical 

exposure. The CIA, for instance, was expressing 

uncommon concern about the possibility that the 

Gambit employment of Corona originated devices 

had “caused greater deterioration to Corona security 

than was anticipated.” CIA had always been extremely 

sensitive to any threat of Corona exposure, however 

slight it seemed; the Gambit episode appeared to 

attract even more attention on that score than usual. 

It was the CIA’s position that all possible alternatives 

should be attempted before resorting to the practice 

of briefing more people on Corona.70 To a lesser 

extent, Greer’s organization operated on the same 

premise, acting in January 1963—for instance—to 

change payload analysis procedures so that no test 

controllers at Sunnyvale would have to be made 

cognizant of Gambit’s actual functions.71 But a great 

deal of observation and a fair amount of quiet inquiry 

had confirmed General Greer’s assumption that 

most minor participants in launch and orbit control 

operations merely performed their assigned duties 

without even wondering why. The flight controllers, 

for instance, were largely content to monitor their 
33

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

meters and take their required readings without 

asking whether the incoming telemetry originated in a 

camera subsystem or a beta-ray sensor.

Special provisions had been made at Vandenberg 

to cordon off the Gambit areas in the missile assembly 

building from other projects that shared the facility. 

Then the E-6 people, for instance, were told that “your 

program is extremely sensitive,” and that they were 

not to let the 206 people get a glimpse of their payload. 

The gambit worked marvelously, convincing the E-6 

workers that 206 was much less sensitive than their 

own effort.

Other people at Vandenberg who had enough 

experience with either overt or covert reconnaissance 

programs to be suspicious of Gambit apparently 

concluded that 206 couldn’t involve reconnaissance 

because other efforts, such as Corona and Lanyard, 

were fully satisfying all needs. There was also a 

general impression among the photographic fraternity 

aware of Corona and the E-5, E-6 programs that it 

was not technically feasible to stuff a big camera-film 

package into a vehicle dependent on a Discoverersize recovery capsule.72

There were significant indications that the original 

misdirection of 206 program documents had been 

spectacularly effective. High-level officers who were 

briefed on Gambit during the early months of 1963 

generally confessed complete ignorance about the 

character of the payload (concurrently disclosing 

a most interesting lack of curiosity) or admitted to a 

belief that it involved precise de-orbiting of some sort 

of nuclear weapon.73 There was no pertinent press 

speculation whatever.

One of the problems peculiar to pretending that 

Gambit was a non-camera project was that a certain 

number of Eastman Kodak people had to be at the 

launch stand during final checkout. The problem 

decreased appreciably when Lieutenant Colonel John 

Pietz and Colonel J. W. Ruebel ran a careful study 

of needs and discovered that no more than four or 

five camera specialists were actually needed. In 

dress rehearsals for the first launch, they were literally 

smuggled into the launch area in the back of an 

unmarked van. The practice was dropped, however, 

when the driver wrecked the empty truck while 

returning from one delivery run. Thereafter the needed 

specialists entered the launch zone as inconspicuously 

as possible, but using more conventional means of 

transport.74

There was some concern for the mode of getting 

recovered film from the mid-Pacific drop zone to the 

Eastman processing facility at Rochester, chiefly 

because it seemed possible that a clever agent could 

trace back along the capsule’s route and identify both 

the facility and the fact that film was the payload. But 

a succession of package transfers, arrangements for 

which were made immediately before the first launch, 

eliminated most worry.75

Apart from such precautions, which were not at 

all unusual in other satellite reconnaissance programs 

and which were routine in the case of Corona, the 

Gambit operation involved one deception that was 

unique. Colonels Ruebel and Pietz, Major David 

Bradburn, and Lieutenant Colonel Ralph J. Ford were 

responsible for an elaborate scheme of misdirection 

that would have qualified for a good spy novel. It 

revolved around a wooden box of irregular shape 

which measured about 12 by 3 by 3 feet. The box—

which actually contained three 50-gallon drums filled 

with water and a set of storage batteries—included 

several hatches and inspection plates, each secured 

by heavy hasps and combination padlocks. Under 

one of the plates was an impressive instrument panel, 

complete with blinking lights and flickering voltage 

gauges. It was a very imposing Quaker gun.

The container, painted white and prominently 

marked with the well-known corporate symbol of 

Space Technology Laboratories, was for official 

purposes designated an “Environmental Shipping 

Container”—ESC for the purpose of what had to seem 

routine government correspondence.* 

The ESC was the basic subject of an elaborate 

set of pre-written messages to be exchanged 

between SSD, the launch base at Vandenberg, and 

several contractor establishments. Designed to 

provide “tangible evidence” that some government 

agency other than the Air Force was participating in 

the “206 Program,” the messages were also intended 

to promote confusion and uncertainty among “those 

unwitting and peripheral people” who were aware of 

or involved in the 206 activity. A reasonably astute 

reader with access to a few of the messages could 

not but conclude that the 206 payload was something 

delivered to and maintained by STL immediately 

before a scheduled launch. By all appearances, each 

such payload was delivered to the launch site by truck 

and there installed in the flight vehicle for launch into 

orbit.

Because of the severe restrictions imposed 

on the pre-launch handling of the payload (ran the 

legend), no payload checkout was permitted at the 

* To my mind, the “ESC” nomenclature was the stroke of brilliance that made 

this preposterously funny bluff so effective. No self respecting administrator 

in all of the Air Force could avoid believing in something so classically 

bureaucratic in title. R.P. 
34

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

launch site other than normal countdown checks 

during pre-launch. Too perfect security would negate 

the desired impression, so a policy of “calculated 

ineptitude” was adopted which, it was hoped, would 

expose knowledge of the “ESC” payload to as large 

an audience as possible while still retaining credibility.

Sixteen messages were involved in the general 

deception package. One called for a meeting 

between launch base people and the “payload 

responsible organization” at SSD to discuss payload 

problems. Another cancelled the meeting and called 

for destruction of the first message. A third, from 

Vandenberg, protested against the lack of a prelaunch checkout and asked for a definition of “ESC.” 

The reply confirmed that no pre-launch payload check 

would be permitted and called for the assignment of a 

representative of the test wing who would be instructed 

in the “operation of the ESC.” Others raised questions 

concerning the minimum pre-launch delivery time 

needs of the contractor, the test wing, and the “other 

government agency.” The general tenor was that 

something enclosed in the “environmental shipping 

container” had to be closely monitored, carefully 

watched, and handled very, very gently.

On 3 July (eight days before the scheduled launch) 

an unmarked truck entered Vandenberg. The driver, 

who exhibited considerable uncertainty about his final 

destination, eventually was routed to the Lockheed 

receiving area where a “puzzled” Air Force officer 

opened one of the shackled hatches of the whitepainted crate, briefly disclosed to several nearby 

personnel an array of blinking lights and pulsing dials, 

and hastily directed the driver to the General Electric 

receiving area. There were subsequent meetings 

between 206 people and the local security officers 

over the “lapse” in security, all designed to encourage 

speculation about the peculiar nature of the ESC’s 

contents. At one point the deception proved so 

successful that it evoked an unplanned inquiry from the 

Strategic Air Command—which wanted assurances 

that the “payload” did not contain any nuclear devices 

to be placed in orbit without due regard for various 

national laws and international agreements.76

In the aftermath of the July 1963 Gambit launch—

and those which followed it that year—it became clear 

that the extremely tight security which had come to 

surround all military space launches tended to limit 

the effect of a very ingenious deception scheme. 

In theory at least, the purpose of such a deception 

was to convince Soviet intelligence that the 206 

payload was not a camera. The ESC maneuver could 

have that effect only if one of the witnesses to the 

transaction happened to be an agent or if some of the 

witnesses mentioned the event and its implications to 

an agent. By extension, an American agent serving as 

part of a Soviet espionage net could use the event or 

certain of the classified messages exchanged during 

preliminaries as evidence that something presumably 

radioactive had been orbited in the 206 vehicle. It was 

conceivable that a Russian agent could be let into the 

periphery of the security process and fed just enough 

selected information to mislead him. But nothing of 

the sort seems to have happened. Instead, a handful 

of people who had been forcefully indoctrinated with 

security consciousness were exposed to the ESC 

deception and were so impressed with the sensitivity 

of the information they had “accidentally” acquired 

that they would discuss it only with similarly cleared 

fellow witnesses. As for the outside world, the only 

information generally available would indicate that 

another Atlas-Agena had been launched. The 

presumption that an Atlas-Agena launched from the 

vicinity of Vandenberg carried a “Samos” payload was 

common to journalists and to interested members of 

the aerospace disciplines. Whether the ESC prank 

succeeded and was useful was something only the 

CIA could judge, and the CIA did not say.

Los Angeles was experiencing one of its recurring 

sieges of “unusual” warm weather during the early 

afternoon of 12 July 1963. From General Greer’s 

office on the fourth floor of the six-story building that 

housed the Air Force space program organization, the 

mountains around the basin seemed no more than 

slightly solid chunks of the prevailing smog. It was 

an uncommonly quiet Friday afternoon. Most of the 

fourth floor offices were empty of officers and senior 

civilians. General Greer’s secretary, and Colonel 

King’s, turned away visitors and telephone inquiries 

with politely vague phrases: “the general is on TDY, 

“ or “the colonel is out of the complex this afternoon.” 

The double doors at the east end of the main hallway 

on the fourth floor were closed and latched, which 

was somewhat unusual, if not unprecedented. Behind 

them, in a small conference room equipped with a 

speaker system, project people who could not get to 

Vandenberg listened intently to the piped-in verbal 

traffic of launch controllers on the site.

Shortly after two o’clock the gathering broke up. 

Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Ford, responsible for much 

of the “ECS” deception that shrouded the purpose 

of the first Gambit launch from observers, opened 

the electrically secured door to his office to resume 

his afternoon routine and found an occasional visitor 

punching vigorously at his secretary’s typewriter. The 

visitor, a sometime historian, asked in a carefully 

casual voice, “How’d it go?” 

He got a quick grin and the answer, “It’s off. It looks 

good. Real good.”
35

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

At that moment, 22 months and 17 days after the 

National Security Council decision to proceed with 

development of a “covert” alternative to Samos, a new 

phase in satellite reconnaissance was beginning. The 

first Gambit had lifted into orbit at 1344 hours, Pacific 

Daylight Time, on 12 July 1963.

Many of the Gambit program office people had 

managed to get to Vandenberg to watch the launch. 

General Greer and Colonel King were at the Satellite 

Control Facility, at Sunnyvale, watching the launch 

on remote television and listening to the countdown. 

Earlier in the day the launch crew had notified Greer 

that during the final checkout they had uncovered 

a fault in the Atlas booster that would either force 

delay or cause reliance on a component not tested 

to the extent required by specifications. Shouldering 

aside the oppressive memory of unbroken failures 

and “partial successes” in the E-5 and E-6 programs, 

Greer ordered continuation of the countdown. It 

was a personal decision, taken without consultation 

with others, based as much on instinct as on the 

confidence of a program director who had done all 

that could be done to insure success. For an instant 

during the launch itself, most observers experienced 

the horrified conviction that the decision had been 

wrong, that disaster had come again to the Air Force 

satellite reconnaissance program. The splashing 

rocket exhaust of the Atlas knocked out all electrical 

connections to telemetry and cameras, giving the 

impression of a major launch stand explosion to 

observers at Sunnyvale and El Segundo. But seconds 

later the signals began to come through again, and 

they said that the Atlas was climbing stolidly toward its 

selected launch window.

Climbout, separation, and orbital injection occurred 

as planned. Then for 90 minutes the tense group in the 

control center had to wait until the satellite completed 

its first orbital pass and the computers could report 

precise ephemeris and attitude data. Only then could 

there be complete assurance that the first Gambit 

was actually in its intended orbit and that the delicate 

and complex stabilization equipment was performing 

its assignment. And after that, another five orbits 

before the Gambit payload, that complex of optics, 

electronics, and mechanical devices conceived more 

than three years earlier, came to life. And then another 

nine passes before a recovery attempt could be made, 

and still another wait for information that the capsule 

had re-entered, had survived its passage through the 

upper atmosphere, had been arrested in its descent 

by parachutes, and had been recovered. Even if all 

possible combinations of failure during orbit, re-entry, 

and recovery stages were avoided, there remained 

the ultimate uncertainty: what about pictures?

Both the Atlas and the Agena operated normally, 

apogee being 116 nautical miles and perigee 107. 

When excess propellants were dumped from the 

Agena the reactive force caused an unprogrammed 

series of vehicle motions that used up considerable 

portions of the Agena’s control gas supply, but enough 

remained for Agena stabilization during nine orbits.

On the fifth orbital revolution, command controllers 

turned on the camera for eight strip exposures of 20 

seconds each, commanding an identical maneuver 

on each of the next two orbits. On orbits eight and 

nine, two stereo pairs and five 20-second strips were 

exposed—after which the premature exhaustion of 

Agena stabilization gas forced discontinuance of 

camera operations.

With the depletion of Agena control gas, the 

Lifeboat became the only means of recovering the film 

capsule. The Gambit-Agena coasted through eight 

uncontrolled orbits after stabilization gas finally was 

exhausted during orbit nine, ground control activated 

the “Lifeboat” circuitry during the 17th pass, and on 

orbit 18 an “execute” signal from the ground station 

went to “Lifeboat.” Routine separation and recovery 

followed. There was no drama. And nobody minded.

After the reentry capsule had been safely retrieved 

by C-119 aircraft circling near Hawaii, the Orbital 

Control Vehicle was separated from the Agena for 

“solo” tests of various operations.

It maintained stability through orbit 25 and was 

successfully restarted again on orbit 34, after a period 

of inactivation. Thereafter spurious commands caused 

instability. Greer’s expectation of the unpredictable 

had proved reasonable: not only had the orbital control 

vehicle’s mistrusted stabilization system been affected 

by spurious commands, but the performance of the 

“reliable” Agena had been unexpectedly degraded 

when engine propellants were routinely dumped. In 

the end, the successful operations of “Lifeboat” and 

“BUSS” (the backup stabilization system) had been 

essential to the success of the initial mission.

Evaluation of the recovered film indicated 

an out of focus condition apparently caused by 

uncompensated temperature changes that affected 

the face of the primary mirror and by faulty image 

motion compensation settings. Nevertheless, best 

resolution on the 74 exposed frames (and nine stereo 

pairs) was on the order of 3.5 feet; 5-foot ground 

resolution occurred on several stretches of the 198 

feet of exposed film, and average resolution was 

about 10 feet. With all, it was the best photographic 

return ever obtained from a reconnaissance satellite, 

“best” resolution being better than anything previously 

obtained by a factor of four to five.77
36

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

Endnotes

1. Notes by A.H. Katz, Rand Corp, 7 Jul 60, on meeting with STL 

representatives, in Rand (Katz) files. 

2. TWX TEC 648/002, K. G. MacLish, EK, to BMD, 20 Dec 60; 

notes by BGen R. E. Greer, Dir/SAFSP, attached, in SP-3 “G” files.

3. Rpt, “Presentation on G,” June 61, prep by SAFSP for SAFUS, 

in SAFSS files, Gambit; interview, Maj Gen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, by R. 

L. Perry, 23 Jan 64. 

4. TWX AFDSD-MS-83304, DCS/D USAF to Hq AFSC, 5 Jul 61, 

in SP-3 files, “G”; memo, J. V. Charyk, SAFUS, to C/S USAF, 8 Aug 

61, subj: Atlas Boosters for Support of Space Projects, in SAFSS files, 

Gambit; Charyk also sent a 23 Jun 61 memo to the C/S ordering the 

Agena procurement but it did not appear to have found its way to the 

Gambit files.

5. TWX SAFMS-M-1 163, SAF-MS to SAFSP (Maj John Pietz), 11 

Aug 61; memo, Maj H. Howard, SAF-MS, to Maj J. Sides, 10 Aug 61, no 

subj; TWX SAFMS-M-1 162, SAFMS to Pietz, 11 Aug 61; TWX SSZA 

11-8-349, SSD to AFSC, 12 Aug 61; ltr, Maj Gen J. R. Holzapple, Asst 

DCS/S&L, to SAF-RD, 21 Aug 61, subj: Boosters for Support of Space 

Projects.

6. TWX AFCVC 64852, Gen F. A. Smith, VC/S USAF, to Gen B.A. 

Schriever, Cmdr, AFSC, 25 Sep 61, in SAFSS files, Gambit.

7. TWX SCGN 26-9-50, Col R. Nudenberg, Dir/Space Progms, 

AFSC, to SSD, 26 Sep 61; TWXs SAFSP-F-19-9-1114, SAFSP to SAFMS, 19 Sep 61, SAFMS-M-1 172 SAFMS to SAFSP, 11 Sep 61, all in 

SP-3 “G” files.

8. Memo, Maj Gen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, and Maj Gen O. J. Ritland, 

Cmdr SSD, to all Gambit-cleared personnel, 14 Nov 61, subj: GAMBIT 

Project, in SP-3 files; memo, Greer to Gambit-cleared personnel, 

16 Nov 61, subj: Cue Ball Security Precautions, same file; TSXs 

SAFMS-M-1198, SAFMS to SAFSP, SAFSP-F-15-11-143, SAFSP to 

SAFMS, and SAFMS-M-1197, SAFMS to SAFSP, all 15 Nov 61, all in 

SAFSS files, Gambit.

9. Memo, J. V. Charyk, SAFUS, to DCS/S&L, 24 Nov 61, no subj; 

ltr, BGen M.G. Smith, Dir/Sys Services, DCS/S&L, to AF Compt, 27 Nov 

61, subj: Project Cue Ball; TWX AFSSV-82581, DCS/S&L, USAF, to 

AFSC, 27 Nov 61; ltr, Dir/Proc, DCS/S&L, to Hq AFSC, 13 Dec 61, subj: 

Program Adjustment AF-62-62-600, with MFR on SAFSS copy, initialed 

with no date but apparently written on 14 Dec, detailing contacts with 

the budget people; TWX SCGN-22-1-46, AFSC to DCS/S&L, 31 Jan 

62; all in SP-3 files, “G”.

10. Memo, Maj J. Sides, SAFMS, to BGen R. D. Curtin, 19 Jan 62, 

subj: Cue Ball; TWX SAFSP-F-1-2-190, Maj Gen R. E. Greer to Curtin, 

1 Feb 62, both in SP-3 files; memo, LtGen James Ferguson, DCS/S&L, 

to SAFUS, 22 Jan 62, subj: Cue Ball, in SAFSS files, Gambit.

11. TWX SAFMS-INS-M-2017, BGen R. D. Curtin to Maj Gen R. E. 

Greer, 16 Feb 62, in SP-3 files, Funding; ltr, Col Ch, R&D Programs 

Div, DCS/S&L, to AFSC, 13 Feb 62, SAFSS files, Gambit; MFR, Maj 

J. Sides, SAFMS, 7 Mar 62, subj: Trip Report, SP, 28 Feb 62, Gambit, 

in SAFSS files.

12. MFR, Col J. L. Martin, SAFMS, 13 Feb 62, subj: SAFUS SAFSP 

West Coast Conference 9 Feb 62, in Martin’s files, SAFSS; MFR, 

Sides, 7 Mar 62.

13. MFRs, BGen R. E. Greer: 6 Jan 61, subj: Trip 4-5 Jan 61, and 16 

Jan 61, Time and Materials Contract EKC, both in SP-3 Gambit files.

14. Memo, Maj Gen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, to J. V. Charyk, SAFUS, 10 

Jul 61, no subj, in SAFSS files, “G”.

15. TWX SAFSP-F-18-9-10, SAFSP to SAFMS (Maj H. Howard), 

18 Sep 61; TWX SAFMS-M-1-187, BGen R. D. Curtin, SAFMS to Maj 

Gen R. E. Greer, SAFSP, 20 Oct 61, both in SAFSS files, “G”; TWX 

SAFSP-F-12-8-99, SAFSP to EK, 23 Aug 61, in SP-3 files, Gambit.

16. Briefing charts, 9 Nov 61, “Project Cue Ball,” in SP-3 files.

17. MFR, Maj J. Sides, SAFMS, 30 Jan 62, subj: Trip Report- G (22-

26 January 1962), in SAFSS Gambit files; ltr, Maj Gen R. E. Greer, Dir/

SP, to SAFUS, 28 Feb 62, subj: Action Pursuant to 9 February 1962. 

In SP-3 files.

18. MFR, Sides, 30 Jan 62; TWX SAFMS-DIR-62-25, BGen R. 

D. Curtin, SAFMS, to Maj Gen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, 1 Feb 62, in SP 

files, General.

19. MFR, Col J. L. Martin, D/Dir SAFSS, 8 Mar 62, subj: SAFUSSAFSP EK-GE Visit on 5-6 Mar 62, in SAFSS files, Gambit.

20. Ltr, Greer to SAFUS, 28 Feb 62.

21. TWX SAFSS-DIR-M-2024, SAFSS to SAFSP, 19 Mar 62, in 

SAFSS files, Gambit.

22. Memo, Maj Gen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, to J. V. Charyk, SAFUS, 

14 Mar 62, subj: 698AL Program Enhancement, in SAFSS files, 

Gambit corres.

23. TWX SAFSS-DEP-M-2023, SAFSS to Maj Gen R. E. Greer, Dir/

SP, 19 Mar 62, in SP-3 files, “G”.

24. Memo, Maj Gen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, to J. V. Charyk, SAFUS, 

about 15 Mar 62, subj: Contractor “X” in SAFSS files, Gambit; TWX 

SAFSS-DIR-M-2024, 19 Mar 62; memo, Greer to Charyk, 14 Mar 62.

25. TWXs: SAFSP-F-10-4-299, SAFSP to SAFSS, 10 Apr 

62; SAFMS-INS-M-2035, SAFSS to SAFSP, 20 Apr 62; SAFSSPRO-M-2038, SAFSS to SAFSP, 20 Apr 62; SAFSP-F-28-4-239, 

SAFSP to SAFSS, 30 Apr 62, all in SP-3 Funding files; MFR, Martin 

8 Mar 62.
37

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

26. TWXs: SAFSP-F-4-5-243, SAFSP to SAFSS, 4 May 62; 

SAFSP-F-10-247, Maj Gen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, to J. V. Charyk, 

SAFUS, 10 May 62; SAFSP-F-10-5-248, Greer to BGen R. D. Curtin, 

Ofc Space Sys, 10 May 62; SAFSS-DLRM-2041, SAFSS to SAFSP, 14 

May 62; SAFSP-F-15-5-255, Col Q.A. Riepe to Greer (in SAFSS), 15 

May 62; SAFSPF-17-5-257, SAFSP to SAFUS, 17 May 62, all in SP-3 

files, “G”; memo, T. D. Morris, Asst SOD/Instal and Log, to SAFUS, 31 

May 62, subj: Industrial Facilities Expansion, Project 698AL, in SAFSS 

files, Gambit.

27. Memo, L. C. Meyer, Ch, Mis and Space Sys Div, Dir/Budget, 

AsstSAF (Fin), to J. V. Charyk, SAFUS, 17 Apr 62, no subj, in SP-3 

files, Funding; TWX SAFSP-F-17-4-232, Maj Gen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, 

to BGen R. D. Curtin, Ofc Space Sys, SAF, 17 Apr 62, in SP-3 files, “G”.

28. Memo, W. F. Sampson, Aerospace Corp, to Col Q. A. Riepe, 

Dir/206 Progm, 19 Jan 62, subj: Air Retrieval for Program 483A, in King 

files; Interview, Maj Gen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, by R.L. Perry, 11 Sep 64.

29. Greer interview, 11 Sep 64; msg, Maj Gen R. E. Greer to J. V. 

Charyk, SAFUS, and Col J. L. Martin, Dir/NRO Staff, approx 3 Aug 62, 

in SAFSS files, 162-Disc.

30. TWX, SAFSS-DIR-M-2072 and 2073, both J. V. Charyk, SAFUS, 

to Maj Gen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, 28 Jul 62, in SP-3 files.

31. Msg, approx 3 Aug 62.

32. Memo, to Col Q.A. Riepe, Dir/Prog 698AL, 1 Aug 62, Sub.): ProCon-Overwater vs Land Recovery, in SP-3 files, Land Recov; the affair 

of the station is covered in MFR, Maj J. Sides, SAFSS, 7 Mar 62, subj: 

Trip Report, SP, 28 Feb 62, Gambit, in SAFSS files, Gambit, in TWX 

Dean Rusk, Secy/State, to American Embassy, 2 Jul 62, cy in SAFSS 

Gambit files, and in various TWXs in those files.

33. Study, “Pros and Cons of Satellite Recovery Methods,” Maj Gen 

R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, 4 Aug 62, in SP-3 files,Land Recov.

34. Memo, prep by Capt F.B. Gorman (USN), SAFSP Plans Oft, 17 

Aug 62, subj: Program Recovery Information Desired by Dr. Charyk; 

TWX SAFSP-F-14-8-321, Maj Gen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, to Col J. L. 

Martin, Dir/NRO Staff, 14 Aug 62, both in SP-3 files, Land Recov; TWX 

AFSSA-AS-1-7768S, DCS/S&L, USAF, to Cmdr AFSC, 24 Aug 62, in 

SAFSS files, Gambit.

35. TWX SAFSS-DIR-M-2082, SAFSS to Dir/SP, 24 Aug 62, 

inSAFSS files, Gambit.

36. TWX SAFSS-DIR-M-2082, SAFSS to Dir/SP, 24 Aug 62; msg, 

CLA. to SAFSP, 18 Sep 62, in (Leach) files; TWX SAFSP-F-7-9-333, Col 

R.A. Berg, Asst Dir/SP, to Col J. L. Martin, Dir/NRO Staff, 7 Sep 62, in 

SP-3 files, “G”, summarized the course of the earlier .station negotiations 

and the uncertainty as to their status. TWX SAFSP-F-21-9-343, Maj 

Gen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, to Martin, 20 Sep 62, confirms agreements of 

the 18 Sep 62 meeting, details of which are contained in memo for the 

record, prep by 19 Sep 62, in Col King’s files; TWX SAFSP-F-20-2-530, 

SAFSP to SAFSS, 20 Feb 63, concerns the Annette Island station and 

the doppler radar requirements.

37. Msg, , CIA to SAFSP, 18 Sep 62; TWX SAFSPF-21-9-343, Maj 

Gen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, to Col J. L. Martin, SAFSS, 20 Sep 62, in SP-3 

files, Finance; msg, SAFSP to CIA, 24 Sep 62, and msg, CIA to SAFSP, 

28 Sep 62, both in SAFSS files, Gambit.

38. Rpt, Gambit Report for FIAB, 28 Sep 62, in SAFSS files, Gambit.

39. Greer interview, 11 Sep 64.

40. TWX SAFSS-DIR-M-2095, J. V. Charyk, SAFUS, to Maj Gen R. 

E. Greer, Dir/SP, 3 Oct 62, in SAFSS files, Gambit.

41. Interview, BGen J. L. Martin, D/Dir/SP, by R. L. Perry, 18 Sep 64; 

interview Maj Gen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, by Perry, 22 Nov 63.

42. TWX SAFSP-F-5-10-364, Maj Gen R. E. Greer to members of 

the 206 Progm Ofc, 30 Oct 62, subj: New Assignments, in SP-3 files, 

Progms.

43.Endnote in text but missing from endnote list.

44. SSD Spec Order, 28 Nov 62, in SSD Mil Pers Div files.

45. Greer interview, 22 Nov 62.

46. Interviews: LtCol J. Pietz, 14 Sep and 7 Oct 64; Col W. G. King, 7 

Oct 64; Maj Gen R. E. Greer, 15 Sep 64, all by R. L. Perry.

47. Memo, Maj Gen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, to Col W. G. King, D/Dir/206 

Progm, 7 Dec 62, subj: H-30 Capsule, and 1st Ind, King to Greer, 10 

Dec 62, in King’s files.

48. Memo (1st Ind), King to Greer, 10 Dec 62; King interview, 7 

Oct 64.

49. TWX SAFSP-F-8-11-409, Maj Gen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, to J. V. 

Charyk, SAFUS, 8 Nov 62, in SP-3 files, Programs; rpt, Security of 

Satellite Reconnaissance Activities, 25 Jun 62, in SAFSS files, Basic 

Policy; interview, Greer by R. L. Perry, 23 Jan 64.

50. TWX SAFSS-1-M-2119, SAFSS to SAFSP, 20 Nov 62, in SAFSS 

files, Gambit.

51. TWX SAFSP-F-30-11-432, Maj Gen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, to Col J. 

L. Martin, SAFSS, 30 Nov 62; TWX SAFSS-1-M-2129, Martin to Greer, 

30 Nov 62, both in SAFSS files, Gambit; interview, LtCol John Pietz, 

SP-3, 6 Jun 63, by R. L. Perry; Greer interview, 22 Nov 62.

52. TWX SAFSS-1-62-178, SAFSS to SAFSP, 11 Dec 62; interview, 

LtCol J. Pietz, SP-3, by R. L. Perry, 22 Jul 64; TWX SAFSS-1-M-2138, 

SAFSS to SAFSP, 19 Dec 62 (confirming the hitchup, roll-joint, 

lifeboat, and H-30 changes), both in SAFSS files, Gambit; TWX, 

SAFSP-F-24-1-491, Maj Gen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, to NRO Compt, 

24 Jan 63, (summarizing “white” costs), in SP-3 files, Funding; msg, 

SAFSP to 9 Jan 63 (concerning “black” costs), in (Leach) files.

53. Greer interview, 22 Nov 64, 11 Sep 64; Pietz interview, 6 Jun 63.
38

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

54. Pietz interview, 6 Jun 63; Greer interview, 22 Nov 63; TWX S A 

FSS -1- M-2138, 19 Dec 62, msg, Maj Gen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, to J. V. 

Charyk, SAFUS, 6 Dec 62, in SAFSS files, Gambit.

55. Rpt, Program 206 Detail Schedule, Oct 62, in SP-3 files, Progms; 

rpt, Program 206 Bi-weekly Activities, Rpt, 2 Dec-22 Dec 62, in SP-3 

files, Gambit.

56. Memo, Col W. G. King, D/Dir 206 Progm to Maj Gen R. E. Greer, 

Dir/SP, 21 Dec 62, subj: Horizon Sensors; memo, Greer to King, 8 Jan 

63; memo, King to Greer, 11 Aug 64, subj: Improved Horizon Sensors; 

ltr, King to GE/ASPD, 17 Sep 64, same subj; all in King’s files.

57. Memo, Col W.G. King, D/Dir/206 Progm, to Maj Gen R. E. Greer, 

Dir/SP, 7 Jan 63, subj: 206 Program Funding; memo, King to Greer, 15 

Jan 63, subj: Review of Changes to Program; memo, Greer to King, 

subj: 206 Program Funding, all in King’s files.

58. Memo, Col W. G. King, D/Dir/206 Progm, too”’ 22 Jan 63, subj: 

Estimate of Funding Required to Provide Program Changes Directed 

by SAFUS, 19 Dec 62, in King’s files.

59. Memo, Col W. G. King, D/Dir/206 Progm, to Maj Gen R. E. Greer, 

Dir/SP, 27 Feb 63, subj: 206 Costs and Current Contract Negotiations, 

in King’s files.

60. Memo, LtCol J. Sides, SAFSS, to Col J. L. Martin, Dir/NRO Staff, 

31 Oct 62, subj: “G” Camera, in SAFSS files, Gambit.

61. Memo, A. C. Lundahl, Dir/NPIC, to Dir/NRO, 24 Jan 63 (with 

undated longhand note by H. Scoville, Dir/Res CIA), subj: Specific 

Technical Requirements Satellite Photographic Systems; TWX SAFSS6-M-0051, SAFSS to SAFSP, 28 Feb 63; memo, Col J. L. Martin, Dir/

NRO Staff, to Dir/NPIC, 2. May 63, subj: Stellar/Index Camera for 

GAMBIT, all in SAFSS files, Gambit; TWX SAFSP-F-18-2-526, SAFSP 

to SAFSS, 18 Feb 63, in SP-3 files, “G”.

62. TWX SAFSP-F-5-3-548, SAFSP to SAFSS, 5 Mar 63; 

TWX SAFSS-1-M-0070, SAFSS to SAFSP, 28 Mar 63; TWX 

SAFSPF-16-4-641, SAFSP to SAFSS, 16 Apr 63, all in SAFSS 

files,Gambit.

63. TWX SAFSS-6-M-0059, SAFSS to SAFSP, 12 Mar 63; TWX 

SAFSP-F-14-3-579, SAFSP to SAFSS, 15 Mar 63; TWX SAFSS1-M-0070, 27 Mar 63; TWX SAFSS-1-M-0071, Col J. L. Martin, Dir/

NRO Staff, to Maj Gen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, 28 Mar 63, TWX SAFSS6-M-0074, Martin to Greer, 2 Apr 63, all in SAFSS files, Gambit.

64. TWX SAFSS-1-M-0105, SAFSS to Maj Gen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, 

10 May 63; memo, B. McMillan, D/NRO, to Greer, 10 May 63, no subj; 

memo, Greer to SAFUS, 15 May 63, subj: Budgeting and Procurement, 

all in SP-3 files, Funding.

65. Memo, Col W. G. King to Maj Gen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, 10 May 

63, subj: Preliminary Feasibility Report - Dual Recovery Capability for 

GAMBIT; indorsement, Greer to Col J. L. Martin, SAFSS, 13 Jun 63, 

same subj, both in SAFSS files, Gambit.

66. TWX SAFSP-F-11-2-517, SAFSP to SAFSS, 11 Feb 

63; TWX SAFSP-F-13-3-575, SAFSP to SAFSS, 13 Mar 63; 

TWX SAFSP-F-27-3-608, SAFSP to SAFSS, 27 Mar 63; TWX 

SAFSP-F-2-4-619, SAFSP to SAFSS, 2 Apr 63; TWX SAFSP-F-16-4-642, 

SAFSP to SAFSS, 16 Apr 63, all in SAFSS files, Gambit.

67. TWX SAFSP-F-16-5-706, Col W.G. King to LtCol J. Sides, 

SAFSS, 17 May 63; TWX SAFSP-DIR-15-5-1, SAFSP to SAFSS, 15 

May 63; TWX SAFSS-1-M-0119, SAFSS to SAFSP, 23 May 63; TWX 

SAFSP-F-6-737, King to Col J. L. Martin, SAFSS, 5 Jun 63, TWX 

SAFSS-1-M-0134, 6 Jun 63, all in SAFSS files, Gambit.

68. TWX SAFSS-1-M-0109, SAFSS to SAFSP, 15 May 63; memo, 

Maj Gen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, to Maj Gen B. I. Funk, Cmdr, SSD, 15 May 

63, subj: 206 Program; memo, Funk to Greer, 31 May 63, same subj; 

TWX, SAFSP-F-17-6-758, Greer to B. McMillan, SAFUS, 17 Jun 63, all 

in SP-3 files, “G”.

69. TWX SAFSP-F-22-5-718, Col W. G. King, SAFSP, to LtCol J. 

Sides, SAFSS, 22 May 63, in SAFSS files, Gambit.

70. Msgs, CLA to D/NRO, 4 Jan 63; and CIA to SAFSP, 18 Jan 63, 

both in (Leach) files.

71. TWX SAFSP-F-19-1-498, SAFSP to 6594th ATW, 29 Jan 63, in 

SP-3 files, G.

72. Interview, Col J. W. Ruebel, SP-3, by R. L. Perry, 29 May 63.

73. Interview, Col R.J. Ford, SP-3, by R. L. Perry, 17 Sep 64.

74. Interview, LtCol J. Pietz, SP-3, by R. L. Perry, 29 May 63.

75. Msgs, EK to CIA, 11 Jul 63; and D/NRO to SAFSP, 1 Jul 63, both 

in Leach files, TWX SAFSP- 8-21-588, SAFSP to SAFSS, 21 Mar 63, 

in SAFSS files, Gambit.

76. “Book,” Gambit Payload Deception Operation, May 63, prep 

by LtCols R. J. Ford and J. Pietz, SP-3, in files; ltr, J. D. Hansford, 

GE, to Col R. J. Ford, SAFSP, 21 Oct 63, subj: Memo Report on STL 

Payloads, 951, 952 and 953 in SP-3 files; Ford interview, 14 Sep 64.

77. Author’s notes, 12 Jul 63; rpt, Gambit Program Summary 

Report 1960-1967, prep by R. Perry, Sep 67 (hereafter cited 

as G Summary); rpt, Summary Analysis of Program 206 

(GAMBIT), prep by 29 Aug 67 (hereafter cited as 206 Summary).
39

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

Gambit–1 Operations

The flight portion of the Gambit* Project offered 

interesting departures from the “normal” cycle of 

research, development and operations observed by 

most DoD development agencies. It owed much in that 

respect to the precedent of the Corona program, the 

only earlier satellite reconnaissance activity that could 

even casually be called successful. Although nominally 

divided between development and operational 

phases, the dividing line coming after the fifth flight, 

the de facto value of each flight was measured in 

various ways. Criteria ranged from the performance 

of the Gambit vehicle and camera system through the 

success of experiments and equipment modifications 

which were of development significance to a variety of 

projects, including Gambit-3. As for operational value, 

data of appreciable intelligence worth were collected 

as early as the fifth flight, and the quantity of such data 

continued to increase at a steady rate throughout the 

life of the original Gambit program.

While technical developments including the 

refinement of hardware and the introduction of 

new manufacturing techniques were of obvious 

significance, other and perhaps less tangible aspects 

of the Gambit project had greater potential long-term 

value. They were mostly of a program management 

sort. They included such areas as security devices 

necessary to “black” programs and management 

techniques for ushering a program through flight test 

into operations. General Greer’s stubborn insistence 

that “one good picture” was the only valid goal of 

the first flight lost much of its dramatic impact once 

success became the norm rather than the exception 

for new programs. But it was almost certainly one of 

the pivotal reasons for the early success of the Gambit 

project.1 Other projects in the space reconnaissance 

program had fallen almost entirely from the weight 

of overly ambitious early flight objectives. The result, 

* On nomenclature: Gambit operated under a considerable variety of titles 

and numerical designators. Two principal designators are used hereafter in 

this manuscript. The name Gambit ordinarily is used to identify the vehicles, 

and the program, that included any version of the original 77-inch (focal 

length) camera and the original single-recovery-vehicle film retrieval system. 

Gambit-3 (for “Gambit-Cubed”) is the comparable designator for the systems 

and program that involved the 160-inch lens and the “double bucket” recovery 

system. Where both the original Gambit and Gambit-3 are being discussed, 

the term Gambit-1 has been used to lessen confusion. It will be recalled that 

Gambit carried the “white” titles “Exemplar” and “Cue Ball.” In 1961 and 1962, 

the latter name being associated with the unclassified program number 483A, 

mostly for accounting purposes. In mid-1962 the terminology “Program 698-

AL” was applied as an unclassified identifier for Gambit; it subsequently was 

changed to “Program 206, “the terminology ordinarily used until the original 

Gambit gave way to Gambit-3. That follow-on program, which officially became 

“Gambit” in 1969 (the “G3” or “Gambit-Cubed” description was formally dropped 

at that time), carried the numerical designator “Program 110.”

with uncommon regularity, had been catastrophic 

failure and consequent abandonment of the program. 

Whatever had been invested was lost. Greer’s forte 

had been that of a midwife to the new project—

overseeing and guaranteeing a successful birth and 

infancy. His successor, Brigadier General John L. 

Martin, Jr.,** proved to be particularly adept at raising 

the child to maturity. Martin’s handling of a midstream 

crisis (three successive catastrophic failures midway 

through the flight program) by re-orienting contractual 

incentives served as a model for future contracting 

practices as well as solving the problem of the 

moment. The elements of the incentive program were 

probably of less importance than its conceptual basis. 

It represented an acknowledgement that the goals 

of a project changed as it outgrew its developmental 

constraints, and that incentives suitable for one phase 

were not necessarily appropriate to another.

Less than two weeks after the first Gambit flight 

aimed at “one good picture,” General Greer advised 

the project director, Colonel W. G. King,*** that he very 

much wanted “two in a row.” 2 That was to become 

the watchword for the second Gambit flight. While 

Greer was gratified by the success of the first flight, 

he appreciated that unwisely ambitious second-flight 

objectives could damage the program just as much 

as an unsuccessful first flight. Paradoxically, the 

very success of the first flight raised expectations 

for subsequent flights and could be expected to 

make later failures even more unsettling to those 

who ultimately controlled project funding. If enough 

success could be tucked away in the flight history of 

the basic hardware, then downstream failures could 

be treated as local problems rather than indications 

of a flawed conception. While no one knew how many 

successful flights or how much good output was 

required to create this aura, King and Greer were 

both quite positive that at least the second flight would 

have to be a pronounceable success.

The operational plan for the second flight called for 

three days of flight in a hitch-up mode. During the first 

flight control over the orbital control vehicle (OCV) had 

been lost after seven orbits, which did not represent 

enough of a test to justify making the success of the 

second flight dependent on its proper functioning. 

King decided that the Agena should be relied on 

once again for orbital control during that portion of 

the flight when primary mission objectives were to be 

satisfied. Those objectives were the demonstration 

of best resolution from the camera and successful 

recovery of the film. The secondary mission goal was 

to demonstrate controlled independent flight by the 

** Both Greer and Martin retired as Major Generals.

*** Later a Brigadier General and Martin’s successor
40

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

OCV, but not until after three days had been logged 

on orbit in the hitch-up mode.3 A cautionary note was 

injected by anxiety over the operation of the Agena, 

which had malfunctioned during the first flight. Greer 

and King decided that ground controllers should be 

prepared, beginning with the second revolution, to 

separate the OCV-RV combination from Agena at the 

first sign of trouble.4

Although master schedules called for one 

Gambit launch every 40 days, making 6 September 

nominally six days late,5 early Gambit flights were 

acknowledged to be development flights, so neither 

the schedule nor the slippage was considered critical. 

What was important was to precede each flight with 

a full analysis of the failures of the previous flight—

and to incorporate corrective features. The first two 

years of Gambit flights were to be marked by steady 

increases in pre-flight testing and by the installation of 

telemetering devices to monitor in-flight failure modes. 

That trend developed from a gradual understanding 

that although the proper dictum was to correct each 

flight’s failures before the next, the extent of effort 

needed to successfully perform that task had initially 

been underestimated.

Underestimating may have been the least 

important of several influences. In the early stages 

of the program, its managers were justifiably worried 

that it might be cancelled. The record of earlier failure 

in other satellite reconnaissance efforts, and financial 

overruns in the Gambit program provided reason 

enough for that worry. In any case, Greer perceived 

the urgency of extensive pre-flight tests to enhance 

the probability of program success even at the cost of 

schedule slippages. He had gone a long way toward 

hedging his bet by massive simplification of the 

Gambit hardware and early flight operations. While 

lack of adequate test data continued to trouble the 

program for some months, it was clear in retrospect 

that Greer made the right tradeoffs. They were clearly 

responsible for the regular success and smooth 

progress which marked the program for all but the 

middle portion of its life.

Another factor of some considerable importance in 

the perceived vulnerability of the early Gambit program 

was a fundamental difference of viewpoint between 

the CIA and the photo-intelligence community, on the 

one hand, and Greer’s organization plus the NRO 

staff, on the other. Admittedly, the Gambit group 

saw their mission as one of correctly exposing and 

efficiently recovering film. They were less concerned 

with the intelligence content of the product, as such. 

The intelligence community was preoccupied with 

the information content of the film; its members were 

willing to accept the risks of mission failure if the quality 

and quantity of intelligence returns might be enhanced 

thereby. Greer’s people were not, arguing reasonably 

enough that failed missions returned nothing of value 

to anybody.6

The Gambit countdown on 6 September was 

uneventful; launch occurred at 12:30 local time. All 

went well. Perigee was 102 nautical miles. During 

fifty-one hours on orbit, the hitched vehicle completed 

34 orbits and exposed some 1930 feet of film, some 

in stereo pairs but the most in single frames. The 

mission covered ten different intelligence targets. On 

the 34th revolution, the reentry vehicle was detached 

and successfully recovered by air catch.7

During separation of the Agena from the orbital 

control vehicle, a malfunction of the pneumatic system 

caused a rapid loss of stabilization gas. As a result, 

the major objective of the solo flight of the OCV—

operation of the stabilization subsystem—could not 

be demonstrated. The OCV was deboosted before 

completing any of its planned 49 revolutions.

Gas leak problems were not confined to the 

stabilization system. On revolution 31 of the hitched 

flight, the primary camera door failed to close (during 

the 20th opening-closing cycle). That too was due 

to a gas leak, but in the door actuator. That event 

pressaged a problem which was to recur in one form or 

another until the pneumatic systems were eventually 

replaced, in both primary and secondary modes, by 

electro-mechanical actuators. But that modification 

was not effective until the 26th Gambit.

Initially, the pneumatic door actuator failure did not 

appear to be a major problem. In terms of product, 

the flight was hugely successful. During hitch-up, the 

cameras provided ground resolution of 2.5 feet. The 

contractual specifications called for two to three feet, 

so one of the three major objectives of the project 

had been satisfied on the second flight. (The other 

objectives were an operational life of five days and 

the ability to point the camera at will. A completely 

successful five-day flight was almost two years 

and 17 flights away; pointing accuracy was to be 

demonstrated by the seventh flight.)

The Gambit flight program developed three major 

classes of problems. The first and least frequent 

but most persistent appeared as failures of various 

pneumatic subsystems. Another class of problems 

included one-time failures, which once corrected did 

not reappear.

The third class of problem was intellectually 

the most interesting and operationally the most 

frustrating. Throughout the program instances of 

seemingly random failure occurred in components 
41

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

which had functioned correctly for many flights. The 

problem would persist through three or four flights, 

notwithstanding strenuous correction efforts, before 

succumbing. While there was nothing mysterious 

about the recurrence of a given failure, the sudden 

appearance of one where none had existed earlier 

was unusual for space vehicles, used only once 

and normally immune to wearout as such. No fully 

satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon ever 

appeared, although transient quality control and test 

program faults were generally blamed. 

The aftermath of the second flight brought a 

renewal of controversy about the paramount objectives 

of early Gambit flights. An analysis of the photographs 

recovered from the second Gambit showed consistently 

high quality until the 31st orbit. The failure of the main 

camera doors to close thereafter with consequent 

optical problems caused by temperature transients, 

had caused a softening of image quality and some loss 

of resolution. But the resolution achieved during the 

initial portion of the flight was sufficient to distinguish 

details like aircraft engine nacelles, small vehicles 

and even maintenance equipment.8 Thus, for the first 

time an orbiting camera had returned detail at levels 

previously obtained only from aircraft. In effect, only 

three years after aircraft overflights of the Soviet Union 

had been discontinued, satellite reconnaissance had 

more than filled the gap. First, Corona had returned 

coverage of areas most U-2’s could not reach or could 

not safely overfly, and now Gambit had returned detail 

not greatly inferior to that produced by U-2 cameras. 

But the Gambit returns had been limited; 1950 

feet of film was not a large return, only ten targets 

having been covered, but more important, the OCV 

on which eventual routine coverage would depend 

had not yet functioned properly. Pointing accuracy 

demonstrations were lacking. Although the Gambit 

achievement represented remarkable progress and 

excellent research and development results, it did 

not yet constitute a basis for good recurring coverage 

of the Soviet Union. And information of that sort, at 

resolutions much better than Corona could provide, 

was an urgent national goal. 

Given that the high resolution potential of Gambit 

had been demonstrated and pointing accuracy using 

the orbital control vehicle had not, Greer decided that 

for the third flight the primary objective should be 

demonstration of the operation of the vehicle. High 

resolution photography of intelligence targets would 

be relegated to a secondary objective.

McMillan approved Greer’s decision on 17 

September, after which King forwarded the formal 

statement of objectives and priorities to Washington.9

The target launch date was set for 22 October. 

Operations were to be maintained for two days in the 

hitch-up mode and two additional days in solo flight.

That operational plan prevailed until 24 October. 

While technical problems that had caused a three-day 

launch postponement were being resolved, McMillan 

reversed his earlier position, telling Greer he wanted 

to “clarify” the objectives of the Gambit program. 

He explained that the effectiveness of the program 

could not be judged by the ground area covered or 

the amount of film exposed successfully. Rather, 

effectiveness would be judged in terms of the number 

of high priority targets for which high resolution stereo 

pairs could be obtained. Primary efforts for following 

Gambit missions were to concentrate on obtaining 

the best possible ground resolution over larger 

numbers of “denied area” targets. Orbital control, as 

such, was to be a secondary consideration. Further, 

development-oriented flights were to end as soon as 

possible.10 Full operational missions were wanted at 

the earliest achievable date.* In historical summaries, 

the primary objective of the third flight is duly recorded 

as obtaining maximum information from high 

resolution photography, and the secondary objectives 

as demonstrating capabilities of the orbital control 

vehicle and proving the feasibility of a five-day flight.12

But post-fact notations do not necessarily reflect 

the course of real events. The 34 revolutions of the third 

Gambit vehicle in the hitch-up mode were what had 

been specified in Greer’s message of 13 September, 

in any case. The only other relevant evidence 

concerning real objectives of the flight is the amount 

of film used and the number of targets photographed. 

One hundred feet less film was recovered from the 

third Gambit mission than from the second, and the 

amount actually exposed on orbit (rather than in prelaunch tests) was less than half that of the second 

flight. Four targets were photographed compared to 

ten of the second flight.

Greer’s principal concern was to demonstrate, 

systematically, that each essential element of 

Gambit hardware was functional. He was satisfied 

that sufficiently high resolution photography could 

* In September and October 1963, McMillan had the first of several major 

brushes with Dr. Albert D. Wheelon, who had become the CIA’s Deputy 

Director, Science and Technology, in July. Even earlier, McMillan had been 

exposed to several pointed suggestions that Greer’s organization be instructed 

to subordinate its R&D orientation to an intelligence-return orientation. 

Although no directly relevant documents from that period have survived that 

detail the Gambit flight goals disagreement of July-October, indirect evidence 

of the pressures on McMillan and of his reluctance to reorient Gambit flight 

objectives is found in his own memoranda. The instructions to Greer on 24 

October reflect an effort to compromise existing differences, requiring—or 

formally stating—an unwritten agreement between McMillan and Roswell 

Gilpatric, Deputy Secretary of Defense, to place greater emphasis on quickly 

ending the R&D phase of the Gambit program.11
42

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

be obtained. If he had doubts, they were resolved 

by the results of the second and third missions. His 

next concern was for the orbital control vehicle. Dr. 

McMillan had to cope with different constraints. One 

of his problems was that only the first three Gambit 

flights had been represented to “high authority” as 

developmental. While he and Greer were completely 

agreed on the need for more developmental flights, 

McMillan also wanted to be able to display intelligence 

returns that could substantiate claims of operational 

utility for Gambit. He was not prepared to reverse 

Greer, in any case. On 12 February 1964, he 

authorized developmental flights to continue beyond 

the fifth Gambit. Indeed, he ruled that flights would 

only be designated operational after “several” four- or 

five-day flights had been successful.13 Since the first 

such mission was not scheduled until August 1964, 

Greer’s arguments clearly had prevailed.

By February 1964, however, it had become almost 

certain that Gambit would return large quantities of 

highly valuable photographic intelligence, and in the 

reasonably near future. McMillan therefore broadened 

his position in dealing with “users,” and supported 

Greer’s well-based convictions both privately and 

publicly. 

Some additional cause for anxiety about the 

success potential of the third Gambit resulted from the 

history of the orbital control vehicle. It had originally 

been used in thermal-vacuum testing of the satellite 

vehicle. It was subsequently refurbished and assigned 

the third Gambit flight. By 25 October 1963, all 

systems had been checked out and, for the first time, 

propellants were loaded that would support orbital 

adjust maneuvers. At one minute before noon, local 

time, the booster was ignited and the third Gambit 

space vehicle was put into orbit. 

Whatever the preliminary uncertainties about 

mission objectives and equipment, the result was a 

mission that conformed to flight goals from first to last. 

Not only was the photography as good as that of the 

second flight, but the recovery was routine and the 

orbital vehicle, in solo flight, successfully demonstrated 

orbital adjust and de-orbit capabilities.14 During the 

solo flight the stabilization subsystem was exercised 

extensively and found to operate as specified. Of the 

38 Gambit flights ultimately undertaken (not including 

Gambit-3) this was one of only three which was perfect 

in the sense that it was unmarred by any failure, major 

or minor. The other two such missions came at the 

very end of the Gambit-1 program.

The general quality of the photography was 

judged to be “...better and more consistent...” than 

that of either of the first two missions. Photographs 

from that mission were the first to show identifiable 

figures of people on the ground—from a distance of 

some (The scene was a football field in Great Falls, 

Montana.) In one picture a place kicker could be seen 

putting the football in place while other players moved 

into position. In a second photograph the players had 

lined up, ready for the kickoff.15

Its first three flights having been successful, 

Gambit secured the virtual guarantee of continued 

funding Greer had sought. Lanyard, the “insurance” 

surveillance system that backed up Gambit, was 

cancelled.16 The Gambit space vehicle and payload 

having been proven, the only backup necessary in 

the future was an operational one, satisfied by the 

production of Gambit vehicles for continued use.

Although photography obtained from the first three 

flights of Gambit had little intelligence value, it had 

superb resolution. Orbital adjustment maneuvers had 

been carried out successfully, as had solo flight of the 

orbital control vehicle, after separation of the payload 

capsule for reentry. The entire system had an evident 

capability of performing five-day operational missions. 

The problems thus far encountered appeared to be 

manageable.

The next step was a mission which fully explored 

operational capability. The stated primary mission 

of the fourth Gambit was to obtain high-quality 

reconnaissance photography, as would be the case 

with every flight thereafter, to the end of the program. 

The secondary mission goal was demonstration of 

five-day longevity.17

The fourth flight vehicle differed substantially from 

the first. The stellar index cameras (being procured 

through a black CIA contract with Itek) still were not 

available, but most of the other major features of 

Gambit, as originally planned, were present. The 

hitch-up option was dropped, giving the orbital control 

vehicle its first opportunity to display its capabilities in 

a “live” test. Such changes had once been planned for 

the sixth mission, but success in the solo operation 

of the OCV had been so encouraging that program 

managers concluded that no more useful information 

could be generated by further dry runs. A “Lifeboat” 

system was installed for the first time in the fourth 

Gambit. (Also known as the back-up stabilization 

system [BUSS], “Lifeboat” utilized the earth’s lines of 

magnetic force as a reference to stabilize the vehicle in 

flight. It had its own control gas supplies and command 

circuitry, separate from the primary stabilization 

system. Originally conceived as temporary insurance 

against the failure of the primary system in early 

missions, BUSS survived to the last in the original 

series of Gambit flights and was last used to bring 

back the reentry vehicle of Gambit number 36.)
43

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

Launch occurred in the early afternoon of 18 

December 1963. Separation of the Agena and the OCV 

and orbital injection were nominal. Launch controllers 

were slightly uneasy because of an uncorrected test 

failure which had occurred during countdown. They 

had been unable to change the crab position of the 

primary mirror. The failure was considered random; 

probably due to a short circuit between the crab servo 

and the command decoder relay box. In any case, no 

corrective action was considered necessary. In any 

event, the short circuit persisted, but the anticipation 

of “no problem” proved accurate.

The first four orbits were normal. During the fifth 

revolution, however, the satellite vehicle began to 

tumble and all orbital control gas was expended in 

efforts to stabilize it. The precipitating failure was 

in a small heat controlling device responsible for 

maintaining acceptable temperatures around the rate 

gyro. The heater operated at full output the first four 

orbits. The result was a heat-induced malfunction of 

the rate gyro, causing massive instability of the space 

vehicle. Mission controllers decided to deboost and 

recover the RV during the 18th revolution.

Because the primary stabilization gas supply had 

been fully exhausted at the end of the fifth revolution, 

controllers had to call on the Lifeboat system. 

Tumbling was so extreme that BUSS could not fully 

suppress it during the next 13 revolutions. By the time 

the recovery was attempted, BUSS gas was all but 

depleted. The result was that deorbit of the RV was 

inaccurate and reentry occurred 720 miles downrange 

from the planned location. Nevertheless, because 

they had been warned in advance of that likelihood, 

the recovery team was still able to recover the capsule 

by air catch. 

Of the missions assigned to the fourth flight, only 

one was demonstrated, and that only in part: the 

BUSS, newly installed on this flight, performed very 

well in an unexpected emergency. It had allowed the 

recovery of the capsule when all else would have 

been unavailing.

Although the fourth Gambit had experienced 

catastrophic mission failure and had performed none 

of its primary assignments, the fault was so localized 

that it caused no significant change in the system. The 

only alteration suggested by the failure was to wire a 

back-up heater switch in the rate gyro assembly to 

turn off the heater when a critical temperature was 

reached.18

Even though the early Gambit flights were 

developmental and telemetry of error mode 

information was essential, much instrumentation 

essential to detailed system operation monitoring 

was not incorporated in the first four Gambit vehicles. 

Limited mission objectives in combination with budget 

problems partly explained the omission. After the first 

three flights, that rationale evaporated, to be replaced 

by another: program success. Hindsight suggested 

that instrumentation was inadequate to the needs of 

development.

For various reasons, the launch schedule for the 

fifth Gambit was allowed to slip to the extent of about 

a month. During the interval between missions four 

and five, McMillan accepted the premise that ten 

development flights should be programmed before 

operational status could be claimed. Gambit was not 

to be considered operational, McMillan concluded, 

until, “...several completely successful four- or five-day 

missions have been accomplished and all significant 

operational limitations and capabilities identified.” The 

maximum effort was to be aimed at development and 

use of full Gambit potential. The NRO director told 

Greer, “...the name of the game is specific coverage 

of specific, known targets with stereo photography of 

the best possible quality.” Mission criteria, he added, 

would be the number of priority targets photographed 

in stereo and the resolution of the photographs.19

Greer’s confidence in the capability of Gambit 

was increasing, but he remained cautious. It was 

reasonable to assume that the camera was capable of 

being pointed accurately at ground targets, that orbit 

injection and orbit change maneuvers could allow 

coverage of different areas on the same flight, and 

that the resulting high resolution photography would 

be routinely recovered. The criteria settled on by the 

director of the NRO assumed these accomplishments 

and asked, if somewhat imprecisely, for considerably 

more: many photographs of many priority targets. To 

that time (1964), the selection of Gambit targets had 

been done manually; analysts decided which targets 

were to be photographed, how many frames were to 

be exposed over each, and the time sequence of the 

operation. The amount of film ordinarily available to be 

exposed was on the order of two thousand feet.

Two later developments in Gambit’s operational 

capability were directly responsive to the requirement 

for the large numbers of aimed photographs. The first, 

which had long been planned for mission operations 

once R&D goals had been satisfied, was initially 

used on Gambit’s fifth flight. It involved the use of 

computer techniques for target selection. The second 

was to increase the quantity of film carried, with a 

corresponding increase in the potential longevity of 

a given flight. Thirteen hundred feet of film had been 

loaded in the first Gambit mission. By the end of the 

program, almost 3400 feet were carried regularly.20
44

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

The first target selection technique used in the 

Gambit program, called TMPGP, was developed by 

Space Technology Laboratories (which later became 

the core of the Aerospace Corporation). It used data 

on priorities, resolution, and total number of areas of 

interest as inputs and then performed an exhaustive 

search of possible targets from target folder data 

in order to determine the optimal set of targets for a 

given mission. Because of the necessarily broad 

scope of the search technique, the program was bulky 

and expensive to operate, as well as being very time 

consuming. Program directors therefore sponsored 

a second generation program using dynamic 

programming techniques, which eventually replaced 

TMPGP. It was characterized by far more rapid and less 

costly operations but perhaps more important provided 

better satisfaction of optimal target selection criteria.21

Once the set of targets had been chosen, relevant 

data on them were entered into an event generation 

program which computed major orbital parameters 

as well as all commands necessary to carry out 

the selected photographic operations. Commands 

included such details as door openings and closings, 

crab angle, and film transport speed. Once the vehicle 

was on orbit it could be assumed that command 

changes would be required, either to correct for 

flight anomalies of various kinds or to incorporate 

late changes in mission objectives—as during a 

sudden crisis in the Middle East or Southeast Asia, for 

instance. These eventualities were taken care of by a 

set of command and control programs which allowed 

technicians at the satellite test center at Vandenberg 

to alter the sequence and nature of events on orbit. 

New target data were fed into the control computers; 

the output was in the form of commands to the space 

vehicle. In generating those commands, the program 

would also determine whether carrying out the new 

tasks would in any way degrade vehicle capability, 

either by requiring it to perform high risk operations 

or by overloading some subsystem to the point of 

incipient failure.

Such techniques were first employed on the flight 

of 25 February. The space vehicle separated from the 

Agena and entered the planned orbit, with an initial 

perigee of 96 miles. On the second revolution, telemetry 

indicated that roll and pitch gyros had not uncaged. It 

was faulty diagnosis, but not until somewhat later did 

it become apparent that only the signals were wrong, 

that in fact the flight control system was functioning 

correctly. In the meantime, flight controllers responded 

by sending a new “uncage gyros” command to the 

vehicle. Its effect was to cause loss of yaw reference 

and a steadily increasing yaw angle. (The yaw angle 

grew at the relatively large rate of 2.5 degrees per 

hour. Because the vehicle and the cameras were 

no longer at right angles to the orbital path, image 

motion compensation became steadily less effective. 

Resolution degraded from an initial 12 feet to an 

eventual 100 feet before the command and control 

system succeeded in negating and correcting the yaw 

angle anomaly, on revolution 18. Unfortunately, either 

communications between personnel at the Satellite 

Control Center Facility or the computer-controlled 

command system could not cope with the situation; in 

any case, a command to cut the film and load it into 

the take up spools had been transmitted and obeyed 

during the 16th revolution. Thereafter, Gambit number 

five performed some research operations which had 

been included as part of the primary mission, but 

photographic functions ceased.22

During early Gambit operations, interest in the 

feasibility of low level flights had become pronounced. 

Better resolution was the goal. But relatively little was 

known about the density of the atmosphere at altitudes 

of 70 miles. Gambit number five was photographically 

“dead,” but something might be salvaged by having the 

vehicle descend to a lower altitude. Flight controllers 

quickly prepared and sent commands for three orbit 

adjustments. They demonstrated that the OCV could 

be successfully controlled and that operation at 70-

mile altitudes was feasible. So notwithstanding the 

succession of command errors that led to a failure 

of mission photography, the mission was judged a 

success.

On the 34th revolution, the recovery vehicle was 

separated from the OCV and recovered. That event 

had originally been scheduled for the 51st revolution, 

but the extra time on orbit was to have been used 

for photography which had been precluded by 

the premature command to cut the film. In partial 

compensation, mission control extended the flight of 

the solo OCV from its original program of 32 revolutions 

to 49. During that period, a malfunction occurred in the 

BUSS (caused by the failure of a relay) which would 

have caused catastrophic failure in the event BUSS 

had been relied on for recovery of the RV. Other minor 

functional failures marred the flight, but for the first 

time instrumentation was sufficiently comprehensive 

to provide relatively detailed information on each of 

the anomalies. Detailed corrective modifications of the 

sixth Gambit followed analysis of the failure modes 

experienced during flight number five.23

The fifth flight had another distinction. It was 

the first for which an incentive fee arrangement had 

been in effect between the project office and General 

Electric, the contractor for the orbital control vehicle, 

which related fee to vehicle performance on orbit. 

Basically, GE would recover the costs of production 

plus an additional fee around a mission success 
45

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

midpoint. Penalties and rewards were on a pro rata 

basis between the two extremes. Because of various 

OCV failures in flight number five, GE had a full fee 

penalty assessed. 

Incentives of that sort became increasingly 

important to Gambit as the program progressed. 

Although cost, performance, and schedule were all 

covered by the contract incentive clauses, cost was the 

principal early target. Gambit costs had substantially 

exceeded early program estimates, although later 

developments in satellite reconnaissance were to 

make that program seem quite inexpensive. In any 

case, the arrangement that took effect with the fifth 

Gambit mission provided that GE would retain as 

profit a large part of whatever underrun occurred, but 

would pay an equivalently large share of overruns out 

of fee. The fee variation associated with performance 

was only about half the size of the cost function 

variation. That difference was partly accounted for by 

the expectation that the orbital control vehicle would 

be extremely reliable, a notion strengthened by the 

first four flights. The schedule incentive was small. As 

might have been expected—indeed, as was intended, 

after the first couple of flights, GE concentrated effort 

on reducing costs, paying less heed to performance. 

Under the terms of the agreement, for instance, if GE 

delivered a minimum-cost OCV on schedule, and the 

vehicle was an utter failure on orbit, the contractor still 

would earn the full scheduled fee plus an incentive 

bonus. Of course that sort of arrangement would not 

be continued if failure became a major problem, but it 

was an interesting condition of the program and one 

that GE exploited—briefly.24

The failures of the fifth flight determined the 

operational assignment of the sixth. The mission would 

be the same: a three day flight to demonstrate full 

operational control and orbit adjustment capabilities, 

and continued investigation of low orbit operations. 

The primary mission would continue to be high-grade 

photography, but this was now a sufficiently hoary 

tradition to be accepted without notice in the formal 

statement of mission objectives.25 The long awaited 

stellar index camera was originally scheduled for its 

maiden flight on the sixth vehicle, but qualification 

delays made it necessary to wait one more flight 

before that final important piece of equipment could 

be added to the Gambit package to make the vehicle 

fully consistent with original specifications.26

Even though the fifth Gambit had been less 

than successful from the standpoint of program 

personnel and the intelligence community alike, the 

system was making steady and remarkable progress 

toward full operational status. That circumstance 

was acknowledged by Greer’s near-term plan for 

flights six through ten. The length of the flights was to 

gradually extend from three to five days, low altitude 

experimentation was to be ended, and optimal 

targeting procedures were to be developed so that 

the greatest possible number of high-priority targets 

would be photographed. Greer maintained that the 

plan was flexible, providing a “...deliberate approach 

to completing the development program. It can and will 

be adjusted to either unusual success or catastrophic 

failure.” McMillan’s concurrence in that general plan 

reached Greer, without additional comment, on 17 

March 1964.27

The subtle increase of emphasis on obtaining 

operationally useful photography starting with flight six 

was in some respects a further acknowledgement of 

the pressure McMillan was experiencing from users of 

the satellite photography. The failure of Gambit five to 

return useful take was reflected without much subtlety, 

in measures that put Gambit six on its launch pad well 

ahead of normal delivery and checkout schedules. 

Only 15 days elapsed between the launch of the fifth 

Gambit and the readiness of the sixth. That striking 

accomplishment was made possible by energetic 

refurbishment of the launch station and by making 

detailed adjustments in delivery schedules for later 

Gambits and their subsystems. It was possible partly 

because the production, test, and delivery of satellite 

vehicle equipment had earlier been accelerated in 

order to provide a standby or backup vehicle as early 

as possible in the Gambit flight program. One effect of 

moving Gambit six forward in the schedule was to force 

a delay in the planned delivery of the reserve system; 

it had been slated for availability by May 1964, but the 

actions of March (in conjunction with an independent 

delay in the availability of the booster, the first SLV-3 

“Standard Atlas” intended for use with Gambit) made 

June the earliest possible month for delivery.

Gambit six was launched shortly after noon on 

11 March 1964. Orbit and separation were nominal. 

There were two major system failures during the flight, 

neither catastrophic. The BUSS failed for a second 

time due to overheating of a solenoid during the test 

cycle. (Test procedures were immediately changed.) 

The primary stabilization system operated nominally 

throughout the flight so that failure of the BUSS was 

of no mission significance.

The second major problem was malfunctioning 

of the roll jets, which caused orbital predictions to 

be inaccurate and led to in-track errors that made 

it impossible to acquire 25 percent of the planned 

targets. (The errors were apparently cumulative; the 

majority of targets not acquired were programmed 

for revolutions 38 to 41.) An additional problem was 
46

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

that some targets had been specified “by hand” rather 

than through the use of computerized event selection 

programs. While on orbit, it became clear that many of 

these were incompatible with the technical capability 

of Gambit hardware.28 (That event brought on a 

short, sharp controversy over operational direction of 

intelligence gathering.)

Despite such problems, some 150 successful 

camera operations were commanded and took place 

of a programmed total of 229. After 51 revolutions, 

the film capsule was recovered and several orbital 

adjustments were made with the OCV in solo flight. 

With the first burn, the perigee was raised from 120 

to 202 nautical miles, then returned to 95. In the next 

experiment it was reduced to 70 miles, then finally 

returned to 90. The vehicle had stayed on low orbit 

with a 70-mile perigee for a total of ten continuous 

revolutions. No temperature anomalies or other 

difficulties were registered, further demonstrating the 

feasibility of such a low orbit. The next step would 

be to operate the camera from such an altitude to 

determine if special problems would arise either from 

camera operation or in the quality of photography 

from low orbit.

Such events were of paramount importance to the 

Gambit program office, but the intelligence community 

they ranked considerably below the fact that Gambit 

six had returned substantial quantities of highly useful 

intelligence data. Earlier photography had generally 

been scant and, even when of good photographic 

quality, had provided information of slight operational 

interest. The photographs returned by the sixth 

Gambit permitted interpretation of additional details in 

already identified targets and confirmed the existence 

of targets in areas which had been classified as 

“probables” earlier. Good quality photographs were 

obtained on all but four of the assigned targets 

covered on the mission. Some of the photography 

was degraded as a result of snow or haze cover, but 

most was excellent.29

That achievement received far less recognition 

than it deserved, then or later, owing to continued 

concern for impending missions. But in fact, Gambit 

was only the second thoroughly satisfactory satellite 

reconnaissance system to reach operational status in 

a development effort that had been intense—a matter 

of extreme national urgency—for six of its ten years. 

Corona, the only predecessor system to provide much 

in the way of useful operational intelligence, had not 

recorded its first success until 15 launches had been 

attempted, only three of which could be accounted 

technically successful. All five of the E-series Samos 

payloads that had progressed as far as completed 

hardware had been cancelled, as had Lanyard, the 

repackaged E-5 camera system. The whole concept of 

readout that originally underlay the program had been 

dropped, and in the entire series of Samos-derived 

mission attempts that started in January 1961, only 

the E-1 and the Lanyard had returned photography 

in which photo interpreters could honestly express 

the slightest interest. As compared to Corona, E-1 

had been thoroughly inferior, while Lanyard displayed 

various defects of system and product that made its 

cancellation inevitable once Gambit had demonstrated 

even minimal capability. In coverage, quality, and 

detail, Gambit photography obtained from the sixth 

mission represented a data acquisition success that 

could only have been matched, in earlier years, by 

aircraft operations so uncertain of success and so 

risky in a political sense that even in the worst stages 

of the several international crises of the early 1960’s 

they were never seriously considered. And the only 

comparable successes of the next eight years were to 

be Gambit-3 and Hexagon. In that sense, the success 

of the sixth Gambit mission constituted one of six 

real achievement milestones in the first fifteen years 

of serious satellite reconnaissance development 

by the United States. The others were the original 

Corona, the Corona-Mural stereo system, the dualcapsule Corona-J, Gambit-3, and Hexagon. And two 

of those were improvements on existing systems. 

In that context, the first real operational success of 

Gambit in March 1964 could stand as one of the most 

remarkable achievements of U.S. technology in the 

first decade and a half of the space era.

With the success of the sixth flight, operational 

proving had been extended in several areas, helping 

to determine the character of the seventh flight. Two 

events were of particular significance. First, the stellar 

index camera was finally mounted on the satellite. 

Second, the low altitude tests seemed very promising 

for the future. Greer, King, and McMillan were agreed 

that they should take the final step of flying the 

recovery vehicle with camera operating at low altitude 

during the seventh flight. The operational plan called 

for one day of flight at a 90-mile perigee followed by 

two days at 70 miles. During the low flight, technicians 

at Vandenberg were to be prepared to adjust the orbit 

upward if any sign of unacceptable temperature rise 

appeared.30

The circulation of Gambit six photography through 

the intelligence community had one effect on Gambit 

seven plans that neither Greer nor McMillan appeared 

to have foreseen, and which they and the members of 

the Gambit project group justifiably regarded as both 

unwelcome and unwarranted. On 26 March 1964, two 

weeks before the scheduled launch of the seventh 

Gambit McMillan received from the Committee on 

Overhead Reconnaissance (COMOR) a request that 
47

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

data on the ephemeris and track of each Gambit 

mission be supplied to COMOR ten days in advance 

of launch so that, upon study, COMOR could add to 

the operational plan a set of photographic requests of 

its own.31

The request had its origin in two related 

circumstances, first that the Corona operations with 

which COMOR was familiar were target programmed 

“by hand,” so to say, and second that COMOR was 

largely unfamiliar with the highly complex computerized 

techniques used to construct a Gambit mission profile. 

Underlying them, of course, was a COMOR charter 

that implied rights of target selection and recent history 

of disagreement about mission and target priorities—

disagreement that stemmed in part from CIA beliefs 

that the Gambit program was insufficiently attentive 

to intelligence needs. In this instance COMOR was 

largely reflecting the CIA viewpoint.* 

McMillan and Greer were in agreement about the 

importance of maximizing the amount of photography 

of priority targets on each mission. To that end, 

Greer had set in motion the technical effort required 

to plan each mission systematically, exploiting new 

computer methodology, so that the greatest number 

of highest priority targets would be photographed on 

each mission. That activity had only begun to bear 

fruit on the sixth Gambit flight. The idea of inserting 

even one randomly determined target in a mission so 

planned had nightmarish qualities. Such an insertion 

would almost certainly ensure that the mission was 

suboptimal—that some priority targets that might 

have been photographed would not be, and that those 

missed might, in sum, be more important than the 

single insertion that displaced them. Mission tinkering 

might not have that effect, of course, but it could.

Dr. McMillan turned over the problem of reply to 

General John Martin, head of the NRO Staff. Martin’s 

response was swift and deft. He provided a primer 

on the technical capacity of Gambit and the means 

of utilizing it, explaining that orbital parameters were 

planned so as to be consistent with a target list 

which was a primary input for such computations 

and pointing out that the optimality of such a mission 

plan would be destroyed by insertion of last minute 

targets. He felt that COMOR should have learned 

about the technical aspects of Gambit operations 

from experience with earlier requests for special 

targets. He concluded that, “It is simply not possible to 

proceed on the basis of manual target determination 

as the mission progresses without substantial loss of 

potential intelligence take.”32

* J. Q. Reber, who later became Deputy Director, National Reconnaissance 

Office, was the chairman of COMOR and its acknowledged spokesman, he 

was also a CIA employee.

The problem went away. The later success of 

Gambit operations precluded its resurrection. 

One point Martin did not make was that mission 

event planning was already having to cope with an 

excess of targeting requirements. The computer 

program then in use could absorb data on only 900 

targets although some 2700 had been earlier specified 

as “eligible.” This meant that some hand massaging 

would have to be done even before the optimization 

routine could begin.33 And for Gambit number seven, 

there were other pre-launch problems. The launch 

date had already been slipped by about a week, but 

checkout was not going smoothly. On 16 April the 

mission was scrubbed because the checkout crew 

could not satisfactorily explain (and fix) command 

sequences anomalies which kept recurring in the test 

sequence.34

The seventh Gambit with stellar index camera 

aboard, was finally launched on 23 April. All mission 

assignments were successfully completed by the third 

day, after which the vehicle flew for an extra day, making 

Gambit seven the first four-day system. In particular, 

the two days spent in low orbit were uneventful; 

preparations for emergency reorbit maneuvers being 

unnecessary. The only major malfunction of the flight 

was registered in the failure of a component in the 

horizon sensor, although that relatively minor anomaly 

caused track errors of as much as four miles late in 

the flight. Some camera pointing problems resulted, 

with a consequent degradation of photographic quality 

after orbit number 42. Inspection of the photographs 

showed that the low altitude at which most had been 

taken enhanced their quality substantially. Stereo pairs 

were particularly good, registering a “best” resolution 

of two and a half feet. The stellar index camera had 

taken 663 frames, although many were of impaired 

value because of light flare in the stellar exposures 

and overexposure in the terrestrial. Initial estimates of 

the cost of fixing those deficiencies were too high, so 

as an interim measure, black felt material was affixed 

to the interior of the lens cone to suppress reflection.35

Growing recognition of inherent Gambit capabilities 

contributed to the next attempted perturbation of 

the planned program. The CIA expressed interest 

in operating the system over Cuba, although the 

continuing success of U-2 flights in that area would 

seem to have provided sufficient assurance that the 

missile crisis of 1962 could not recur. Attempts—and 

success—at shooting down U-2’s would presumably 

signal the start of a new crisis. But Gambit (and Corona 

too, for that matter) was in its usual mission mode not 

well adapted to reconnaissance over Cuba, mostly 

because its flight plan was optimized for operations at 

higher latitudes, at different sun angles, and in another 
48

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

hemisphere. Night launches from Vandenberg could 

put the satellite over Cuba during daylight hours, as 

could launch from Cape Kennedy. Both options had 

severe drawbacks. A night launch from Vandenberg 

would create a mission capability limited to daylight 

operations over the Caribbean and some other areas 

where the U.S. had little or no intelligence interest. 

Daylight recovery near Hawaii would depend on 

successful orbit adjust and could not follow closely 

on photographic passes over Cuba. Facilities at Cape 

Kennedy were inadequate, and provision of minimum 

checkout capability would cost and take about nine 

months.

Basically, however, the Gambit camera-vehicle 

system was far less than optimal for the sort of Cuban 

coverage being considered. Gambit could, of course, 

take both mono and stero strip photography. But a 

mono strip photograph over Cuba would cover a 

swath ten miles wide and 600 miles long. Several such 

passes would be needed to cover the entire island and 

resolution could be expected to degrade because of 

small, cumulative in-track errors which would normally 

be corrected between targets. Using stereo pairs was 

not a better alternative: difficulties with slow settling 

times had still not been eradicated and computations 

showed that ten percent of time over target would be 

consumed by a single roll maneuver of 25 degrees. 

Finally, and ironically, the seventh Gambit flight had 

been a four-day mission, raising hopes of a five day 

mission shortly. Cuban coverage would need no more 

than a two-day mission, and that represented a costly 

disregard of the maximum technological capabilities 

of the satellite. Gambit obviously could do crisis 

reconnaissance if the need were sufficiently great, 

but it did not appear that Cuban reconnaissance 

qualified.36

Preparations for the eighth flight proceeded, 

unruffled by the distant flap over Cuba. Mission plans 

were as for the seventh flight except that the duration 

was to be four days. Low altitude flight would continue 

to be tried.

Launch occurred on 19 May just after noon, to be 

followed immediately by problems. After separation 

from the Agena, the satellite vehicle was injected 

into an orbit which was more than 30 miles below 

the planned 90-mile perigee. Initial perigee was 

57 nautical miles—an altitude at which the satellite 

experienced 17 times the atmospheric density, for 

which it had been designed. In addition the vehicle 

was rolling very rapidly. As tracking equipment lost 

contact with the vehicle, most flight controllers felt the 

vehicle had no chance of surviving the disastrously 

low orbit, much less the rapid spin. But the time Gambit 

had passed over the first downrange tracking station, 

however, the spin had stabilized automatically. On the 

second revolution, normal procedures for orbit adjust 

maneuvers were successfully carried out, lifting the 

vehicle into its planned 90-mile orbit. For the next 13 

revolutions the vehicle operated nominally, producing 

what would later be labeled “...high quality stereo 

photography considered by some to be the best 

imagery yet obtained from satellite photography.” On 

the 15th revolution, however, the vehicle inexplicably 

lost all attitude reference. Just as mysteriously, it 

reappeared on the 25th revolution. Photography 

resumed, but in view of the various travails to which 

the satellite had been exposed, the mission was 

terminated on the second day instead of the fourth. 

Capsule recovery was uneventfully successful.37

Attempts to explain the attitude control failure of 

the eighth flight were dominated by concern about 

the initial low orbit. Fears that the high atmospheric 

density would destroy ablative materials and cause 

malfunctioning of various subsystems seemed to have 

been borne out when attitude reference disappeared. 

That failure was initially charged to the effects of 

atmospheric heating. But a similar failure occurred 

during the next flight, and later analysis of the flight 

track showed that it happened only when the satellite 

was over Antarctica. It became apparent that the 

horizon sensor (which maintained attitude reference 

by determining the position of the horizon beneath 

the vehicle and appropriately issuing roll command) 

could not distinguish between the temperature of 

Antarctic and the temperature of outer space—at least 

during winter in the southern hemisphere. Sensor 

redesign followed. Once the attitude sensor failure 

had been correctly credited to geography rather than 

atmospherics, there was little remaining doubt that 

the vehicle could withstand the rigors of extremely 

low altitude flight with no major deleterious effects. 

A bonus gained by the unscheduled experiment was 

a significant refinement of the standard model of the 

atmosphere, which it developed, was wrong for the 50 

to 70 mile altitudes Gambit had penetrated.*

The ninth Gambit flight was little distinguished 

from the eighth except that it spent no time at 50-mile 

altitudes—planned or otherwise. It experienced the 

same problems of attitude control, however, and the 

effects were considerably worse. The best resolution 

obtained was on the order of fifty feet, making 

photography of little worth. Inadvertent exhaustion 

of orbital control gas owing to the attitude control 

problem was so acute that the BUSS had to be used 

* Explaining where the correct data had originated was more of a problem than 

collecting and analyzing it; scientific satellites simply did not operate at 50-mile 

altitudes, aircraft could not go so high, and balloon data had been misleading. In 

the end, the “corrected” figures on atmospheric density were “surfaced” through 

NASA, with no real explanation of source, and apparently nobody noticed.
49

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

for capsule recovery. The best product of the flight was 

information about what had not caused the attitude 

reference problem of the eighth flight and where the 

correct solution should be sought. Three weeks after 

the mission ended, the project director, Colonel W. G. 

King was able to provide a definitive explanation for 

the entire episode.38

And, unhappily, starting with Gambit number 

nine there began a series of five missions which 

were generally poor in one or several ways. The best 

resolution obtained during the entire period from early 

July to the end of October 1964 was seven feet. Only 

345 targets were photographed during a total period 

when five separate launches produced but five days 

on orbit. The tenth flight was to be, according to the 

schedule agreed upon between Greer and McMillan, 

the last of the Gambit development flights. The 

generally good records of the sixth, seventh and eighth 

Gambit missions had roused sanguine expectations of 

returns thereafter, yet the three men most responsible 

for Gambit, McMillan, Greer and King, were too canny 

about research and development to count overmuch 

on a run of good luck.

The hardware for the tenth Gambit flight had been 

modified in response to earlier problems. In particular, 

a new backup electromechanical device had been 

installed to operate the primary camera door in case 

the pneumatic system failed. Gambit number ten was 

also the first to use the new Atlas Standard Launch 

Vehicle (SLV-3). But early in the flight, an electrical 

failure, on 14 August, followed by a blown fuse, 

induced failure of the stellar index camera, making 

exact location of primary photographs difficult. From 

the 19th revolution the command programmer could 

not be loaded, the result of either a parts failure or 

poor contact in a coaxial connector for the harness 

between decoder and programmer. After recovery 

and photoanalysis, poor resolution suggested a 

misalignment of the photo slit. It was only later that 

engineers discovered that the camera was out of 

focus because of a malfunctioning temperature sensor 

which forwarded incorrect temperature compensation 

data to focusing devices. (The problem was not 

identified until it recurred on the eleventh flight.)

That eleventh flight, launched on 23 September, 

was marred by a host of problems. The focus 

error, incorrectly diagnosed from the previous flight 

recurred. In addition, two separate instances of valve 

contamination were identified: one valve was inhibited 

from opening, and the other remained open, allowing 

a slow leak. A new problem occurred with the stellar 

index camera. Camera access doors would open 

only partly because of weak springs (improper heat 

treating) and incorrect door clearances. The saving 

grace of the eleventh flight was that pointing accuracy 

of the camera proved to be superior to all previous 

experience with Gambit.39

While the ninth, tenth and eleventh flights returned 

only poor and small amounts of photography, the next 

two missions returned none at all. The twelfth flight, an 

8 October 1964 launch, experienced an Agena failure 

and was the only Gambit flight in the original series 

that failed even to orbit.

Two weeks later, the thirteenth Gambit had been 

hurried to readiness. The intelligence community had 

gone almost four months without adequate coverage 

of important targets and expressed understandable 

uneasiness. Program managers were reasonably 

confident that there was sufficient information 

about hardware shortcomings to support adequate 

corrective measures, however. On 23 October the 

thirteenth bird was launched and successfully injected 

into orbit. The four-day flight went well, all subsystems 

working perfectly as far as the ground crews could 

ascertain. On the 67th revolution, the command to 

retrofire was sent to the recovery vehicle. The reentry 

vehicle separated from the orbital control vehicle but 

thereafter—nothing. The backup systems available 

on the OCV could not be used. Natural orbital decay 

finally brought the capsule down on its 93rd revolution, 

but reentry point could not be accurately calculated 

and it was lost.40

Several consequences arose directly in that 

sequence of failures. Dr. McMillan reiterated, in their 

aftermath, that the principal program objective was to 

achieve one successful mission every 40 days. In line 

with this objective, the Secretary of Defense approved 

the procurement of an additional four Gambits during 

fiscal year 1966 (raising the total on order to 16) and 

an additional three for the next year, raising that total 

to fifteen. In addition, McMillan ordered the curtailment 

of all supplementary development of Gambit in an 

effort to improve the chances of success for the next 

few flights.41

A problem which was to recur the following 

year was the low quality of workmanship on the 

orbital control vehicle. The project office concluded 

that “... poor discipline in factory and field... by the 

SV contractor...” caused black-box failures at an 

unacceptably high rate. General Electric responded 

to such prodding by agreeing to a series of remedial 

actions: a reduction in overtime worked, slippage of 

delivery schedule to allow system modifications to 

be completed at the factory rather than in the field, 

and a general tightening up of personnel control and 

training.
50

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

The terms on which agreement was reached 

indicate that GE was very concerned about the 

incentive scoring system. The contractor felt, for 

instance, that the introduction of extra payloads 

decreased his control over the chances for success—

and a high incentive score. After a string of almost 

perfect scores, the ninth and tenth flights cost GE 

penalties. Oddly enough, despite several findings 

of faulty workmanship, the eleventh flight brought 

nearly the maximum fee to the contractor. There were 

clear indications that the contract incentive structure 

required overhaul.

General Electric made serious efforts to improve 

production, control and testing. Flight results 

suggested, for instance, that thermal vacuum testing 

had been inadequate; both its intensity and its duration 

were enlarged. Vibration testing was also changed. 

Instead of “before and after” tests, “operation during 

vibration testing” was required. Faults that earlier had 

gone undetected were thereby identified.42

During the early months of 1965 the horizon 

sensor problem was finally solved. The cause of loss 

of attitude reference had already been identified as 

the inability of the sensor to distinguish between earth 

and space during winter months over the South Pole. 

The first response to this difficulty was to attempt the 

development of a more sensitive device, but initial 

estimates of the cost and time required proved low 

and the real probable cost unduly high. Spurred on by 

this, by study on the terrestrial mechanics of Gambit 

flights, and by the approach of warmer weather at 

the south pole, program managers found a cheap 

solution. No targets of any value existed over the 

south polar regions, so the easiest answer was to let 

the vehicle coast over the area un-stabilized. Once 

it returned to warmer latitudes, the horizon sensor 

could be reactivated and attitude control regained. 

The solution saved more than the money required to 

develop a better sensor; it also permitted a significant 

saving of orbital control gas.43

The fourteenth flight of Gambit began a period of 

successful operation which was to continue through 

the summer of 1965. During the period, there was 

a significant increase in the amount of photography 

produced and the number of targets photographed, 

as well as a steady improvement in resolution. The 

fourteenth flight was the least successful of the lot, 

being aborted after only one day on orbit, and clouds 

interfered with photography during much of that day, 

but the recovered film registered a best resolution of 

2.1 feet. The BUSS control system was altered: Gambit 

number 14 incorporated several new features. BUSS 

commands were changed from single to double tone, 

and an address command was inserted in the BUSS 

programs. The first change resulted from the fact that 

fishing vessels frequently used the BUSS frequency 

for communications and occasionally transmitted 

the critical tones, triggering spurious commands of 

the BUSS. The second change was introduced in 

anticipation of having more than one vehicle on orbit 

simultaneously.

Gambit number 14, launched on 4 December 

1964, operated successfully through the first eight 

revolutions. During the ninth, however, battery 

overheating was followed by a loss of stability. The 

vehicle was recovered via BUSS during the 18th 

revolution, providing a successful test of the new 

command coding.44

A month and a half later, the fifteenth Gambit 

was launched. It was the first vehicle to incorporate 

the subsystems generated by GE’s changed quality 

control process. Launched on 23 January 1965, 

Gambit 15 went through separation and injection and 

the first few revolutions without untoward incident. 

But thereafter, three main heaters malfunctioned and 

temperatures in critical sections of the space vehicle 

degraded throughout the flight. The result was that 

although photographs taken early in the flight had 

resolution of as good as two feet, they gradually 

diminished to ten feet by the fourth day. The vehicle 

was recovered during the fourth day, completing its 

planned mission successfully.

The previous three flights had each been 

scheduled for five days of operations and none had 

lasted longer than one day on orbit. By the time the 

fifteenth flight was launched, the seriousness of the 

problem was such that the longevity aim was actually 

reduced to four days.45

Despite heater difficulties and a serious failure 

of the stereo mirror, Gambit 15 could be considered 

successful. The photographic take, of variable 

resolution, covered 688 targets—more than any 

previous flight and more than the five preceding flights 

together.

The sixteenth flight began on 12 March under the 

same operational plan as the fifteenth. Again, a high 

volume of intelligence material was produced, but as 

there was no heater problem the photographs were 

of uniformly high resolution. The major drawback was 

that on revolution 16 the stereo mirror stuck again, 

allowing only mono photography.

The stereo mirror problem was finally pinned 

down by Eastman Kodak engineers as a result of data 

retrieved from Gambit 16. The fault was improper relay 

sequencing to the stereo servo which could cause 

arcing, the consequent welding of relay contacts, and 
51

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

freezing of the mirror in whatever happened to be 

its position when the weld occurred. Correction was 

relatively simple once the cause had been identified: 

the command sequence was changed. Although other 

relatively minor problems of command transmission 

and decoding affected some of the photography, the 

flight returned a high volume of useable intelligence 

and was accounted successful.

The seventeenth flight of Gambit was something 

of a watershed for the program. It incorporated the 

products of all the hardware and procedural changes 

of the past year, a set that extended from improved 

testing and production control techniques to the 

reduction of flown on the vehicle. Two successive four 

day mission successes had increased confidence that 

the five-day mission objective was now achievable, 

and correction of the sticking stereo mirror problem 

eliminated the last known major technical defect of the 

system.

The mission began on 28 April. Except for one 

malfunction, it was superb. Photographic coverage 

increased to 992 targets, best resolution reached two 

feet (equaling the earlier “best”), and operation of the 

stereo mirror was uneventful, allowing 180 stereo 

pairs to be produced in addition to a high volume of 

mono photography. The single malfunction was in the 

primary camera door actuator, apparently a result of 

binding between the door and the opening or some 

nearby harnessing. The backup system overcame the 

difficulty, however, and the outcome of the mission 

was not affected.46

The 17th Gambit was distinctive in another way, 

apart from its superlative flight performance and 

record intelligence return. It incorporated extensive 

new failure mode detection and diagnostic devices and 

associated telemetry. In some respects it was odd that 

such comprehensive instrumentation first appeared 

on the 17th Gambit vehicle. The greater need would 

appear to have passed, particularly if account were 

taken of the exceptionally good performance of the 17th 

vehicle and its two immediate predecessors. But as 

had been the case with Corona, the only earlier satellite 

reconnaissance system to provide useful intelligence 

returns, Gambit had no sooner demonstrated that 

it could satisfy (and in some respects, exceed) the 

original program requirements than proposals for 

modifying it to produce still better intelligence began 

to surface. The feasibility of six- to eight-day missions 

was being seriously evaluated—and Gambit-3 

was midway between first contract and first flight.* 

Those specific developments and several subsidiary 

aspects of Gambit evolution lent both respectability 

and urgency to the effort to obtain more definitive 

information on potential reliability enhancement, and 

that in the end was the object of the instrumentation 

effort. But it was not merely capability enlargement 

that encouraged attention to flight instrumentation; 

project officers were painfully aware of the possibility 

that the Gambit system could experience another 

plague of minor and major malfunctions that would 

inhibit its immediate usefulness, and experience of the 

recent past had clearly demonstrated that incorrectly 

diagnosed malfunctions tended to recur. (The 

attitude stabilization problem and the camera door 

difficulties were two painful reminders of the need for 

adequate instrumentation and diagnostic capability.) 

As it happened, the incorporation of that additional 

instrumentation was providential; Gambit was indeed 

about to experience another set of flight difficulties 

not unlike those of flights nine through thirteen and 

for reasons very much like those behind the earlier 

difficulties.47

The 18th Gambit was launched on 27 May 

1965 with the assignment of performing a five-day 

operational mission. Apart from two non-significant 

functional problems (one being a recurrence of the 

earlier door-actuator failure), it experienced no onorbit difficulties. The quantity of returned film was 

again larger than on any earlier flight, and resolution 

again reached a ‘’best recorded” level of two feet. Two 

successive operations so superlative made it appear 

that Gambit had indeed matured, that it was a fully 

reliable operational vehicle subject only to the random 

minor disabilities inevitable in so complex a system.

As though reasserting its rights to perversity, 

Gambit number 19 was the complete antithesis of 

its immediate predecessors. Launched on 25 June 

1965, it experienced a massive short circuit during 

ascent. The electrical failure completely disabled the 

stabilization system and the flight programmer. Either 

event was catastrophic. Notwithstanding the strenuous 

efforts of flight controllers to regain command, the 

vehicle remained unstable and uncontrollable during 

the 18 revolutions it logged. It was recovered via the 

Back-Up Stabilization System on the 18th revolution. 

Usable output from the flight was nil.

* As earlier explained, in order to distinguish between the two programs the 

designator “Gambit-3” will hereafter be used in this manuscript to identify the 

two-capsule, long-lens system that, after June 1967, was formally known 

only as Gambit. A similar distinction has been made elsewhere: the terms 

Corona-Mural (or Corona-M) and Corona-J have been used here even though 

contemporary documents did not distinguish among the several variants of 

that system. It is perhaps worth noting that even after the original system 

disappeared, discussions among satellite program participants generally 

included references to “G-cube” rather than “Gambit,” or “G.”
52

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

The initial diagnosis of the failure was that it 

had been induced by the extremely high vibration 

associated with the boost phase of the mission. The 

short circuit, which occurred on the ground side of the 

direct current power supply, opened the power supply 

input filter, disabling the stabilization subsystem.48

More disturbing, the ultimate cause of the failure had 

to be either contamination or a faulty part—which 

immediately suggested that quality control and testing 

procedures at General Electric had been grossly 

inadequate.

On that unhappy note, Major General Robert E. 

Greer left the program, and the Air Force, on 30 June 

1965. He, more than any other individual in or out of 

government, had been responsible for instigating the 

Gambit program and for carrying it to its mid-1965 

level of proficiency. With Colonel W. G. King, he had 

been personally responsible for all of the major, and 

quite difficult, technical and management decisions 

that marked the program’s first five years. (Gambit 

had been invented, in a sense, in the summer of 

1960, although it had not taken form as a system 

program until December of that year.) By the only 

valid standard of comparison then available, the 

early Corona program, Gambit represented the most 

comprehensive and striking success yet achieved by 

the American reconnaissance satellite program. It 

had recorded its successes earlier and with greater 

regularity than the early Corona, and the returned 

photography was in its own special way of equivalent 

or greater value. And by the summer of 1965, 

there was abundant evidence that Gambit could be 

improved at least as markedly as Corona had earlier 

been improved, with a consequent equivalent benefit 

to the overall satellite reconnaissance program. On 

balance, the achievement was quite remarkable.

Brigadier General John L. Martin, Jr., who had 

earlier headed the NRO staff in Washington but who 

had most recently been Greer’s deputy, succeeded to 

Greer’s post in Los Angeles. Virtually from the day of 

his accession, he was confronted with the question of 

whether to proceed with the next scheduled Gambit 

launch on 9 July or to delay the mission in order to 

revalidate the probability of mission success. Given 

that the failure of Gambit number 19 could well have 

been caused by a random breakdown of the quality 

control, inspection, or testing procedures, Martin 

decided to proceed in accordance with existing plans. 

In any case, he was immediately confronted by a 

massive problem in contracting and procurement.

Nearly two months earlier, program officers had 

advised Lockheed Missiles and Space Company of 

their increasing distaste for the high prices reflected 

in Lockheed bids on new Agena vehicles. Costs 

were much higher than for earlier deliveries of 

approximately the same equipment. Procurement 

officers concluded that Lockheed was negotiating to 

protect a position rather than “in good faith.” They were 

also concerned that Lockheed might be maintaining a 

large reserve pool of engineers who did not work on 

Gambit but were funded by that contract. Even more 

than was usually the case for a sole-source supplier 

to the government, Lockheed was in a very favorable 

situation for negotiating follow-on procurement. Agena 

production had continued at a regular rate for years 

and bid fair to continue for several more. NRO people 

had long since explored and discarded as unfeasible 

the possibility of establishing an alternative production 

source. It promised to be an extremely costly course, 

and one involving considerable technical risk. Nor, 

in general, could Lockheed be faulted for inferior 

Agena performance. Although some quality control 

problems had occasionally appeared, the Agena was 

widely regarded, at the time, as a reliable vehicle—

something of a contrast to the more troublesome GE 

orbital vehicle, which was the object of considerably 

more immediate concern on that score.49

The twentieth flight of Gambit slipped three 

days, to 12 July. The launch was a prompt and total 

catastrophe. The Atlas flight programmer shut down 

the sustainer engine prematurely and the Agena and 

its payload followed a ballistic trajectory to impact in 

the Pacific some 680 miles south of Vandenberg.

Although the Gambit-20 mission had been a 

complete failure, the fault was almost unique. Atlas 

boosters rarely malfunctioned so thoroughly. The 

OCV and the Agena, more characteristic sources of 

program difficulty, had not been given a chance to 

demonstrate their capability. Nevertheless, the entire 

Gambit system was subjected to new and more 

stringent test and inspection procedures starting with 

mission twenty-one. In particular, OCV components 

were subjected to x-ray inspection, and second, the 

intensity of vibration testing was increased by 30 

percent. Both of these measures led to the discovery 

of faulty OCV components, and in six other instances 

they were attributable to insufficient quality control and 

inspection during manufacture and assembly by GE. 

Power supply subassemblies, which had caused the 

June failure, were re-examined in detail, with the result 

that several instances of the incorrect application of 

thermal grease were detected.

The correction of such defects and the redefinition 

of mission objectives caused a schedule slippage of 

one week. On 3 August 1965, the 21st Gambit was 

launched. It achieved orbit without difficulty but the 

AC/DC power converter in the OCV promptly failed, 

resulting in an immediate and permanent loss of 
53

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

stability. No acceptable photographs were recovered. 

Gambit number 21 thus became the third in succession 

to experience catastrophic failure.50

Understandably, the intelligence community was 

becoming increasingly concerned about the gap in 

detailed coverage of the Soviet missile program that 

three successive Gambit mission failures had caused. 

The last good high-resolution photography of what 

was known to be an intensive Soviet ICBM buildup had 

been recovered in May; owing to the rapid depletion 

of Gambit hardware, launch schedules could not be 

accelerated and not until at least late August would it 

be feasible to attempt another mission. (In the event, 

a September launch date proved to be the earliest 

that was achievable.) The minimum program goal of 

one successful Gambit flight each 40 days had gone 

by default. Nor was Gambit the sole—or even the 

paramount—concern of the NRO during the summer 

of 1965. The Washington staff had been involved in 

institutional bickering between the Pentagon and the 

CIA which in September 1965 led to the departure 

of Brockway McMillan, for more than two years the 

Director of the NRO. Although the possibility that the 

NRO might be entirely abandoned as an instrument of 

national reconnaissance policy was dispelled by the 

appointment of a successor to McMillan (Dr. Alexander 

Flax) and by the issuance of a new NRO charter, the 

whole of the reconnaissance program was in some 

disorder. Corona operations had been reasonably 

successful during that summer, only one major mission 

failure having occurred in three flights, but Corona 

did not return the detail that intelligence analysts had 

begun to expect and interpretation of Soviet force 

status had become heavily dependent on information 

elicited from Gambit photography. Some part of the 

institutional infighting of 1965 was occasioned by 

disagreement over the management of the Corona 

program and some of the Corona project people on 

the West Coast were convinced that a serious failure 

of Corona operations could result if the authority for 

technical and operational control of that bifurcated 

activity was not promptly sorted out. Although in 

retrospect that appeared to be no more than a minor 

possibility, it contributed to uneasiness on both coasts. 

And finally, an extended controversy about the nature 

and timing of a replacement system for Corona, and 

perhaps also for Gambit, was complicating plans for 

the continuation and improvement of both systems.

Flax had to turn his attention to several of these 

issues almost simultaneously; his immediate reaction 

to the Gambit problem was to suggest study of the 

possibility that “twenty to thirty” Gambit launches might 

be conducted each year. (At that time, increasing the 

schedule from 13 to 15 annual launches was occupying 

the project office; a 20-launch-per-year program would 

require about an 80 percent expansion of production 

capacity—a considerable undertaking.) He was also 

very attentive to measures initiated by General Martin 

that were intended to improve markedly the general 

quality and reliability of delivered Gambit subsystems, 

particularly the Agena and the orbital control vehicle 

(which had, on balance, provided most of the program 

difficulties, the Atlas and the camera system being 

infrequent offenders.)

General Martin’s response to his problem of 

the moment—Gambit was to obtain approval of his 

proposal that the next scheduled Gambit launch be 

delayed by a month to permit more comprehensive 

testing and the incorporation of whatever correctives 

might be needed to insure mission success. He, too, 

was keenly aware of widespread uneasiness about 

Gambit’s potential. The decision to delay launch was 

not lightly taken; it guaranteed, at the least, that the 

next delivery of Gambit photography would occur at 

least a month later than had earlier been expected.51

The more extensive thermal vacuum and vibration 

tests being conducted by GE were uncovering large 

numbers of faulty parts and assemblies, frequent 

contamination, and other defects of workmanship. 

But to Martin’s relief, nothing seemed to be inherently 

wrong with the design of the OCV or its interfaces 

with the Agena and the camera. Consistent with 

these findings, thermal vacuum testing was extended 

to 48 hours and expanded to include the entire 

OCV. Similar tests were also applied to 24 critical 

components. Vibration testing was also expanded to 

include complete systems with equipment operating 

during the period of vibration. Inspection teams 

began tear-down of 25 mission critical components 

on each vehicle, searching for contamination and 

bad workmanship—and finding more than enough to 

justify the time they spent. The vibration tests were 

enhanced by improved monitoring devices so that part 

failures or malfunctions could be more easily identified. 

Components which had earlier been extensively 

modified were subjected to complete requalification. 

(Many components little resembled their original, 

qualified format.) All inspection procedures were 

sharpened. Finally, because some modules reworked 

following identification of a failure became even more 

prone to failure, GE began an effort to decrease 

frequency of reworking.

While some of these changes were routine enough 

and cheap enough to be continued thereafter, others 

were extraordinary measures adopted temporarily in 

response to what was widely regarded as a transitory 

crisis. The Air Force lacked the resources to support 

such a complex process of test and checkout through 

the life of an operational program. Recognizing that 
54

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

circumstance, General Martin began to plan for the 

adoption of a novel contract incentive scheme he had 

originated earlier, while serving as Greer’s deputy. 

It was pointed more at GE than Lockheed, at first, 

because the failure of the 21st Gambit had resulted 

from the third catastrophic OCV failure in five flights. 

Martin’s point of attack was the incentive fee contract 

with GE. His study of the existent contract incentive 

provisions led him to conclude that they were most 

appropriate for the development stages of the program 

and decidedly inadequate for the operational phase 

(which had presumably begun with the tenth flight). 

The incentive structure earlier installed emphasized 

the importance of cost over operational performance. 

It had been, at least in part, prompted by lost control 

problems characteristic of the early Gambit program. 

But it also reflected the experiences of Greer and 

King with previous satellite reconnaissance programs 

in the older Samos series. With few exceptions, they 

had incurred major cost growth. King’s reputation for 

bringing high-cost, high risk programs under control 

was highly regarded, and in assuming control of 

Gambit, he had done precisely that.

But Gambit was no longer a development-focused 

activity, despite the continuation of engineering 

improvement activities. To the extent that the nature 

of satellite reconnaissance vehicles would permit, 

Gambit was a production item—withal one that little 

resembled the usual military article.

A second point seems to have been the 

expectation that as the Gambit program continued, 

the contractors, as a matter of course, would strive to 

earn the bulk of the performance incentive fee. The 

original contract incentive program perfectly reflected 

such considerations and beliefs.

The incentive structure had three major parts: 

schedule incentives, cost incentives and performance 

incentives. The schedule consideration was in fact 

a disincentive for late delivery of the vehicle. The 

maximum penalty for late delivery was set as a per 

day amount, with a ceiling. On the other hand, a cost 

overrun carried fee penalties. Since the return to 

capital is computed by dividing fee by gross cost, that 

arrangement meant that the rate of return on gross 

costs was a variable function of vehicle cost, dropping 

sharply for overruns and rising sharply for underruns.

The performance incentive, unlike the cost 

incentive, was linear, being unrelated to the gross 

outlay for a given vehicle. A scoring system was devised 

on a scale from zero to 100. The critical region initially 

fell between 65 and 95, but these numbers increased 

as the system became more fully operational. A score 

of 80 was the breakeven point where no incentive 

fees were either gained or lost. For scores above or 

below 80, the fee changed in proportion to the change 

in the score. The maximum gain or loss in fee that was 

possible under such a system was on the order of half 

the amount that could be gained or lost via the cost 

incentive. To any rational contractor, that arrangement 

was an imperative to worry about cost far more than 

about performance.

One result of the bias was that GE was motivated 

to delete as many control and test procedures as 

possible in order to save money in the production of 

the vehicle. If, for instance, the deletion of a given 

test procedure had the same effect on reducing cost 

as on decreasing the probability of a failure, it would 

rationally be deleted, since half of the savings would 

be returned as an incentive fee on cost—over and 

above any penalty for inferior performance. Because 

that accommodation also reduced the capital outlay 

of the contractor, the resulting fee increase would be 

proportionately larger than the fee differences arising 

from flight performance bonuses or penalties.

Taken to its logical extreme, the formula could 

result in the delivery of a minimum-cost vehicle which 

failed catastrophically, but nevertheless earned a 

premium over and above the standard fee. The rate 

of return on invested capital in that case would be 

greater than about twice the normally acceptable 

return on fairly risky investments by private firms.

General Martin’s arrangement left the schedule 

incentive essentially unchanged, but radically altered 

the relationship between cost and performance 

incentives. The new system paid no bonus for a cost 

underrun, a reflection of the belief that the cost of a 

vehicle built at that relatively late stage in the program 

could be estimated rather precisely. The maximum 

penalty that could be incurred for cost overruns was 

about what it had been. The major change was in the 

performance incentive. It no longer made sense to 

sacrifice performance for cost savings because costs 

below negotiated price brought no incentive fee, while 

performance shortfalls would reduce the fee at a much 

more rapid rate than before. Furthermore, even with an 

overrun of more than 25 percent, perfect performance 

meant a fee bonus. Most military procurements of the 

period were suffering from overruns at least as large 

as 25 percent, so no rational contractor would quarrel 

with the conjunction of a large price increase coupled 

with an incentive fee.

In retrospect, General Martin’s incentive system 

represented probably the most significant nontechnical accomplishment of the Gambit program. It 

recognized the fact that contractor performance could, 
55

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

in some instances, be “fine tuned” to the objectives 

of the contracting agency. In this case, shifting the 

focus of the incentive system from development to 

operations had precisely its intended effect—to judge 

Gambit missions to which it applied (number 24 and 

after).

Hindsight illuminates what General Martin saw: 

the contract performance of GE during 1965 steadily 

deteriorated, while fees did not. It seems clear that GE 

was reacting to an inappropriate incentive structure. 

Perhaps the change could have been made earlier. 

But the signs that seemed to stand out clearly after the 

fact—workmanship deterioration, faulty inspection, 

inadequate testing, and catastrophic failures resulting 

from such causes rather than from basic engineering 

design problems—were not readily detectable in the 

normal events of the early Gambit program. The 

success of early Gambit flights did nothing to make 

the identification of these problems any easier; when 

all goes reasonably well, prophets of doom have small 

voices.52

The introduction of expanded checkout procedures 

affected the program immediately, influencing the 

flights of Gambit 22 and 23. But those two vehicles 

were not subject to the provisions of the new incentive 

system. Nevertheless, changes in vehicle testing and 

quality control were rewarded by a successful flight 

for Gambit 22. That satellite was launched on 30 

September 1965 after a lacuna of almost two months. 

The flight plan specified five days on orbit, but the 

excessive use of stabilization gas by the fourth day 

lessened vehicle stability so much that the capsule 

was called down on the 67th revolution. Some heating 

problems associated with the direct current power 

supply caused flight planners to reduce the battery 

charge below normal, but overall, the flight was a 

striking success. Some were photographed and for 

the first time the two- to three-foot resolution required 

by the specifications for the vehicle. This photography 

was the first intelligence material produced by Gambit 

since the end of May 1965.53

The Gambit vehicle for flight number 23 differed 

in some important respects from earlier versions. 

Most important were the changes that made it the 

first six-day vehicle. They included the installation of 

a sixth battery and a 12 percent increase in Freon—

control gas—loading. The six-day capability had 

basically been made possible by the research on 

and development of thin-base film, permitting a 20 

percent greater quantity of film (by area) to be carried 

without any increase in the size of loading or takeup cassettes. Providing stabilization control for six 

rather than five days required several minor changes 

(computer programming for instance) but increasing 

control gas capacity was the most substantial.

Owing to several circumstances (the new test 

and inspection regimen, the modifications needed to 

support a six-day mission, and delays in GE delivery 

schedules caused by correction of defects uncovered 

during checkout), the OCV for Gambit mission 23 

reached Vandenberg seven weeks later than planned, 

arriving on 14 October. Nonetheless, it was launched 

on schedule, on 8 November. The launch was called “a 

good job” and injection went as well. But the excessive 

use of stabilization gas which had been experienced 

on the previous flight recurred; all gas was exhausted 

by the tenth revolution. The cause was leakage from 

the high-pressure regulator. The failure mode was 

peculiar in that it also caused thrust control valving 

to lose effectiveness, so that stabilization control 

vanished earlier than would have been the case had 

the leak occurred elsewhere. Photographs were taken 

during the 18 revolutions of the flight, of which ten 

were stabilized. Resolution was so poor that it could 

not be measured.

The gas pressure failure on Gambit 23 led to 

a detailed design change which became effective 

immediately before Gambit-3 replaced the original 

version, but it also lent further impetus to the continuing 

shift from pneumatic to electro-mechanical devices 

for Gambit-1. Owing to the excellent instrumentation 

carried on the 23rd vehicle, considerable data 

applicable to engineering improvements for application 

to later Gambits were obtained.54

Gambit number 23 was a turning point of another—

and welcome—sort; it was the last of the lot of generally 

imperfect vehicles flown in 1965. The next ten flights 

were to be almost unqualified successes. The 

combination of quality control enhancement and the 

new contract incentive system became operative for 

the 24th and later Gambits. Each of the next ten flights 

experienced malfunctions of one sort or another, but 

none could be called a failure in consequence of those 

malfunctions. Those missions extended from January 

to October 1966, Gambits being launched about once 

a month during that period. They routinely returned 

photographic intelligence of high quality, covering 

more than a thousand targets on each flight. One flight 

returned photographs with a “Best Resolution” ranged 

from 2-5 feet for the entire series of missions.

Major system anomalies in that set of missions 

included two malfunctions of the stereo mirror, two 

stellar index camera breakdowns, and four instances 

of orbital control difficulties. None was grave enough to 

imperil mission success, although each had the effect 

of degrading total mission success in some degree. 

The OCV experienced no malfunctions of any sort 

during the first five of the ten flights, but four of the last 

five were so marred. The new testing procedures were 

extremely effective, locating and identifying several 
56

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

potentially catastrophic failure modes well in advance 

of launch. If only half of the major problems so identified 

by the new procedure had gone undetected by launch 

time, the majority of the missions would have failed or 

returned much degraded photography.

Beyond these matters, Gambit registered several 

notable achievements during the period. Although 

the first two missions had six-day capability, they 

were limited to five days because of minor system 

malfunctions. The third flight with six-day capability, 

however, flew for something more than six days, 

registering 99 revolutions and the remainder of the 

planned six-day flights performed as scheduled.

On the third anniversary of the flight program, 12 

July 1966, the first vehicle with eight-day capability 

was launched. It was recovered on the 20th, having 

precisely satisfied the extended mission requirement. 

A comparison of the two flights, three years apart, had 

some very interesting elements. The first Gambit had 

been quite successful, in its own way, even though 

limited to what was predominately a research and 

development function. But in the interim, Gambit had 

extended its longevity (one to eight days on orbit), had 

increased the number of targets (from three to 1636), 

and had improved resolution (from 3.5 feet to 2.5 feet). 

And except for longevity, the initial eight-day Gambit 

was not particularly distinguished; it had the poorest 

resolution of the ten-mission set in 1966 and returned 

20 percent fewer target photography than the best of 

the lot.

The first eight-day mission was the 30th Gambit. 

The 31st had originally been scheduled for launch 

eighteen days later, on 30 July 1966, but the first wildly 

successful Gambit-3 flight intervened. Gambit-3 had 

more than twice the film capacity of its predecessor, 

two recovery capsules, and a lens with a focal length 

of 160 rather than 77 inches. Gambit-3 was so 

extraordinarily successful in its initial operation that 

the need for launching the 30th in the original Gambit 

series on its original schedule completely vanished. 

Indeed, the returns from the first Gambit-3 mission 

so overloaded the film processing and interpretation 

capabilities of the National Reconnaissance Program 

that had the 31st Gambit operated with its usual 

effectiveness there would have been no timely way to 

exploit the intelligence return. Whatever else Gambit 

might have achieved in its first three years, it had 

completely suffocated—in film—early complaints 

from the intelligence community that not enough data 

were being returned. Now the problem was an excess 

of photography, a surfeit that would continue for a 

considerable period.

The string of successes that had begun with 

Gambit-1 number 24 was broken at ten. The 

cause was almost as infuriating as the flight was 

disappointing. The manufacturer of the explosive 

charges that removed the camera doors had changed 

pyrotechnic specifications without properly advising 

those responsible for altering the remainder of the 

camera door actuation sequence. In consequence, the 

door itself was not altered to accommodate the new 

changes and could not be removed once the vehicle 

was on orbit. Only stellar index photographs could be 

made. A new manufacturer was found, the door was 

altered appropriately, and provisions were made for 

door removal even if only one of the charges operated 

correctly. No further problems of that sort arose.55

Gambit number 34 was the last instance of 

catastrophic failure in the original Gambit-1 flight 

program, although less serious malfunctions continued 

to occur. Gambit number 35 suffered from an excessive 

roll time at low rate, causing degradation both in the 

number of targets that could be photographed and in 

the resolution (2.5 feet). A programming error caused 

selection of the wrong shutter slit during revolutions 7 to 

25 of the 36th Gambit mission, with approximately the 

same effect. The last two flights, Gambits number 37 

and 38, registered no problems of any consequence, 

an outcome that had marked only one other operation 

in the entire program (number 31). Those flights were 

also distinguished for photographing the greatest 

number of targets on mission 38) and for the best 

resolution obtained in the original Gambit-1 program.56

The last three flights extended from February to 

June 1967. By the time the last capsule was recovered 

on 12 June 1967, most of the remaining resources 

of the Gambit program had been dispersed. The 

distributed residual included four orbital vehicles and 

four Atlas launch vehicles, plus several cameras and 

Agenas.57

The original Gambit-1 program had been 

completely phased out by the end of June 1967, not 

quite three years after the first of its 38 missions. The 

name survived: “Gambit-cubed” dropped its suffix 

and thereafter was known as “Gambit.” The newer 

system had by that time completed eight operations, 

mostly successful, and was returning film images with 

resolutions that were the best ever obtained from the 

77-inch cameras used in the older reconnaissance 

satellite. Had that not been the case, had Gambit-3 

been troubled by major problems of operation or 

resolution, four additional missions using the older 

system could have been mounted. They proved 

unnecessary. In a special sense, the older Gambit was 

the victim of its own success. The best of the original 

system had been carried over to the new, and progress 

in technology combined with simple economics to 

make continuation of the older system an exercise in 

inefficiency. Gambit-3 cost somewhat more, but one 
57

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

Gambit-3 mission returned more than twice as much 

film, at better resolutions, and of more targets than the 

original could ever manage.

Even after Gambit-1 became one of the several 

casualties of technological obsolescence in the 

American satellite reconnaissance program, the 

system added another “first” to its considerable record 

of accomplishment. It became the first of the satellite 

reconnaissance systems—the first of all clandestine 

reconnaissance systems—to leave behind both a 

careful historical record* and a full set of system

“hardware” deliberately stored against the day when it 

could be openly displayed.

* Somewhat sketchy historical accounts of the early Samos program appeared 

in the Air Force histories prepared at Wright Air Development Center (later the 

Aeronautical Systems Division of the Air Force Systems Command) in the mid1950’s but even then access to program details was difficult to acquire. Still 

sketchier records appeared in early chronological summaries of activity at the 

Ballistic Missiles Division (later the Space and Missiles Systems Organization 

of the Air Force Systems Command) from about 1956 until early 1960. The 

first serious attempt to write a history of any such program was sponsored by 

Major General (then Brigadier General) Robert E. Greer in 1962. He arranged 

to have Robert Perry, at that time the Air Force historian for the Air Force 

Space Systems Division, assigned to his organization, the Special Projects 

Office, on an informal, part-time basis. Greer’s expressed purpose was to 

insure that accounts of the increasingly complex Air Force reconnaissance 

satellite program were prepared before the vital records disappeared. His 

support was continued and enlarged by his successors (Generals J. L. Martin, 

W. G. King, Lew Allen, and D. D. Bradburn). The activity to be covered by the 

history also expanded substantially, largely at the urging of Colonel Paul E. 

Worthman, an early Corona program manager and subsequently the longterm chief of plans for successive heads of the National Reconnaissance 

Office staff in the Pentagon. Perry continued to work toward a comprehensive 

satellite reconnaissance program history after leaving his Air Force position to 

join the research staff of the Rand Corporation in 1964, and became a contract 

historian after transferring from Rand to Technology Service Corporation in 

1972. He was briefly assisted by W. D. Putnam, another former Air Force 

historian employed by Rand, in 1969-70. Bureaucratic considerations (the 

“blue suit” Air Force would not agree to the expenditure of Project Rand 

contract funds or such work) interrupted the preparation of the history between 

1969 and 1973, and relatively little was done in the years 1967-69 because 

of Perry’s primary commitment to the Rand Corporation assignments. The 

work was taken up again late in 1972 under contract between the Special 

Projects Office and Technology Service Corporation, at which time Robert 

A. Butler, a consultant with that firm, became a collaborator. The product of 

that spasmodic work over a period of ten years (to the time of this note) is 

this manuscript—which includes coverage of the background of Samos, the 

several E-series Samos programs, Corona and its descendants, Gambit, the 

evolution of the National Reconnaissance Office and its early activities, and 

related issues and programs To the best knowledge of the present authors 

and present and past members of the NRO staff, there is no formal history 

of any other reconnaissance program ever conducted by the United States. 

A CIA sponsored history of Corona was nominally in preparation late in 

1972, and apparently some effort within CIA has been devoted to preserving 

records of the Idealist (U-2) and Oxcart (A-12) aircraft programs, but that 

represents the sum of such history. The ancestor of all such programs, the 

balloon-carried reconnaissance camera system of the mid-1950’s, appears 

to have disappeared from the records. Given the volume of documentation of 

reconnaissance program activity by 1970, that is unlikely to happen again— 

but detailed source material of the kind available in the early years of Gambit 

and Corona had become a casualty of the records destruction process by 

1970, so there is no assurance that all of the important events can ever be 

captured for historians. (RP, March 1973)

Early in August 1967, Martin suggested to Dr. Flax 

that Gambit systems left over from the program and brief 

summary records of the achievements of the Gambit 

program be encapsulated “for eventual release to the 

Air Force Museum and the Smithsonian Institute.” Flax 

promptly agreed and issued appropriate instructions 

to the Air Force Chief of Staff and the Commander, 

Strategic Air Command (in whose facilities the artifacts 

would be stored). Flax gave the enterprise the name, 

“Project Van Winkle.”58

In due time (and rather more time than originally 

planned), two large sealed canisters went to 

Vandenberg Air Force Base with instructions for longterm storage under continuing guard. Each contained 

both hardware and documents, and each carried 

a plaque explaining that the contents were neither 

explosive nor toxic but that they could be opened only 

by approval of the Secretary of the Air Force—at some 

future time. Flax also insured that “each succeeding 

commander of Strategic Air Command and the 

Commander of Vandenberg Air Force Base be briefed 

on what had been done.”59

The accompanying summary report, enclosed with 

the two sets of Gambit hardware, covered the main 

events of the Gambit-1 program. (The summary had to 

be completely rewritten early in 1968; as first presented 

to Martin by General Electric, which had a contract 

for the whole of the preservation work, it was classic 

engineering and was nearly unintelligible. Martin had 

the then unofficial program historian, Robert Perry of 

Rand, prepare an English version.)

The hardware included everything that went into 

orbit with Gambit above the interface with the Atlas 

booster. It was a fitting interment.** 

** Comparable Corona hardware was subsequently treated in similar fashion, 

under CIA auspices, but was on display in a closed area of the National 

Photographic Interpretation Center in Washington.
58

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

Endnotes 

1. SAFSP, Gambit Program Summary Report 1960-1967, prep by 

R. Perry, Sep 67, p 124 (hereafter cited as Gambit Summary).

2. Memo, MGen R. E. Greer to Col. W. G. King, 24 Jul 63, subj: 

Instructions on Second 206 Bird, SP files.

3. GE, 206 Program Report, Rough Draft, Document No. DIN 

500200-34-1, (undated, prep Jul 67), p11-6, (hereafter referred to as 

GE Report).

4. Memo, Greer to King, 24 Jul 63.

5. Gambit Summary, p 1-25.

6. For details, see Vol V this history, p 112, et seq.

7. For Mission details, see GE Report, p 11-7.

8. Msg 7028, EK to SAFSS, 10 Sep 63.

9. Msg, SAFSP-F-13-9-936, MGen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, to B. 

McMillan, DNRO; 13 Sep 63. Msg, SAFSS-1-M- 0196, McMillan to 

Greer, 17 Sep 63; msg, Greer to McMillan, 18 Sep 63.

10. Msg, 0698, B. McMillan, DNRO, to MGen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, 

24 Oct 63.

11. See Vol V, pp 120-135; see also: MFR, MGen R. E. Greer, Dir/

SP, 15 Aug 63, subj: Plans for Ultra-High Resolution Reconnaissance, in 

SP-3 files; memo, R. Gilpatric, Dep Sec Def, 5 Sep 63, subj: Discussion 

with Mr. McCone regarding NRO, in NRO Staff files; ltr, A. D. Wheelon, 

D/Dir (Sat), CIA, to Dr. B. McMillan, DNRO, 5 Nov 63, no subj, NRO 

Staff files.

12. GE Report, p 11-8.

13. Msg, B. McMillan, DNRO, to MGen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, 12 

Feb 64.

14. Rpt, National Reconnaissance Program Status, 29 Jan 64, SP-3 

files; Gambit Summary, pp 4-22 and 4-25.

15. NRP Status, 29 Jan 64, p 3.

16. See Vol IIB, Lanyard, nominally and occasionally called a 

“Gambit backup,” did not pretend to Gambit-class resolutions.

17. GE Report, pp 11-4, 11-9.

18. Ibid; NRP Status, 29 Jan 64.

19. Msg, McMillan to Greer, 12 Feb 64.

20. GE Report, p 11-4.

21. Ibid, pp 5-18 to 5-21.

22. Msgs, STC to SAFSP, 26 Feb 64;GE Report.

23. Msg STC to NPIC, 27 Feb 64; msg, STC to SAFSS, 28 Feb 64; 

msg, SAFSS to NPIC, 28 Feb 64.

24. See Quarterly Program Review, December 31, 1965 (hereafter 

cited as QPR) for details of GE Incentive Programs. The scoring 

system had changed slightly up to that time and was overhauled 

completely in December.

25. Msg, SAFSP to SAFSS, 18 Feb 64.

26. SAFSP to SAFSS, 3 Mar 64.

27. Msg, BGen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, to B. McMillan, DNRO, 4 Mar 64; 

msg, BGen J. L. Martin, Dir/NRO Staff, to Greer, 17 Mar 64. 

28. Msg, MGen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, to BGen J. L. Martin, DNRO 

Staff, 25 Mar 64.

29. Ibid; msg, NPIC to AF Processing Lab (AFSPPL), 27 Mar 64.

30. Msg, 25 Mar 64.

31. Memo, J. Q. Reber, Chm, COMOR, to DNRO, 26 Mar 64, subj: 

Request for Epheimeris Data for Next KH-7 Mission, in SS files.

32. Memo, BGen J. L. Martin, Jr, Dir/NRO Staff, to Chm COMOR, 27 

Mar 64, subj: Target Priorities, in SAFSS files.

33. Msg, STC to SAFSS, 27 Mar 64.

34. Msg, STC to SAFSS, 16 April 64.

35. Msg, NPIC to AFSPPL, 6 May 64; GE Report, pp 11-12; QPR, 

31 May 64.

36. Staff memo for SAFSS-6, (undated, but prepared 3 May 64); 

msg, SAFSS to SAFSP, 7 May 64; msg, CIA (Col. J. Ledford) to BGen 

J. L. Martin, Dir/NRO Staff, 1 May 64; msg, DNRO to CIA, 4 May 64.

37. Msg, NPIC to SAFSP, 10 Jun 64; GE Report, pp 11-13; msg, 1,4 

STC to SAFSS, 30 Apr 64.

38. Interview, Col W. G. King, Dir/Program 206, by R. Perry, 27 

Jul 64.

39. QPR, 30 Sep 64. Many of these details there specified are in 

conflict with those provided by the GE Report, cited for previous flights. 

For various reasons, the program review document seems more 

reliable.

40. GE Report, pp 11-17; The time lag between the 12th and 13th 

flights was 15 days, which represented a speed-up of only five days 

from the originally scheduled 28 October launch. Considering the 

problems created by launch schedule acceleration, however, that 

represented a considerable achievement.

41. SAFSP, Quarterly Program Review, 31 Dec 64.
59

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

42. GE Report, pp 5-6 and 5-7. Such tests began with vehicle 966, 

used for the 16th flight. A final form of test procedure was introduced 

with the vehicle for the 26th flight. This combined the operation-duringvibration idea with an accurate mission profile to simulate on-orbit 

events.

43. Interview, MGen R. E. Greer by R. Perry, 20 Nov 64.

44. GE Report, pp 11-18.

45. Ibid.

46. GE Report, pp 11-4 and 11-19; Gambit Summary, p 3, 

Attachment 1.

47. QPR, 30 June 65.

48. GE Report, pp 11-20.

49. QPR, 30 Jun 65, Procurement Section.

50. QPR, 30 Sep 65; 31 Dec 65; see also Ch V of Vol V, this mss, 

and particularly pp 211 et seq.

51. QPR, 31 Dec 65.

52. Memo, BGen J. L. Martin, Dir/SP, to DNRO, 29 Aug 67, subj: 

Summary Analysis of Program 206 (Gambit), atch 4; Interview, Martin 

by R. Perry, 8 Aug 67.

53. Gambit Summary, Attachment 1.

54. QPR, Sep 65.

55. QPR, 31 Dec 66.

56. GE Report, pp 11-4, and Gambit Summary, Attachment 1.

57. QPR of 31 Mar 67; 30 Jun 67.

58. Memo, BGen J. L. Martin, Jr, to SAF(R&D) (Dr A. Flax), 4 Aug 

67; subj: Long-Term Storage of Gambit Hardware at Vandenberg AFB 

(Project Van Winkle); memo, Flax to Cmdr, SAC, 25 Aug 67, same subj, 

all reproduced in Program Summary Report, Vol 1, 6 Mar 68.

59. Memo, BGen J. L. Martin, Jr, Dir/SP, to Dr A. Flax, DNRO, 6 

Mar 67, subj: Long-Term Storage of Gambit Hardware at Vandenberg 

AFB (Project Van Winkle), in SAFSP files; memo, Flax to Cmdr, SAC, 

25 Aug 67.
60

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

The Development and Operation 

of Gambit-3

Background and Nomenclature 

Gambit was the first operational American satellite 

system to return high resolution photography.* 

Originally designed around a lens of 77-inch focal 

length to produce photographs with ground resolutions 

of two to three feet, the Gambit was boosted to orbit by 

an Atlas-Agena combination. The camera system was 

housed in an orbital control vehicle built by General 

Electric, an innovation in photosatellite design intended 

to overcome the assumed stability shortcomings 

of the Agena. The camera system was a product of 

Eastman Kodak design; the recovery capsule was 

adapted from one first developed by General Electric 

for the Corona satellite. Operational use of the original 

Gambit system began on 12 July 1963 and continued 

until 4 June 1967. During that time 38 vehicles were 

launched. The successor surveillance satellite in the 

National Reconnaissance Program was Gambit-3.

During its development and operational life, 

Gambit was identified by several designators other 

than its code name. ‘’Cue Ball” and Program 206 

were respectively a classified non-Byeman cover 

name and the “white” program designator. Neither 

was publicly identified with satellite surveillance. 

Gambit-3 was often called “Gambit-Cubed” although 

the “-3” designator was actually a suffix differentiating 

that particular design from three others: Gambit-1, the 

original, Gambit-2 a proposed modest improvement, 

and Gambit-4, a proposed very-high-resolution 

system considered as an alternative to Gambit-3 for 

development as a second-generation surveillance 

satellite.

Gambit-3 was influenced by but was not directly 

related to the Valley system, a very-long-lens 

development project conducted by Eastman Kodak in 

the early 1960’s. The lens system derived from Valley 

work was much more closely akin to the proposed 

Gambit-4 than to Gambit-3. When first considered, 

Gambit-3 was also informally referred to as Program 

207, implying that it was the follow-on to “Program 

206,” as Advanced Gambit, and G3—or “G-Cubed.” 

G-3 eventually became the accepted shorthand 

designator for the successor system, although upon 

the completion of the original Gambit program and the 

start of Gambit-3 operations that suffix was dropped. 

* As noted elsewhere, the abortive Samos E-3, E-5, E-6, and Lanyard 

systems were intended to perform surveillance functions of one sort or 

another, but none ever became operational and only Lanyard produced 

satellite photography. 

Old hands continued to use “G-3” as a convenient 

way of distinguishing the successor system from its 

predecessor. For reasons of clarity, that distinction 

has been retained here. In the following sections, 

the term Gambit-3 is ordinarily used to identify the 

“advanced” system, and Gambit-1 the original. Unless 

otherwise indicated when the term Gambit without a 

suffix appears in quotations, it can be interpreted as 

referring to Gambit-3, that being the official post-1967 

nomenclature. In the Talent-Keyhole designation 

system used to identify the products of photographic 

reconnaissance operations, Gambit-1 products 

were labeled KH-7, and Gambit-3 products KH-8.

The Origins of Gambit-3

Even before the first of the original Gambit 

reconnaissance satellites had been launched in July 

1963, planners acknowledged the need for a more 

capable surveillance system. By implication, they 

suggested that such a system could be successfully 

developed.

The underlying rationale for satellite surveillance 

stemmed from assumptions that significant operational 

and technical details of Soviet weaponry could be 

discovered through satellite photography. Something 

could be learned from photography with resolutions of 

two to three feet—which was from three to five times 

better than anything Corona, the only other available 

system, might then produce. But much more could be 

deduced if photographs capable of resolving ground 

details one foot or less on a side were returned for 

analysis, and the intelligence community wanted 

“much more.”

The dominant ingredients of higher resolution 

tended to be focal length (which by implication 

included optical aperture), and pointing accuracy 

(which included stability). Smear, a product of 

imprecise camera stabilization and imperfect image 

motion compensation, was not always treated as a 

major constraint in the effort to obtain high resolution. 

Nor, for that matter, was focal length alone. In the early 

1960’s the objection to using very-long-lens systems 

was more a matter of system weight, and principally 

weight of optics, than magnification potential.

Long lens systems created enlarged images of 

relatively small areas. In that circumstance, pointing 

accuracy was essential; surveillance targets had to be 

caught within the optical field of the lens system if the 

total system was to be functional. It was customary 

to design lens or mirror motion into camera systems 

to cover a wide swath of the earth. But panoramic 

coverage at high magnifications required huge film 
61

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

quantities, and given the relatively limited film capacity 

of the boosters and orbital vehicles available in the 

early 1960’s, using panoramic coverage techniques 

as a substitute for pointing accuracy was not an 

attractive option. 

Lacking a better solution, camera designers of 

the early 1960’s had to adopt a “brute-force” gross 

coverage approach—essentially a “broad swath” 

technique. That was the essence of the early Valley 

program, a proposal to carry large quantities of highacuity film to compensate for what was assumed to be 

an inherent deficiency in camera pointing accuracy. 

Pointing with the precision required to operate a 

narrow-swath camera system was until 1963 generally 

assumed to be beyond the capability of satellitecarried cameras.

Recovery of the first Gambit-1 film in July 1963 

disclosed that several system capabilities about which 

there had been significant doubt were feasible. Although 

few photographs were recovered from the first Gambit 

mission (because Major General Robert E. Greer was 

determined to obtain “one good picture” and not to 

endanger that goal by attempting complete system 

operation on the trial mission), the consequences were 

enormous. Getting the pictures was one substantial 

achievement;* the obtained resolution of about 3.5 

feet was another; and exceptional pointing accuracy 

was a third. Although the first two were of greater 

immediate importance, the demonstrated ability of 

Gambit-1 to point its optical system with great precision 

caused a complete revision of long-term plans for 

a next-generation surveillance system. Valley was 

promptly redirected toward “narrow swath” concepts; 

the “wide swath” and “brute force” approaches were 

abandoned as unnecessary. By August 1963, Valley 

research and Gambit-1 experience had convinced 

the National Reconnaissance Office that long focal 

lengths were feasible for satellite operations and that 

(because pointing accuracy could be guaranteed) a 

system built around large optics could be appreciably 

lighter than had earlier been thought necessary. One 

consequence was that plans for the “big optics” system 

* Apart from Corona, which had been operational for three years, one Lanyard 

flight of May 1963 which produced a few photographs of no great intelligence 

worth and the returns from one Samos E-1 mission (with resolution limited 

to about 100 feet), represented the only previous successes of a satellite 

reconnaissance effort that had been in existence for nine years and had been 

heavily funded for five. Corona, sponsored by the CIA, was not considered an 

element of the “Air Force” satellite reconnaissance program, being classified 

as an “interim” capability system even though developed, managed, and 

operated mostly by Air Force people. Both the Samos E-5 and Samos E-6 

programs had failed and had been cancelled by the end of 1962—after eight 

consecutive mission failures (nine, if the first Lanyard were counted). An effort 

that very probably cost more than a IV had yet to produce useful photography. 

Greer’s concern for “one good picture” was all too understandable in those 

circumstances. 

were adjusted to provide for use of an Atlas rather 

than the much larger Titan III-C booster (although 

other considerations later caused a reversion to the 

Titan booster).1

Disagreements and uncertainties marked 

subsequent developments. A major contributor was 

a bureaucratic competition for control of the satellite 

reconnaissance program. But for the most part such 

skirmishing concerned matters other than the “very 

high resolution” system, which in July 1963 received 

the endorsement of Dr. E. M. Purcell and a special 

panel he headed** and in September became the 

subject of preliminary plans for contractual actions.2

One of the problems was technical: the Purcell Panel 

had recommended development of specific lens 

systems defined in terms of focal length and aperture 

(and very large aperture at that—f/2.0 and f/1.5 lenses 

of 60- and 40-inch diameter were proposed!). General 

Greer was convinced that the proper course was to 

require a specific ground resolution and let the system 

design emerge from the tradeoffs necessary to obtain 

that resolution.3 Ultimately that became the approved 

course of Gambit-3 development, but in 1963 it was 

not popular.

Although several contractors had been involved in 

the “big optics” program of 1961-63, Eastman Kodak 

had two notable advantages when proposal time 

arrived, having been the principal contractor for Valley 

and having designed the original Gambit system. It 

would have been feasible, of course, to have some 

contractor not involved in either Valley or Gambit 

develop a Gambit successor, but cost, time, and 

technical capability factors all agreed against such a 

course.

Early in December 1963, Eastman Kodak 

presented ideas and concepts for an advanced Gambit 

system to Dr. Brockway McMillan*** and (subsequently) 

to General Greer. As a result of the presentation, 

Greer formally proposed the development of a higher 

resolution, longer lens Gambit system.

The crux of Eastman’s proposal was to develop 

a system that would exploit the pointing accuracy 

of Gambit- 1 to drive a camera with a length lens. 

Eastman urged that resolutions could be obtained 

from such a system, assuming photography from 

an orbital altitude, Eastman also proposed that 

the new system incorporate a “factory to pad” 

concept providing greater modularity than Gambit-1. 

** The Purcell Panel simultaneously urged discontinuance of efforts to develop 

new optics for Corona and in so doing provided the initial impetus for the 

S-2 and Fulcrum programs. By 1966, the Hexagon program had emerged, 

laboriously, from Fulcrum and S-2 activities. See Chapter XIII. 

*** Director of the National Reconnaissance Office from February 1963 to 

October 1965. 
62

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

Specifically, instead of an orbital control vehicle which 

enveloped the camera system, Eastman proposed 

using two modules, physically distinct, one containing 

the camera and the other providing orbital control. That 

arrangement would make it unnecessary to do major 

assembly work at the launch complex, a troublesome 

aspect of Gambit-1 operations.4

Although the proposed Advanced Gambit would 

include a variety of detailed refinements of the basic 

Gambit system, Eastman Kodak felt that the major 

system performance improvements would derive from 

three factors: focal length, the use of International 

Harvester’s mirror substrate, and introduction of a new 

thin-base, high-resolution film with a substantially higher 

exposure index than that available for Gambit-1.*

Three candidate systems had received attention 

during the 1962-1963 period when a higher-resolution 

successor to Gambit-1 was under consideration. 

Categorized in terms of resolution potential,”Gambit-3” 

and “Gambit-4” would have a much better resolution 

potential than the “Gambit-1” and “Gambit-2.” (In 

each instance the requirement postulated 95 percent 

returns at the desired resolution.)

Gambit-2 did not appear to afford a sufficient 

advantage over Gambit-1 (which had a potential 

for resolution for rather less than 60 percent of its 

photography). Development of Gambit-4 promised 

to be attended by “...serious technological and 

manufacturing uncertainties, formidable costs, and a 

long development time.” In the view of the National 

Reconnaissance Office (NRO), Gambit-3 would 

provide “...significant improvement in resolution at 

acceptable estimated costs and lead times, “ and 

should be the preferred system. Eastman Kodak 

heartily concurred, although disagreeing with the 

additional estimate of NRO program officials that the 

Gambit-3 program might incur major problems if the 

new mirror substrate material and Eastman’s higher 

speed film did not become simultaneously available. 

To hedge against any major program difficulty that 

might arise from that circumstance, the NRO decided 

to sponsor the concurrent development of the primary 

substrate material endorsed by Eastman and of two 

alternatives.

By 13 December 1963, Colonel W. G. King, 

Project Director for Gambit, had constructed an initial 

development proposal based on technical content 

of Eastman’s “Gambit-3” briefing. He incorporated 

* Film with an exposure index (El) of six might not seem “fast” to commercial 

users, who in 1963 were able to buy EI 1200 film from Kodak, but EI six film 

was roughly three times as fast as the film used in Gambit-1. Its availability 

made the lens-mirror system of Gambit-3 an equivalent two f-stops “faster” 

than the predecessor system. 

Greer’s instructions that general cleanup of the 

Gambit-1 system would continue until Gambit-3 

became operational.5

King’s plan provided that the entire Advanced 

Gambit program would operate under the purview 

of the existing Gambit office. The initial flight of the 

new system was scheduled for the second quarter of 

1966, with the operational transition from old to new 

system taking place later the same year. Contractors 

for the new system would begin “controlled entry” into 

development toward the end of fiscal 1964.

King saw only two feasible options for orbital 

control. He conceded that an orbital control vehicle 

could be developed with a capability similar to that of 

Gambit-1, but for various reasons he favored using 

an Agena with a roll joint coupling to the photographic 

payload. The roll joint used in the first few Gambit-1 

flights had operated perfectly, while General Electric’s 

orbital control vehicle, a new and complex system, 

had experienced a great many difficulties.** To rely on 

the Agena for orbital control afforded advantages of 

lesser technological and financial risk.*** King’s tentative 

schedule called for receipt of proposals in mid-April of 

1964 and contract award by June.6 As 1963 ended, 

McMillan informally authorized Greer to proceed with 

the Gambit-3 program outlined in King’s development 

plan. Formal approval appeared on 3 January 1964.

King and Greer had been predisposed toward 

the combination of Atlas and Agena, but McMillan felt 

that as long as scheduling difficulties would not result, 

the option of using a Titan III should be retained. 

That change represented the only significant initial 

alteration of King’s Gambit-3 plan.7

King and Greer worked out the remaining major 

elements of the Advanced Gambit concept early in 

January 1964. The major subsystems of the satellite 

were to include a photographic payload section 

(PPS), a satellite control section (SCS), and the 

booster vehicle. The payload section would contain 

a camera module and a recovery vehicle (SRV). The 

control section was to include the orbit adjust module, 

an attitude control subsystem, a back-up stabilization 

system (BUSS), and the power supply. 

**  The roll-joint had been invented for Lanyard and later adapted to Gambit-1. 

*** Although experience with the GE orbital control vehicle was limited in early 

1964, to Colonel King it was evident that the subsystem was potentially the 

most troublesome of all Gambit elements. The accuracy of that assessment 

was evident two years later: General Electric proved difficult to work with, had 

the poorest cost record of any Gambit contractor, had the poorest schedule 

record, and delivered systems with the poorer reliability than that of any major 

Gambit subsystem.) 

**** Although the option of using a Gambit-l-style orbital control vehicle had 

not yet been formally discarded, the Greer-King concept was heavily biased 

toward Eastman’s proposed approach as early as January 1964.8
63

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

A preliminary development plan for what was to 

become Gambit-3 appeared early in February. It made 

clear the contributions of Gambit-1 to the early concept 

of what was already being called “Gambit Cubed.”* 

Operational use of Gambit-1 was then demonstrating 

that testing and maintenance were greatly hampered 

by the highly integrated nature of the subsystems. 

Thus, said program managers, “...a great deal of 

connecting and disconnecting of wiring harnesses was 

necessary...In the G3 system, the emphasis on modular 

construction will increase the ease of maintainability....

The command control subsystem... of the G-Program 

has been shown to be a superior system and it is 

anticipated that it and associated software may be 

included in the G3 system.” Thus, not only would 

the direction of Gambit-3 development be guided by 

Gambit-1 experience, but some of the hardware and 

software of the earlier system would be used “off the 

shelf” for the new system.9

Colonel King expected to have program evaluations 

and recommendations complete by 13 May 1964, to 

have all contracts in effect by 30 June 1964, and to 

meet a scheduled first flight date of 1 July 1966.10 In 

the event he was optimistic only by four weeks.

Only one major change to the preliminary 

specifications occurred in the early stages of 

development. After consideration of the risks, General 

Greer decided it would be imprudent to anticipate full 

development of a dual platen camera configuration in 

time to meet flight schedules. McMillan agreed. With 

that change, negotiations with Eastman Kodak for the 

development of the camera system could be concluded. 

Contract price, including fee, was just under.11

By May, Eastman had completed preliminary 

research that seemed to reaffirm the feasibility of the 

primary mirror and had concluded that use of the new 

thin base, fast film would allow three times as many 

photographs to be taken on each Gambit-3 mission as 

on Gambit-1 missions...if problems of storage, on-orbit 

life, and recovery of larger film loads could be solved.12

Neither a booster nor an orbital control system 

had yet been chosen. Cost and schedule implication 

were large. Moving from Atlas to Titan III would 

imply either building a new pad at Point Arguello, or 

transforming an existing Atlas pad. Building an orbital 

control vehicle that could initially be used on an Atlas 

and later on Titan was a complex operation. If Titan 

were chosen, with its much greater lift capability, 

useful compromises in camera system weight and 

performance might be feasible.13

* Why “G3 “ (“Gambit Cubed” or “G-Cube”) became the informal designator for 

the program, rather than “G-3” (“G-Three”), is a minor mystery. 

Predictably, Lockheed favored use of the Agena 

and GE the use of an orbital control vehicle (OCV) like

that of Gambit-1. Both contractors had to consider the 

adaptability of their vehicles to the Titan III booster.

Influenced by orbital control system problems 

which were already beginning to affect the Gambit-1 

flight program, Greer and King had early endorsed the 

use of Agena, suitably modified, as the orbital control 

vehicle, although conceding the need for backup 

work by GE to help keep all options open.14 (During 

the first few Gambit-1 missions, the orbital control 

vehicle was only used in “solo” flight, after the film had 

been recovered. Primary missions had been flown 

in what was known as the “hitch-up” mode, which 

meant reliance on the Agena for orbital control by way 

of a roll joint. Results had been greatly better than 

expectations.)

The Agena was a proven space vehicle. Its 

shortcomings were well known and generally were 

not critical. The orbital control vehicle developed 

by GE both duplicated Agena capabilities and 

provided desirable properties the Agena did not 

possess. Lockheed proposed extending proven 

Agena capabilities to meet the requirements of the 

Gambit-3 system. GE proposed modifying the existing 

Gambit-1 orbital control vehicle. Greer, concluding 

that the OCV approach was too complex and too risky 

recommended that Lockheed do the primary vehicle 

study and GE a backup study. McMillan agreed.15

Work on the parallel satellite control section 

studies began in early July. Lockheed’s task was to 

study the compatibility of the Agena with the Titan 

III-X, the version of Titan best suited to the Gambit-3 

mission. GE was encouraged to look at both the 

simplification of the GE proposal for a simplified OCV 

and the possibility of using a separate ascent stage 

(rather than Agena) with the orbital control vehicle.

The photographic payload section included three 

major components, the satellite recovery vehicle 

(SRV), the external structure and the camera itself. 

Eastman had originally agreed to build the recovery 

vehicle thus concentrating the design, development 

and manufacture of the entire payload section in 

the hands of one contractor. It rapidly became clear, 

however, that Eastman would have difficulty in staying 

on schedule with just the camera subsystem to worry 

about. In consequence, Eastman subcontracted 

the capsule work to the Recovery Systems Division 

of GE, which had built most earlier recovery 

capsules. Similarly, Eastman subcontracted external 

structural work to Lockheed and concentrated on the 

development of the advanced optical system for the 

new Gambit-3. However, the arrangement that made 

Lockheed and GE subcontractors to EK insured that 
64

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

both the external structure and the reentry vehicle 

would be designed in compliance with camera system 

needs and that design compromises, should they 

prove necessary, would be compliant to the primary 

needs of the camera system.

By the Fall of 1964, Eastman and its 

subcontractors had advanced to the point where 

engineering specifications of the composite design 

had been released, design reviews held, some 

engineering drawings had been released and some 

of the critical long lead-time items had been ordered. 

Nevertheless, payload development was somewhat 

behind schedule.16

The hedge represented by concurrent 

development of two orbital control concepts was 

duplicated, by force of circumstances, in camera 

system development. Neither King nor Greer was 

willing to hinge program success on the probability 

that both the new film and the new substrate material 

would appear, operationally ready, on schedule. The 

two-fold task of casting such large blanks as were 

required for the stereo mirror and for the primary 

mirror) and then polishing them to the required 

smoothness provided numberless opportunities for 

delay. Eastman had originally estimated that each 

of the two mirrors would require almost 800 hours of 

grinding, polishing, in-process testing, electroplating, 

and coating. The actual manufacturing time proved 

to be about 3000 hours for each mirror blank, thus 

the precautionary development of the two alternative 

substrate materials. As substrate development 

proceeded, initial pessimism proved to be warranted. 

The program experienced several failures; 

collapsed and fracturing substrates, and polishing 

processes which proceeded far more slowly and 

less accurately than expected. The results were so 

variable that no final selection of a substrate material 

could be made in 1964.

During the last quarter of 1964, Eastman fell 

farther behind schedule while all other phases of the 

Gambit-3 project were either on or ahead of schedule. 

Less than a year old, and therefore going through 

a period normally associated with legions of bad 

surprises, the Gambit-3 program had encountered 

and overcome most of its major technical problems. 

Only the camera optics still presented significant 

difficulties.

Despite such rapid progress, by the end of the 

calendar year the Special Projects Directorate was 

able to return unexpected Gambit-3 funds to the NRO 

budget, a precedent that was continued, by and large, 

for another eight years.* 

* Through 1972.

Although schedules continued to slip, by late 

1964 Eastman had apparently solved the problem 

of manufacturing the optics for G-3. The solution 

lay in foregoing unconventional manufacturing and 

polishing techniques for conventional ones. The 

reason for going to unconventional techniques in the 

first place had been the difficulty of precision finishing 

mirror surfaces. Two developments of 1964 made 

it possible to overcome the natural shortcomings of 

the conventional techniques: mapping the surface 

irregularities of the mirrors by interferometery, and 

filling the mapped depressions by electro-plating. It 

had taken Eastman more than a month to prove the 

applicability of these processes however, and that 

represented a month of schedule slippage.17

Other equipment to be included in the 

photographic payload was subject to changes. The 

Astro-Position Terrain Camera, completed early, 

was redesigned by the end of the year to enhance 

its performance. GE completed design of the satellite 

recovery vehicle by November 1964. Profiting from 

earlier experience, King and Greer had insured that 

the G-3 recovery vehicle was much like that of G-1. 

The only significant change from the original was 

the imposition of extremely stringent quality control 

processes from the start. The widening schedule gap 

in optics development thus was the principal subject 

of management attention. New controls, technical 

reviews by Aerospace Corporation personnel, and 

the institution of bi-monthly progress reports were all 

aimed at getting Eastman back on schedule, or failing 

that, to prevent further slippage.

In October 1964 on the basis of the Titan III X-Agena 

studies carried out by Lockheed and General Electric, 

Greer’s staff prepared cost estimates pertaining to a 

switch from Atlas-Agena.** Just before the end of the 

year, McMillan approved the change to Titan.18

That decision had a number of effects on the 

program. The first was a significant growth in the 

budget. Another was a slippage in the scheduled initial 

launch data. But from the long view, neither of these 

perturbations was important. The choice of a Titan 

booster made future system improvement far simpler 

than it would have been if the lift capacity of the Atlas 

had been an operative constraint.

The collective experience of McMillan, Greer, and 

King, in particular their recent Gambit experience, 

induced a sequence and timing of Gambit-3 decisions 

which, in retrospect, may have assured the ultimate 

** A consideration of some importance was the probability that a new search 

system to replace Corona would have to rely on Titan III boosters. Although 

considerable technical and institutional controversy preceded the latter (April 

66) decision to develop what became Hexagon, the pattern was plain enough 

for Greer to see in 1964. 
65

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

success of the Gambit-3 program. Ironically, the 

keynote of that decision process was indecision—or 

delayed decision. They refused to allow the program 

to be tied irrevocably to the “obvious” booster (Atlas), 

the “available” orbital control vehicle, or the “most 

promising” mirror substrate material. In each area, 

they delayed design freezes long enough to allow all 

the relevant data to come to light. The price of such 

decision delays was a growth in program cost and a 

modest slippage in the initial launch date. The product 

seemed well worth that slight cost.

The second year of Gambit-3 development 

saw the disappearance of residual ambiguities 

and uncertainties affecting the final configuration. 

In particular, optical materials and manufacturing 

processes were selected and adaptation to a Titan III 

booster mode was completed. By the end of the year, 

engineering models of all systems had been built and 

were in test or fabrication stages. The transformation 

of Point Arguello Launch Complex II (PALC II), Pad 

3, from Atlas-Agena capability to Titan III-Agena 

capability was well underway. (An additional capability 

of handling small, strap-on solid rocket motors had 

been added.)

The distinguishing marks of the Gambit-3 program 

were that the problem-solution cycle was more 

compressed than in earlier programs of similar nature 

and the program experienced continuing economies 

rather than overruns. Once the schedule adjustment 

required by the shift to the Titan III booster had 

been accommodated, the schedule remained valid. 

The projected capabilities of Gambit-3 equipment 

were enhanced rather than reduced as the program 

proceeded. It is interesting to recall that such events 

took place during a time in the mid-1960’s when 

virtually all military procurements were experiencing 

major cost overruns, schedule slippages, and 

performance shortfalls.

By the beginning of 1965, major camera system 

problems had been reduced to four. One was the 

selection of a substrate material (and a structural 

form) for the primary and secondary mirrors. The 

requirements for the material included low weight, 

dimensional stability, and handling properties 

appropriate to the method of surface preparation. A 

second problem, partly solved, was the development 

of a method for preparing the precise optical surfaces. 

The requirements here were that the method yield the 

desired precision, but that it do so both economically 

and at a rate of production consistent with the 

operational plans for the completed satellite. The third 

problem was to devise a method of mounting the optical 

surfaces in the spacecraft so as to maintain focus and 

avoid the introduction of mechanical distortion. Finally, 

some technique had to be developed by which thermal 

distortions could be controlled during operations.

Program reviews during the last half of 1964 had 

dealt chiefly with the first two problems. One result 

of the concern evidenced by those responsible for 

reviews was to amend the Eastman Kodak contracts 

to include reporting on critical experiments and tests 

which had a bearing on the issues of concern. This 

activity came to be called the “Early Demonstration” 

program. After reviewing it during September of 1964, 

McMillan directed that the program be extended 

to include all aspects of the optics development 

program. He anticipated final selection of substrate 

materials by May, final decisions on engineering by 

June, completion of the engineering by August and 

completion of tests during September.19

Concentration of attention and effort on one 

component of one subsystem of the project had some 

interesting implications. Beyond the critical nature of 

that component, and the fact that it represented the 

largest single technological advance captured in the 

Gambit development, the attention paid it suggests 

that there was little else of critical moment in Gambit-3 

development that required much management 

attention. In any case, management spent its time 

rather lavishly on the one major problem that did exist.

Early in January 1965, notification of the switch 

to Titan III Agena configuration went to the principal 

contractors. It was the last program change of any 

consequence in Gambit-3 development.20

Unhappily for routine operations, the Titan III 

announcement very nearly coincided with a major 

program review, having the effect of invalidating 

most of the schedules on which that review was 

predicated. As it happened, however, except for 

the mirror development activity the entire program 

was essentially on schedule—and within predicted 

cost ceilings—and the readjustment necessitated 

by shifting to a Titan III launch capability provided 

a cushion for the mirror development schedule.21

Formal direction for the incorporation of the new 

booster in the Gambit-3 program included instructions 

that the budget was to be austere, pad modification 

was to begin at once at PALC II, production rate of the 

boosters was to be approximately one per month, and 

the first should be available in time for the projected 

first launch date of 1 July 1966. The project staff were 

also directed to include a capability of using small 

strap-on solids (such as the Minuteman first stage) in 

both the pad modifications and the booster production 

contract.22
66

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

The optics situation was still sufficiently worrisome 

in March 1965 to warrant a four-hour briefing for Dr. 

McMillan.23 Many substrate materials still were being 

considered.24 

By early March, Martin-Marietta (the builder of the 

Titan) had concluded that the earliest possible delivery 

date for the first booster could not support a launch 

date before 28 July 1966, almost a month later than 

the date by which the payload and satellite control 

sections could be ready. There seemed to be no way 

to protect the original first flight date of 1 July 1966, so 

General Greer recommended that the late July date 

be accepted. Dr. McMillan concurred immediately.25

Both were aware that Eastman’s payload schedule 

slippage made the goal of 1 July more theoretical than 

real in any case. 

March 1965 marked the appearance of a new 

problem. The satellite control section began to fall 

behind schedule when GE started work on a new 

command system. That development paced the 

progress of the checkout for the development test 

vehicle, which by the end of March had fallen six 

weeks behind schedule. In the end, therefore, the new 

booster schedule caused no real problems.26

The progress of Gambit-1 and its flight experience 

were also important for Gambit-3. During the Spring 

of 1965, the project office had decided that Gambit-3 

should incorporate both a redundant view port 

actuator and a backup film cutter. The camera-door 

actuator certainly owed its provinance to a series 

of failures experienced on Gambit-1 flights. The 

Gambit-1 systems, primarily pneumatic, continued to 

fail throughout the history of that vehicle until, near 

the end, they were completely replaced by electromechanical devices, While the lesson might have 

been that pneumatic devices could not be relied upon 

for space operations, it was not accepted in total at 

the time. But more of the primary actuators used on 

Gambit-3 were electro-mechanical than had been the 

case for Gambit-1.

By the end of June 1965, GE was two months 

behind schedule in command system engineering, 

and Eastman was a full three months behind in mirror 

development and fabrication. Happily, neither delay 

impacted on the initial launch date schedule, for which 

the modification and structural checkout of the new 

Titan III was the pacing item. In addition, test schedules 

for virtually all subsystems of the Gambit-3 were very 

liberal, so slippages in development simply meant 

some low risk compression of the test programs.27

The central problem at Eastman involved more 

than simple inability to solve the manufacturing and 

finishing problems for optical surfaces. As the project 

office phrased it in June 1965, “It is evident at this 

time, that EKC has underestimated the engineering 

manpower required to produce the electromechanical 

portion of the PPS (photographic payload section). 

Their late design releases are evidence of this. We 

have started down too many paths in some areas and 

have been late in formalizing the route to be taken.”28

Extreme concern for preserving options had earlier 

in 1965 been expressed in the wide variety of substrate 

materials which continued under investigation. By 

June, indecision had ended. Eastman still followed 

a course of caution, however, keeping the new 

alternative material, as an open option. In the event, 

the first attempt to produce a second generation failed, 

and the backup material, fused silica, was elevated to 

primary status. (Paragraph and Associated Endnote (29) Redacted.)

Perhaps a more significant change occurred even 

before the shift to fused silica. The original stereo 

mirror had a tapered design, which caused trouble 

in the polishing process, and its beveled edges were 

troublesome to grind. Both these special features 

were eliminated with a new design.30 Although the 

simplification cost a slight loss of theoretical resolution, 

that was never to prove a serious drawback.

During the subsequent nine months, new 

authorizations, cutbacks, and transfer of funds to the 

fiscal 1966 budget raised the actual figure to only 

less than the original estimate. The ability to predict 

costs so accurately—for a high-risk development 

program—was perhaps unique to the Special Projects 

Directorate among all major government contracting 

bodies of that era. (Paragraph and Associated Endnote (31) Redacted.)

During the summer of 1965, the NRO experienced 

administrative changes which, while of considerable 

internal significance, had only minor influences on 

the Gambit-3 program. After some two years of 

struggling with the CIA over control and direction of 

the National Reconnaissance Program, Dr. McMillan 

left his post as Director of the NRO in September. He 

was replaced by Dr. A. H. Flax, Assistant Secretary 

of the Air Force (R&D).* General Greer, with the 

successful development and early operations of 

the original Gambit to his credit, retired from the Air 

Force, to be replaced as Director of Special Projects 

by Brigadier General J. L. Martin, Jr. Martin, in turn, 

was succeeded as head of the NRO staff by Brigadier 

General J. T. Stewart. Colonel King remained as 

project director for both Gambit-1 and Gambit-3, thus 

insuring management continuity.

Schedule problems continued to trouble Eastman, 

General Electric, and Lockheed. Photographic 

payload section schedules were so tight that for the 

first time the project office began to question whether 

* Flax served as Acting Director at various times between July and September 

1965, during McMillan’s temporary absences. McMillan’s plans were known 

to the NRO staff in July.
67

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

the initial launch schedule could be protected: 

“Continued compression of the EK test schedule is 

beginning to make the 28 July 66 initial launch date 

appear somewhat optimistic,” King’s group noted in 

September. Similar doubts persisted through the 

end of the year. Eastman was six months behind 

by September 1965, and the reliability model test 

sequence, originally scheduled to begin on 15 October 

1965, had to be rescheduled for April 1966.32

Although pad modification at Vandenberg Air 

Force Base was 70 percent complete by the end of 

September, labor jurisdiction problems briefly caused 

worry about a work stoppage. Apprehensions had 

two facets. Not only would the launch schedule be 

invalidated by a stoppage, but there was no desire in 

the project office to call attention to Gambit-3 activities 

at Point Arguello.

Minor difficulties also arose in Lockheed’s effort 

to incorporate new redundancies into the control 

electronics for the roll joint while Martin encountered 

combustion instability symptoms in Titan III-X tests.

Eastman’s difficulties had several sources, not 

the least being an apparent overcommitment of 

resources. The company was working simultaneously 

on Gambit-1, Gambit-3, a lunar camera for NASA, and 

a proposed new search system (for what later became 

the Hexagon competition). Late in 1965, Eastman also 

began to do work on mission profiles for Gambit-3. 

(Such profiles would simulate the flight of the camera 

around the globe and yield the data necessary to 

study on-orbit camera operations. The data would 

then be used to derive operational parameters for the 

camera during a variety of flights. The parameters to 

be estimated included the number of roll maneuvers, 

distribution of roll angles and the distribution of slit 

positions. Because of the problems encountered on 

Gambit flights with the horizon sensors, separate 

profiles had to be developed for winter and summer 

operations.)* 

Even beyond the administrative changes and 

schedule slippages encountered with Gambit-3, the 

summer of 1965 was rather traumatic at the West 

* See chapter on Gambit Flight Operations. During deep winter, the heat 

sensitive horizon sensor aboard Gambit was incapable of distinguishing 

between space and earth over the South Pole. After a brief flirtation with 

the development of more sensitive devices, a solution rather typical of the 

Special Projects group was found; since photographs of the polar ice cap 

were not of interest, neither was orbital stability in that region. The vehicle was 

therefore allowed to coast over the cold region, regaining attitude reference 

and control as it reached the areas of intelligence interest. A supplementary 

benefit arising from that solution was that orbital control gas was expended 

less rapidly since it was only used on part of each orbit. The expedient was 

one of several that allowed the eventual stretch out of Gambit on-orbit life from 

an originally specified five days to eight days by the end of the program. 33

Coast facility. Gambit-1 problems had come to a head 

during July and August: three successive catastrophic 

failures caused a complete stoppage in the receipt of 

high resolution photography. The immediate result, 

felt during the fall of 1964, was an intensification 

of virtually all quality control measures imposed on 

National Reconnaissance Program contractors. The 

first Gambit-3 item affected by such stringency was 

the Lockheed command system; after some difficulty, 

the project office brought Lockheed to agree to the 

inspection of all command system components, 

beginning with the second batch of equipment (to be 

used on flights after number five). More stringent and 

earlier tests were also required for the first group of 

flight items as well. Finally, Lockheed was encouraged, 

in some instances, to find better qualified personnel 

to work on Gambit-3.34

Contracts in virtually all areas had been let for 

development and procurement of hardware for the 

first six (developmental) flights.35 After exposure 

to the flurry of Gambit-1 problems, General Martin 

concluded that requirements for more intensive 

inspection would not, of themselves, instill a sufficient 

degree of system reliability in either Gambit. He 

concluded that the procurement policies hitherto used 

for the program were best suited to a developmental 

program relatively low in technical and high in 

financial risk. The environment in which Gambit had 

been developed explained adequately the kind of 

incentive structure which could be thus described. 

The Gambit program was no longer in a development 

phase, however, and something new was needed.

Enough experience had been gained with Gambit 

production to give the project office considerable 

confidence in its ability to estimate the cost of a satellite. 

But the Gambit-1 failures of the summer of 1965 

indicated that performance was far less predictable. 

In particular, existing contractual incentives for saving 

money in production were greater by a factor of about 

two than those for performance. Appreciating such 

considerations, General Martin developed a new 

incentive system which not only reversed the order 

of priority, emphasizing performance over cost, but 

deleted all reward for cost saving. That policy was 

consistent with Martin’s belief that the cost of the 

hardware was the least of existing uncertainties; he 

perceived on-orbit performance to be the crux of the 

problem. That Gambit contractors accepted the new 

incentive structure strongly suggested that the new 
68

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

system made more sense than the old. In fact, the new 

incentive structure subdued several contract disputes 

that had been continuing for several months.*

The Martin reforms could scarcely have been timed 

better for Gambit-3. Program managers planned six 

development flights of the new system, after which it 

was to be considered operational. Contracts covering 

the initial flight systems were converted to the new 

incentive structure shortly before the first flight of 

Gambit-3. That development, like the accelerated 

inspection, checkout and test program for Gambit-3, 

was a direct product of Gambit-1 experience.** 

By the end of 1965 it was apparent that the 

occurrence of any major problem in the test cycle 

for the payload section would cause a slippage of 

the initial launch date for Gambit-3. Eastman was 

by then 30 weeks behind schedule; it was the low 

point for the company and the program. Indications 

of improvement, later shown to be accurate, were 

present even then, however. Several components 

of the photographic payload section had completed 

their initial tests with slight difficulty, an event that 

brought a symbolic sigh of relief from apprehensive 

program managers.

* The “Martinized” incentive structure was described in his 1969 paper, “A 

Specialized Incentive Structure for Satellite Projects.” It discussed, clearly and 

in detail, the thesis and its application, although (of course) Gambit was not 

identified as the program to which the policy was first applied. General Martin’s 

approach was intended for application to mature programs, those past the 

stage of schedule and cost uncertainties but still subject to performance 

improvement. Its attractiveness, and the obvious success of its application to 

Gambit, had the unfortunate effect of inducing others to attempt to apply it to 

programs that lacked the fundamental character General Martin specified. In 

particular, it was occasionally applied, in part or in whole, to the development 

phases of new programs—where the structure devised by Generals Greer 

and King for the initial stages of Gambit was almost certainly more suitable. 

Misapplication of the Martin strategy to immature programs was particularly 

unfortunate because what may have been General Martin’s major contribution 

was the demonstration that the incentive structure could be “fine tuned” to the 

needs of almost any procurement problem. He did not intend, and certainly did 

not recommend, that it be applied to development enterprises characterized 

by cost, schedule, and technical uncertainties of real consequence. The 

success of the Martin approach resulted from his recognition that Gambit had 

changed as it matured, and that a mature Gambit required contract incentives 

different from those of developmental Gambit. He did not suggest, and did not 

believe, that the incentives of the original Gambit contracts were in any sense 

incorrect—merely that they were no longer appropriate to the circumstances 

he had to contend with. The incentives he devised could, or may have been, 

of indifferent quality, in an absolute sense. But they were better suited to 

the circumstances than those they replaced. There lay the explanation of 

the success of General Martin’s approach. And there lay the seed of failure 

when his techniques were applied, in inappropriate circumstances, to other 

programs.

** Since Gambit-3 was still in the “development” stage, one might wonder if this 

did not constitute the first misapplication of Martin’s new incentive system. The 

answer is no for two reasons. First, cost uncertainties were not substantial, 

nor were technical risks. Second, Gambit-3, as the name implies, was a new 

mark of a proven system.

The selection of fused silica, the primary mirror 

substrate, ended uncertainty about initial optics 

design. Fused silica would be used in the first 22 

vehicles (the developmental flights and the first 16 

operational systems).*** And by the end of the year 

construction work on the modified launch complex 

at Point Arguello had been completed, as had the 

first battery of tests of the Development Test Vehicle 

(the satellite control section) at Lockheed’s Systems 

Test Complex. On 6 December, the test article was 

returned to Eastman for mandatory re-manufacturing 

to correct faults discovered in testing. At the end of 

1965, optimism was in order.36

One product of photographic payload section 

difficulties was an early 1966 reorganization of the 

entire test schedules for both Eastman Kodak and 

Lockheed. If schedules could be maintained, and no 

major test failures occurred thereafter, the new system 

would make its planned first launch date. But all was 

not completely serene. By January 1966 there existed 

considerable doubt that the high-speed (E.I.6), highresolution film on which Gambit-3 excellence so heavily 

depended would be ready for use in initial flights. If 

it were not ready, Gambit-3 photography would not 

satisfy expectations. The fall-back film, with proper 

resolution and a lower exposure index,  would cause 

a certain amount of smear in the photography; control 

parameters had all been designed to accommodate 

the faster film.37

Other elements of the development program were 

going well. Pad modifications still were on schedule. 

The development test vehicle, having been through 

mandatory re-manufacturing, successfully completed 

its thermal-vacuum tests in late March. The integrated 

satellite control section and photographic payload 

sections were expected to enter joint testing at 

Lockheed in early April, as planned. Engineers 

identified and solved a venting problem with the Titan 

booster and by March had completed structural tests 

on its skirt and the Agena adapter. The troublesome 

command system hardware for the development 

test vehicle was back on schedule. Lockheed had 

understood the message implied by incentive and 

test procedure changes, and was responsive to 

program needs. Most hardware schedules looked 

sound. The only significant problem, other than film, 

was with substrates for the mirrors, and it was now a 

manufacturing problem rather than a design problem. 

Casting difficulties persisted; other problems seemed 

to be under control.38

** * In fact, although hope continued for the later introduction of the new material, 

only one mirror made from that substance would ultimately be flown.) 

**** The alternative was a film with index of 3.6 with a resolution capability of 

110 lines per millimeter, as against the nominal 130 lines ASA 6.0 film under 

Gambit-3 flight conditions.
69

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

Gambit-3 introduced one other significant change 

derived immediately from experience of the early 

phases of Gambit-I. In lieu of the extensive testing at 

the launch site that characterized Gambit-1, testing 

that frequently was accompanied by substantial 

amounts of repair work in the Missile Assembly 

Building, Gambit-3 incorporated a command system 

with features permitting automated checkout of 

virtually all vehicle functions, telemetry readout of the 

functional check being fed directly to a computerized 

evaluation and assessment subsystem that indicated 

directly whether or not various subsystems and 

components were operating within acceptable limits. 

The automated checkout normally was performed 

during final assembly of the payload at the principal 

manufacturing points (EK and Lockheed-Sunnyvale); 

vehicles, therefore, went directly from factory to 

launching pad, bypassing one of the most fertile 

sources of subsequent trouble. The independent 

subsystem checkout routines were combined into a 

single simulated flight operation during final check 

of the vehicle while on the launch pad immediately 

before launch. The effect of the new capability, and 

the procedures that accompanied it, was to increase 

confidence in the validity of the testing process, to 

abbreviate the launch and countdown procedure, and 

to eliminate the field handling and testing that had 

sometimes contributed to later operational problems.39

Development Flights

At the end of June 1966, the project officer 

reported “...reasonably good (indications) that the 

initial Gambit-3 launch date of 28 July 1966 can be 

met.” The Titan booster had arrived at Vandenberg on 

7 May and was mated with the satellite control section 

of the development test vehicle three days later. 

Inspectors accepted the control section and command 

system by 30 June, but refused to sign off on the Titan 

because of residual thrust instability. (Two alternative 

fixes were put in train, both of which would protect 

the launch date.) Final acceptance testing of the 

photographic payload section went slowly, but there 

were no failures. (Paragraph and Associated Endnote (40) Redacted.)

By 28 July the vehicle was ready to go. General 

Martin decided to ignore several minor defects in 

order to bring off the first flight on schedule. The most 

important, discovered during the pad checkout of the 

primary camera, was that commands to change the 

slit size were only intermittently obeyed. The project 

office decided to fix the aperture in the best “average” 

position to insure that research objectives could be 

satisfied. Operation of the roll joint was constrained 

to limits of plus or minus 35 degrees, a precaution 

reminiscent of the initial flight of Gambit-1. 

At the last moment, an anomaly developed in 

ground station equipment which forced a one-day 

delay in launching, but at noon on 29 July 1966, the 

teletype at the Special Projects office in El Segundo 

began to rattle off its message: “29 Jul, 1830:22Z 

Preliminary TLM data indicates normal launch.” 

Precisely two hours later Sunnyvale reported, “All 

systems appear normal.” Target count data began to 

flow in four days later.41

The ephemeris achieved was very close to that 

sought: inclination of 94.15 degrees, apogee of 150.33 

nautical miles and perigee of 84.43 nautical miles. 

The primary (i.e., photographic) mission lasted for five 

days, during which the system was programmed for 

maximum targets. Of these, a total were successfully 

“read out.”* The best resolution actually obtained in the 

recovered photography was as predicted, measured 

at a contrast ratio. The film was also underexposed.42

Aside from the constraints imposed on vehicle 

operations before the flight, the only operational 

failure was intermittent operation of the Astro-Position 

Terrain Camera. The reentry vehicle was successfully 

recovered on the 83rd revolution, after which three 

days of solo flight were conducted with the satellite 

control section. Shortly after separation of the recovery 

vehicle, the roll joint malfunctioned (on orbit 90), but 

it later recovered. The solo flight was used to gain 

experience with the vehicle in orbital maneuvers and 

to carry out some nineteen experiments related to the 

demonstration of specified capabilities of the vehicle. 

Three successful orbital adjustments on orbits 89, 97, 

and 122 satisfied the first of those objectives, and all 

of the subsequent experiments were successful.43

* To be read out, a photograph must represent the confluence of several 

aspects of success. The camera must have operated correctly, causing no 

perturbations which would make the negative unreadable. Such perturbations 

could include uncompensated smear, incorrect focus, faulty compensation 

for thermal effects, solar or terrestrial flare and (occasionally) degraded 

optics. The film had to be unmarred either by faulty manufacturing or by 

scratches caused by film transport or take up. All of these factors were 

nominally controllable in manufacture and checkout. The major cause 

for unreadable film, however, was natural and uncontrollable—weather. 

The dominant cause for differences between targets programmed and 

targets readout in the entire Gambit-3 program was cloud cover. In 

later years, the output of weather satellites lessened that effect, but it 

would persist as long as cloud cover data were other than instantaneous. 

There is almost no stable relationship among frames exposed, film used, 

and targets covered. Most targets occur in clusters of random size. Thus, several 

are scheduled to be covered in one photograph. In addition, a “photograph” may 

be a single frame, a stereo pair, or a strip of variable length, so there could be 

no predictable relationship between film length and the number of exposures, or 

between the number of exposures and the number of targets photographed—or 

between the number photographed and the number “read out.” 
70

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

Post flight analysis of recovered film was 

revealing. The overall quality of the imagery from the 

first Gambit-3 mission proved to be better than that 

obtained from any Gambit-1 mission.* 

Eastman analysis noted, “Although...primary 

optics fell short of the design goal, the intelligence 

provided by this mission was reported to be the 

highest of any reconnaissance satellite to date.”44

There could be little doubt that, at least in one 

area, the new version of Gambit was superior to its 

predecessor. While targets read out did not compare 

favorably with best Gambit-1 results to that time 

(targets had been photographed on the 27th flight of 

Gambit-1), the improvement which could ultimately be 

expected was indicated by progress recorded since 

Gambit-1’s first flight.45

Gambit-3 program plans dated from December 

1963 and January 1964. The initial launch of the 

system had then been scheduled for 1 July 1966. 

Almost a full year later, booster changes caused a 

schedule revision to reflect a new first-launch date of 

28 July 1966. In the event, launch was postponed by 

24 hours. In sum, a schedule established 134 weeks 

beforehand proved to be only four weeks in error. In 

retrospect, that did not seem an enormously significant 

achievement—and was not. But if considered together 

with the budgetary record of Gambit-3, it represented 

a unique achievement in those years of major program 

slippage, budget overruns, and performance shortfalls 

throughout the Department of Defense. No DoD 

program of the 1960’s that approached Gambit-3 in 

terms of technical advance, gross cost, or scheduling 

stringency achieved such a record. The caution that 

Gambit-3 was really no more than an advanced 

version of a system already in operation had no real 

relevance. Even though its mission was the same 

as that of Gambit-1, Gambit-3 provided substantial 

advances in resolution and orbital life. It required 

development of a new camera with more than twice 

the focal length of the original, new film, batteries, 

fuel plumbing—and ultimately a new booster. The 

performance objectives of 1 resolution and tenday orbital life constituted goals beyond reasonable 

expectations of earlier years—and when Gambit-3 

itself matured, even those goals were surpassed.** 

The fate of the Gambit-1 system was, of course, 

markedly influenced by the success of early Gambit-3 

flights. By June 1966, shortly before the first Gambit-3 

flight, there were clear indications that the first lot 

of Gambit-3 systems probably would not produce 

much better resolution than the (now) well regarded 

Gambit-1. United States Intelligence Board (USIB) 

approval of Hexagon development some two months

* Resolution was not obtained with the Gambit-1 system until its last two 

flights, numbers 37 and 38, in May and June 1967.

** The 22nd flight achieved resolution of and an orbital life of 27 days was later 

recorded.

earlier (April 1966) further complicated the problem; 

early expectations of Hexagon availability, though 

unreasonably optimistic, made it seem advisable to 

begin near term conversion of the Gambit-1 launch 

pad for use by the Hexagon. The certainty that 

Gambit-1 would be entirely replaced by Gambit-3 

made it difficult to keep the Gambit-1 developmentmanufacturing team adequately motivated—and, 

indeed, made it unlikely that a Gambit-1 capability could 

be maintained at all, given the increasing needs of the 

Gambit-3 program. If Gambit-3 were even moderately 

successful, the need for completing the planned 

purchase of 16 additional Gambit-1 systems would 

vanish; if, on the other hand, Gambit-3 encountered 

early operational problems, keeping a reserve 

Gambit-1 capability in being would be essential to 

continuance of the surveillance mission. Dr. Flax was 

extremely reluctant to cancel any planned Gambit-1 

launchings until Gambit-3 had actually demonstrated 

a “reasonable” level of capability.46 Despite Dr. Flax’s 

reluctance, the Director of Central Intelligence, Richard 

Helms, felt that the combined total of 20 Gambit 

(counting both Gambit-1 and Gambit-3) in fiscal year 

1967 was too much. He pointed out that the schedule 

developed for fiscal 1967 dated from January 1966. 

At that time, Gambit’s had experienced a succession 

of catastrophic failures—but there had been no 

Gambit-1 failures during 1966. Further, Gambit-1 

had recorded remarkable advances in orbital life and 

coverage during that year. Finally, the first Gambit-3 

had flown successfully and the considerations which 

underlay the January decision were quite obsolete. 

On 17 August, therefore, the Executive Committee 

for the National Reconnaissance Program decided to 

delete four of the scheduled Gambit-1 flights.47

USIB’s Committee on Overhead Reconnaissance 

in September 1966 proposed that nine Gambit-1 and 

eight Gambit-3 missions be conducted during fiscal 

year 1967. USIB, as a whole, somewhat reluctantly 

accepted the recommendation of its subcommittee, 

several members expressing concern that success 

in all of the scheduled missions would cause the 

exploitation elements of the intelligence community 

to be swamped in high resolution photographs. Many 

of those USIB members also favored contined use 

of Gambit-1 rather than Gambit-3 because of the 

apparently greater cost of the newer system.

For the moment, the decision to proceed with a 

mix of Gambit-1 and Gambit-3 systems during the 12 

months starting in July 1966 was permitted to stand 

unchanged. The convincing argument, advanced by 

the staff of the National Reconnaissance Office, was 

that the better roll maneuverability and longer orbital 

lifetime of the Gambit-3 system in combination with 

a resolution that, at worst, would be at least as good 

as that of Gambit-1, were sufficient justifications for 

proceeding rapidly to total reliance on Gambit-3.
71

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

One of the growing national concerns during the 

period of Gambit-3 development was quick reaction 

to crises. As early as January 1965 Dr. McMillan had 

informed Secretary McNamara of impending studies of 

a quick reaction capability for Gambit-3.48 While funds 

had been allocated in the fiscal 1966 budget for this 

purpose, little work had been done—the money was 

held back until actual results of Gambit-3 operations 

could be weighed.

The tangible proof which had been lacking during 

fiscal year 1966 became available shortly after the first 

Gambit-3 flight, at the beginning of fiscal year 1967. 

On 17 August 1966, the NRP Executive Committee 

approved in principle the modification of Gambit-3 by 

inclusion of multiple recovery vehicles and extended 

orbital life. The costs involved were two years in the 

future and the technology involved was, by that time, 

low risk. Long life and multiple reentry capsules would 

satisfy the need.49

The premise of long-life, multiple capsule systems 

was that urgently required photographs would be 

taken and returned for analysis while more routine 

surveillance duties were still performed, exposed film 

being fed into a second recovery vehicle. But another 

requirement for quick reaction was that either a satellite 

be on-orbit when the need arose or that one could be 

launched quickly. One was largely a matter of luck and 

the other was, during 1966, ultimately constrained by 

the rate of production of reconnaissance satellites.

While the first G-3 flight had been largely meant 

to prove the capability of the camera and gain some 

experience with orbital maneuvers, the second flight 

was intended to demonstrate some extension of the 

satellite’s orbital life and to test, as exhaustively as 

possible, the roll joint and the backup systems.* The 

camera system was still the pacing item in scheduling, 

and on-pad testing had to be compressed slightly when 

the acceptance testing slipped a week. The slippage 

affected the Astro-Position Terrain Camera, which 

was not a critical item for initial flights of Gambit-3. 

When that subsystem failed its acceptance tests (a 

looper malfunction due to a broken roller bracket), it 

was disabled and the second Gambit-3 system was 

launched without its services on 28 September 1966.50

The vehicle achieved a correct orbit and began 

its planned seven day primary mission, programmed 

to photograph almost targets—half again as many 

* In September 1966, Colonel King left the Gambit office for a new assignment. 

In some respects, the timing was unfortunate; King had been the prime mover 

in Gambit development for several years, and the second Gambit-3 mission 

still was pending. General Martin, therefore, arranged for King’s continued 

availability to oversee the second and third Gambit-3 missions—a task that 

had precedence over any he incurred in his new assignment.

as the first flight.51 A tape recorder malfunction was 

the only disturbance of the primary mission. It failed 

during orbit 82, but recovered thereafter. The capsule 

was recovered, uneventfully, on orbit 115.52

The roll joint was exercised extensively during the 

primary mission (943 cycles), and in solo flight (546 

cycles). Only one malfunction occurred (during solo) 

and it was corrected via backup systems.53

The importance of the backup systems being 

well understood by the project office after Gambit-1 

experience, a total of 1552 backup system operations 

were completed during the solo portion of the mission.

The results of the second Gambit-3 flight were 

mixed. While the mechanical operation of the satellite 

was impeccable, the camera system did not score as 

well. Photography for the second flight was poorer 

than that of the first, a variance in the quality of the 

optics being blamed.54 The outcome was puzzling, 

however, because preflight tests had indicated that 

the optics for the second Gambit-3 were slightly 

superior to those of the first. Best ground resolution 

was about 36 inches. Nevertheless, the second 

Gambit-3 success reinforced the growing conviction 

of NRP managers that too many Gambit’s were in 

the flight schedule.** Shortly after recovery of the film 

from the second Gambit-3 flight, the photographic 

payload for the third flight began acceptance tests 

toward a 27 October delivery in anticipation of a 1 

November launch date. But the payload experience 

of the second flight induced an extension of testing 

for the third, causing the flight to be slipped until midDecember. The extended test procedure was adopted 

as the norm for all future payloads.55

The vehicle was readied during the second 

week in December and launched on the 14th. 

The orbit achieved was similar to the two previous 

flights, although somewhat more eccentric.56 Two 

pre-planned orbit adjustments during the primary 

flight lowered the perigee from 82.6 nautical miles 

to approximately 76 miles.57 During the flight, 

spurious commands generated through one channel 

of the extended Command System troubled flight 

controllers, but actually affected operations only 

during three orbits (28 to 31), during which most of the 

operational photographic take was lost. Thereafter, 

changed operational procedures overcame the 

** Two issues underlay the overlapping flight schedule; cost and continuity of 

coverage. The success of both Gambit flight programs during 1966 created 

pressures to reduce the total number of flights. Contemporary schedules called 

for one Gambit-1 per month in the period October 1966 to June 1967 plus 

Gambit-3’s in November 1966, January 1967, and one per month thereafter. 

Three of the planned Gambit-1 flights were eliminated. Because of the optics 

problem, the Gambit-3 flight planned for November was slipped to December, 

and the January, March and May 1967 flights of Gambit-3 eliminated.
72

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

difficulty. The Astro-Position Terrain Camera which 

had malfunctioned on flight one and been deliberately 

disabled on the second flight, again malfunctioned, 

experiencing intermittent operation of the shutter 

mechanism.

The mission returned “best resolution” on a new 

ultra-thin-base film (still not the high-speed film earlier 

promised) that extended the available film load from 

roughly 3000 feet to about 5000 feet. That increased 

film capacity largely accounted for an improvement 

in the numbers of targets programmed and read 

out. Another contributing factor was mission length: 

eight days.58 Gambit-1 had yet to achieve that goal. 

But Gambit-3 had still not been extended to its full 

capabilities. The project directors were carefully 

adhering to the “proceed slowly” rule for development 

flights.59

The objectives of development flights included 

proof of hardware capability as well as learning how 

to extract the maximum return from the hardware. 

The fourth flight of Gambit-3 principally served the 

latter end. The flight was scheduled for 21 February 

1967. No major problems were encountered during 

acceptance testing, but preflight checkout disclosed an 

out-of-specification condition in the inertial reference 

package of the guidance section that ultimately 

caused a three-day slip in the launch.60

By shortly after noon of 24 February 1967, the 

satellite control facility at Vandenberg sent the cryptic 

“Nominal ascent” message to the dozen or so stations 

waiting for word.

The fourth mission of Gambit-3 thereafter 

proceeded with few on-orbit problems. Flight 

controllers confidently predicted that the photographic 

take would be as good as that of the first Gambit-3 

flight, thus far not duplicated.61

Some anomalies did occur, of course. Erratic 

behavior of the focus sensor, incorrect timing of the 

backup roll joint drives during the solo flight, and 

erratic spacing between photographic frames were 

the most notable.

Double images and run-through of unexposed 

film resulting from frame spacing faults absorbed 

the greatest amount of administrative and technical 

energy during the days following recovery of the film.62

Unhappily, best resolution was on the order of 27 

inches, a development that—in light of good preflight 

test results and promising on-orbit performances—

demanded explanation. The only obvious difficulty 

experienced in the camera section acceptance test 

had involved determination of the best point of focus. 

“Best focus” was established by adjusting the platen 

with reference to a tri-bar target similar to those 

photographed from orbit. Skilled technicians focused 

the optics repetitively until a large body of data on 

the “best electrical focus” distance had been built up. 

The data were then plotted. All previous experience, 

both with Gambit-1 and Gambit-3 had been that the 

resulting plot formed a unimodal distribution. The 

mode, or peak, was chosen as the point of best focus.

Because of an aberration in the optics for the fourth 

Gambit-3, the distribution of points of best focus had 

two peaks. The better of the two also displayed double 

imagery. In an attempt to use the higher resolution 

focal distance designers improved the lens, which 

eliminated the secondary image. The optics were 

flown in this configuration despite a supplementary 

test using a point target which indicated that the lower 

resolution peak was unambiguously correct. On-orbit, 

defocus experiments, unhappily, agreed with the 

results of the point-target procedure.

But the wrong “best point of focus” had been 

selected before launch. As a result of that experience, 

all future optical assemblies in which an aberration had 

been detected were focused by use of a point target 

rather than the more common tri-bar target. A cause 

for chagrin was a set of calculations which showed 

that resolution of the mission photography would have 

been as good as that obtained on the first mission had 

the correct focal plane been chosen.63

In other respects the mission had been successful. 

Despite the double imagery and comparatively low 

resolution, the intelligence value of the photography 

was considered to be high. Exposure was excellent 

for more than 90 percent of the exposed frames. Free 

for the first time of malfunctions, the terrain camera 

registered ground resolutions between 100 and 120 

feet, more than adequate for mapping purposes. 

The stellar camera element again experienced film 

fogging, although not as badly as had been the case 

on the first three missions.64

By the time hardware acceptance had begun 

for the fifth flight of Gambit-3 there was reason to 

anticipate a very successful mission. Acceptance 

testing of the cameras ran more smoothly than ever 

before.65 Procedures for determining the best plane 

of focus seemed quite adequate and tests showed 

the camera to have a well defined stable point of 

best focus with a resolution potential of 60 lines per 

millimeter.66 While nominal lens resolution was inferior 

to that of the fourth flight article, it seemed more than 

adequate. The optics tested better than those of the 

first Gambit-3 camera, that which had achieved the 

best resolution of the series. General Martin reported 
73

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

to his Washington counterpart, General Berg that, 

“The recommendation is a very strong ‘Let’s go!’67

No significant problems had appeared in acceptance 

testing, delivery, or mating of the components on the 

launch pad. A slip of one day from the planned 25 April 

1967 launch date apparently was caused by weather 

conditions in the launch area.*

Lift-off occurred at exactly 10:00 a.m. Pacific 

Standard Time on 26 April 1967. Before the message 

could be sent to that effect, however, the second stage 

booster, Agena, and camera section had impacted in 

the Pacific Ocean southeast of Hawaii. The first notice 

of failure mentioned a possible second stage Titan 

failure adding, “Injection into orbit is questionable at 

this time.” The final message from Point Arguello that 

day spoke for itself: “Water impact due to low thrust 

of second stage of Titan booster. Negative acquisition 

at downrange ship on ascent. Further report will 

be issued only if additional information becomes 

available.” That day, at least, none did.

Such information as eventually became available 

indicated that thrust chamber pressure had dropped 

by 40 percent shortly after second-stage ignition. 

Maximum velocity was 8000 feet-per-second, too 

slow for injection. Suspecting that the failure was due 

to a fuel line blockage, Martin instituted more stringent 

inspection procedures on all tanks, lines and pumps. 

No more could be done.68

The sixth and final Gambit-3 development flight 

had originally been planned for 6 June 1967. Following 

the failure of mission five, it was rescheduled for 20 

June. Acceptance testing and prelaunch checkout 

proceeded smoothly, no major anomalies being 

encountered.

Early in June the NRO staff in Washington 

recommended consideration of a new flight pattern 

for Gambit-3 with the object of exploiting the higher 

sun angles characteristic of summer months. It was 

accepted and made effective for the sixth Gambit-3 

mission.

In the past, Gambit cameras had normally been 

operated only on north-to-south orbital passes. 

By launching in the early morning, instead of early 

afternoon, photographic operations could take place 

on the ascending portion of the orbit as well. In 

consequence, some targets, those which fell in the 

* The principal documents which cover launches are Quarterly Program 

Reviews of Special Projects and the routine memo from the Director, 

SAFSP, to Director, NRO (Mission Summary). Both of these documents were 

concerned with the most important feature of the mission—its failure—to the 

exclusion of all other details. However, high winds in the launch area were 

common during March and April, accounting for similar one-day slips on other 

launches.

ascending track, could be photographed twice a day 

instead of only once. Making such an adjustment 

also required that the latitude of perigee be shifted 

northward so that the satellite would be closer to the 

earth during the ascending portion of its orbit. Although 

resolution would be acceptable on both sides of the 

orbit trace, targets in southern latitudes would register 

poorer resolution than usual because of the camera’s 

higher altitude when it flew over them. The tradeoff 

was acceptable because of better coverage of “more 

interesting” Soviet and Chinese target sites during the 

ascending portion of the orbit.69

Detecting a slight anomaly in the optics, technicians 

set the “best electrical focus” one mil away from the 

calculated best plane of focus. Modal distribution 

seemed slightly abnormal, and because the platen 

position was subject to slight shocks during ascent, a 

one-mil, out-of-focus condition of the platen seemed 

the best compromise between expected resolution 

and a potential out-of focus condition.**

A change in checkout procedures for the sixth 

Gambit-3 provided yet another increase in total film 

capacity. Final checks of the system before a flight 

normally consumed from 200 to 300 feet of film. 

To offset that loss, Eastman overloaded the spool; 

the first 300 feet of film extended above the spool 

flange. The flange kept film from slipping loose during 

launch and injection, but it was not necessary in the 

controlled ground experiments used during checkout. 

(The first two Gambit-3 flights had carried only 2600 

feet of film, as did most of the later Gambit-1 vehicles. 

The introduction of ultra-thin base film had allowed an 

increase to 4700 feet. With the adoption of the new 

checkout procedure, Gambit-3 could be launched with 

almost 5000 feet of unexpended film.)

The mission began on schedule, early in the 

morning of 20 June 1967. All ascent events proceeded 

normally until 60 seconds before Titan second stage 

engine cutoff. At that moment, part of the ablative skirt 

of the engine blew off. The resulting aerodynamic 

asymmetry slowed the vehicle’s acceleration, and 

injection velocity was 88 feet per second lower than 

programmed. Apogee was more than 46 nautical 

miles lower than planned, and perigee was about two 

miles low. Mission controllers called on the Agena 

propulsion system to correct the orbit, but during 

that maneuver (on orbit 32) the Agena rocket engine 

suffered a chamber pressure loss. Fortunately, it did 

not affect the ultimate success of the mission.70

** The conservatism of the choice was warranted by flight experience. Analysis 

revealed that the electrical focus had shifted a half mil from its intended 

position.
74

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

Indeed, notwithstanding such mishaps, the flight 

proceeded so well that controllers decided to extend 

orbital life from the planned eight days to ten. An 

Agena reburn during orbit 98 provided the essential 

repositioning impulse.

A malfunctioning relay brought on roll joint 

operating peculiarities during and after the 64th orbit. 

Flight controllers spent some 14 hours in identifying 

the source of the problem before attempting a 

correction. The first fix attempted was to use the crab 

servo to work around incorrect roll-joint movements. 

After three orbits during which smear was inevitable, 

new programming instructions went aloft. Not until 

orbit 112 was the problem wholly overcome.71

The photographic products of the sixth Gambit-3 

mission were well worth the effort required to make the 

flight successful. Two extra days of flight and the extra 

film contributed to a doubling of the number of targets 

photographed and read out. Resolution showed less 

variability than in earlier Gambit-3 operations, as did 

exposure. Photography was considered generally to 

be the best achieved by Gambit-3 to that time.72

Analysis of the film results by the National 

Photographic Interpretation Center indicated that the 

decision to adopt a new orbit had been wise. NRO 

headquarters reported: “All evaluations received to 

date regarding the intelligence effectiveness and 

overall scale and exposure quality of NSN 4306 have 

been highly complementary... it is requested that the 

capability for high northern latitude perigee placement 

and early morning launch be retained and requirements 

be examined for each Msn during the high solar 

northern declination months for application of this 

type orbit. We wish to commend your development of 

the 4306 type orbit and its contribution to increased 

intelligence return in terms of operational flexibility 

and cost effectiveness.”73

Dr. Flax was somewhat less euphoric. Reporting 

to the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Flax noted that, 

“In general, system performance was excellent (after 

six flights) except for the optical sensor which is, of 

course, the most critical element of the system.” 

Resolution fell well short of the planned resolution. But 

in all other respects, Gambit-3 had to be considered 

a striking success. As compared to Gambit-1, the 

newer system had achieved its development goals—

excepting resolution—in about one-third as much 

mission time.74

Results obtained during the first year of Gambit-3 

operations fully justified the decision to rely on that 

system. Although the newer high-resolution film was 

not yet available, Gambit-3 produced a “best resolution” 

of (as compared to the “best resolution” of Gambit-1), 

an average resolution that was slightly better, and a 

substantially greater rate of film exposure. (Owing to 

various limitations on maneuvering during the first 

three Gambit-3 missions, in deference to research 

and development test objectives, Gambit-3 averaged 

coverage of only slightly more targets than Gambit-1, 

but on a “best missions” basis the Gambit-3 system 

covered half again as many critical targets.)

After the second Gambit-3 flight had appropriately 

demonstrated the general technical capability 

of that system, Dr. Flax cancelled the final five 

Gambit-1 missions and diverted the boosters to other 

assignments.75 There was abundant evidence that the 

interpretation facilities would be overloaded were the 

full complement of Gambit-1 and Gambit-3 vehicles 

to be flown in what remained of the year. After the 

sixth Gambit-3 mission it was clear to all concerned 

that the system would produce better returns than 

Gambit-1 could ever hope for and that it was wasteful 

of resources to continue production of Gambit-1. On 

30 June 1967, Flax cancelled the Gambit-1 program. 

At the time, seven additional Gambit-1 systems 

were on contract, but only two were approaching 

completion (work on the other five having been earlier 

curtailed). Even though the improved film on which 

Gambit-3 expectations were partly based still had not 

been perfected, Gambit-3 recorded a “best resolution” 

during its ninth flight (mission 4534), in October 1967.

Results of the adoption of Gambit-3 were 

evident in more generally acclaimed ways than 

“best resolution” alone. The U.S. knew, for instance, 

almost precisely at what rate the new Soviet T-62 

tank was being delivered to Soviet tank regiments 

stationed along the Chinese border, and similar 

findings were reported for a surprisingly wide variety 

of aircraft, missiles, and ships. That the newer Gambit 

returned pictures that made it possible for U.S. 

interpreters to assess was a sufficient comment onthe 

improvement that had resulted from its introduction.76
75

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

Policy, Administration and 

Further Development 

The sixth flight marked the end of the 

development flight program for Gambit-3. In terms 

of mission operations, however, that milestone 

was mostly distinguishable by a slight decrease in 

experimentation during flight. The first four flights 

of Gambit-3 had been clearly developmental in that 

they had limited objectives. Malfunctions in some 

non-critical components were tolerated, for instance, 

as had also been true of Gambit-I in a comparable 

phase. A significant difference in the experience 

of the two programs was the amount of attention 

devoted to the transition from developmental status 

to full operational readiness. For Gambit-1 the 

pace of that transition was an issue of considerable 

concern generated partly by political considerations 

(the mounting CIA-NRO differences of the time) but 

also by the complete lack of any alternative means 

of obtaining high resolution overflight photography. 

The NRO probably could not have survived another 

program failure, so Greer and McMillan were 

exquisitely circumspect in their deliberate progress 

toward full operational readiness. But precisely 

because all previous programs had been failures, the 

intelligence community was enormously impatient to 

get early operational returns from Gambit. Largely 

because of Greer’s stubborn insistence on stepby-step progress, Gambit-1 had an unprecedented 

run of early successes. Major problems when they 

occurred, came toward the mid-point of Gambit-1’s 

operational life, at a time when intelligence specialists 

had become accustomed to a steady output of highquality photography and had come to assume, almost 

placidly, that any Gambit problems would be solved 

quickly and without disrupting the flow of information 

to photo interpreters. Gambit-1 experienced mid-term 

problems because of manufacturing and test process 

faults; Greer and King had successfully insured 

against the survival of any disabling design defects. 

In Gambit-3 the design verification process proved 

out in the earlier program was supplemented by the 

manufacturing process emphasis that General Martin 

had applied to Gambit-I. Defects in Gambit-3 tended 

to be random, the product of oversight or accident 

rather than any failures of process.

Development of the camera systems of both 

Gambits was a never ending process. Developmentduring-production expenditures for Gambit-1 camera 

systems (identified as such by their being entered in 

the books as non-recurring costs) far exceeded initial 

development expenditures. That also became true, for 

Gambit-3. That a potential for continual improvement 

existed testified to the excellence of the basic design 

of the two camera systems. (The same had been true 

of Corona, though in a somewhat different fashion.)

During the period covered by the development 

flights of Gambit-3, the NRO was working its way toward 

an optimal mix of reconnaissance vehicles. During 

the early days of Gambit-1, the entire photo-satellite 

reconnaissance effort was dependent on two systems, 

Gambit and Corona, each based on technology of the 

late 1950’s. Gambit-3 represented a vehicle at least 

as reliable as the second generation Corona, and 

like that system promptly became an apt subject for 

modification and performance improvement. Among 

the developments which concerned Gambit-3 were 

readout technology, extended operational life, and 

multiple film return capability. Readout and multiple 

reentry implied longer system orbital life and expanded 

coverage of ground targets. Imagery readout had been 

a goal of satellite reconnaissance for two decades—

originally because no obvious alternative ways of 

retrieving orbital photography were available. The 

introduction of recoverable film capsules, with Corona, 

and the indifferent quality of returns from early readout 

systems (Samos E-1 and E-2) had relegated readout 

to a research enterprise by 1962, however. During 

1966, the concept of readout was again raised to 

system design status, and in one proposed application 

Gambit-3 became the vehicle. Various technical 

considerations made it only marginally attractive at 

the time, however, and in November 1967 the NRP 

Executive Committee decided against any near-term 

application to Gambit-3. It recurred more and more 

frequently to consideration of new system possibilities 

thereafter, however.77

Although readout was rejected for the time, 

long life and multiple reentry capability had become 

approved Gambit-3 goals earlier in the year. Neither 

involved the technological and financial risk of imagery 

readout. Fortunately, owing mostly to McMillan, 

the Titan booster of Gambit-3 had life capability the 

early Gambit-3 systems did not need. The addition 

of a second reentry vehicle, more film capacity, and 

the attendant modifications to film transport, cutting 

and other mechanisms would considerably increase 

Gambit-3’s weight. Except for “crisis reconnaissance” 

operations, a capability never required though often 

proposed, a second recovery vehicle would be 

redundant if the total time on orbit for the camera 

were no greater than with one capsule. Extended 

orbit of life would require more batteries and greater 

quantities of control gas and rocket fuel. Additional lift 

capability through the addition of small strap-on solid 

rocket engines to the Titan III was an option which had 

been foreseen early in the Gambit-3 program (and 

provided for in construction of the launching pad at 

Point Arguello). Formal approval for the development 
76

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

of long-life, multiple-reentry vehicle capability for 

Gambit-3 was obtained in August 1966.78 The change 

would add almost to Gambit-3 costs in fiscal 1968.79

By November 1967, the question of schedule 

overlap between Gambit-1 and Gambit-3 was 

conditioned by the continuing success of Gambit-3 

operations. For a time late in the year, the CIA suggested 

that Gambit-3 rather than Gambit-1 schedules should 

be curtailed. Absolute cost comparisons were all in 

favor of Gambit-1—if resolution were disregarded.80

The success of the first two Gambit-3’s made 

it apparent to the United States Intelligence Board 

that with three satellite systems routinely returning 

large quantities of photographic intelligence, the 

interpretation task was becoming, for the first time, a 

constraint on operations.

Photo interpreters were not alone in finding it 

difficult to deal with three successful satellites at the 

same time. The Satellite Operation Center (SOC) in 

the Pentagon (Washington’s principal interface with 

STC, Vandenberg) was also feeling the pinch. Major 

General James T. Stewart, Director of the NRO staff, 

complained that, “The SOC is barely able to cope 

with Gambit and/or Gambit Cubed today in a manual 

operation.” Addition of Hexagon to their burden would 

swamp them, as would any appreciable improvement 

in Corona capability.81

By early December 1967, USIB was considering 

a reduction in coverage requirements as a way out 

of the difficulty. In combination with extended life for 

Gambit-3, that implied steadily decreasing launch 

rates for the future. At the launch rate then prevailing, 

the 16 Gambit-3 systems then on order would last 

through April 1970. At the usage rate suggested by 

USIB, only 12 would be required. After allowing for 

backup vehicles to replace possible failures, the NRP 

Executive Committee decided to buy 14 rather than 

16 new Gambit-3’s.82 (In the event, 16 were actually 

used by June 1969, after which the dual-reentry 

vehicle [double bucket] version of Gambit-3 became 

standard.)

The recurrent Gambit-3 launch-rate question was 

nominally resolved in January 1967;* six launches 

were scheduled for fiscal 1967, ten for fiscal 1968, nine 

for fiscal 1969, and seven each year thereafter. That 

decision reflected a cutback in scheduled launches 

of seven vehicles through fiscal 1969 and two per 

year thereafter. Uncertainty concerning the provision 

of standby and backup vehicles was countered by 

a decision to consider reserve vehicles as hedges 

against expanded intelligence requirements rather 

* It was reopened annually, however.

than as insurance against the catastrophic failure 

of a mission. Thus readiness within two months 

became the standard for reserve vehicles, rather than 

readiness within two to three weeks (as would have 

been the case if protection against mission failure 

consequences were intended).83

In a separate effort to conserve funds, the NRO 

altered its earlier disaster recovery policy for Point 

Arguello. Against the possibility of a disabling launch 

pad disaster, the NRO had planned to modify a second 

pad to back up the primary Gambit-3 launch pad (PALC 

II, Pad 3). That commitment was revoked in February 

1967 in favor of a policy of quick rebuilding and repair 

in the event of launch stand damage. The newer 

approach had the undeniable advantage of being less 

costly, particularly if no severe damage occurred. It 

invoked a degree of greater risk, of course, but in that 

no occasion for either major repair or the use of an 

alternate launch stand arose through the end of 1972, 

the policy subsequently justified itself.84

The only major shortcoming that inhibited 

Gambit-3 by late 1967 was the inadequacy of the 

camera system. Despite the fact that it was better 

than that of Gambit-1 it was not yet sufficiently better 

to justify Gambit-3 development—and could not be 

so rated until the original requirement for resolution 

was actually satisfied. That achievement depended 

on real progress in developing high-resolution, highspeed film, improved substrate materials, better 

manufacturing process, and improvements in the final 

preparation of the optical surfaces.

All of the cameras flown in the first six flights carried 

optics whose substrate material was fused silica. All 

available alternative materials had been rejected by the 

beginning of 1967. It was less expensive and easier to 

manufacture than fused silica substrates. Those were 

important considerations; the 1967 rate of production 

was so low that it prevented the accumulation of 

enough spares to permit diversion of mirrors to the 

development of faster polishing techniques—a 

circularity which would require considerable effort to 

break.

During the first quarter of 1967, six promising but 

undersized blanks were sent to Perkin Elmer and 

Eastman for finishing. Unfortunately, the castings 

were marred by opacity and structural defects 

eliminated those faults in the next batch of blanks, 

but the castings still were overweight, and polishing 

techniques were not adequate to the need.85 Still, the 

casting process seemed to have progressed past 

the period of experimentation. Late in July, Colonel 
77

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

Lew Allen left a note on General Berg’s desk* which 

provided a good indication of progress: “After many 

disappointments it appears that we have a good 72” 

blank. The press operated flawlessly... We still need 

to hold a reservation until full clean-up and interior 

inspection is done, but our experience leads us to feel 

success is here. Hooray!”86

Notwithstanding such progress, the resolution 

specified for Gambit-3 still had not been realized. 

The urgency of achieving better than resolution in 

Gambit-3 operations had its own rationale in system 

requirements, but it was reinforced by activity 

elsewhere, particularly in Hexagon programs. In some 

respects, it seemed to be a prospective replacement 

for Gambit-3.

The elusive goal of photo-satellite reconnaissance 

was a good resolution of small objects. It was a 

threshold number for photo interpreters, who foresaw 

in it marvelous possibilities for obtaining hitherto 

unobtainable information. By 1967, some seasoned 

veterans of the National Reconnaissance Program 

had begun to suggest that Gambit-3 might never 

achieve even the basic resolution for which it had been 

designed, but that it would actually return imagery of 

better resolution. Commenting on a draft study by 

Colonel Lee Battle, former Corona program manager, 

General Berg conceded that, “[basic resolution] ... 

may be just too tough a development problem. But 

compare that to the theoretical statement that ‘we will 

get better at the outset’ from it. I want to see better 

resolution so badly, I become completely vexed with 

anyone talking it down. But I also realize that getting it 

depends a heck of a lot on the G3 learning curve and 

experience...”87

Uneasiness about Gambit-3’s prospects also 

surfaced during an August 1967 meeting of the 

Reconnaissance Panel of the President’s Scientific 

Advisory Committee (PSAC). Although the nominal 

topic was the program, the PSAC had also scheduled 

a one-hour briefing on the status of Gambit-3 optics. In 

the event, it lasted three hours, counting the extended 

discussion it generated. Dr. Richard L. Garwin sharply 

criticized several aspects of the Gambit-3 program: 

program management, lack of technical expertise 

at Eastman Kodak, and the faltering progress in 

improving the resolution provided by the first Gambit-3 

mission to the better resolution specified. General Berg 

cautioned Dr. Flax that the PSAC might well pursue 

the topic at greater length in another session, but 

the threat never materialized. While members of the 

PSAC were fully aware of Gambit-3’s difficulties, and 

* Allen, later head of the NRO staff, and still later head of the Special Projects 

Directorate, was then in charge of technical development in the NRO staff; 

Brigadier General R. A. Berg headed the NRO staff at the time. 

concerned about them, most did not accept Garwin’s 

pessimistic views. The NRO staff concluded that 

Garwin’s criticisms were in part based on incomplete 

information.88

Notwithstanding the failure of Gambit-3 to satisfy 

early expectations for resolution, its demonstrated 

operational capability was sufficiently satisfying by the 

sixth flight to warrant final cancellation of Gambit-1. In 

consequence, several camera systems and attendant 

flight equipment was freed for distribution to other 

programs. Most went to NASA to support the Surveyor 

and Lunar Orbiter photography programs, although 

two were crated and stored for display at “some future 

time” when security permitted.

Making Gambit-1 cameras available to NASA 

created its security problems. In order to conceal the 

potential of the now outmoded Gambit-1, enormously 

better than anything in NASA’s inventory, the NRO 

specified that the equipment be called the “Lunar 

Mapping and Survey System” (LMSS) and be used 

only for lunar photography—and that products be 

presented to the public in a way that would make it 

impossible to determine resolution. That could be 

accomplished—in theory—by failing to disclose 

the altitude from which photographs were taken, 

thus concealing both scale and definition. In that 

fashion, the need for invoking Talent-Keyhole security 

procedures would be obviated.89

As it turned out, the LMSS camera was never used 

for lunar photography. But the ownership of equipment 

so advanced presented new opportunities, and new 

temptations, to NASA. Some NASA people began to 

argue for the use of the Gambit-1 camera in the Earth 

Resources Survey and Earth Sensing programs. The 

product would be photography with at least two-foot 

resolution in a program that was closely monitored by 

a large community of scientists who were unwitting 

of the achievements of covert reconnaissance. The 

National Security Council had earlier ruled that NASA 

could not release photography with better than 60-

foot resolution. There seemed no feasible way of 

concealing Gambit-1 capability if the system were 

used at any scientifically reasonable orbital altitude—

although NASA was not willing to concede that point. 

With the vigorous support of Dr. Donald Hornig, the 

President’s Science Advisor, the NRO responded to 

NASA’s enthusiasm by stony refusal; the issue was 

allowed to die of its own weight.90

While such events were proceeding, and while 

development flights of Gambit-3 still were continuing, 

designers had begun to work seriously on the 

development of a dual-recovery-vehicle version of 

the system. Film capacity was the limiting factor in 

Gambit-3’s orbital life, the ten-day film supply generally 
78

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

being used up long before the system was otherwise 

exhausted. On the seventh mission, for instance, 

even after completion of a solo mode operation and 

deboost of the Agena control section, remaining 

battery life was sufficient for five additional days of life, 

and enough control gas remained for another 28 days 

on orbit.91

The small quantity of film available, relative to 

other expendables, evoked considerable ingenuity 

among flight planners intent on securing maximum 

returns from the single-bucket version of Gambit-3. 

That ingenuity was rewarded by significant and steady 

increases in target coverage from the first to the last 

(22nd) single-bucket Gambit-3.

The development period allowed for the doublebucket Gambit was fundamentally determined by 

the rate at which the original Gambit-3 systems were 

used up. Following the purchase of six development 

systems, the NRO bought 16 additional single-bucket 

Gambit-3’s for a total of 22. The last was expected 

to be launched before April 1969, which thus became 

the scheduled initial launch date for the first doublebucket Gambit-3. But small schedule slippages in 

development of the double-bucket Gambit could 

be, and were, offset by stretch outs in single-bucket 

launch schedules. In late October 1967, less than a 

year after work had begun, it became evident that 

July 1969 rather than April 1969 was the probable 

first flight date for the initial double-bucket Gambit. 

Launches of the remaining single-bucket satellites 

were stretched out to cover the gap.92 (The relatively 

late finding that a double-bucket Gambit would require 

a more comprehensive data handling and command 

subsystem had an appreciable influence on the 

schedule slip)93

While the events peripheral to the development 

and operational quality of Gambit-3 continued to 

intrude on the program, and in many instances 

tended to distract attention from the central purpose 

of that program, the technical features, intelligence 

potential, and on-orbit performance of the system 

were themselves in a constant state of change. Such 

change was neither random in nature nor wholly 

responsive to problems encountered in operation; 

both technological progress and mission performance 

were somewhat unpredictable influences on program 

status.

Several improvements in the Gambit-3 system 

became feasible almost concurrently with the shift 

to a dual-recovery subsystem. The major innovation 

was a new optical system.94 The new system provided 

greater focal length, a flatter field, and improved color 

correction. Both resolution quality and the variability of 

resolution would improve thereby.95

The introduction of improved film was also a 

constant of the Gambit-3 program. A medium-speed 

(E.I 3.6), thin-base film had been used during the first 

two flights. The same emulsion, on a thinner base, 

was carried on flights three through thirteen. By the 

time of the 14th flight, the faster emulsion (E.I 6.0) 

originally scheduled for the first Gambit-3 flight was 

deemed ready for use. Because it was somewhat less 

satisfactory than had been anticipated, the slower 

emulsion was reintroduced, temporarily, for flights 

20 through 27, after which an improved version of 

the higher-speed emulsion on ultra-thin base was 

adopted. It exceeded original expectations.

Two other major advances in Gambit-3 technology 

originated in research performed for the program. The 

first was a solution to the stubbornly intractable problem 

of obtaining a fully satisfactory optical substrate 

material. Half a dozen materials had been tried and 

rejected for one reason or another during the course 

of Gambit-3 development. The only materials that still 

seemed to offer promise by the time it approached 

readiness were fused silica, used on virtually all 

flights of the single-bucket series. Both materials were 

candidates for the substrate. Because fused silica had 

always been an interim solution to the Gambit-3 mirror 

substrate problem, Gambit lens designers seized 

eagerly on the new material. In a sense, it was the last 

real hope for mirror improvement; none of the feasible 

alternatives had the desirable qualities of materials. 

Not until flight 42 of Gambit-3 was the new substrate 

used.

The second innovation was the Titan III “long tank” 

modification. The 32nd flight of Gambit-3, marking the 

introduction of system, was also the point of adoption 

of “long tank” Titan III boosters. (The excess lift 

capacity of the Titan III-X had been sufficient to permit 

an uncomplicated conversion from single- to doublebucket versions.) 

In early 1968, USIB again suggested changes 

in coverage requirements and Gambit-3 launch 

frequencies, explicitly proposing a reduction to 

seven flights during fiscal year 1969.96 The NRO had 

earlier concluded that eight vehicles would have to 

be procured to insure seven successes (and nine to 

insure eight successes). Eastman’s optics production 

capacity was still limited, and eight systems were a 

more realistic prospect than nine. Secondly, by that 

time only eight more single-bucket vehicles remained 

on contract and the availability date for the first doublebucket Gambit-3 was somewhat uncertain. Stretching 

out the single-bucket Gambit-3 launch schedule was 

the least painful way of protecting against a gap in 

coverage.97
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Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

In the event, the first flight of the double-bucket 

Gambit-3 did not occur until 23 August 1969, almost 

five months after it was originally scheduled and two 

months after the last single bucket Gambit flew. Thus 

a short hiatus in intelligence return did occur.98

Flight Program – Vehicles 7 to 22

Acceptance testing for the flight equipment to be 

used on the seventh Gambit-3 mission went smoothly. 

The payload was accepted with a total of nine 

performance waivers, of which only one, a shortfall 

in resolution, was important. It was also recurrent and 

persistent, continuing to be “the major performance 

waiver.”99

During preflight testing on the launch pad a faulty 

command in the test command tape caused a failure 

in the roll joint primary motor electronics. The entire 

component had to be replaced, causing a slip of one 

day in the launch. The vehicle finally lifted off shortly 

after nine in the morning of 16 August 1967. The early 

launch time was, as in the case of the sixth flight, 

used in order to take advantage of high sun angles 

still available during August.

Despite the “nominal launch” message from 

Vandenberg, the injection was not nominal.100 The 

initial perigee was six nautical miles high (80.3 miles) 

due to an injection velocity 25 feet per second higher 

than planned. The satellite was allowed to remain in 

high orbit until its 31st revolution, when it had decayed 

to a perigee of 79.8 nautical miles. At that point an 

orbit adjustment brought it some five miles closer to 

earth.

Even before the non-nominal orbit had been 

detected, ascent telemetry indicated that the roll joint 

separator had not functioned, causing it to be “locked 

up” and unable to traverse from side to side along 

the flight path. Backup systems successfully freed 

the roll joint almost four hours after launch. Minor 

problems also occurred with the battery thermostat 

in the recovery vehicle making it necessary for flight 

controllers to turn off the battery heater power for 

most of the mission. Some channels of the Extended 

Command System also became troublesome, but 

neither failure degraded the mission. Two further 

orbital adjusts were carried out on orbits 81 and 162.101

The number of targets programmed and read 

out were both extremely high. That so many targets 

actually were photographed was partly due to 

favorable cloud conditions over areas of interest. 

Ground resolution as measured from photographs 

came out nearly as good as the first Gambit-3 flight.102

There were no delays in acceptance or checkout 

of flight equipment for the eighth flight of Gambit-3, 

and that pattern persisted through the mission. 

Mission eight was one of three in the first group of 22 

for which no major on-orbit anomalies were recorded. 

Of several minor anomalies, however, two were 

significant. As with mission 4307, the “nominal launch” 

signal sent immediately after launch on 19 September 

1967 was a premature indicator of mission normality, 

injection error causing the perigee to be almost four 

miles lower than predicted. Because it was within 

acceptable tolerances, however, no orbital adjustment 

was performed until perigee had decayed to less than 

71 nautical miles, on the third day of the mission. 

Another orbit adjustment proved necessary three 

days later. An eccentric film wrap prevented primary 

camera operation for several minutes during the first 

pass over the Soviet Union, but was quickly corrected. 

(It was one of a very few camera malfunctions in the 

early operation of Gambit-3.)103

Because of the season, mission 4308 was launched 

later in the day than its two predecessors, there being 

no possibility of taking advantage of high sun angles. 

Instead, the satellite trace was altered for better 

coverage of targets at lower latitudes (descending) 

than had been obtained in recent missions. Target 

coverage suffered from the change, but an offset was 

the achievement of resolution, equal to the best yet 

obtained. The average quality of the photography was 

superior to that of any earlier Gambit mission.104

During acceptance testing of the photographic 

payload section for the ninth Gambit-3 mission, tests 

indicated that resolution would be better than with 

earlier optics. However, intermittent operation of the 

platen drive motor caused a two-week slip in delivery 

to allow for retrofit. The eventual effect was a twoweek slippage of the launch itself.105

An additional one-day delay in launch occurred 

with the detection of a propellant leak in the Titan 

second stage. Launch finally occurred on 25 October 

1967.106

Launch trajectory and orbital injection were 

near perfect. The Astro-Position Terrain Camera 

experienced a minor malfunction and the last half day 

of photography was lost due to the failure of the film 

take-up system. (Some 200 feet of film remained in 

the camera when the recovery vehicle separated for 

reentry.) Otherwise, troubles were few.

Upon analysis, the photography proved to be the 

best ever recovered from orbit. Measured resolution 

was and less and eight percent of the frames 

were incorrectly exposed.107 CIA Director, Richard 
80

PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

Helms, was moved to compliment Gambit’s recent 

photography, characterizing it as a rich source of 

“extremely important intelligence.”108

Pressures for target selection changes reached 

the Gambit Project Staff from various groups within 

the intelligence community. (Paragraph and Associated Endnote 

(109) Redacted.)

Flax’s reaction was to schedule a compilation 

of coverage experience so to “enable us to relate 

planned aircraft and drone coverage and, if 

necessary, to plan special or additional G missions, 

assuming the requirements were ‘hard.’” The resulting 

study indicated that satisfaction of nominal USIB 

requirements for it would require no fewer than 20 

Gambit missions a year. Since, at the time, USIB was 

in the process of trying to decide whether Gambit 

missions should total six or seven annually. Flax’s 

interest in distinguishing between “requirements” and 

“hard requirements” was warranted.110

Actually, communications between the NRO 

and the CIA in that matter dealt with mapping and 

charting applications of Gambit. Apparently not all in 

the intelligence community appreciated that although 

Gambit-1 often had unexpended film at mission’s 

end (mission event selection procedures for that 

system were relatively unsophisticated in terms 

of later procedures), Gambit-3 relied on far better 

programming routines and “wasted” only a very small 

amount of primary film, and absolutely no indexing 

film whatever.111

The tenth Gambit flight was little distinguished 

from the ninth. Resolution achieved was the same, 

although overall film quality was somewhat lower. 

The Extended Command System failed during its test 

cycle at Vandenberg, but was quickly replaced by the 

unit intended for the next flight. Launch occurred on 5 

December 1967. Ascent and injection appeared to be 

nominal; although the orbit was actually slightly high. As 

a result, an orbit adjust programmed for the 80th orbit 

was rescheduled for orbit 33 and was supplemented 

by another adjust on orbit 96. The primary reason for 

orbital adjustments was target optimization, however, 

and not recovery from an anomalous orbit. Small, 

non-critical malfunctions occurred during the mission 

in the Extended Command System and the terrain 

camera part of the APTC.112

Early in 1968, one of the few hardware changes 

during the single-bucket flight program took effect—

completion of the development of a redundant attitude 

control system (RAGS) as a backup for the primary 

system used in the satellite control section. While no 

failure of the primary system had occurred in Gambit, 

thus far, the project officers were wary of such an 

occurrence. Experience with the Gambit-1 vehicle 

had been considerably different, and since the weight 

of a redundant system could be easily accommodated 

in Gambit-3, it seemed wise to make the change.113

Gambit-3’s eleventh mission was not a happy 

one. The vehicle seemed plagued with problems 

from its beginnings. Acceptance testing for the 

photographic payload section began on 8 December 

1967 but was halted six days later when a telemetry 

unit malfunctioned and had to be replaced. The 

replacement unit failed on 2 January 1968. A third 

unit was installed and the payload was accepted, with 

waivers, on 4 January. (The major waiver was again 

for the optics, which were still considerably below 

specification. Initial resolution tests were so bad for the 

unit that the optical axes of the Ross Corrector and the 

primary mirrors were realigned using interferometry. 

The realignment yielded a significant improvement in 

resolution so the system was accepted at a doublepass resolution.

The satellite control section had comparable 

problems. During on-pad checkout at Vandenberg, a 

line surge through one of the breakout boxes resulted 

in burned wires in the separation controller. It took two 

days—passed on as a launch slippage— to remove 

and replace the unit and recheck the remainder of the 

vehicle.114

Finally, on 18 January 1968, mission number 

11 was begun.115 Launch and injection were almost 

nominal again. But the orbit was again low and had to 

be corrected during the 32nd orbit. Another orbit adjust 

was performed on orbit 96. Much earlier, the primary 

viewport doors had refused to open. Fortunately, the 

backup system worked properly.

On the tenth day of flight, recovery procedures 

were put in train, but although telemetry signals were 

mostly positive, planes in the recovery area never 

made contact. Nor did tracking stations. The recovery 

system had functioned correctly up to and including 

dispatch of the coded message indicating that the 

parachute cover had been ejected, but two minutes 

later all telemetry ended. It could only be assumed that 

the capsule had reentered the atmosphere without 

benefit of parachute. A search was begun without 

much hope of finding the capsule. It ended some thirty 

hours later with the assumption that reentry velocity 

had been sufficiently high to destroy the capsule on 

impact with the water.

Despite such mishaps, the mission was not a 

complete loss. After separation of the capsule, the 

Agena satellite control section continued in orbit for an 
81

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

additional seven days, logging thereby the longest time 

on orbit yet experienced for the system. The purpose 

of the extended solo mission was to demonstrate the 

capability of the control system to operate over the 

total time required in support of the double-bucket 

Gambit. The control section was deboosted after a 

total of 17 operational days on orbit.116

Another matter conditioned by the expectation of 

longer life beginning with vehicle number 23 was the 

capacity of the roll joint, the link between the power 

supply stored in the Agena and the payload section. 

The Agena, stabilized by its own attitude control system, 

received commands from tracking and guidance 

stations and translated these into roll maneuvers that 

would allow the camera to point at targets to the side 

of its trace. Because “interesting” targets fell on the 

satellite’s trace only by accident (i.e., rarely), virtually 

every target to be photographed was the cause of a roll 

maneuver.

The ultimate reason for increasing Gambit-3’s time 

on orbit was to obtain an increased number of good 

photographs of important targets. A fully successful 

mission could require many separate roll maneuvers. 

The roll joint used in the first eleven flights had been 

capable of performing only rolls. A new drive system 

installed for the 12th vehicle had a capacity of rolls. 

It represented the first step in moving toward the 

capability for the double-bucket Gambit.117

The only other major equipment change on 

Gambit-3 number 12 was a newly designed parachute. 

Its installation caused a launch date slippage of seven 

days. Otherwise, optics were predominant matters of 

concern, although the electronics for the Astro-Position 

Terrain Camera had to be removed and reworked 

before the payload section was acceptable. Primary 

optics were again the subject of a performance waiver, 

a procedure almost ritual for Gambit-3 by that time. 

Although continuing progress in polishing techniques 

and improvements in the use of interferometry had 

steadily improved system resolution, the Gambit-3 

system as a whole was not yet capable of satisfying 

original specifications. Tacit acknowledgement of that 

reality was signaled by the decision to disable the 

short range compensation mechanism after it operated 

erratically during tests. The trouble was traced to a 

drive motor. A failure during flight could cause platen 

adjustment loss and mission failure, so the compensator 

was disabled. The penalties were inconsequential; the 

optics were still so imperfect that correctly making the 

fine adjustments for which the slant range compensation 

device was intended would have no detectable effect 

on the quality of mission photography.

All was ready by 12 March 1968 but, as had 

happened before, high winds at Point Arguello forced 

a further slip of one day. On 13 March, fifteen minutes 

after the launch window opened, the mission began.

Launch and injection were again nominal.118

The only significant flight problem was failure of the 

terrain-camera element of the Astro-Position Terrain 

Camera on orbit number four. But because the stellar 

camera operated throughout the mission, indexing for 

the primary camera was adequate.

Analysis of mission telemetry provided the 

lead to the solution of a major problem of camera 

operations. The difference between predicted and 

actual resolution for previous missions had been 

much greater than expected.* The point of best focus 

determined in preflight tests seemed always to be 

off by an unacceptable margin. By the 12th flight, a 

considerable amount of experience had been built up 

through secondary flight objective experiments with 

the focus adjustment. On the 12th flight it was noticed 

that the focus wandered during the course of each 

revolution between +.001 inches at the start of the 

orbit and -.001 inches at the end.** Analysis established 

that heating of the front surface of the stereo mirror by 

the earth albedo was responsible. Flight controllers 

attempted to stabilize the mirror by cooling it for ten 

minutes during the dark-side portion of each orbit. The 

experiment was only partly successful, but it led to a 

far better understanding of thermal influences on focus 

adjustments.119 Ultimately, it would become possible 

to minimize heat-induced focus shift by regulating the 

time and degree of camera door and viewport opening 

during various phases of the mission.

After ten days of flight, the capsule was 

separated—and the new parachute worked. The 

recovery vehicle was air recovered on 23 March 1968. 

The general level of photography was better than on 

any previous mission.120

A more serious special coverage requirement 

inquiry was dealt with on mission number 13. In 

response to a request made by the Director, Joint 

Reconnaissance Center, the program office prepared 

a description of coverage from April 1967 to March 

1968, corresponding to Gambit-3 missions five to 

twelve. During that period, targets that had been 

programmed had been either fully covered, partially 

covered, or had poor coverage. Some targets 

were programmed for coverage during fiscal 1969. 

Designing a mission for enhanced coverage could 

increase the programmed coverage of targets while 

still satisfying USIB requirements for the rest of the 

world on that mission.121

* See Analysis of Gambit (110) Project. 

** That is, the distance between lens and platen shifted in this fashion, causing 

the focus to change. 
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PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

In the end, that pattern was imposed on the 

forthcoming 13th Gambit-3 mission. (“Requirement is 

max access to the main target plus unique access to 

at least 60 percent of the remaining targets.”)122 The 

change caused no major delay in the acceptance 

process, although it was necessary to inhibit the 

activity of the platen adjust motor in order to avoid 

possible catastrophic failure resulting from malfunction 

of this component. The vehicle was ready on 16 April 

1968 but high winds in the launch area again caused 

a delay of one day, to 17 April.

The mission was “nominal” from start to finish; 

there were no significant malfunctions on orbit. 

Because of the stringent coverage requirements, and 

the consequent need to fly a near cyclic orbit, two 

orbital adjusts were carried out (orbits 64 and 113). 

Two more took place during the subsequent twoday solo mission (to study the thermal effects of low 

altitude flight, an experiment aimed at demonstrating 

capabilities of the control section in anticipation of 

more demanding requirements for the operation of the 

double-bucket Gambit).123

The results of the mission were encouraging. 

Resolution again improved. In addition, more targets 

were both programmed and read out than ever before. 

The coverage was the subject of a congratulatory 

message from Washington: “Please accept the 

congratulations of Dr. Flax and the NRO staff for 

achieving the highest readout of intelligence targets in 

the Gambit Program to date.”124

If anything, the 14th mission of Gambit-3 was more 

smoothly run than the 13th. Acceptance testing and 

checkout cycles were uneventful. Launch occurred on 

time on 5 June 1968, early in the morning (as had the 

previous flight). The mission flew for its planned ten 

days and recovery was also nominal. The only failure 

on orbit involved a tape recorder intended to record 

data on malfunctions elsewhere in the vehicle—but 

there were none to record.125

Of greatest interest were the results of the mission. 

The resolution achieved was again photographic 

quality being slightly poorer than had been registered 

on mission 13. The number of intelligence targets read 

out was greater, however, even though fewer had 

been programmed. (More targets were cloud free.)126

Experiments conducted during the 14th flight of 

Gambit-3 had the additional benefit of demonstrating 

that target coverage could be enlarged without altering 

flight parameters. Reducing the length of each “burst” 

of photography would reduce the quantity of film used 

in photographing areas surrounding the real target. 

As a product of improvements in target location 

data (generated largely by the Corona program) and 

corollary improvements in Gambit position data, the 

need for “insurance” footage had gradually diminished. 

By the time of the 14th flight of Gambit-3, enough 

was known about true position on orbit to achieve a 

far greater degree of control over the camera than 

had been possible at the beginning of the program. 

That knowledge was applied during the flight in 

experimental reduction of burst times. The results 

of the experiment were good “...this is a successful 

test and could be applied in future missions with the 

exclusion of the highest priority targets...”127

Mission 15 of Gambit-3 used short burst times as 

standard. The result was another dramatic increase 

in the number of targets programmed and read out, 

despite slightly heavier cloud cover.

The planned launch date had been 23 July 1968, 

but problems in checkout of the payload caused a slip 

to 6 August. The mission was near nominal with no 

major malfunctions. A quick-look estimate of resolution 

was later revised upward, equivalent to experience in 

the previous mission.128

Seven more Gambit-3 vehicles remained before 

the first of double-bucket vehicles appeared. They 

were flown between September 1968 and June 1969. 

System changes and experiments carried out during 

that time were mostly aimed at proving capabilities 

needed in the double-bucket version of Gambit-3.

The first new item of equipment, and possibly 

the most significant addition to Gambit-3 during the 

period, was a redundant attitude control system 

(RAGS). The first was installed in the 16th vehicle and 

was the subject of tests during the solo portion of that 

flight. Timing was exquisite: a failure of the primary 

stabilization system on flight 17 forced reliance on the 

still experimental redundant system, after which the 

mission proceeded to a successful conclusion. “As 

a matter of fact,” General Berg told Dr. Flax, “John 

(General Martin) tells me the vehicle stability is better. 

In this case we can chalk one up for the home team!”129

Flight number 16 also included some 

experimentation with color photography as well 

as the introduction of a third version of the roll 

joint, a redundant system to be used in the doublebucket Gambit-3. The color photography was quite 

successful, achieving both good color correction 

and good resolution.130 Such an achievement was 

noteworthy; the earlier Gambit-1 system had been 

designed to produce resolution of two to three feet 

using the best available monochromatic film. Here 

was more evidence of the influence of changing 

technology on Gambit.
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Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

Flights 18 and 19 were marked by extremely high 

energy orbits which caused a short mission in the first 

instance and degraded photography in the second. 

(Paragraph and Associated Endnotes (131 and 132) Redacted.)

During the last three flights of the original 

Gambit-3, resolution improved during mission 20, 

mission 21, and then mission 22. The resolution 

specified for Gambit-3 had finally been surpassed by 

the last camera to be flown in that series. The final two 

flights of the single-bucket Gambit also set records in 

target coverage with both programmed and readout 

targets during the 22nd flight.

Photographic quality benefited from several 

innovations introduced during the flight program of 

the Gambit-3 vehicle. They included the introduction 

of ultra-thin-base film over “over-flange wrap” 

(for preflight tests), ascending and descending 

photography during summer months, and reduction in 

burst times made possible by more accurate position 

data on the vehicle and its targets. Resolution was 

also improved through the continual development 

of better optical surfaces, more accurate polishing 

techniques and closer tolerance testing. Other 

contributing factors included improved understanding 

of the influence of thermal variation on the optical 

surfaces during flight (and the ability to control these 

through operation of the viewport doors), and better 

control of camera dwell times and stereo mirror flip 

time. One area where improvement was lacking, 

where some real deterioration was noticeable, was 

the effect of cloud cover. The Gambit project staff did 

not see it as their responsibility to alter the weather, 

but they were charged with avoiding poor weather to 

the extent that other factors permitted. Perhaps the 

417 weather satellite had provided all the assistance 

in its capability; perhaps Gambit-3 was unlucky in that 

respect. But in any case, target obscuration by clouds 

continued as a major inhibitor of complete mission 

success.

The Gambit-3 flight of 3 June 1969, mission 

number 22, had been skipped to compensate for 

delayed availability of the first double-bucket vehicle. 

In the event, the mission schedule adjustment was 

not sufficient, and last-minute problems caused a gap 

in coverage of almost two months between the 22nd 

and 23rd flights of Gambit-3. In general, the results of 

the 23rd mission and following flights of the improved 

Gambit-3 system proved to be well worth the extra 

wait.133

Flight History of Gambit-3 Block II 

(Double-Bucket)

The first group of double-bucket Gambit-3’s 

(referred to here as the Block II vehicles) experienced 

three kinds of capability improvement. Resolution 

increased from a previous best and the improvement 

in average resolution was even more dramatic. 

Operational longevity increased from ten days to 

27 days. In the entire period there were only three 

catastrophic failures: the second recovery vehicle was 

lost on flights 25 and 27, and mission 35 was a total 

loss. It was not that technology took a sudden spurt. 

Rather, a succession of modifications conceived and 

tested over several years coincided in their effect. 

The Gambit-3 system matured appreciably between 

August 1969 and September 1972.134

The first group of Block II flights included missions 

numbered 4323 through 4327. Each was planned as 

a 14-day mission, a week of photographic operations 

being allocated to each of the two recovery vehicles 

(SRV’s). Of the five flights, the third and the fifth were 

marked by catastrophic failures; a parachute failed to 

open for the second recovery vehicle of mission 4325, 

and an Extended Command System failure on mission 

4327 prevented recovery of the second SRV from that 

satellite. Although these vehicles brought back 50 to 

100 percent more photography than the last of the 

single bucket Gambit-3’s, their best resolution was not 

better. Average resolution improved slightly.

Other than the introduction of the second SRV, only 

two major hardware changes distinguished the first lot 

of Block II Gambit-3 vehicles: a battery was added to 

extend the orbital life of the vehicle, and an improved 

reserve attitude control system was introduced.

No major malfunctions marked the first Block II 

flight. An excessively high orbit (408 nautical miles 

instead of 220) marred the second (4324). Because of 

a relay malfunction, the vehicle control assembly failed 

to shut down the main engine during ascent. Happily, 

the failure did not degrade mission success, orbital 

correction being possible through use of the secondary 

propulsion system rather than the primary gas supply. 

Remote tracking stations had some difficulty in picking 

up the vehicle’s transponder frequency, which caused 

some delay in loading commands and a loss of some 

photography. But the effect was minor. The post-flight 

discovery of a dome nut tucked into the folds of the 

recovered film prompted redesign of those nuts for 

future flights, but again there was no mission effect.
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PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

The recovery parachute on the second capsule 

of mission 4325 failed and the capsule sank before 

recovery personnel could reach it. Flight 4326 

encountered no major problems, but registered the 

worst resolution seen for a year and a half.

Mission 4327 was routine through recovery of 

the first capsule, although the air-catch crew was 

somewhat startled to discover that the ablative shield 

had failed to separate upon parachute deployment. 

Still both the parachute and the air-catch harness 

were able to sustain the extra weight, so no harm 

resulted. But shortly after film began to pan to the 

second capsule, the heater for the clock in the 

extended command system began malfunctioning. 

In the absence of that component, the propulsion 

systems of the vehicle could no longer be precisely 

controlled and little could be done to govern the 

impact point of the second capsule when it deboosted. 

Program controllers decided to attempt an emergency 

recovery, but it was unsuccessful and the second 

capsule, carrying one-day’s film was lost.

The first 18-day flight of Gambit-3 was scheduled 

for 18 August 1970, one year after the first doublebucket Gambit-3 mission. No major hardware 

changes had been necessary to extend the 14-day 

life of the earlier vehicles to 18 days. Mission 4328 

remained operational only for 16 days, however, it was 

called down early. Loose thermal tape interfered with 

operation of the horizon sensor and detracted from 

photographic operations in a minor way, but the total 

take was significantly greater than on any previous 

mission.

In the next three flights, between 23 October 1970 

and 11 May 1971, there were no hardware changes 

and no malfunctions of any consequence. Mission 

4330, begun on 21 January 1971, achieved, for 

only the second time among the Block II vehicles, a 

resolution as good as the best of the earlier Gambit3’s. It was also the first of the Block II vehicles to 

undergo an atmospheric survivability test (VAST). 

Despite close tracking, no debris could be located on 

this or any of the subsequent three tests, conducted 

at the conclusion of missions 4331, 4332, and 4334, 

reassuring intelligence specialists that no revealing 

bits and pieces of Gambit hardware could survive 

reentry and thus provide clues to the system’s 

composition or capability.135 Later events were to show 

that confidence to be wholly unwarranted, but that 

was for the future.

The last of the second lot of Block II Gambit-3 

operations, began on 22 April 1971 and continued for 

19 days. Vehicle 4331 achieved a best resolution and 

exposed more film than any earlier Gambit.

Mission 4332, begun on 12 August 1971, two 

years after the first Block II launch, marked a new 

watershed in the maturation of the Gambit program. 

The orbital life of 4332 was extended from 18 to 22 

days by the introduction of a tenth one-kilovolt battery 

and other minor system modifications. Far more 

significant, however, was the first operational use of 

equipment, under development for several years. The 

system improved best resolution from its earlier peak 

to a higher percent performance improvement.

Several hardware changes in the four flights 

which followed led to still longer orbital life, improved 

stability, increased maneuver capacity, and still better 

photography. The mission 4333 Gambit-3 used, for the 

first time, a new type of battery that enabled it to stay 

on orbit for an extra two days, bringing total mission 

life to 24 days. The booster and second stage had 

reached their lift capacity with the introduction of the 

newer—and heavier—batteries, however. In order to 

carry still more batteries, therefore, it was necessary 

to increase the thrust of the Agena upper stage by 

the use of High Density Acid (HDA) in place of the 

standard oxidizer. That modification allowed either 

an increase in orbital payload of 125 to 150 pounds, 

or an increase in the vehicle’s inclination capability. 

On vehicle 4334, which included this modification, a 

fifth “magnum” battery was used. The satellite was 

launched on 17 March 1972.

Mission 4335 included more major hardware 

changes than any other Block II vehicle. A Gemini 

Uniform Mixture Ratio (GUMR) engine was installed 

in the secondary propulsion system which further 

enhanced lift capacity by an additional 200 pounds, 

or alternatively, allowed spacecraft inclination to 

approach eight degrees. The introduction of a latching 

solenoid valve in the Backup Stabilization System 

(BUSS), allowed the use of surplus BUSS gas in the 

primary control system, which effectively increased the 

number of rolls that could be performed. Finally, some 

of the extra lift capacity was utilized to completely 

replace all of the original batteries with the newer, 

heavier, “magnum” models, bringing the total of the 

more powerful batteries to ten and increasing orbital 

capability life to 30 days. Unfortunately, a defective 

pneumatic regulator prevented the delivery of control 

gas during the ascent stage of the launch of mission 

4335. In consequence, the satellite failed to orbit and 

the entire mission was a failure.

While mission 4335 did not include a VAST 

experiment, an attempt was made, as on all flights, 

to identify the impact point for whatever debris might 

remain after reentry. The predicted impact point for 

4335 was somewhere over South Africa. Ground 

tracking stations lost contact with the disabled 
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Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

spacecraft during its descent, however, so no search 

was attempted. Considering the few instances in which 

debris had survived reentry, that seemed safe enough.

Almost five months after mission 4335 had 

been launched, a Gambit-cleared employee of the 

Aerospace Corporation visiting his firm’s London 

offices, heard from a coworker, some “interesting 

space material” had been recovered by the British 

earlier that year. The employee was interested, so 

the coworker arranged to revisit the Royal Aircraft 

Establishment at Farnborough, where he had first 

seen the debris on a laboratory bench.

The employee found three objects on open view, 

a spherical titanium pressure vessel about a foot in 

diameter, some circuit boards of U.S. manufacture, 

and several chunks of glass which, together, formed 

a pie-shaped wedge with a ten-inch edge. The glass 

was backed by a characteristic of Gambit optics. All the 

pieces had been found on farmland within a five-mile 

radius some 75 miles north of London. Eyewitness 

accounts indicated that they had come down about 

20 May 1972.

Convinced that he had viewed debris from a 

Gambit vehicle, he privately alerted the project office 

in California. The resulting flurry of telephone calls and 

memoranda led to informal arrangements for recovery 

of the residue, the transfer being arranged through 

friendly RAF contacts. Subsequent analysis confirmed 

that the debris had indeed survived the breakup and 

reentry of Gambit 4335136 —which cast some doubt 

on the findings of Project VAST and further lessened 

confidence in impact-point predictions.*

The offending pneumatic regulator was replaced 

for mission 4336 and later Gambit-3 flights, but no 

other hardware changes were made.137 Gambit 

4336, the last Block II system, was launched on 1 

September 1972 and remained in orbit for 27 days 

of photography, after which the satellite control 

section was exercised for an additional day. All of 

the new hardware introduced in the previous mission 

functioned correctly, and none of the several minor 

malfunctions had any substantial impact on mission 

performance.

Three distinct advantages arose from the addition 

of a second satellite recovery vehicle to Gambit-3. 

The increase in photographic coverage was the 

most obvious—although, in fact, photographic days 

on orbit did not dramatically increase merely by the 

addition. Perhaps more important, the second capsule 

enhanced the quick reaction capability of the Gambit; 

* Five years earlier, an entire Corona capsule had survived random reentry 

and landed, largely intact, in Venezuela. See Volume I for details.

if need be, the first film batch could be recovered as 

soon as vital photographs had been obtained without 

forcing an end to the entire mission. Finally, a “Quick 

Look” team assembled to perform rapid analysis of 

the output of the first lot of recovered film could direct 

focus or ephemeris corrections that enhanced the 

quality of the second lot of film.

Gambit-3 vehicles 23 through 36, comprising the 

“Block II” buy, incorporated continuing changes in 

hardware through their period of use. Refinement of 

operational procedures had been the most important 

source of improvement for “Block I” vehicles, although 

modifications, subsystem changes, and optical system 

development also occurred. But hardware changes 

during “Block II” flights were chiefly responsible for 

orbital life extension from an original 14 days to an 

eventual 27 days. For Block II, procedures changed 

mostly as hardware changed. Major design changes 

included the introduction of a long tank Titan booster, 

introduction of a modified fuel system for the Agena, 

detail changes which allowed improved utilization of 

orbital control gas, and the introduction of larger and 

more numerous batteries. In order to take advantage 

of the extended life thus provided, flight controllers 

had to place greater reliance on short-burst times 

and on early morning launches. The reduction of 

burst times, film pads, and frame sizes required a 

number of improvements in hardware and software. 

Data collected throughout the Gambit-3 program were 

used to improve target location and orbital parameter 

accuracies. Reduced burst times thus became 

possible. The introduction of the MOD IV Command 

Subsystem permitted more precise calculation and 

control of ephemeris changes.138 The reduction in 

burst times was so effective that over the initial period 

of Gambit-3 operations, the average frame length 

decreased from 2.68 feet in 1966 to 1.29 feet in 1969, 

the first year of Block II operations. By the end of 

1972, average frame length had dropped to slightly 

more than six inches.139

Such accommodations initially extracted a price in 

degraded resolution. Ascending photography required 

higher average altitudes, and the brevity of burst times 

was limited by requirements for stabilization after 

a roll maneuver (settling time), and flip time for the 

stereo mirror. Smeared photographs resulted if bursts 

were too brief and too frequent.140 To some degree, 

these disparities were increasingly offset by continued 

improvements in film. Indeed, film quality so outpaced 

the mechanical capabilities of the vehicle, principally 

the roll joint, that by the time Block III changes were 

planned (vehicles after 36), a principal addition was a 

new roll joint capable of supporting maneuvers during 

the mission.141
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PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

The quality of Gambit-3 photography was also 

degraded in early flights by high frequency banding 

and focus shifts, both which were, at first, poorly 

understood. Banding, troublesome for the first lot of 

Gambit-3 satellites, was eventually attributed to a 

lack of smoothness in the film drive. The problem was 

corrected by stiffening the drive shaft between the 

motor and the camera platen. Focus shift, had also 

been identified earlier, but not until mission 4332 was 

it demonstrated conclusively that focus shifts occurred 

because of temperature changes brought on by 

camera door settings. Setting primary camera doors at 

appropriate angles to provide shade helped to regulate 

the temperature gradients across the lens.142

Perhaps the most important Gambit-3 improvement 

during the Block II program was the introduction of 

new equipment. Old equipment had difficulties with 

the original optical system of Gambit-3. The first 

nine double-bucket vehicles had resolution slightly 

better than the last few single-bucket Gambits, and 

resolution actually degraded on occasion. Early Block 

II Gambit-3 vehicles used the same cameras as Block 

I systems, but various problems associated with Block 

II design changes caused resolution to worsen for 

several flights. Average resolution had only returned 

to the level achieved late in the Gambit-3 Block I 

flights on mission 32. The new equipment permitted 

resolution to surpass the previous best, achieved only 

three times in the entire Gambit program.143

With the launch of the first double-bucket Gambit-3 

on 23 August 1969, the mission life of that system 

doubled and the cost per target covered dropped 

significantly, though not proportionately. By December 

1972, fourteen of the double-bucket Gambit systems 

had been launched; of the 28 potential film recovery 

opportunities thus created, 24 reached fruition. On 

one occasion the recovery parachute failed to deploy 

(a mishap that also marked the first flight of Hexagon 

in mid-1971, when two of four recovery parachutes 

deployed improperly and one payload was lost). Later 

in 1970 a command system failure sent a recovery 

vehicle back into the atmosphere still attached to the 

orbital vehicle, and in May 1972 an Agena malfunction 

ended in failure to achieve orbit. Following somewhat 

after the introduction of the twin-capsule version of 

Gambit, the new equipment was incorporated and 

“best resolution” immediately went from a normal 

range to better. Target coverage increased. None of 

the high-resolution films routinely used by 1972, had 

existed in 1969; film improvement was a major factor 

in Gambit-3’s extended scope of coverage and vastly 

improved resolution.144

The first Block III Gambit-3, 4337, was launched 

on 21 December 1972. Recovery of the second 

SRV on 2.2 January made 4337 the longest Gambit 

mission yet flown (31 days). Best resolution was 

not quite matching the achievement of mission 34, 

but average resolution was as good as any earlier 

recorded. (Paragraph and Associated Endnote (145) Redacted.)

The next mission of Gambit-3, operation number 

4338, was plagued by malfunctions which inhibited 

operations to some extent, although they did not 

cause substantial failure. Problems began before 

launch with the discovery of an unreliable power 

supply for the camera’s electronic focusing apparatus. 

The launch date slipped by two days in consequence, 

to 16 May 1973.

Launch itself was uneventful, but problems 

with the Astro-Position Terrain Camera (APTC) 

developed almost immediately. The terrain camera 

portion produced no usable frames before the 

232nd revolution. Owing to extreme underexposure, 

intermittent failure of the entire APTC occurred after 

the 300th revolution. Finally, not all the photography 

which had been planned could be accomplished; only 

129 feet of film could be recovered because the takeup reel in the second recovery vehicle had overfilled.146 

(Paragraph and Associated Endnotes (147 and 148) Redacted.)

McLucas telephoned Dr. J. R. Schlessinger, then 

Director of Central Intelligence (and thus chairman of the 

Executive Committee for the National Reconnaissance 

Program), at 9:20 that morning. Unable to contact 

Schlessinger directly, McLucas left a message: unless 

advised to the contrary by 11:00, McLucas proposed 

to allow the recovery of the first capsule to proceed as 

Bradburn had directed—that afternoon. The cost, he 

advised, would be about 15 percent of programmed 

coverage of relatively low priority targets and inability 

to use some 1500 feet of film.

No objections appeared. At 4:01 (Eastern time) 

on the afternoon of 21 May, a C-130 circling east of 

Hawaii caught the capsule in its descent and headed 

for its base. Twelve hours later, after a nonstop flight 

from Hawaii, the spooled film reached Eastman’s 

Rochester, New York, laboratories. Despooling, 

developing, and locating and inspecting the critical 

frames required seven hours, during which the 

atmosphere shifted from hope to gloom to elation.

Although the first phase of mission 4338 lost 

nine days on orbit, the second was flown for seven 

days longer than had been planned. It might have 

been flown for an additional two days except for the 

expenditure of control gas in adjusting Gambit-3’s 

orbit. Ultimately, all but a small portion of the film flown 

on 4338 was exposed and all but 25 feet loaded into 
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Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

recovery vehicles. No high-priority targets and few 

low priority targets programmed for coverage before 

launch were missed. Advancing the launch date 

for the next Gambit-3 on schedule would offset any 

coverage gap.

The last mission of fiscal year 1973, mission 

4339, was begun on 26 June 1973. It proved to be 

a disappointing anticlimax to the high achievement 

of 4338. Some 12 seconds after the early morning 

launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, the main 

fuel tank of the Titan ruptured. The debris fell into the 

Pacific Ocean south of Vandenberg.

With the launch of the first double-bucket Gambit-3 

on 23 August 1969, the useful single-mission 

intelligence return virtually doubled. The single-bucket 

version had carried 5000 feet of film, the doublebucket Gambit-3 carried almost 10, 000 feet. The 

number of roll maneuvers the system could perform 

increased to 7000 from an initial 1250. Time on orbit 

increased from ten to fourteen days. Principally due to 

two operational changes brought about during the first 

2.2 flights of Gambit-3, the number of targets acquired 

was enormously increased. Those changes included 

early morning launch during summer months (to 

enable both ascending and descending photography), 

and the use of shorter burst times (i.e., less film per 

target).149

By 1973, the Gambit program had moved into its 

fourth generation—Gambit-1, Gambit-3, the doublebucket Gambit-3, and the “Block III” Gambit-3 (the 37th 

Gambit-3). That newest satellite was initially capable 

of several camera operations, each one accompanied 

by a roll maneuver. It could resolve images on a side 

of several nautical miles and from heights of several 

nautical miles—a feasible operational altitude.

The achievements of the Gambit program from 

its inception in 1963 to 1973 were varied, significant, 

and in many cases, dramatic. One that was often 

overlooked was cost. Although Gambit photography 

improved in resolution over those years, the 

photographs themselves became less expensive by 

several orders of magnitude. (Paragraph and Associated Endnote 

(150) Redacted.)
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PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

Endnotes

1. Rpt, SAFSP Quarterly Program Review, 10 July 1964; (hereafter 

cited as QPR, with date). 

2. Memo, E. M. Purcell, Chm, Reconnaissance Panel, to DCI, Jul 

63, subj: Panel for Future Satellite Reconnaissance Operations; memo, 

B. McMillan, DNRO, to Dir CIA, 11 Sep 63, subj: Implementation of 

Purcell Panel Recommendations, both in SAFSS files.

3. MFR, MGen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, 15 Aug 63, subj: Plans for UltraHigh Resolution Satellite Reconnaissance.

4. Rpt, “Preliminary Development Plan for Advanced Gambit 

System (Program G ),” prep by SAFSP, Vol I, 4 Feb 64.

5. Memo, MGen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP to Col W. G. King, Dir/Gambit 

Ofc, 13 Dec 63; subj: G3.

6. Msg, MGen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP to BGen J. L. Martin, Dir/NRO 

Staff, 27 Dec 63.

7. Memo, MGen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP to Col W. G. King, Dir/Gambit 

Ofc, 2 Jan 64, subj: G 3 , msg, BGen J. L. Martin, Dir/NRO Staff, to 

Greer, 3 Jan 64.

8. Ltr, MGen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, to Col W. G. King, Dir/ Gambit 

Ofc, 7 Jan 64, subj: Letter of Instructions; msg, B. McMillan, DNRO, 

to Greer, 8 Jan 64; ltr, Greer to King, 8 Jan 64, subj: Appointment of a 

Special Evaluation Board G 3 , in SP files.

9. Prelim Dev Plan for Advanced Gambit Sys (Program G3 ), Vol 

I, 4 Feb 64.

10. Ibid, pp 14-1, 14-2.

11. Msg, BGen J. L. Martin, Dir/NRO staff, to MGen R. E. Greer, 

Dir/SP, 10 Feb 64; msg, Greer to Dr. B. McMillan, DNRO, 24 Feb 64; 

ltr, EKC to Greer, 28 Feb 64, subj: Proposal for Recoverable Satellite 

Reconnaissance System G3.

12. QPR, 10 Jun 64.

13. Memo, MGen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, to Col W. G. King, Dir/Gambit 

Ofc, 28 May 64, subj: G3.

14. Msg, BGen J. L. Martin, Dir/NRO Staff, MGen R. E. Greer, Dir 

SP, 2 Jan 64; msg, Greer to Dr. B. McMillan, DNRO, 3 Jan 64; msg, 

Martin to Greer, 4 Jan 64, in SP files.

15. Ltr, MGen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, to LMSC, 5 Jun 64; ltr, Greer 

to GE, 5 Jun 64; memo Greer to Col W. G. King, et al, 9 Jun 68, 

subj:G 3 SCS Parallel Program; msg, BGen J. L. Martin to MGen R. 

E. Greer, 1 Jul 64.

16. QPR, 30 Sep 64.

17. QPR, 31 Dec 64; memo BGen W. G. King, Dir/SP, to Dr J. L. 

McLucas, DNRO, 28 Apr 70, subj: Analysis of Gambit (110) Project.

18. Msg, MGen R. E. Greer, Dir/SP, to Dr. B. McMillan, DNRO, 22 

Oct 64; msg, McMillan to Greer, 30 Dec 64.

19. Memo, B. McMillan, DNRO, to DepSecDef, 4 Jan 65, subj: 

Milestones for Gambit-3, in DNRO files.

20. Msg, 100, , BGen J. T. Stewart, Dir/NRO Staff, to MGen R. E. 

Greer, Dir/SP, 8 Jan 65; msg, SAFSP to EKC, 21 Jan 65.

21. QPR, 31 Mar 65.

22. Msg, BGen J. T. Stewart, Dir/NRO Staff, to AFSC, 4 Feb 65.

23. Msg, SAFSS to EKC, 4 Mar 65.

24. QPR, 31 Mar 65.

25. Msg, MGen R. E. Greer, Dir /SP, to Dr. B. McMillan, DNRO, 8 

Mar 65; msg, , BGen J. T. Stewart, Dir/NRO Staff to Greer, 9 Mar 65.

26. QPR, 31 Mar 65.

27. QPR, 30 Jun 65. There is some ambiguity in this source, 

however. In the overview section, compression of test schedules 

is cited as the reason the EKC slippage did not impact on the initial 

launch: in the technical status section, EKC is described as pacing the 

entire G-3 Program.

28. QPR, 30 Jun 65.

29. (Text Reference was Redacted) QPR, 30 Sep 65. 

30. QPR, 30 Jun 65.

31. (Text Reference was Redacted) Ibid. 

32. QPR, 30 Sep 65; 31 Dec 65.

33. QPR, 30 Sep 65.

34. QPR, 31 Dec 65.

35. See procurement resume in memo, King to McLucas, 28 Apr 70, 

attachment 4. The exception was the camera; 22 flight articles were 

purchased at one time.

36. QPR, 31 Dec 65.

37. Rpt, “A Review of the Gambit-3 Program,” Feb 68, in NRO 

staff files.

38. QPR, 31 Mar 66.

39. Rpt, “A Review of the Gambit-3 Program,” Feb 68.

40. (Text Reference and Endnote was Redacted)
89

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

41. Msgs, 29 Jul 66, 29 Jul 66, 2 Aug 66, all Sat Ops Center to Dir, 

SP. Note that “z” time is Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). When daylight 

savings time is in effect, there are seven hours difference between GMT 

and Pacific Time; when not, the difference is eight hours.

42. EKC, “Addendum I to the Final Flight Evaluation Report for Flight 

No. 1, Operation No. 3014, on 29 July-6 August 1966, 3 Oct 66.” These 

reports referred to hereafter as “EKC Evaluation Flight No____.”

43. QPR, 30 Sep 66; memo, King to McLucas, 28 Apr 70.

44. EKC Evaluation Flight No. 1, p 5.

45. Memo, Col C. T. Smith, Gambit Ofc, to BGen J. L. Martin, Dir/SP, 

24 Aug 67, subj: Analysis of Gambit Project.

46. Msg, Dr. A. H. Flax, DNRO to BGen J. L. Martin, Dir/SP, 10 

Aug 66.

47. Min, NRO ExCom Mtg, 17 Aug 66.

48. Memo, Dr. B. McMillan, DNRO to R. McNamara, SecDef, 11 Jan 

65, subj: Quick Reaction Surveillance System.

49. Min on NRP ExCom Mtg, 17 Aug 66.

50. Msg, 28 Sep 66; QPR, 30 Sep 66.

51. Msg, 28 Sep 66.

52. Memo, King to McLucas, 28 Apr 70, Atch 1, Tbl 1, and Atch 3.

53. Msg, Tower 1434, 31 Aug 66.

54. QPR, 31 Dec 66.

55. QPR, 30 Sep 66, 31 Dec 66; memo, BGen J. L. Martin, Dir/

SP, to Dr. A. H. Flax, DNRO, 2 Feb 67, subj: GAMBIT Cubed Mission 

Summary. Hereafter, these memoranda will be cited as “Mission 

Summary, Flight No.______.”

56. Msg, 14 Dec 66.

57. Msg, 23 Dec 66.

58. Memo, King to McLucas, 28 Apr 70, Atch 1, Tbl 1, and main 

report.

59. See Ch XIII.

60. Mission Summary No. 4, 25 Apr 67.

61. Msg, 24 Feb 67; msg, 5 Mar 67.

62. Msg, 25 Apr 67; msg, 23 Mar 67; Mission Summary No. 4, 23 

Mar 67.

63. Msg, 23 Mar 67; Mission Summary No. 4, 25 Apr 67; QPR, 31 

Mar 67; Addendum I to EKC Evaluation, Flight No. 4, 11 May 67. See 

also MFR, BGen R. A. Berg, Dir/NRO Staff, 23 Mar 67, subj: Telephone 

conversation with Gen Martin.

64. EKC Evaluation, Flight No. 4, 11 May 67, p 3-1.

65. QPR, 30 Jun 67. “The contractor appears to have significantly 

improved his component and manufacturing quality control,” was the 

project office evaluation.

66. QPR, 31 Mar 67.

67. MFR, Berg, 23 Mar 67.

68. Msg, 26 Apr 67; Mission Summary, No. 5; QPR, 30 Jun 67; 

msgs, 11 Apr 67 (Mission parameters), 26 Apr 67 (count), 26 Apr 67 

(launch and first failure indication), 26 Apr 67.

69. Mission Summary No. 6, 27 Jul 67; msg, SAFSS to STC, 1 Jun 

67; interview, 16 Apr 73.

70. QPR, 30 Jim 67; Mission Summary No. 6, 22 Jul 67.

71. Msg, 3 Jul 67.

72. These data were provided by of Special Projects. In addition, 

the Mission Summaries cited here are all from files maintained by the 

only ones extant in the case of early G-3 missions. In addition to the 

targets mentioned above, additional ones were photographed outside 

the programmed areas. See msg, 31 Jul 67.

73. Msg, 25 Jul 67.

74. Memo, Dr. A. H. Flax, DNRO, to DepSecDef, 6 Jul 67, subj: 

National Reconnaissance Program (NRP) Issues and Pending 

Decisions.

75. Ltr, Dr. A. H. Flax, ASAF/R&D, to C/S, USAF, 13 Oct 66, subj: 

SLV-3A Launch Vehicle Requirements, SAFSS files; msg, Dir/NRO 

staff to Dir SP, 24 Oct 66; msg, SP to SS, 16 Nov 66.

76. Rpt, “A Review of the Gambit-3 Program,” Feb 68, inSAFSS Proj 

Ofc files.

77. Min NRO ExCom Mtg, 23 Nov 66.

78. Min NRO ExCom Mtg, 17 Aug 66.

79. Memo, A. H. Flax, DNRO, to DepSecDef, 20 Sep 66, 

subj: The DNRO Recommended FY68 Budget for the National 

Reconnaissance Program.

80. Min, NRO ExCom Mtg, 23 Nov 66.

81. Memo, MGen J. T. Stewart, Dir/NRO staff, to DNRO, 30 Jun 67, 

no subj, NRO files.

82. Memo, James Reber, Sec NRP ExCom, to DNRO, 9 Dec 66, 

subj: Agenda; Min, NRP ExCom Mtg, 16 Dec 66.

83. Msgs, 20 Jan 67; 14 Feb 67.
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PERRY HISTORY - GAMBIT

84. Memo, BGen R. A. Berg, Dir/NRO staff, to MGen J. T. Stewart, 

Ofc, 23 Feb 67, subj: Rapid Recovery Capability from a Disaster for 

SLC-4W and SLC-4E.

85. QPR, 31 Mar, 30 Jun, 30 Sep 67.

86. BGen R. A. Berg, Dir/NRO Staff, to DNRO, 25 Jul 67, no subj.

87. Draft paper, Col. C. L. Battle, SAFSS, no date (1967), subj: High 

Resolution Photography; memo, BGen R. A. Berg, Dir/NRO staff, to 

Battle, 22 Aug 67, no subj.

88. Memo, BGen R. A. Berg, Dir / NRO Staff, to A. H. Flax, DNRO, 

1 Sep 67, no subj.

89. QPR, 30 Sep 67.

90. Memo, A. H. Flax, DNRO, to C. Vance, DepSecDef, 6 Jul 67, 

no subj.

91. Mission Summary No. 7, 15 Sep 67.

92. Msg, 26 Oct 67.

93. QPR, 31 Mar 67, and 31 Dec 67.

94. Rpt, Eastman Kodak Co, 30 Dec 69.

95. Memo, BGen R. A. Berg, Dir/NRO staff, to C. A. Sorrels, BoB, 

30 Dec 68, subj: Resolution Related Improvements, GAMBIT; Rpt, 

Program 110 Status Book, Section 6, “Hardware Description and 

Capabilities,” in Gambit office files.

96. Ltr. Chin, USIB, to Sec Def, 4 Apr 68, with atch, New Coverage 

Requirements, 27 Mar 68.

97. Memo, A. H. Flax, DNRO, to Chmn, USIB, 10 Apr 68 (draft), subj: 

Gambit Mission Schedule.

98. Launch Summary, “ in Gambit office files.

99. Mission Summary No. 7, 15 Sep 67; QPR, 30 Sep 67.

100. Msg, 16 Aug 67.

101. Mission Summary No. 7, 15 Sep 67.

102. “Summary of Series 4300 Operational Missions,” (referred to 

hereafter as “4300 Summary“), prep by SAFSP; Gambit Office “Program 

110 Status Book” (referred to hereafter as “110 Status Book”). There is 

an unresolved ambiguity affecting resolution data in the records of that 

mission. The Gambit Office number is used in the text, while Operations 

shows the result to be because there were so many ways of measuring 

resolution, and so many points at which provisional measurements 

were made, that confusion is not surprising.

103. Msgs, 19 Sep 67; msg, Wir 2 Oct 67; Mission Summary No. 8, 

25 Oct 67; msg, , 2. Oct 67.

104. Msg, 28 Aug 67; Mission Summary No. 8, 2.5 Oct 67; Analysis 

of Gambit (110) Project, Atch 3.

105. Mission Summary No. 9, 27 Nov 67; the original launch date 

had been 10 Oct. In turn it became 17 Oct, 20 Oct, and L4 Oct; see 

msgs 14 Sep 67; I- 4 Oct 67.

106. Msgs, 23 Oct 67; 25 Oct 67.

107. Msg, 6 Nov 67; memo, King to McLucas, 2.8 Apr 70, Atch 3; 

Addendum to EKC Evaluation, Flight No. 9, 2 Jan 68.

108. Min, of NRP ExCom Mtg, 17 Nov 67.

109. (Text Reference was Redacted) Memo, MGen J. M. Reynolds, 

USAF (Ret), Office of the Dir, CIA, to BGen R. A. Berg, Dir, NRO staff, 

15 Sep 67; subj: Utilization of the KH-7 and KH-8 Reconnaissance 

Systems for Mapping, Charting and Geodesy Requirements, in DNRO 

files.

110. Memo, BGen R. A. Berg, Dir/NRO Staff, to A. H. Flax, DNRO, 

26 Sep 67, no subj. (Flax’s marginal note in reply is quoted here); memo, 

Ch Photo Br NRO, tau to Flax, 26 Sep 67, subj: Satellite Coverage of 

26 Sep 67.

111. Memo, BGen R. A. Berg, Dir/NRO staff, to CIA, 14 Dec 67, 

subj: GAMBIT and GAMBIT-Cubed Film Expenditure Against Mapping 

and Charting Requirements.

112. Mission Summary No. 10, 22 Jan 68.

113. QPR, 31 Dec 67.

114. Mission Summary No. 11, 6 Mar 68; msg, 16 Jan 68.

115. Msg, 18 Jan 68.

116. Msg, 29 Jan 68; msg, Mission Summary No. 11, 6 Mar 68.

117. Memo, King to McLucas, 28 Apr 70.

118. Msg, 13 Mar 68.

119. Mission Summary No. 12, 1 May 68.

120. Program 110 Launch Summary, 30 Jan 68;

121. Memo, BGen R. A. Berg, Dir/NRO staff, to Dir, Join 

Reconnaissance Center, 8 Apr 68, subj: Satellite Reconnaissance 

Data.

122. Msg, 9 Apr 68.

123. Msg, 17 Apr 68; Mission Summary No. 13, 11 Jun 68.

124. Msg, 6 Jun 68.

125. Msg, 5 Jun 68; Mission Summary No. 14, 17 Jul 68.
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Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

126. Msg, 12 Jul 68. This message is also congratulatory, pointing 

out that the mission had exceeded in intelligence take, which had been 

a record to that date. Of particular note, however, was the exceptional 

ratio of read-out to programmed targets.

127. Msg, 17 Jul 68.

128. Msg, 14 Oct 68; Mission Summary No. 15, 7 Oct 68.

129. Ltr, BGen R. A. Berg, Dir/NRO Staff, to Dr. A. H. Flax,DNRO, 

14 Nov 68, no subj.

130. Ltr, Dr. A. H. Flax, DNRO, to VP and GenMgr, EKC, Apparatus 

Div, 31 Oct 68, no subj.

131. (Text Reference was Redacted) 4300 Mission Summary, 

memo, BGen R. A. Berg, Dir, NRO Staff, to Dir, CIA Reconnaissance 

Programs (draft), 12 Feb 69, subj: Special Report on Current Soviet 

Anti-Earth Satellite Capabilities.

132. (Text Reference was Redacted) Memo, BGen R. A. Berg, Dir/

NRO staff, to Analysis Branch (SAFSS), 3 Feb 69, subj: Mission 4319 

memo, Pa to Berg, same subject, 4 Feb 69; memo, Berg to Dr. A. H. 

Flax, DNRO, 7 Jan 69, subj:

133. Mission Summary Numbers 16 to 22; Program 110 Launch 

Summary, 4300 Summary, Analysis of Gambit (110) Project; Quarterly 

Program Reviews during the period Sep 68, Sep 69.

134. The discussion of the flight program which follows is taken 

principally from a tabular history of the program which is maintained 

in the Program 110 Status Book, a working document of the Gambit 

Office, SAFSP. Additional sources are cited individually where used.

135. SAFSP, “Analysis of Gambit Project Missions 23 through 36,” 

p 6, Gambit office files (hereafter cited as “Analysis of Gambit Block 

II”); MFR, LCol R. J. Kiefer, NRO staff, subj: Vehicle Atmospheric 

Survivability Test (VAST-Phase II), dtd 17 Sep 71, NRO staff files, 

SAFSS.

136. Memo, LCol F. L. Hofmann, NRO Staff to Dr. J. L. McLucas, 

DNRO, 25 Oct 72, subj: Recovery of Space Objects; msg, H. Cohen, 

SAFSP (SP-3) to McLucas, 25 Oct 72; interview, H. Cohen by R. Perry, 

21 Dec 72.

137. QPR, 30 Jun 72.

138. Analysis of Gambit, Block II, pp 3, 11.

139. Msg, BGen L. Allen, Dir, SAFSP, to Dr. J. McLucas, DNRO, 

7 Oct 70.

140. Analysis of Gambit (110) Program.

141. QPR, 30 Jun 70.

142. Analysis of Gambit, Block II, p 7.

143. Program 110 Launch Summary.

144. Memo, J. L. McLucas, DNRO, to SecDef, 18 Dec 72, subj: 

Taking Stock of the National Reconnaissance Program; memo, 

McLucas to SecDef, 21 Dec 72, subj: Taking Stock, both in SAFSS files.

145. (Text Reference was Redacted) Memo, BGen D. D. Bradburn, 

Dir/SP, to Dr. J. McLucas, DNRO, 20 Mar 73, subj: Gambit Mission 

Summary (4337).

146. Memo, BGen D. D. Bradburn, Dir/SP, to Dr. J. McLucas, DNRO, 

23 Jul 73, subj: Gambit Mission Summary (4338).

147. (Text Reference was Redacted) MFR, Actg Chief, Photo Sci 

Studies Br, NPIC, 28 Jun 73, subj: NPIC Support to Project Skylab, in 

SAFSS files.

148. (Text Reference was Redacted) MFR, LtCol F. L. Hofmann, 

NRO staff, 15 Jun 73, notes by M. Krueger, NASA, 17 May 73, in NRO 

files; msg SOC to Dir/SP (BGen D. D. Bradburn), 17 May 73; msg, 

Bradburn to J. L. McLucas, DNRO, 21 May 73; msg, SAFSP to L. C. 

Dirks, CIA, 18 May 73; MFR, 28 Jun 73; interviews, Hofmann by R. 

Perry, 20 Jun 73, H. C. Cohen, SAFSP, by Perry, 6 Jun 73.

149. Program 110 Status Book,

150. (Text Reference was Redacted) Rpt, Analysis of G(110), 28 Apr 

70, prep by Gambit Program Office; memo, Col. E. Sweeney, Dir/NRO 

staff, to Dr. J. L. McLucas, DNRO, 15 May 70, no subj, with unsigned 

memo by 14 May 70; memo, McLucas to DepSecDef, 1 Jul 70, subj: 

NRP Funds Available for Withdrawal; rpt, DNRO Report to NRP ExCom 

on Fiscal Year 1970 Status and Fiscal Year 1971 Program, 15 Jul 70.
Robert L. Perry

November 1973

A History of Satellite Reconnaissance 

The Perry Hexagon History

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 
96

PERRY HISTORY - HEXAGON

Hexagon Preface

This portion of A History of Satellite Reconnaissance 

covers the period of Hexagon gestation before April 

1966 as well as the development and early operational 

missions of that system. At the time this preface was 

written, in November 1973, the agreed terminal point 

was July 1973. Therefore nothing that relates to 

Hexagon mission 1206 (the sixth flight) or subsequent 

operations is detailed here, and plans for improvements 

are discussed only as they existed in July 1973. It 

seems reasonable to assume that at some later time 

the subsequent flight and developmental history of the 

system will be completed, but that must for the moment 

be treated as conjecture rather than promise.

The author’s research for this volume was supported 

by Robert A. Butler, at the time of writing a consultant 

with Technology Service Corporation, of Santa Monica, 

California. The history was prepared under terms of a 

contract between the Directorate of Special Projects 

(Program A) of the National Reconnaissance Office 

and Technology Service Corporation. 

As detailed in the following pages, Hexagon 

was the outgrowth of effort undertaken in two earlier 

pseudo-program enterprises known as Fulcrum 

and S-2. Both have been treated here in somewhat 

greater detail than might ordinarily be warranted, given 

that Hexagon, as eventually operated, was strikingly 

different from its apparent predecessors. But the 

problems that beset Hexagon development from 1966 

to 1971 were unmistakably derived, in considerable 

part, from the assumptions, premises, plans, schedules, 

and concepts that characterized those predecessor 

activities. As several principal officials of the sponsoring 

development agencies later conceded, Hexagon was 

prematurely advanced from engineering development 

to system development. Unwittingly, it became at once 

the most costly and the most lengthy of the several 

ambitious developments undertaken in the first 10 

years of the National Reconnaissance Program. In the 

end it also became one of the most successful, and 

that happy outcome largely offset whatever criticisms 

might have been leveled at its pre-operational phases.

Because Fulcrum, as a program concept, and the 

Hexagon camera system as a whole were entirely 

CIA-managed efforts, a full history of the program 

should not be prepared without first reviewing CIA 

records. As written, this account is academically 

defective in that the author had no access to CIA 

sources. Nevertheless, the principal aspects of 

the total program appear to have been thoroughly 

documented in “Program A” records (kept in the El 

Segundo. California, offices of the NRO’s Directorate 

of Special Projects) and in policy documents filed in 

the offices of the NRO staff (in suite 4C-1000 of the 

Pentagon). To the author, therefore, it seems unlikely 

that any subsequent expansion or enlargement of the 

manuscript will cause significant alteration of either 

the recorded sequence of events or the interpretations 

attached to them.

As with earlier program history contained in this 

set of volumes, there is no reasonable prospect of 

understanding the course of events in one system 

program without taking account of developments 

elsewhere in the National Reconnaissance Program. 

Thus from time to time it is essential to discuss events in 

such programs as Corona, Gambit, and Samos—and to 

consider in the broad the plans and policies adopted by 

the Director of the National Reconnaissance Program, 

the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the 

United States Intelligence Board, the Executive 

Committee for the National Reconnaissance Program, 

and the several other officials, boards, panels, and 

agencies, which influenced the establishment, growth, 

and conduct of Hexagon. Many of the events so 

mentioned have been described in greater detail in 

other volumes of this history: Corona, Samos, and 

Gambit, for instance, are the subjects of Volumes I, 

IIA, IIB, and IIIA of this set of reconnaissance program 

histories. Readers concerned about background and 

detail that involved those programs with Hexagon 

should consult those other volumes. 

In the interests of avoiding repetition, most 

interactions between Hexagon and other programs 

have only been summarized here. Such summaries 

have been included, even if occasionally repetitious of 

earlier volumes, in the expectation that some readers 

will want to have within one set of covers reasonably 

complete information on Hexagon alone. This volume 

has therefore been constructed so that it will stand 

alone, without recourse to other sources, although in 

some instances it will be necessary to consult those 

other sources in order to acquire a full understanding 

of incidents and events mentioned casually here.

The close interaction of Hexagon and Gambit is 

the principal justification for making histories of those 

programs Volume IIIA and IIIB of the complete set. 

Keeping them physically separate from one another has 

an additional advantage: should it later prove feasible 

and appropriate to do so, each volume can be extended 

to include the later histories of those programs without 

forcing revision of these chapters and pages.

Finally, it is essential to acknowledge the very 

considerable assistance of Colonel Frank S. Buzard 

in providing detail and background information and 

in clarifying both technical and management matters 

that for one reason or another were either casually 

explained or ignored in the voluminous documentation 

of the Hexagon program. The source notes that follow 

the text do not adequately credit the comments, 

additions of detail, and explanations of confusing events 

that he provided throughout the period of background 

research for this volume and—most particularly—upon 

reviewing the initial draft. This acknowledgement must 

serve as the author’s apology for that shortcoming of 

the manuscript.
98

PERRY HISTORY - HEXAGON

Introduction and Background

Hexagon stemmed immediately from a program 

known as Fulcrum, which began as an ltek Corporation 

study initially funded by the Central Intelligence 

Agency in January 1964. But Fulcrum was preceded 

by an extended period of technological rummaging 

about in the requirements for a new search system—a 

replacement for Corona and for the failed Samos 

E-6. The conduct of Fulcrum and the subsequent 

emergence of a Hexagon program were marked 

by two years of variously intense controversies 

about requirements, schedules, technology, and 

organizational prerogatives.

Corona, it will be recalled, had never been intended 

to serve as more than an interim search system, a 

temporary and presumably inferior predecessor to 

other and more capable systems to be developed 

during the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. But by 1961 

several of the planned successor reconnaissance 

satellite programs were in technical and financial 

difficulties while Corona was becoming an operationally 

effective and generally reliable search system with 

considerable potential for growth. How that potential 

should be exploited, and to what extent Corona might 

be utilized in the place of other and less attractive 

reconnaissance satellite systems, had become of 

considerable interest to the intelligence community 

by 1961; the composite issue of what system, if any, 

should eventually replace Corona, involved questions 

of institutional prerogatives, camera and spacevehicle technology, and national requirements for 

overflight photography that were not acted upon until 

1966 and were not fully resolved until 1970.

Once the dual-camera, stereo-capable CoronaMural system had been proved technically feasible, 

it was inevitable that a still better system based on 

Corona concepts and hardware would be proposed. 

In March 1962, the CIA endorsed an Itek proposal to 

develop what came to be called the M-2 search system 

(for Corona-Mural-2). It involved the substitution of a 

single 40-inch f3.5 lens and a dual-platen film system 

for the dual-camera Corona-Mural then in use. The 

estimated cost of design and manufacture seemed 

acceptable in that the system promised to return broadarea photography with resolution of about four or five 

feet for considerably less than would be expended in 

obtaining such performance from alternative systems 

then proposed or in development.

The M-2 proposal was formally presented for 

NRO review on 24 July 1962. Six months earlier, in 

December 1961, the E-5 surveillance system being 

developed under the aegis of the original Samos 

program had been severely cut back, and in July 1962 

a programming error had caused the last of the E-5 

recovery capsules to stabilize in a high orbit where it 

would remain until decay and reentry “somewhere east 

of Africa” more than a year later. Lanyard, a relatively 

inexpensive composite of E-5 camera technology and 

Corona vehicles, was making reasonable progress 

toward a scheduled first launch in December 1962, 

but like E-5 and Gambit, Lanyard was predominantly 

a surveillance system.* If Gambit were successful, 

there would be no need for Lanyard. 

Corona, E-5, and Lanyard were Itek camera 

developments. The need and real potential for 

Corona improvement was still uncertain. E-5 had 

been cancelled, and Lanyard was a dubious prospect. 

Corona, and to some extent Lanyard, represented the 

only satellite reconnaissance programs under CIA 

control. The various Samos efforts (by 1963 reduced 

solely to an E-6 effort with a record of five successive 

mission failures and a most unpromising future), 

Gambit, and several radiation-sensing satellites, 

were under the cognizance of the NRO’s Directorate 

of Special Projects, on the West Coast. If E-6 could 

be made to work, and Gambit performed as its 

developers anticipated, neither ltek nor the CIA could 

be sure of a continuing direct role in the development 

and operation of reconnaissance satellites. 

That circumstance was well appreciated by 

the Department of Defense, the CIA, and all of the 

participating contractors. Although interagency 

working level relationships had been outstandingly 

effective during the earlier days of Corona operations, 

they were less so by 1963; the CIA and DOD 

participants in Corona were by then engaged in 

organizational skirmishing that was within two years 

to become a source of major concern to cabinet-level 

DOD and CIA officials.

Operating-level difficulties were paralleled by 

institutional conflicts at the NRO level, where they 

would contribute to the 1963 resignation of the CIA’s 

designate as deputy director of the NRO (Herbert 

Scoville) and the later departures of an NRO director 

(Dr. Brockway McMillan), his CIA opposite (Dr. A. D. 

Wheelon), and several lesser officials. Although a 

variety of questions involving funding responsibilities, 

program management authority, and organizational 

prerogatives (as well as some personal differences) 

influenced events; a central theme in the whole period 

between 1962 and 1966 was the selection of a new 

search-mode reconnaissance satellite.

* E-5 and Lanyard were intended to be surveillance systems, and Gambit to be 

a technical intelligence system. But because only the latter became operationally 

available, it served as and often was characterized as a surveillance system, 

none other existing.
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Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

When the M-2 proposal first was formally 

presented to NRO program reviewers in 1962, the 

E-6 “successor system” originally intended to provide 

better search coverage capability than Corona was 

entering its yet-to-be-acknowledged final decline. E-6, 

carrying two 36-inch focal length cameras, could in 

several respects provide nominally better coverage 

than Corona, but by late 1962 a series of sequentially 

introduced Corona improvements had made the E-6 

relatively less attractive. Then the first two attempts 

to operate E-6 on orbit ended in recovery failure; 

perhaps as important, they had been accompanied 

by serious camera system malfunctions. In July and 

August 1962, the third and fourth E-6 missions also 

ended in failure. In October, E-6 seemed so little 

promising that Major General R. E. Greer (NRO 

Director of Special Projects) and Dr. J. V. Charyk 

(then NRO director) decided to suspend plans for 

the purchase of operationally configured systems. 

The fifth E-6 sank in the Pacific in November 1962, 

damaged by reentry heating. Although there were 

indications of acceptable on-orbit camera operation 

before the reentry sequence began, by that time the 

potential advantages of E-6 over Corona-Mural had all 

but disappeared. The older system was returning film 

images with resolutions on the order of 13 feet. Even if 

E-6 could do better—still not at all certain—and could 

provide broader coverage because of greater film 

capacity, the Corona system had reliability attractions 

that E-6 seemed to lack. Notwithstanding determined 

efforts to diagnose and correct the defects E-6 had 

displayed in five successive mission failures, there 

was no real assurance that the system could be made 

to work. In January 1963, therefore, Charyk cancelled 

the E-6 program.1

The still undetermined future of Corona M-2 

was clouded, during the late months of 1962, by 

the emergence of another Corona variant, the dualcapsule Corona-J system. Although not formally 

approved for development until October of that year, 

Corona-J had actually entered a phase of engineering 

design in July, with a first launch scheduled for May 

of 1963. (Because of problems mostly external to 

Corona-J, actual first launch did not occur until August 

1963.) Another objection to proceeding with M-2 was 

the proposed development of an “improved” and reengineered E-6 utilizing proven components in place 

of many troublesome elements of the original. Yet 

another was the lack of a stated requirement for a 

relatively high resolution search system, although the 

requirements that had warranted a 1961 start on E-6 

development still remained to be satisfied.

Notwithstanding such uncertainties, the 

Directorate of Special Projects awarded a study 

contract to Eastman Kodak in January 1963 that 

called for examination of the high-resolution, broadcoverage mission and means of performing it. Called 

Valley, the project quickly focused on a large-optics 

system to be placed in orbit by a Titan IIIC booster. The 

difficulties of providing wide area coverage at such 

resolutions finally caused termination of that part of 

the study effort. The promising consequences of flying 

very large optics led, however, to the development 

of Gambit-3. Moreover, research undertaken after 

cancellation of the original E-6 Samos program 

together with the search phase studies led toward 

Eastman’s S-2 designs of 1964.

In the Spring and early Summer of 1963, CIA 

reconnaissance specialists had proposed two 

alternatives to M-2 as candidates for the “next 

generation” reconnaissance satellite. One was 

a vehicle that could be flown covertly, that could 

be represented to be something other than a 

reconnaissance vehicle. Disagreements about the 

validity of and need for such a concept had been 

involved in Scoville’s resignation in June 1963.

The second concept was even more controversial: 

the agency suggested the need for a system that could 

perform wide-area coverage at very high resolutions, 

the proposed requirement emerging from a series of 

studies conducted by CIA system analysts in early 

1963. Such requirements uncertainties were passed 

on to the Purcell Panel, a special reconnaissance 

study group established by John A. McCone, Director 

of Central Intelligence, in the Spring of 1963.*

Perhaps surprisingly, the Purcell Panel concluded 

that “the natural incompatibility of wide coverage and 

high resolution within a given payload is becoming 

more acute ... as the art advances.” An effort to 

combine the two functions in a single system “with only 

a modest improvement in resolution... would not be a 

wise investment of resources,” the committee decided. 

Rather than to focus immediately on development of 

a new system, the NRO was urged to concentrate 

on improving the average quality of returns from 

Corona. The Purcell Panel made a number of specific 

suggestions for lines of research that promised to 

lead in that direction. But the panel suggested that a 

new system, though ultimately needed, was for the 

moment a lesser requirement. 

* The “Purcell Panel,” headed by E. M. Purcell, included A. F. Donovan, E. 

G. Fubini, R. L. Garwin, E. H. Land, D. P. Ling, A. C. Lundahl, J. G. Baker, 

and H. C. Yutzy—perhaps the most distinguished group of authorities on 

reconnaissance, space, and photography ever to be collected in one study 

group. Many of the “Purcell Panel” members subsequently became members 

of the “Land Panel,” which between 1965 and 1972 operated as the principal 

advisor for reconnaissance matters to the President’s Scientific Advisory 

Group and the President’s Science Advisor.
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PERRY HISTORY - HEXAGON

The Purcell Panel report had several interesting 

repercussions, some of them delayed rather than 

immediate. One that was to become important 

somewhat later involved interpretation of the 

qualifications in the “not a wise investment” judgment. 

The CIA ultimately argued that the panel had endorsed 

development of a combined search-surveillance 

system with more than a modest improvement in 

resolution. The NRO’s special projects directorate 

tended to emphasize the panel’s view that combining 

high resolution with wide coverage was an exercise 

in natural incompatibility. But in any event, the panel 

plainly had refused to accept the findings of an earlier 

study group organized by Greer, at Charyk’s direction, 

in April 1963. Concerned with the broad issue of what 

should be developed in the way of a new search 

system, the West Coast group (headed by Colonel 

Paul Heran) decided that an “improved” E-6 camera 

system coupled to an enlarged Corona-style recovery 

capsule should be developed in parallel with the 

proposed Itek M-2 system, the more promising of 

the two being produced once its superiority had been 

verified.

(It is worth recalling that by early 1963 the E-l, E-2, 

E-5 and E-6 had all been cancelled, Lanyard was in 

some early difficulty, while Gambit, still untested, was 

recovering from technical and financial troubles that in 

October 1962 had led to major program restructuring 

and the assignment of a new project head. The 

interest of the “Ad Hoc Group” in sponsoring parallel 

programs and in delaying a system choice until one or 

the other had demonstrated its capability for effective 

orbital operations becomes readily understandable in 

that light. So does the Purcell Panel conclusion: invest 

first in improved Corona quality; Corona works now. 

High-risk technology was in disfavor in the summer 

of 1963.) 

The new NRO director, Dr. Brockway McMillan, 

ordered cancellation of M-2 work at Itek in July 

1963.* Itek’s efforts were to be principally focused 

on improving Corona product quality. To that end, 

General Greer’s directorate made a number of 

specific suggestions for detail changes. CIA technical 

specialists in reconnaissance, now concentrated 

under Dr. Wheelon, concluded that the proposals were 

inadequate, so in October 1963 Wheelon called into 

being a new special study group—the Drell-Chapman 

Committee—”to explore the whole range of engineering 

and physical limitations on satellite photography...” 

The group, acting under a loose charter proposed by 

* Nonetheless, the elements of M-2 reappeared, in proposal form, at frequent 

intervals in later years, not finally disappearing until the availability of an 

operational Hexagon became reasonably certain in 1971. In subsequent 

incarnations the basic M-2 was given several transitory names, Corona J-4 

being the best known.

John McCone in conversation with Roswell Gilpatric 

(Deputy Secretary of Defense), was to be concerned 

not merely with Corona improvements, but also with 

standards and needs for new systems.

Predictably, McMillan had pronounced objections 

to such proceedings. He did not learn of the 

committee until after it had been established, he felt 

that its “charter” was far too broad (USIB and the 

NRO were nominally responsible for generating and 

validating requirements), and he preferred to spend 

NRO study funds elsewhere. McMillan also protested 

that Wheelon had no official role in the satellite 

reconnaissance program. 

McCone named Wheelon his “monitor for NRO 

matters” three days later, and Wheelon promptly 

declared his intention of “...getting the CIA into 

the satellite business in a contributing, not just a 

bureaucratic way.”

The most attractive prospect for new program 

creation still was in the search area. True, an ultrahigh-resolution camera was also on the general 

requirements list, but it seemed several years in the 

future and, in any case, in 1963-1964 the surveillance 

concept that seemed most promising was still 

embryonic but certain to be an Air Force undertaking. 

The Drell-Chapman Committee had been critical of 

progress in Corona improvement; in time, that criticism 

was to lead to the modifications incorporated in the 

Corona J-3 configuration, a remarkable improvement 

over the original Corona-Mural. But Corona J-3 still 

was only a proposal, and in any case there was 

agreement that no Corona redesign with less scope 

than the M-2 undertaking could substantially improve 

Coronals resolution capability. Camera specialists 

then believed that if resolution much better than 

7 or 8 feet for about half of the returned film were 

wanted, refinement of the original Corona would not 

be sufficient.**

Two events followed in close order. On 18 

November 1963, the NRO’s West Coast directorate 

contracted with Itek for general feasibility studies of a 

new broad-area search system and for the preliminary 

parametric design of such a system. That action was 

the somewhat delayed response to the Purcell Panel 

findings of June 1963. It also represented, indirectly, a 

continuation of search system studies undertaken on 

the West Coast following the cancellation of Samos 

E-6, earlier that year. Not quite two months later the 

** Consistent, rather than occasional, resolution of 7 to 10 feet was the 

Corona goal defined by the Purcell and Drell-Chapman recommendations 

and ultimately incorporated in the Corona J-3 program. The assumption that 

Corona could not generate photography with 4- to 5-foot resolutions, however 

much the system was modified, later proved to be incorrect. Corona J-3 

ultimately provided “best resolution” of 4.5 feet.
101

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

recommended strengthening McMillan’s hand during a 

May 1964 meeting, but the draft Presidential directive 

sent forward in consequence of that meeting was 

never signed. (The 1964 election played some part in 

delaying a resolution of the several controversies that 

afflicted the NRO, the search system requirement, and 

the Corona program from May through November.)

The net effect was that by January 1964 the 

CIA had undertaken to sponsor studies with Itek, 

and subsequently with Philco Corporation and other 

subsystem specialists, leading toward a broad-area 

search system called Fulcrum and the NRO’s Special 

Projects Directorate (Program A) had begun to support 

a different set of studies oriented toward a different 

kind of search system, later called S-2. A secondary 

consequence was that the authority of the Director, 

NRO, either to control or to monitor the program of the 

CIA-sponsored effort had been successfully denied. 

McMillan certainly knew of the CIA’s internal studies 

and of their general import. It does not appear that he 

learned of the existence of the funded studies by Itek 

and Philco until the spring of 1964, five months after 

their inception.3

Evolution of a System

As described by Itek in June 1964, Fulcrum was 

to be a Titan II boosted system built around a pair of 

rotating 60-inch focal length cameras and a transport 

system for seven-inch film, the general arrangement 

somewhat resembling what later became Corona J-3. 

The scale was very different, of course (Corona carried 

36-inch focal length lenses and used 70-millimeter 

film), but resolution was intended to range from two 

feet to four feet across a ground swath 360 miles wide. 

Carrying about 65,000 linear feet of film, the system 

would nominally be able to photograph more than 10 

million square miles of the Earth on each mission. 

Although optics, camera mechanism, film transport, 

boost, and recovery subsystems were all “new,” the 

film transport and recovery systems (one extremely 

large capsule) appeared to be the high risk items.**

** To that time the only film-carrying reentry bodies to be recovered by the 

United States were variants on the original Corona capsule of 1958 vintage. 

Both E-5 and E-6 had used “large” capsules intended for recovery from the sea 

rather than aircatch. E-5 had faults other than in its recovery system, but that 

too may have been faulty—no capsules were ever recovered for examination. 

E-6 had been cancelled solely on the evidence of five recovery failures, 

and two were clearly the consequence of poor capsule design. “Mercury 

and Gemini, NASA’s man-carrying orbital systems, provided evidence that 

bigness was not an impossible constraint; the Mercury capsule was not unlike 

that tested with the E-5, for instance. But all concerned acknowledged that 

single “big” recovery bodies were difficult to develop, and recovery was the 

crucial element in any reconnaissance system of the 1960’s.

CIA separately authorized Itek to study a remarkably 

similar set of problems, but specified a somewhat 

more ambitious design goal based on the findings of 

in-house CIA analyses. The CIA action was a delayed 

response to the Drell-Chapman Committee findings of 

late 1963, but it indirectly represented a continuation 

of the search system research approach embodied in 

the M-2 studies undertaken by the CIA in an effort to 

find a feasible improvement mode for Corona-Mural. 

The “West Coast Itek Study” led to S-2; the CIAfunded Itek study was the genesis of Fulcrum.2

The CIA’s intentions were generally known to 

the NRO staff in December 1963, somewhat before 

Itek formally began work. The probability that Greer’s 

NRO group and Wheelon’s CIA group would emerge 

from their respective study programs with competing 

proposals for a new search system caused some 

concern among program monitors high in Department 

of Defense ranks. (The NRO charter then in effect 

included no provision for anything resembling the 

NRP Executive Committee of later years; the Director 

of the NRO was responsible directly to the Secretary 

of Defense, CIA participation being assured by the 

assignment of individuals to various NRO posts—

including that of deputy director.) Earlier in 1963, Dr. 

Eugene G. Fubini, then serving as a senior technical 

advisor to the Deputy Secretary of Defense, had 

begun acting as a defense department spokesman in 

NRO matters. (In the Charyk era no such intermediary 

function had existed, Charyk having such an effective 

relationship with Secretary Robert S. McNamara that 

it was not needed.) Fubini had by late 1963 assumed 

the role of a mediator in the increasingly acrimonious 

contacts between McMillan and Wheelon.* In 

December, speaking with the implied authority of 

Cyrus Vance, newly appointed Deputy Secretary of 

Defense, Fubini proposed to McCone that the CIA 

assign total Corona responsibility to the NRO in return 

for a free hand in the development of a new search 

system. McMillan apparently was unaware of the offer 

until McCone indirectly passed it along. He rejected 

the compromise out of hand, insisting that the NRO 

had to have full authority to control Corona and that a 

new search system could not be arbitrarily assigned to 

any organization. The disagreement thus expressed 

persisted into 1965. McMillan’s efforts to resolve 

the issue by obtaining directive support either from 

McNamara or from the White House were unavailing. 

The President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board 

* The principal source of CIA-NRO contention in 1963 was Corona 

management responsibility and authority. McMillan wanted to concentrate all 

Corona authority under a jointly staffed West Coast project office reporting to 

the Director, Program A (then Greer, later Brigadier General John L. Martin, 

Jr.). Wheelon, firmly supported by CIA Director John A. McCone, argued that 

CIA control of Corona should be enlarged rather than curtailed. The issue is 

discussed in greater detail in the first volume of this history.
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PERRY HISTORY - HEXAGON

S-2, as first conceived, was in some respects a 

simpler system than Fulcrum. Intended to have both 

panoramic and pointing capability, it would have 

better resolution in a pointing mode (three feet to four 

feet) than in a search mode (five to eight feet), and 

would cover a swath about 150 miles wide during 

search operations. The “early S-2” embodied new 

optics and camera mechanism, but would rely on the 

Atlas-Agena booster combination and an enlarged 

Gambit-style recovery vehicle. Interestingly, the first 

“engineering models” undertaken in the two programs 

were the optics of the S-2 and the film transport of the 

Fulcrum. Itek remained the principal Fulcrum system 

contractor; Greer’s organization brought Kodak and 

Fairchild into the camera study program in September 

1964 and subsequently funded space vehicle studies 

by both Lockheed and General Electric. Perkin-Elmer 

declined an invitation to bid for participation in the 

embryonic S-2 camera studies, but undertook some 

work in support of Fulcrum. While such arrangements 

were being made, other events occurred that were to 

have a considerable influence on later developments. 

For one, Wheelon and McCone separately proposed 

to McMillan and Vance respectively that CIA 

responsibility for both development and operation 

of the new search system—Fulcrum—be formally 

confirmed. In the meantime, the CIA provided scant 

data on the status of or plans for Fulcrum and forbade 

Fulcrum contractors to release information about 

their progress to any agency other than the CIA. CIA 

proposed to establish an internal project office initially 

composed of five people with Space Technology 

Laboratories providing technical support and serving 

as system integrating contractor; the principal 

companies concerned with Fulcrum in July 1964 were 

Itek, General Electric and AVCO (reentry vehicle), 

Lockheed (space vehicle), and STL. 

That procedure and particularly the withholding 

of Fulcrum information from McMillan’s staff, was a 

particular irritant to the NRO. It was not, however, 

unprecedented. In 1963, while questions about the 

desirability of starting Corona M-2 development were 

being considered. Greer and Charyk had attempted 

and very nearly carried off a similar coup. It, too, 

involved a search system intended to succeed or 

supplant Corona. When E-6 was cancelled on 31 

January 1963, they very circumspectly let contracts 

covering the study and initial development phases 

of Spartan, a repackaged, largely re-engineered E-6 

camera in combination with a Corona reentry capsule 

and Thor-Agena launch-orbit vehicles. Scoville, 

directing CIA reconnaissance activities at that time, 

had harshly questioned both the technical feasibility of 

a “re-engineered E-6” and the motives that underlay 

its proposal. Had Spartan proceeded to successful 

operation, it would have provided better capability 

than Corona. Eastman Kodak was convinced that 

Spartan had great growth potential—which, if true, 

would have negated any need for CIA development 

of a new search system. In the face of Scoville’s 

opposition, Charyk in mid-February 1963 formally 

disapproved Spartan—but in fact both the study and 

the procurement of long-lead-time items needed for 

on-orbit tests of the proposed system continued under 

the cover of Program A study contracts with Eastman 

Kodak and General Electric. The name changed. It 

was listed as SP-AS-63 (Special Projects Advanced 

Study—1963), but in all other important respects it 

was Spartan.

Whether Scoville and the CIA ever learned 

the details of the effort remains uncertain. Special 

precautions were taken to prevent the untimely 

disclosure of “SP-AS-63” activity. All project work on 

the West Coast was conducted in a suite of offices 

provided by Eastman Kodak, located about a mile 

from the Program A complex. Probably no more than 

a dozen people of the 150 or so assigned to the West 

Coast establishment were aware of the activity. Even 

fewer were briefed in the Pentagon. No CIA people 

visited Eastman Kodak or that part of General Electric 

concerned with the “study.”

The work continued until July 1963. By that time 

the contractors had completed the preliminary design 

of a system that had many of the attributes of the later 

S-2: wide area coverage at about five-foot resolution, 

dual recovery capsules, relatively simple film transport 

mechanism, and a variety of innovations in optics that 

promised consistently good returns. The replacement 

of Charyk by McMillan in the Spring of 1963 and the 

difficulty of obtaining funds to proceed from advanced 

study to system fabrication were, in combination, 

sufficient to cause abandonment of the main program 

in July. Eastman’s private studies of improved search 

systems continued and certainly influenced later 

Eastman proposals for S-2.4 In the event, little of the 

“SP-AS-63” effort was communicated to the CIA. The 

Agency’s subsequent denial of Fulcrum information 

to McMillan and the NRO staff may not have been 

entirely motivated by the Charyk-Greer ploy of 1963, 

but there was implied justification for Wheelon’s 

actions in the earlier Charyk-Greer maneuver. By the 

end of June 1964, when McMillan first was exposed 

to a full briefing on Fulcrum, the CIA concluded that 

preliminary studies had been sufficiently exhaustive 

to confirm the feasibility of the system. The request 

that Vance confirm the CIA’s responsibility for full 

development of Fulcrum had been submitted. There 

were strong indications that the United States 

Intelligence Board (USIB) would shortly issue an 

updated search system requirement to replace those 
103

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

dating from 1960. On 9 July, therefore, Dr. Wheelon 

proposed that the NRO provide the bulk of the funds 

needed to support a Fulcrum development effort during 

fiscal year 1965. Of that total, only a portion was to be 

devoted to the camera system; the remainder was to 

go to spacecraft, booster, and system support work 

(including preliminary investments in the construction 

of a launch facility for Titan III-boosted satellites).

The timing was bad. Late in June, Dr. Fubini had 

been exposed to details of the Fulcrum proposal and 

had concluded that although it had promise it also had 

problems, particularly in the highly complex transport 

system required to deliver large quantities of film to 

the platens at exceedingly rapid rates. At Fubini’s 

urging, Vance on 8 July had ruled that although the 

CIA could perform whatever tests were needed to 

determine Fulcrum feasibility, the NRO’s Directorate of 

Special Projects should conduct comparative studies 

of alternative search systems. (In effect, Vance was 

directing continuance of both Fulcrum and S-2 work 

at the study and feasibility determination level, but his 

letter did not reach the CIA until Wheelon’s request 

for full system funding had gone to McMillan.) By 

January 1965, Vance suggested, enough should have 

been learned about the various systems to support 

a rational decision on the desirability of starting full 

system development and, if appropriate, on the choice 

of a system to be developed. Given that decision, 

Fulcrum funding was extended, roughly 20 percent of 

the sum Wheelon had requested.5 

The various studies of 1963-1964 and the 

generous investment in pre-design research to that 

time encouraged the July 1964 statement of a new 

and formal search system requirement. Issued under 

the imprimatur of the United States Intelligence 

Board on 29 July, it called for a single-capability 

search-surveillance system with the area coverage 

equivalence of Corona at resolutions equal to those 

provided by Gambit. Another system was wanted that 

would permit interpretation of details at the resolution 

level with Gambit-scope swath widths.6 Gambit-3 

would satisfy the second of those requirements; 

Fulcrum, as then proposed, came closer to the terms 

of the first requirement than did the S-2 concept of mid1964. The requirement was not obviously the product 

of any single faction in the intelligence community, nor 

was the coincident statement of a Fulcrum-oriented 

requirement and a Gambit-3 requirement merely an 

expression of an effort to provide continuing work 

for both the CIA and the NRO’s Special Projects 

directorate. The USIB had taken account of such as 

the Purcell, Drell-Chapman, and Land Panel studies, 

the comparison of M-2 and “improved E-6” potential, 

and several lesser analyses. And even though 

Fulcrum seemed nearer the new requirement than 

S-2, neither of the proposed systems represented a 

fully satisfactory solution.

While the CIA-managed effort continued, chiefly 

under contract to Itek but also with Philco and PerkinElmer, the West Coast group was devoting equivalent 

attention to camera system studies being prepared 

by Itek, Eastman Kodak, and Fairchild. General 

Electric and Lockheed were performing space vehicle 

and reentry system research for both CIA and NRO 

sponsors. It seemed inevitable that some version of 

the solid-rocket augmented Titan III would serve as the 

boost vehicle, whatever the final system configuration. 

Of the several contractors involved in some aspect of 

camera system design, Eastman seemed to the S-2 

program office to have the most promising concept. 

The CIA clearly favored Itek’s approach (which 

incorporated an optical bar system sponsored by the 

CIA’s in-house lens specialists).

The relatively even tenor of development in parallel 

was rudely disturbed in February 1965; Itek abruptly 

renounced any intention of continuing Fulcrum work, 

advising both the CIA and the NRO that the company 

would forego any further development work on 

observation satellites rather than pursue the Fulcrum 

task as then defined. The decision was motivated 

by Itek’s continuing disagreements with the CIA’s 

technical monitors and the Agency’s insistence that 

Itek defer to Agency specialists in technical matters. 

Wheelon concluded that Itek’s action had been 

prompted, or at least supported, by the NRO staff and 

that Itek had in effect been promised the S-2 contract 

in return for withdrawing from CIA-supported Fulcrum 

development. In fact, the NRO staff and McMillan 

were quite as surprised by Itek’s action as were CIA 

officials; McMillan conscientiously advised ltek that 

the NRO evaluations of S-2 progress to that time 

showed the Eastman design to be the most attractive. 

McMillan had scant knowledge of Fulcrum’s status 

at the time Itek withdrew, having received no written 

reports on the program since August 1964 and only 

sketchy verbal summaries. Nevertheless, because S-2 

seemed to be proceeding nicely and the withdrawal 

of the chief Fulcrum design contractor could not but 

confuse and delay Fulcrum progress, it seemed likely 

that in any near-term comparison of system proposals 

leading to a system selection, the Eastman S-2 

design would win easily.7 The Itek affair had extensive 

and unexpected consequences. Perhaps most 

important, it exacerbated the already disharmonious 

relationships between the CIA and the NRO and 

sharpened the existing antagonism between McMillan 

and Wheelon. Perkin-Elmer, rather than Itek, became 

the principal Fulcrum camera system contractor. And, 

as McMillan held predicted, when the S-2 project 
104

PERRY HISTORY - HEXAGON

office was obliged to designate a preferred agent for 

S-2 development, in May 1965, Eastman got the nod. 

But in the end expectations that the development of a 

new search system would proceed from exploratory 

development status to system development in 1965 

proved optimistic. Although McMillan approved a plan 

on S-2 development in fiscal year 1966, in the event 

expenditures were limited to a rate somewhat below 

a year pending a decision on the start of the system 

selection process. Fulcrum funding was concurrently 

reduced to about the same level. For practical 

purposes, the effect of the Itek affair had been to 

delay any decision on starting development of a new 

search and surveillance system. Approval of that 

start required the concerted support of the Director 

of Central Intelligence and the Deputy Secretary 

of Defense. On 24 June 1965, McMillan advised 

Brigadier General John L. Martin, Greer’s successor as 

Director of Special Projects (Program A) for the NRO 

that no agreement on a system approval process had 

emerged from DOD-CIA meetings and that none could 

be immediately expected.8 Vice Admiral W. F. Raborn, 

who had succeeded McCone as CIA director in April, 

proposed to Vance in June that no action be taken on 

the selection of a new search system until the basic 

issue of NRO reorganization had been resolved. The 

NRO charter of 1963 was by mid-1965 being honored 

chiefly in the breach. Extensive readjustments of 

responsibility and authority in program management” 

funding control, operation of on-orbit satellites, and 

the program decision process had been proposed in 

the interim. But however sweeping the reorganization, 

it was unlikely to result in a working relationship that 

could accommodate both Wheelon and McMillan. As 

early as February 1965, a week before the Itek affair, 

the deputy NRO director had resigned in frustration; a 

senior CIA employee assigned to the NRO, he found 

himself so thoroughly distrusted by both staffs that he 

was almost totally ineffective. The S-2 and Fulcrum 

project groups had little direct interaction, but they 

were bitter competitors for funds and held divergent 

views on how the search system requirement should 

be satisfied.

Raborn’s intransigence on the search system 

issue, the definition of a new NRO charter without 

inputs from the NRO, and the virtual collapse of 

communications between McMillan and Wheelon, the 

principal managers of the National Reconnaissance 

Program, had their inevitable effect early in July. 

McMillan privately advised the NRO staff that he 

planned to resign his post and return to private 

industry. His decision apparently was precipitated 

by the failure of a final effort to force a decision to 

develop the Eastman S-2 system, keeping either 

Itek or Perkin-Elmer as a supporting contractor. 

Raborn balked, and was backed by the Land Panel’s 

judgment* that as yet insufficient data were available 

to support the selection of a single search system for 

intensive development.9

Although McMillian did not officially depart until 30 

September, his chosen successor, Dr. Alexander H. 

Flax, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (Research 

and Development), began to act as NRO director 

in July, formally exercising authority in McMillan’s 

absence and informally monitoring NRO affairs 

throughout the transition period.** On 11 August 

1965, the NRO charter of 1963 was supplanted 

by a new document that significantly altered earlier 

arrangements. The chief innovation was the creation 

of a three-member Executive Committee for the 

National Reconnaissance Program, composed of the 

Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Director of Central 

Intelligence, and the President’s Science Advisor. 

The NRO director was to be a non-voting member. 

The committee acquired much of the executive 

authority previously assigned to (though not always 

exercised by) the NRO Director, including program 

and budget approval. If the NRO Director had until 

then possessed the authority to select and fund a new 

search and surveillance satellite system program, 

that was no longer the case. The NRP Executive 

Committee would thereafter make such decisions; the 

NRO director would oversee their execution.10

The program proposal that went to the Land Panel 

late in July from McMillan was paralleled by a program 

summary prepared by the Fulcrum project group. 

After having weighed the evidence, the Land Panel 

advised Dr. Hornig that “there is no technical basis 

for selecting for development at this time one system 

over the other, nor does the Panel see any urgency for 

making a selection now rather than, say, three months 

from now.” Hornig advised Vance, therefore, that work 

on all three systems (ltek and Eastman on S-2, PerkinElmer on Fulcrum) should be continued at about the 

same rate for at least three additional months “in order 

to better define the advantages and disadvantages 

of each system.” Thus, Hornig hoped, it might be 

* The Land Panel, headed by Dr. Edwin Land, was created at the direction of 

the Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, Dr. Donald 

F. Hornig, early in July 1965. Its charter extended to “an overview of the NRP,” 

but initially it was concerned with the technology of, requirements for and 

status of search and search-surveillance systems in development or proposed 

for development. The group first met on 21 July 1965 and continued to meet 

at irregular intervals until President Nixon abolished the office of science 

advisor in early 1973. The panel provided specialized technical support to 

Hornig and his successors, operating in some respects as a counterpart (or 

counterweight) to the NRO and CIA technical staffs that supported the DOD 

and CIA members of the NRP Executive Committee. Generally, however, 

the Land Panel evaluated proposals, studies, and programs rather than 

generating them, as was the case for the CIA and NRO special staff groups.

** Among other personnel changes in the satellite reconnaissance program in 

the late months of 1965 were Major General Robert E. Greer’s retirement, in 

July, and Dr. Albert D. Wheelon’s resignation informally announced in October.
105

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

possible to substantiate the performance claims for 

the various proposals.11 Vance subsequently ruled 

that in the interim all effort was to be concentrated on 

the camera systems, which meant cessation of work 

on satellite vehicles, boosters, reentry capsules, and 

associated subsystems. That was decidedly awkward 

for both Fulcrum and S-2 managers, because in the 

early months of 1965 quite extensive preparations for 

full-scale development had included letting contracts 

of one sort or another with Lockheed, General 

Electric, and Martin. For the S-2, a Lockheed-General 

Electric competition was pending, while for Fulcrum a 

GE orbital vehicle and an AVCO reentry vehicle had 

tentatively been selected.12

The NRO-preferred configuration of S-2 in 

early August provided for a four-bucket recovery 

system (with potential growth to a six-bucket design) 

associated with a camera capable of providing threefoot resolution (at nadir) from an altitude of 120 

miles. The payload would satisfy both search and 

surveillance coverage requirements if launched at a 

rate of six to nine systems per year. Carrying 1000 

pounds of primary film (and 63 pounds of film for a 

stellar-indexing camera), S-2 would have a length 

of 50 feet, a diameter of 7.5 feet, and an on-orbit 

weight of 12,000 pounds for a 25-day mission. The 

incorporation of a supplemental crisis reconnaissance 

capability, as suggested by the Land Panel and the 

United States Intelligence Board, permitted complete 

access to any area of the earth between 20o North and 

20o South latitude every five days.13

Compliance with Vance’s instructions meant 

stopping General Electric’s work on satellite control 

and reentry vehicles and confining Eastman’s level of 

effort to that scheduled for August, actions that were 

taken early in September. The difficulties thus created 

were compounded by a special problem involving 

Eastman Kodak. That concern was then producing 

Gambit-l payloads, developing and building initial 

lots of Gambit-3 payloads, building a Lunar Survey 

payload for NASA under NRO cognizance,* and 

developing the S-2 payload. Although the decision 

had not yet been announced in mid-August; there 

was no practical way for Eastman to proceed with 

both Gambits, the Lunar Survey payload, and the S-2. 

Something had to give. McMillan’s solution was to 

propose transfer of the Eastman S-2 design to Itek, 

with Itek also continuing development of the second 

* The NRO was involved in the Lunar Survey program because the readout 

camera being carried was a modest improvement of the Samos E-1 camera 

of 1960. Use of the E-1 camera and readout system was an economical 

means of performing the survey mission, the alternative being to develop a 

comparable camera system using NASA funds. In order to keep the nature 

and capability of earlier reconnaissance camera development secret, 

however, it was necessary to provide the E-1 through clandestine channels—

which meant NRO control of the production process.

preference S-2 camera already in process. Although 

complex, the transfer was not unprecedented, Itek’s 

original Fulcrum camera design having been shifted 

to Perkin-Elmer in the aftermath of the February 1965 

dispute between Itek and the CIA. 

McMillan’s proposal went to Secretary of Defense 

Robert S. McNamara on 30 August; on 22 September 

McNamara authorized termination of the Eastman S-2 

activity and its transfer to Itek for design completion. 

Finally, there emerged a clear understanding that three 

camera designs were to be competitively evaluated 

for selection as the new search surveillance system: 

the Perkin-Elmer (Fulcrum) proposal, the Eastman 

S-2 design (generally known thereafter as the Itek/ 

EK proposal), and the backup Itek design (usually 

identified as the “pancake” proposal, a term generally 

descriptive of the optical mirror layout preferred by 

ltek).14

Between February 1965, when the Itek-CIA 

disagreement suddenly flared, and October of that 

year, when Flax officially succeeded McMillan as 

Director of the National Reconnaissance Office, 

virtually every aspect of the search-surveillance 

system program had radically changed. The Land 

Panel and the NRP Executive Committee had come 

into being; both were to be dominant influences in the 

eventual selection of a design and a system contractor. 

McCone, McMillan, Wheelon, Greer, and several 

lesser figures in the S-2 and Fulcrum programs had 

left government service or moved to assignments 

remote from satellite reconnaissance. Perkin-Elmer 

had become the principal Fulcrum system developer, 

replacing ltek (and working more intently on the 

inherited Itek-Fulcrum design than on the original 

Perkin-Elmer design for Fulcrum), while Itek had 

acquired custody of the NRO-preferred S-2 system 

originated by Eastman (and was proceeding also with 

the Itek-pancake design that represented a backup for 

the favored Eastman S-2 proposal). Work on satellite 

and recovery vehicles, boosters, and supporting 

subsystems had largely ceased in September after 

having earlier advanced to the preliminary selection of 

design and development contractors.

On 6 October 1965, the Executive Committee 

for the National Reconnaissance Program held its 

initial meeting. The first order of business was the 

search-surveillance system. Colonel David L. Carter, 

for the NRO, and L. C. Dirks, for the CIA, briefed 

the committee on the three design proposals then 

being funded. (Until September there had been four, 

Perkin-Elmer had been working both on the design 

transferred from Itek and an alternative Perkin-Elmer 

design dating from the time when that company was 

the CIA backup for the Itek-Fulcrum design.) Although 
106

PERRY HISTORY - HEXAGON

both suggested that proposals would be ready for 

evaluation by December 1965, there were indications 

that no competition could begin until sometime early 

in the following year.

Dr. Flax, charged by McNamara and Vance with 

reconciling the differences among the principals in the 

search-surveillance system controversy, presented to 

the Committee a comprehensive plan for proceeding 

toward system selection in an orderly fashion, one that 

would overcome the earlier tendency to use Fulcrum 

and S-2 as devices in an institutional squabble. Flax 

had early concluded that the requirement approved 

by the USIB the preceding year was inappropriate 

in that it specified technical capability rather than an 

intelligence objective. He proposed, therefore, to create 

a technical task group composed of representatives 

from the CIA (Fulcrum) and Special Projects (S-2) 

elements of the NRO. The task group, he suggested, 

would “prepare a statement of system operational 

requirement... recommend the selection of a system 

configuration... formulate plans for contractor 

selection, and ... recommend a program plan including 

a schedule.” Flax also advised the Committee that he 

intended to establish a separate task group to “define 

the project management structure”—which meant, 

in practical terms, to decide what roles the CIA and 

Special Projects groups would play in the eventual 

development of the chosen system.

Flax had prepared his ground carefully. None of the 

Committee principals was surprised by the carefully 

constructed proposal for proceeding. All had seen 

the material beforehand. Without much discussion, 

the Executive Committee endorsed the Flax plan and 

for the first time in two years the search-surveillance 

program had reasonable coherence.15

During its second meeting, in mid-November, the 

Executive Committee turned its chief attention to the 

many other problems of national reconnaissance. The 

search system requirement received brief but pointed 

attention, the NRO’s Comptroller reported somewhat 

ominously that the Bureau of the Budget might well 

take “an adverse view” of the development proposal 

on grounds of cost. Cyrus Vance, the chairman, 

asked for a formal statement of the Bureau’s 

views—particularly relevant because, owing to the 

various delays in the search system program, it now 

appeared that Corona operations would have to be 

extended for at least a year past the point at which 

the new system had been earlier scheduled to enter 

service. One of the interactive complications was the 

necessity of diverting to the procurement of additional 

Corona systems some of the funds earlier planned for 

allocation to search system development. 16

In the meantime, Flax had issued instructions 

for the deliberative evaluation of search-surveillance 

system proposals. He named the chief of the NRO 

staff, Brigadier General J. T. Stewart, to chair a 

management evaluations committee that included 

John McMahon of the CIA and Colonel Paul Heran 

of the NRO’s Directorate of Special Projects. Carter, 

Dirks, and Colonel W. G. King (NRO Special Projects) 

were appointed to a technical task definition group. With 

interesting promptitude, Carter issued a preliminary 

paper describing the search requirement and the 

plan for system development. (Both had long been in 

preparation, of course.) The concept included use of 

a Titan IIIC booster (including two-or three-segment 

strap-on solid rockets for augmentation) capable of 

placing 13,000 pounds of payload in orbit; a satellite 

vehicle consisting of an orbital control module, a sensor 

module, and recovery vehicles (two reentry vehicles 

were suggested); and first launch 28 months “after 

development go-ahead.” A discussion of the rationale 

for a two-bucket system provided some insight into 

the problems the new system would confront on the 

way to design approval: in the judgment of Carter’s 

group, a two-vehicle configuration represented the 

best compromise of reliability and cost, although 

four or more reentry vehicles would provide a crisis 

reconnaissance capability only marginally present in 

the two-vehicle configuration. In the group’s opinion, 

development of a three- or four-vehicle configuration 

would prove troublesome; Corona had provided 

experience in dual-reentry-vehicle operations, but 

there was no background for the complex cut-andsplice operations that would be required if more 

than two buckets were used. Finally, Carter’s group 

maintained, “the severe weight and cost penalties 

of three or more RV’s argue against compromising 

the primary mission and configurations for the crisis 

role.”17

There was no question in anybody’s mind that 

the camera system would be the pacing item in the 

development. It was with some dismay, therefore, that 

Martin and Flax learned late in October that Itek did 

not propose to complete a variety of essential tests, 

calibration efforts, and technical analyses until late 

July 1966. Until that work was in hand, there would 

be no fair basis for comparing the Itek-EK and the 

Itek-pancake designs. The transfer to Itek of the 

Eastman drawings, tools, and test data appeared 

to be an easy task; Eastman assistance to ltek was 

scheduled to continue until at least February 1966, 

by which time (the principals fervently hoped) ltek 

would be capable of carrying on independently. Flax 

responded, somewhat acidly, that “the Itek schedule 

for completion of those activities is not compatible with 

the anticipated decision milestone for the new search/
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Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

surveillance system.” Assuming that Itek would tend 

to favor its original design over the less familiar EK 

design, Flax instructed Martin that unless Itek agreed 

to push both designs to evaluation readiness quickly, 

“we must...consider another course of action in this 

regard.”*

General Martin assigned to Colonel Heran the 

delicate task of inducing Itek to agree to complete 

the work necessary to permit evaluation of the three 

principal systems by 3 January 1966. After extended 

discussion with Itek officials, Heran obtained the 

necessary commitment, but he cautioned that owing 

to the short period left for completion of the scheduled 

work it was likely that evaluators would have less 

confidence in an Itek-EK design proposal than in the 

Itek-pancake design proposal. In passing Heran’s 

findings to Flax, Martin urged that an additional period 

be provided for equalizing the confidence in the two 

designs, so that both Itek bids would be honestly 

competitive with the Perkin-Elmer submission.

Flax accepted the altered schedule, and Itek’s 

assurances of conscientious effort on both the Itek-EK 

and Itek-pancake designs, but he was in no position 

to extend the period of preliminary design past that 

earlier specified. He insisted that by January 1966 the 

three designs be available for competitive evaluation, 

promising that evaluators would make the necessary 

allowances for status differences.18 Itek reluctantly 

acceded to the conditions, and on 22 November 

the formal transfer of the EK design to Itek custody 

received Martin’s endorsement.19

In the event, it was April 1966 rather than 

January before the several search-surveillance 

system proposals were eligible for the transition to 

a formal competition stage. The EK design—paper 

and hardware—was not fully in Itek’s custody until 

mid-January; several intervening reviews of camera 

system design status in December 1965 and January 

and March 1966 indicated that Itek’s ability to cope 

with the EK design was developing slowly.

For practical purposes, Colonel Carter’s task 

force spent most of its time working out the details 

of a Request for Proposal to be issued to Itek and 

Perkin-Elmer when all else was ready. The earlier 

rivalry between Fulcrum and S-2 approaches had not 

vanished, even though diminished by Flax’s skillful 

assignment of responsibility to special interagency 

task forces. The CIA draft version of the Request for 

Proposal, for instance, called for inclusion of what was, 

in Carter’s opinion, “the most optimistic [schedule] 

* The Itek and EK approaches differed in concept as well as detail. In the 

judgment of S-2 program managers, the EK design was simpler, less risky (in 

a technical sense), more certain to appear on time, and potentially cheaper.

which could be envisioned” and provided for holding 

the formal pre-proposal briefing some two weeks 

before ltek would have completed its effort to become 

fully conversant with the transferred EK S-2 design. 

But by February Itek was capably briefing such groups 

as the Land Panel on the status and prospects of both 

designs, and by late March Flax had concluded that 

nothing was to be gained by further delaying the start 

of a formal competition.20

The main elements of Flax’s proposal were a 

plan for source selection and a management plan. 

For the first of those, little that was controversial 

remained for decision, and in other than a casual 

way the NRP Executive Committee did not look into 

its details. The management plan, however, specified 

the organizational arrangement to be honored 

during the development of the system and thus 

encompassed all of the highly controversial aspects of 

CIA-NRO relationships that had troubled the National 

Reconnaissance Program for more than three years. 

Even in its draft form, as circulated for comment, it 

had evoked strong reactions from both CIA and NRO 

spokesmen. The original proposal, as worked out in 

advance of the 15 October 1965 establishment of the 

task group on management had represented a skillful 

compromise of organizational prerogatives. There 

was no longer any doubt that the CIA would exercise 

responsibility for the development of whatever 

camera subsystem won the competition. That much 

had been implied in the compromise arrangements 

of August 1965. But whether the sensor project office 

would be located with the main program office on the 

West Coast, as Martin wanted, or would continue to 

operate from CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia 

was argued at length, and the scope of sensor 

project office responsibility continued to be debated 

for months. (Would it extend to the surrounding 

spacecraft structure, to the whole of the payloadvehicle structure, or be confined merely to optics-plusfilm-transport and supporting components?)

General Martin, who had been NRO staff 

director during much of the period when divided 

responsibilities and ill-defined command lines had 

made chaos of Corona management, argued that 

a combined program office was essential, that coproject-leader arrangements could never be made to 

work. Supported by most of the NRO staff and his own 

West Coast group, he held out for assigning system 

integrating responsibility to the principal program 

office and limiting the sensor project office to custody 

over the camera subsystem alone. 

Flax eventually concluded that integration of 

the camera with the payload must be a System 

Program Office responsibility, the CIA retaining 
108

PERRY HISTORY - HEXAGON

sensor subsystem design responsibility and the 

Program A group on the West Coast being totally 

responsible for the main vehicle structures. That 

Solomonian edict was one of the few of the Flax 

proposals that occasioned arguments during the 

Executive Committee meeting of 26 April 1966, where 

final decisions were confirmed. John J. Crowley, the 

CIA’s principal agent for sensor development, urged 

the Committee to assign to the CIA full responsibility 

for the structure enclosing the sensor system as well 

as responsibility for the development, production, 

and integration of the stellar index camera. Crowley 

contended, with Admiral Raborn’s backing, that so 

extending the CIA’s responsibilities would reduce the 

amount of interagency interface required for program 

management “and thereby markedly improve the 

possibilities of satisfactory performance within the 

time limits of the program.”

Only one other difference of viewpoint surfaced 

during the Executive Committee meeting. Dr. Flax had 

provided that both the Special Projects Directorate 

and the CIA project office were to be authorized to 

issue program access clearances, and that each 

would honor without question the need-to-know 

determinations of the other: The CIA asked for a veto; 

Flax responded that his object was “to eliminate the 

use of security as a means of frustrating ...legitimate 

access to information...” The three principals of the 

Executive Committee met privately and alone after 

the briefings and discussions had ended. Vance, 

the chairman, advised Flax as soon as the threeman group had completed its deliberations that the 

program proposal had been approved precisely as 

submitted.21 What had been approved was a detailed 

plan for conducting competitions for sensor systems 

and other elements of the reconnaissance satellite 

and a specification of the relationships that were to 

characterize the subsequent period of development 

and system operation. What remained for near-term 

decision was the choice of a camera design and a 

contractor, after which questions of satellite vehicle 

design, subsystem design, contractor selection, and 

booster design and selection might be taken up in 

order. The plan of April 1966 envisaged completion of 

development and first launch by mid-1968—roughly 

two years from the date of program approval. The 

effort to do away with the institutional rivalry that 

had marked the preceding three years of searchsurveillance system development extended, finally, to 

nomenclature. In his 22 April memorandum proposing 

a structure and schedule for the program, Dr. Flax had 

noted that the system to be developed would carry the 

designator Helix. That name lasted less than a week; 

it had unwittingly been assigned earlier to another 

activity. On 30 April, the CIA assigned a substitute 

nickname: Hexagon. Retroactively, it was introduced 

into the minutes of the Executive Committee meeting 

that signaled program approval. The names Fulcrum 

and S-2 that had epitomized the earlier stages of the 

Hexagon program disappeared. None of the many 

principals ever expressed regret. 22

Hexagon: 

Program Onset to First Flight

The situation of Hexagon and the pattern of 

program development as anticipated at the time of 

program go-ahead were fairly represented by the 

several papers Dr. Flax submitted on 22 April, and 

which the NRP Executive Committee approved for 

action during its 26 April meeting. 

The camera system, universally acknowledged 

to be the pacing element in a highly interactive 

program, then consisted of three potential proposals 

from two contractors, Perkin-Elmer and Itek. The 

principal Perkin-Elmer design represented that firm’s 

elaboration on and improvement of a Fulcrum-based 

conceptual approach and engineering construct 

originated by Itek between 1964 and early 1966. 

Perkin-Elmer’s own favored design of the early 

Fulcrum era had always been considered less 

promising than the CIA-sponsored Itek-Fulcrum 

approach and was not really in competition. Itek had 

two designs in process, the earlier NRO-sponsored 

Eastman S-2 design, transferred to Itek and the native 

ltek S-2 design (Itek-pancake), which the NRO had 

earlier considered to be a prime backup to what was by 

April called the Itek-EK design. Flax characterized the 

Perkin-Elmer design as “considerably changed and 

improved from a prior Itek effort.” Although Brockway 

McMillan, Flax’s predecessor as NRO director, had 

endorsed and attempted to secure development 

approval for the Itek-EK design while it still was an 

Eastman program, and the Itek-EK design approach 

was generally favored by NRO special projects 

people over the Perkin-Elmer Hexagon proposal, 

Flax wisely ignored all such considerations in his 

22 April resume. The major problem of the moment, 

as Flax saw it, was how to conduct an equitable 

competition among three camera designs at different 

stages of refinement, composed to satisfy somewhat 

different technical and operational requirements, and 

representing an amalgam of studies and engineering 

effort by seven different groups (General Electric, 

Lockheed, Itek, Perkin-Elmer, the NRO’s Directorate 

of Special Projects, the NRO’s staff, and the CIA’s 

Directorate of Science and Technology). All three 

surviving design approaches were nominally capable 

of satisfying the 1964 requirement for Corona-scope 
109

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

coverage at Gambit-level resolutions (given that the 

Corona and Gambit capabilities of 1964 were treated 

as baselines—there being no real possibility that any 

of the optical systems proposed for Hexagon could 

perform at Gambit-3 resolutions). There was general 

agreement among USIB, NRO, and CIA authorities 

that what was wanted was 25-30 day orbital life with 

single-mission capability for stereo coverage of 20

million square miles, a stellar-indexing camera, and 

either two or four recovery vehicles. The probable 

launch vehicle was a Titan IIID class rocket with 

two 120-inch diameter strap-on three-segment solid 

rocket accessory boosters; although an alternative 

five-segment strap-on rocket had determined 

advocates. Orbit weight of about 12,000 pounds 

seemed reasonable, although a slightly greater 

weight was not unlikely, given the growth tendencies 

of all previous reconnaissance satellites. Flax had 

designed the management mode for Hexagon to 

comply with the provisions of the II August 1965 NRO 

charter and related agreements between the CIA and 

the Department of Defense. That essentially meant 

that the CIA would retain responsibility for sensor 

development and sensor-related activities, and the 

NRO’s Special Projects directorate (in Los Angeles) for 

all else in the total program. The two agencies would, 

for each segment of their assigned responsibilities, 

provide system engineering, system integration, and 

management.

Given those fundamentals, Flax proposed to 

distribute a system operational requirement, an RFP 

(request for proposal) covering the sensor system, a 

management plan, and a schedule of planned NRO 

actions. Attached to the submission that went to NRP 

Executive Committee members on 22 April was a set 

of five papers that carefully explained the rationale 

underlying the operational requirement, the RFP, and 

the management plan.

Although both the CIA and NRO participants in the 

S-2 and Fulcrum aspects of the pre-Hexagon program 

had conducted competitions for the spacecraft 

element of the total system, and both had settled 

on General Electric designs, Flax proposed holding 

a new competition, contending that not all eligible 

contractors had been offered an opportunity to bid 

to the same requirements, and noting also that the 

requirements reflected in his draft system operational 

requirement differed in some important respects from 

those earlier specified.* The NRO’s director urged that 

the recovery vehicle contracts should be recompeted 

for the same reasons. To arguments that recompetition 

was wasteful of time, Flax responded that even if the 

most optimistic schedule then suggested proved valid,

* In the event, General Electric won neither the satellite vehicle nor the reentry 

body competition for Hexagon.

recompetition would not delay the first launch for more 

than a few weeks. (He also proposed a competition 

for the Titan IIID strap-on solid rockets.)23

Implementing papers went to the CIA and NRO 

participants in the program on 28 April, two days after 

Flax received formal notification that his proposal had 

been approved as submitted. (Some minor points of 

disagreement on security arrangements remained for 

clarification, but that did not constitute a significant 

problem.) Apart from the set of papers submitted to the 

Executive Committee, the 28 April directives included 

directions for the assembly of a sensor source 

selection board, preliminary budget guidance, and a 

memorandum to the Air Force authorizing the start of 

a competition for the Titan IIID and the preparation of 

system package plans for both the Titan IIIC and IIID. 

(As with the spacecraft and recovery vehicles, a final 

decision on configuration and design of the launch 

vehicle still had not been made.)

Sensor source selection, the first order of 

business, was assigned to a board headed by L. C. 

Dirks of the CIA and composed of four additional 

members, two from the CIA and two from the 

Directorate of Special Projects. They were scheduled 

to receive formal inputs from Itek and Perkin-Elmer 

by 22 July.** Booster source selection was entrusted 

to a similarly constituted board chaired by the Titan III 

System Program Office. Booster proposals were due 

by 1 September; Flax expected contract negotiations 

to be completed by early November 1966.24

On 30 April 1966, both the Special Projects 

Directorate and the CIA officially established Hexagon 

project offices in their respective organizations. Flax 

confirmed the nomination of the CIA to direct sensor 

development and named Colonel F. S. Buzard to 

head the Hexagon System Program Office on the 

West Coast. In what was assumed to be a temporary 

measure, Buzard arranged to have the Hexagon 

office physically collocated with the existing Corona 

program office, sharing command of the composite 

organization with the Corona chief. The purpose 

of the arrangement was to permit Buzard to draw 

on the experienced Corona people to supplement 

his own relatively small staff resources. With the 

start of Hexagon development, there seemed little 

doubt that Corona would cease operations in the 

reasonably close future. Obvious advantages resided 

in an orderly transfer of search-system responsibility 

from the existing system to its successor. In the 

event, Hexagon became operational five years after 

program start, rather than two, as had originally been 

proposed, and the transition was much more gradual 

** The proposals had been in preparation since February and the technical 

aspects of the three principal submissions were well known to the evaluators.
110

PERRY HISTORY - HEXAGON

than Buzard had anticipated. The consequence was 

that at the end of three years the core of the Hexagon 

office was composed of people who had varied earlier 

experience with Corona but who had also accumulated 

considerable Hexagon experience. 

With the approval of a Hexagon program and 

assignment of sensor subsystem responsibility to 

the CIA, existing S-2 contracts with Itek had to be 

terminated. Colonel Buzard negotiated the essential 

contract agreements with Itek between 6 May and 23 

May 1966, and on the latter date Itek formally began 

work preliminary to a proposal for Hexagon camera 

system development. With issuance of the request 

for proposals on 23 May, both Itek and Perkin-Elmer 

became contractors to the CIA’s newly created Sensor 

Subsystem Project Office. 25

The matter of how many film capsules Hexagon 

would carry became the concern of a special study 

group on 24 May. The CIA’s earlier Fulcrum schematic 

had been organized around the premise of one very 

large recovery vehicle; the S-2 proposal had never 

envisaged use of fewer than two capsules—and as 

many as four had been urged by members of both 

Fulcrum and S-2 study groups at one time or another.

On 25 May, Flax authorized the creation of 

a source selection board for the Satellite Basic 

Assembly (SBA) under Buzard’s direction. The board 

included four NRO and two CIA members. By 8 June 

the formal Request for Proposal had received Flax’s 

endorsement and eight days later it went to Lockheed, 

General Electric, McDonnell-Douglas, North 

American, and Hughes. (Hughes decided against 

participating in the competition.) Proposals were due 

by 22 August, one month after the scheduled receipt 

of sensor system proposals.

As could have been predicted, a renewed space 

vehicle competition was not welcomed by General 

Electric, which had won both the Fulcrum and S-2 

“competitions” of the previous year. H. W. Paige, 

general manager of GE’s space program organization, 

protested to Flax that it was basically unfair to GE to 

be forced to compete a third time, given that GE had 

originated the concept then being competed, had twice 

won competitions, had a skilled but unemployed space 

vehicle team available (unemployed because with the 

transition from Gambit-l to Gambit-3 the orbital control 

vehicle around which Gambit had first been designed 

was no longer being used), and represented the only 

experienced alternative to Lockheed. Flax, who was 

aware of the problems created by his decision to 

recompete the space vehicle part of Hexagon, could 

but point out that Hexagon was neither Fulcrum nor 

S-2, that conditions had changed, and that he would 

give consideration to GE’s experience when selection 

board recommendations were submitted.26

Although the final report of the recovery vehicle 

study committee had not yet been prepared, Buzard’s 

people began writing the proposal guidelines for the 

recovery vehicle in June 1966. Because the number 

of recovery vehicles had not yet been decided, three 

designs were specified, providing for loaded film 

weights of 250, 525, and 1050 pounds. On 21 June 

Buzard urged Dr. Flax to approve a four-bucket 

configuration, but Flax decided to postpone a final 

decision until booster configuration and weight budget 

were better defined. Nonetheless, on 6 July, Flax 

agreed to the commencement of reviews of recovery 

vehicle proposals and agreed to issuance of requests 

for proposals by 19 July. The issuance of a Request 

for Proposal for the Stellar Terrain camera in late 

August completed the formal actions needed to get 

Hexagon development underway, but hopes that the 

development itself could proceed as expeditiously 

were to prove unduly optimistic. Almost two years 

were to pass before the recovery vehicles were at 

last put on contract although initial estimates of first 

launch date for the new system postulated availability 

of all subsystems within 18 months of program start.27

On 30 August—precisely as scheduled—the 

sensor source selection board reported its findings 

to Flax. The evaluators unanimously concluded 

that Perkin-Elmer had the better proposal and 

recommended that sensor development be assigned 

to that contractor. The preferred design was an 

outgrowth of the much earlier Itek-Fulcrum approach; 

the loser was the Itek-EK design of S-2 vintage.

 Proposals had been evaluated in two categories: 

technical and operational qualities, and management, 

production, and logistics. In a scoring system that 

permitted a maximum possible score of 100, PerkinElmer accumulated a total of 69.3 points and Itek 54.7. 

Although the differences could be accounted for by 

many details of quality and resources, the board was 

influenced by Itek’s emphasis on design for maximum 

resolution on the film as against Perkin-Elmer’s 

approach of minimizing optical errors. Itek had larger 

and more complex optics; Perkin-Elmer emphasized 

other than optical considerations. The Itek design was 

based on use of a 48-inch Schmidt lens system with a 

maximum aperture of f/2.0; the Perkin-Elmer system 

on a 60-inch focal length lens with an aperture of 

f/3.0. In order to provide the desired ground resolution 

capability of 2.7 feet, the Itek system would have to 

be flown at an altitude of 84 miles as against the 92.5 

nautical mile altitude required of the Perkin-Elmer 

optics for the same resolution. Optical design was 

also a factor in the weight characteristics of the two 
111

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

designs. For a 30-day mission, the on-orbit spacecraft 

weight of a Hexagon carrying a Perkin-Elmer camera 

system promised to be about 1000 pounds less than 

the comparable weight of a spacecraft carrying the Itek 

camera. Although there was little doubt that a boosterspacecraft combination capable of putting the heavier 

system in orbit could be obtained, it was difficult to 

ignore the obvious advantages of a weight differential 

so greatly in favor of Perkin-Elmer. (Camera weight 

differences totaled about 700 pounds—which partly 

represented the effects of a difference in design 

approaches but was in some respects a reflection of 

earlier Itek difficulties in getting the weight of the ItekEK design down to the level specified during the S-2 

phase of pre-Hexagon work.)

Other considerations of sensor system evaluation 

had a lesser influence on the decision than such 

fundamentals, but were not ignored. In the opinion 

of the evaluation group, the Itek proposals had 

a “significantly larger” development risk and the 

production tolerances required to insure proper 

operation of the Itek system would be much more 

difficult to meet than those of the Perkin-Elmer 

system. Further, because of optical surface quality 

requirements, the larger optical surfaces of the Itek 

system would create greater schedule and production 

difficulties than would the Perkin-Elmer optics.

Neither design was fully satisfactory in a technical 

sense. “Numerous errors” in design and analysis 

were sufficiently serious to cause the source selection 

board to question the adequacy of the engineering 

teams that prepared the two proposals. Yet in the end 

there was no reason to believe that either contractor 

lacked adequate technical resources. Perkin-Elmer 

was given a better chance of meeting the development 

schedule than Itek, although both schedules were 

admittedly tight.

Itek had a very slight lead in the management, 

production, and logistic aspects of the two proposals, 

and had proposed a development costing less than the 

Perkin-Elmer bid, but Itek production costs promised 

to be about 10 percent greater, and that offset the 

attractions of lower development costs. 

In the end, Perkin-Elmer’s 10 percent edge in 

weight and resolution, the lesser complexity of the 

Perkin-Elmer proposal, and the apparently greater 

maturity of the Perkin-Elmer design accounted for the 

appreciable difference in the scores awarded the two 

competitors. 

Flax approved the findings of the source selection 

board as submitted. On 10 October 1966, PerkinElmer signed a contract calling for development of the 

Hexagon camera subsystem. 

Flax received notice of the findings of the source 

selection board for the satellite assembly on 26 

September 1966 and during November reviewed the 

initial reports of the source selection boards for the 

recovery vehicles and the stellar-indexing camera. 

He accepted the recommendation that Lockheed 

develop the satellite but withheld approval of the 

start of satellite vehicle work until mid-July 1967. In 

retrospect, that appeared to be an error of judgment 

because sensor design proceeded throughout that 

period without needed inputs from satellite vehicle 

designers. Through much of the intervening time, 

Perkin-Elmer and the Sensor Subsystem Program 

Office apparently believed that General Electric had 

won the competition. CIA sensor program managers 

and their principal supporting contractor, ThompsonRamo-Wooldridge, encouraged a variety of PerkinElmer design approaches inconsistent with the 

Lockheed vehicle concept, but generally compatible 

with the General Electric approach. When Flax 

formally authorized funded Lockheed work on the 

satellite vehicle in July 1967, virtually the first and 

most difficult order of business was to redesign 

several features of both the satellite vehicle and the 

camera subsystem which, by that time, had become 

incompatible. Much of the work Perkin-Elmer had 

completed between October 1966 and July 1967 had 

to be redone during the last six months of 1967 and 

the vehicle-cum-camera interface definition process 

eventually required ten months of effort instead 

of the three months the System Program Office 

had originally allocated to that task. Still, the NRO 

director’s decision to postpone starting work on the 

satellite vehicle seemed sound at the time; in his role 

as Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Research 

and Development, Flax had recently seen the MOL 

program suffer various misfortunes because major 

subsystems had prematurely begun final design 

stages. He wanted no comparable problems to afflict 

Hexagon. 

Proposals for both recovery vehicles and stellarindexing camera were returned for further work, 

being technically inadequate in several respects. 

McDonnell-Douglas eventually won the recovery 

vehicle competition because of a superior heat 

shield design (an ingenious honeycomb-base silicon 

coating), and Itek the stellar-index camera competition 

(Fairchild’s competing proposal involved a relatively 

risky electronic imaging technique as opposed to 

Itek’s clever but conventional film-pIus-lens design), 

but almost another year passed before contracts 

covering those subsystems became effective.28

The possibility that Hexagon might be partly or 

wholly substituted for Gambit had been entertained at 

the time of Hexagon program approval in 1965 but the 
112

PERRY HISTORY - HEXAGON

issue did not become pressing until late 1966, when 

the United States Intelligence Board decided to give 

the question formal consideration. The immediate 

problem was finances; if Gambit purchases could 

be reduced, more money would become available 

for Hexagon development. But the high assurance 

of Gambit-3 success and the considerable value of 

photography thus generated warranted continued 

procurement of Gambit-3, so the USIB endorsed that 

course in December 1966.29

On the assumption that satellite vehicle 

development would shortly be approved, and in light of 

delays in the start of work on other major subsystems, 

the System Program Office late in 1966 proposed and 

secured approval of a new target date for first launch 

of Hexagon: April 1969. Contract definition for the 

recovery vehicles, stellar-indexing camera, and fivesegment (rather than the originally proposed threesegment) solid-fuel augmentation rockets for the Titan 

booster was not scheduled until May 1967, but none 

was a pacing item in the program. The money spent 

on Hexagon by the end of 1966 was committed to 

subsystems other than the sensor, and most of the 

cost increments associated with major subsystems 

remained to be defined. Geodesy requirements had 

yet to be specified.30 Preliminary mapping, charting, 

and geodesy system studies were not completed until 

March 1967 (and remained contentious for another 

year); the number of recovery vehicles to be carried 

by Hexagon was not decided until May 1967. 

Nevertheless, the camera subsystem continued to 

pace program schedules. On 3 April 1967, Patterson 

advised Colonel Buzard that sensor development 

schedule slippages made October 1969 the probable 

initial launch date (rather than April) and that if the 

camera were installed in the satellite vehicle by 

Lockheed instead of Perkin-Elmer a further delay to 

December 1969 was likely. (The System Program 

Office concluded that system test requirements were 

such as to make camera-vehicle mating under PerkinElmer auspices inevitable even if not wholly desirable 

on other grounds.) Colonel Buzard’s organization 

formally recommended, on 5 May 1967, that Hexagon 

carry four prime-payload recovery vehicles. Whether a 

fifth should be provided to return stellar-index camera 

film remained uncertain for the moment, so contract 

award was again delayed.

The approved budget included provisions for 

a four-recovery vehicle configuration, an improved 

engine for the Titan, and the initial procurement of 

10 Titan IIID’s. It did not provide for development and 

procurement of a stellar-indexing camera, deferred 

pending further study.31

Continuing problems with the stellar-indexing 

camera specification were Linked to the camera’s 

ability to provide useful mapping data, principally to 

the Army. During the Spring of 1967, Perkin-Elmer 

proposed a system (dubbed SIMEC) based on the 

concept of printing calibrated reseau lines on normal 

Hexagon panoramic photography for mapping 

reference. Doubts about the quality of SIMEC induced 

Dr. Flax to convene a joint technical evaluation 

committee to examine the Perkin-Elmer proposal. The 

committee members (from Program A, the CIA, and 

such other groups as the Army Mapping Service and 

the National Photographic Interpretation Center) were 

not impressed. They concluded that SIMEC could 

not meet the Army’s requirement for 1:50,000 scale 

maps, that it promised to be excessively costly, and 

that the reseau pattern would obscure the underlying 

Hexagon imagery to an unacceptable degree. The 

committee’s recommendation was to abandon efforts 

to incorporate mapping capability in the Hexagon 

panoramic camera. 

Although the System Program Office had earlier 

concluded that a 12-inch stellar indexing camera was 

needed to satisfy Army mapping requirements, action 

to that end was not immediately feasible because of 

CIA objections. But in July Flax finally announced that 

Lockheed had won the satellite vehicle competition 

of the previous summer, and contractually covered 

work formally began. Final contracts were not signed 

until December 1967, however. In early August 1967, 

following the announcement that Lockheed had 

won the satellite vehicle contract, the program office 

created four interface working groups for (1) structural 

and mechanical issues, (2) tracking, telemetry and 

command/electrical issues, (3) test and assembly 

coordination, and (4) operations. The working groups 

subsequently induced major changes in the design of 

Lockheed’s orbital vehicle, a new command system 

and a single rather than a dual vehicle shroud being 

two of the earliest.

Late in October 1967, General Electric contracted 

to deliver a development test unit and six flightqualified Mark IV Command Programmer subsystems 

adapted for Hexagon. The Lockheed and General 

Electric contracts were the first to be signed in the 

Hexagon program—other than that covering PerkinElmer. The delay between program approval and 

contractual agreement was nearly 18 months. The 

basic problem was lack of agreement on detailed 

system specifications and production quantities. 

In November, for instance, the NRP Executive 

Committee reduced the initial Hexagon buy (deleting 

two planned reserve systems) and the Directorate of 

Defense Research and Engineering formally urged 

that a 12-inch (focal length) stellar-indexing camera 
113

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

be used in Hexagon instead of the earlier proposed 

3-inch design. Dr. John Foster, director of the defense 

engineering agency argued that no other expedient 

could satisfy Army needs.* The cost implications were 

alarming, given that Hexagon was edging toward 

substantial price increases in several areas, but the 

additional weight of a 12-inch camera was yet a larger 

difficulty. The fundamental objection, nonetheless, 

was the CIA argument that Hexagon should not carry 

mapping equipment at all. Again, a final decision was 

put off. 

Although a contract covering the initial lot of 10 

Titan IIID boosters became effective in December 

1967 (backdated to cover “black” work Martin had 

performed since July), problems created by the delay 

in starting work on the Lockheed satellite vehicle 

negated any progress thus implied. By the time 

Lockheed was legally entitled to start final design, 

much of the Perkin-Elmer camera system had been 

configured to conform to the losing General Electric 

spacecraft design. In particular, the Perkin-Elmer 

design had to be changed so that the film supply reels 

were oriented along the pitch axis of the vehicle rather 

than along the roll axis. Reconciling other aspects 

of the Perkin-Elmer system with the satellite vehicle 

forced redesign of both in December. However, the 

program office was finally able to let contracts for 

computer software, recovery parachute design and 

development, and communications equipment. The 

effect of all that was to drive up budget levels between 

September and December 1967. Most of the increase 

reflected booster purchase costs but program changes 

of various sorts were important contributors. 

Late in 1967, the stellar-indexing camera issue 

again surfaced. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul 

Nitze, Chairman of the NRP Executive Committee, 

had become receptive to John Foster’s advocacy 

of a large-camera stellar-indexing and mapping 

subsystem for Hexagon. Cost-factor objections to 

* Although the Directorate of Defense Research and Engineering participated 

in general discussions of the National Reconnaissance Program at the 

Executive Committee level, Foster had no vote in program decisions and little 

influence on most. That constraint did not extend to geodesy and cartography, 

however. The tradition of tri-service participation in the reconnaissance effort 

generally gave the Navy a major role in passive electronic reconnaissance 

and assigned to the Army prime responsibility for mapping and charting. When 

the Argon program first was approved, in 1958, the Directorate of Defense 

Research and Engineering inherited from the Advanced Research Projects 

Agency both a sponsorship function and an active voice in mapping program 

decisions–reflected in the composition of the configuration control board for 

Argon. Argon had long since passed from the scene, but Army interests still 

were represented by the Directorate of Defense Research and Engineering 

whenever mapping programs were considered. Thus Foster was in one sense 

a spokesman for Army viewpoints. His access to and influence with the upper 

echelons of the Department of Defense made that an important consideration 

in decisions on new stellar-indexing and mapping systems.

the proposal had been countered by an Army offer 

to contribute toward development. Even though no 

new camera could be readied in time for the first 

flight of Hexagon, and only the Army mapping agency 

maintained that a large camera was essential to the 

satisfaction of national requirements for maps and 

charts, the Army’s arguments, and their sponsors, 

proved, compelling. The Executive Committee had to 

accept Flax’s assurances that no large-camera stellarindexing and mapping system could be incorporated 

in early Hexagons, but development of that system 

continued and eventually the Committee agreed that 

it should be used in the seventh and all later launches. 

No formal contract was to be signed for another year—

until November 1968—but Itek continued preliminary 

development activities in the interim.32

Eighteen months after program approval, 

Hexagon still was making only slow progress toward 

operational readiness. The difficulties of proceeding 

from conceptual design to engineering development 

had been sadly understated—as had the costs of that 

transition. Most delays had origins in delayed decisions 

and management disputes, but that did not diminish 

their effect. The CIA’s reluctance to agree to software 

specifications and CIA efforts to acquire control of 

software programs caused delays in that area, for 

instance. Similar difficulties occurred elsewhere: a 

formal system performance requirements statement 

appeared in January 1968, after having survived a 

strenuous informal review the previous November, 

but immediately became a matter of contention 

between the CIA’s sensor specialists and the main 

Hexagon program office. Lockheed finally signed 

a definitive contract for space vehicle development 

in January but was immediately obliged to propose 

a major vehicle redesign in order to accommodate 

camera system changes made since Lockheed’s 

design had first been submitted, some 14 months 

earlier. Whether the camera subsystem would be 

mounted by Perkin-Elmer or shipped to Lockheed for 

installation had not yet been decided. For that matter, 

still unresolved questions of camera design included 

decisions on the film path, the kinds and quantities 

of test equipment, and the scope of camera system 

testing to be performed once the camera section had 

finally been passed on to Lockheed. That Hexagon 

would include four recovery capsules was certain, 

but whether the product of stellar-indexing camera 

operations should be returned with the last of the 

four or in a separate (and smaller) capsule still was 

a study question as late as April 1968. Because of 

design uncertainties, no recovery vehicle contractor 

had yet been chosen. (McDonnell-Douglas had an 

attractive proposal in a technical sense, but the cost 

was unacceptably higher than for GE’s less appealing 
114

PERRY HISTORY - HEXAGON

shield concept.) Costs were rising, schedules were 

slipping, essential test articles remained undefined, 

and disagreements over management responsibilities 

repeatedly disrupted routine. Nevertheless, in April 

1968 program managers agreed that 1 October 1970 

was a reasonable first launch date (one both could 

accept) and made that, rather than mid-1968, the new 

program goal. 

Resolution of stellar-indexing camera uncertainties* 

early in 1968 permitted the issuance of “go-ahead” 

letter contracts for recovery vehicle development 

(to McDonnell-Douglas) late in May and for stellarindexing camera development a month later (to ltek). 

Formal contracts appeared on 30 September and 

15 November 1968, respectively. In May, Dr. Flax 

settled the, who-does-what argument over cameravehicle integration responsibilities by accepting the 

CIA’s contention that Perkin-Elmer could do the job of 

installing the camera system in the vehicle assembly 

more effectively than could Lockheed, thus permitting 

disposition of several lesser questions still hinging on 

that fundamental issue.33

Fulcrum, the 1963 proposal that eventually 

led to Hexagon, had initially been conceived as a 

search system to replace Corona. Eventual approval 

of Hexagon development expanded that concept 

to include surveillance by incorporating the 1964 

“Corona coverage at Gambit resolutions” statement. 

Between 1964 and 1968, considerable advances 

in reconnaissance technology had affected both 

Corona and Gambit; the former had become a highly 

cost-effective search system with remarkably good 

reliability and the latter a surveillance system with 

a demonstrated resolution capability and evident 

growth capability to “best resolution.” capability. 

Several proposed camera systems with at least 

that resolution potential were beginning to demand 

attention by 1968. Further, some of the more optimistic 

participants in the satellite reconnaissance effort had 

by that time concluded that it was now feasible to 

undertake development of a high-resolution readout 

system with near-real-time capability. In the growing 

national uproar over the costly Indochina War, defense 

budgets were becoming tighter; one consequence 

was that the development of expensive new satellite 

reconnaissance systems was becoming increasingly 

dependent on finding the necessary money within 

ceiling-limited NRP budgets. Hexagon was the single 

most expensive item of the 1968-1970 National 

Reconnaissance Program. 

* The concept of a long-focal-length camera prevailed, but not until June was 

it possible to confirm the advisability of returning the film product of the stellarindexing camera in its own separate recovery capsule. The Corona capsule 

eventually was adapted to that purpose.

Starting in mid-1968, therefore, and continuing 

for a full year, proposals for reorientation, cutback, 

or cancellation of Hexagon were frequent, serious, 

and loud. They began routinely enough in budget 

bureau suggestions that Hexagon program costs 

were excessive and that the mission Hexagon had 

been designed to perform could be as well performed 

by other, less costly systems. That entirely legitimate 

issue tended to get submerged in the subsequent 

advocacy of particular “other” systems, partly because 

the McNamara tradition of proposing “alternatives” 

had become a fixture of the system evaluation 

process, partly because various groups within the 

satellite reconnaissance community had taken to 

sponsoring one particular system, and partly because 

any decision to cancel or reduce expenditures on 

Hexagon could not but enhance the prospects of 

some other proposal for reconnaissance satellite 

development and operations. 

The opening of Strategic Arms Limitations Talks 

(SALT) with the Soviet Union further complicated 

orderly consideration of the future of Hexagon. 

Progress in the arts of satellite reconnaissance 

had been so rapid in the mid-1960’s that it was no 

longer essential to couple arms limitations to the 

on-site inspection of strategic weapons stockpiles 

and installations. The Soviet Union had consistently 

refused that concession; pre-1968 efforts to agree on 

means of verifying compliance with arms limitations 

agreements had grounded on the inspection issue. 

Although neither the Soviets nor the Americans were 

fully prepared to specify that all needed verification 

and inspection could be performed by means of 

cameras in orbit, de facto acceptance of that premise 

was evident after 1968. 

Once the means had been agreed upon, however 

informally, the details became all important. On the 

American side (and conceivably on the Soviet side 

as well), the scope and detail of coverage required 

to confirm compliance with arms agreements were 

contentious issues. Most reconnaissance systems 

in service and in development by 1968 had been 

designed to provide specialized coverage of various 

kinds. Systems like Corona, Gambit, Hexagon, and 

the several passive Elint and Comint sensor satellites 

could undoubtedly serve the needs of verification, 

but none was optimized for such an application. 

Optimization—which implied acceptable costs, 

frequency of coverage, and detail of return—could 

well require the development of some new system 

or reliance on some combination of systems not 

previously contemplated. Crisis reconnaissance, a 

troublesome subordinate requirement for a decade, 

could well become a dominant requirement in an era 

of strategic arms detente. Very high resolution might 
115

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

be needed to detect subtle shifts in strategic posture. 

Emitting systems, capable of functioning in the 

presence of the heavy cloud cover and poor lighting 

conditions that characterized most Soviet strategic 

missile bases, could become vital. A capability for near 

instantaneous recurrent coverage of selected areas 

might be essential. All that seemed certain was that 

requirements for the 1980’s were uncertain and that a 

satellite reconnaissance system (or systems) capable 

of verifying Soviet compliance with arms limitation 

agreements must be in the American inventory in the 

1970’s and after. The contribution Hexagon could 

make, and Hexagon costs thus became factors in 

deliberations on the long-term composition of the 

National Reconnaissance Program. 

Such issues began to concern the NRP Executive 

Committee during the summer of 1968. Late in that 

summer, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Nitze, 

alert to the increasing costs of the Hexagon program, 

the remarkable new capabilities being demonstrated 

by other reconnaissance satellites, and the potential 

value of Hexagon in a SALT-agreement verification 

setting, instructed Dr. John Foster, Director of 

Defense Research and Engineering, to undertake a 

comprehensive evaluation of Hexagon. Similar studies 

had been completed and reported to the Executive 

Committee at intervals since 1964 (although only 

lately had SALT been of real concern), but most had 

been undertaken by one or another of the several 

participants in the satellite reconnaissance effort 

(the CIA, the NRO, NPIC, DIA, and the NSA had all 

participated or contributed at one time or another), 

and Nitze wanted a fresh and entirely independent 

viewpoint.34

Cost was in no way a new issue. But during the 

summer and fall of 1968 it became apparent that 

substantial reductions in prospective NRP budgets for 

fiscal years 1969 through 1973 were inevitable and 

that one way of offsetting them would be to cancel 

Hexagon. The objection, of course, was that Hexagon 

returns seemed essential to satisfaction of approved 

NRP objectives for the post-1972 period. At that 

point in the discussions, the Bureau of the Budget 

revived an earlier suggestion that the combination of 

Gambit-3 and an improved Corona (presumably some 

variant of what was generally known as the Corona 

J-4 proposal) would satisfy the requirement at a cost 

perhaps below that anticipated for Hexagon. The CIA, 

DIA, NPIC, and NRO responded in concert that without 

a complete redesign (with costs then estimated to be 

equal to those of completing Hexagon development), 

Corona could never provide search resolutions much 

better than about 4.5 feet—and all those agencies 

were agreed that search resolutions better than 3.0 

feet were essential to verification of arms limitations 

agreements. The Bureau of the Budget rejoinder that 

a 1.5-foot difference in resolution could not possibly 

be worth what it would surely cost by 1973 had no 

evident effect.35

In November 1968 the American electorate chose 

Richard M. Nixon to succeed Lyndon B. Johnson as 

President. Nixon appointees took office in January 

1969. Foster and Richard Helms, Director of Central 

Intelligence, were among the few senior officials 

to carry over from one administration to the other. 

Nitze was succeeded by David Packard as Deputy 

Secretary of Defense, and Clark Clifford, President 

Johnson’s last Secretary of Defense, by Melvin Laird. 

Clifford had delegated responsibility for virtually all 

matters concerned with the National Reconnaissance 

Program to Nitze; Laird did the same for Packard, but 

kept closer tabs, on NRP policy decisions than had 

Clifford. Laird’s instructions from President Nixon 

were to reduce defense expenditures below the levels 

proposed by the Johnson Administration, and he did 

not propose to exempt the NRP from funding cutbacks. 

The new Director of the Bureau of the Budget, Robert 

P. Mayo, had received similar instructions: he found a 

ready advocacy of NRP funding cuts embedded in the 

permanent staff of the bureau. 

Very shortly after taking over the budget bureau, 

Mayo proposed cancelling Hexagon and substituting 

a Corona-Gambit capability. Packard saw little merit 

in the idea (he had concluded that if any major 

reconnaissance program were to be cancelled it 

should be a measure that would have about the same 

financial effect as a Hexagon cancellation), and for 

the moment Mayo received no support from the White 

House.36

Late in March, Mayo again marshaled budget 

bureau arguments against Hexagon and carried 

them to the President. On 9 April 1969, President 

Nixon ordered Hexagon to be cancelled. The 

rationale of the decision was extremely complex, but 

in essentials it derived from the evident necessity of 

eliminating either Hexagon or a competing project if 

the fiscal 1970-71 budget was to remain in balance, 

the apparent overlap of capability between Hexagon 

and the competing project in SALT terms, the 

impossibility of cancelling Gambit until a replacement 

was operational, and the lack of any other obvious 

reconnaissance program candidates for cancellation. 

Corona was so inexpensive as compared to Hexagon 

that its continuation into an indefinite future would 

have no appreciable effect on NRP budget levels. 

Whatever the reasoning behind the 9 April 

decision, reconsideration was immediate. At Helms’ 

urging, the President delayed action on Hexagon 
116

PERRY HISTORY - HEXAGON

cancellation for two weeks. In that interval Helms 

and Packard made their objections known to the 

President, and on 21 April Mayo reversed his original 

stand. The three brought Laird to their way of thinking 

by late April. The fundamental argument they settled 

on (eventually presented by Mayo) was that Hexagon 

would provide a much better capability for validating 

any arms limitation agreement. John Foster did not 

fully agree, but his reservations about Hexagon 

derived partly from the inconclusive study he had 

undertaken at Nitze’s urging six months earlier. 

(Endnote 37 redacted.)

The June 1969 decision was conclusive, and before 

long was irreversible. To have cancelled Hexagon 

after the summer of 1969 would have decimated the 

national capability for search-satellite operations. 

Proposals for extending Corona production and even 

for stockpiling Coronas against some future need 

(which presumably could have included the failure 

of the Hexagon development program) gained an 

occasional hearing thereafter, but never again did they 

have high-level support. The National Aeronautics 

and Space Administration wanted Corona for possible 

use in Earth Resources Survey assignments and 

the Department of State urged retention of Corona 

capability against crisis reconnaissance needs, 

but NASA was unable to finance continued Corona 

production and State could not overcome arguments 

that Hexagon would outperform Corona in a crisis 

reconnaissance assignment. Enough Corona 

systems had been ordered to protect against a 

serious gap in coverage should Hexagon be delayed 

in development—which proved notably wise—and 

the development of a reasonably effective and not too 

costly Gambit modification (Higherboy) represented 

another hedge against delayed Hexagon availability. 

Both were stopgap measures, of course; by 1969 

successful Hexagon operations in 1972 had become 

an integral of national reconnaissance policy.38

During the first two years after Hexagon program 

approval, incurred delays had largely arisen in 

uncertainties of program definition and design. Their 

effect had been to cause a significant slippage in 

program schedules. Although their advocates had 

represented both S-2 and Fulcrum to be fit for full 

system development by late 1965, not until the Spring 

of 1966 had a development start been approved, and 

not until 1968 were all of the essential elements of 

the Hexagon system under contract. Decisions on 

booster configuration, recovery vehicle configuration, 

the selection of a stellar indexing and mapping 

camera, and accommodation of the orbital vehicle 

to the changing design of the camera system had 

been delayed far longer than could reasonably have 

been anticipated. Long after, the chief CIA manager 

of reconnaissance program matters concluded that 

insufficient background research had been performed 

on Hexagon in advance of the decision to proceed 

with full-scale system development.*

After system definition had finally been completed, 

an event that was difficult to date but could most 

accurately be assigned to mid-1968, Hexagon 

began to encounter the sorts of engineering and 

test problems that had marked the development 

of all earlier photographic satellites. Gambit-1 had 

come closer than any other photosatellite to meeting 

its schedule, and even Gambit had demonstrated 

disturbing operational shortcomings during its first 

year of operation. Corona had nearly been cancelled 

after a first year of flight experience dominated by 

mission failures, and all other photo-satellites of the 

1960’s had eventually succumbed to one or another of 

several major flaws. Although the Hexagon program 

schedule made some allowances for slippages 

caused by unforeseen engineering difficulties, in the 

end they proved to be insufficient.

The lack of an agreed software program delayed 

progress in operational planning until March 1969, 

when Flax intervened to resolve disagreements 

between the sensor (CIA) and system (SAFSP) 

program offices. Another delaying element arose from 

a difference of opinion involving the System Program 

Office and the National Photographic Interpretation 

Center concerning the accuracy requirement for 

attitude determination devices. Although for a time it 

appeared that some redesign of the attitude sensors 

might be required, in the end the problem was reduced 

to one of data requirements, NPIC relaxing its original 

demands for extreme precision. Colonel Buzard later 

summed up the program office viewpoint with the 

phrase, “if a thing is not worth doing at all, why do 

it well?” Nevertheless, such problems hinted at real 

slippages to come. 

The first unrecoverable slippage of any kind was 

acknowledged early in 1969 (while the scheduled first 

launch date still was 1 October 1970); Perkin-Elmer 

spent an unprogrammed two and one-half months 

of additional work in completing and testing the first 

qualification model of the camera-vehicle midsection 

assembly. The disclosure of that misadventure had 

* Carl Duckett, the CIA’s Deputy Director, Science and Technology, suggested 

in a 15 July 1971 discussion of probable cost growth in a proposed new system 

that “...in the case of HEXAGON... we had spent little money and knew very 

little what we were trying to do” at the time of program approval. Although only 

Dr. Flax and his immediate staff seem to have expressed such misgivings 

while Fulcrum and S-2 were being roundly endorsed by their respective 

sponsors in 1965-1966, that retrospective judgment seems sound. Only the 

camera subsystem design seems to have been reasonably well defined at 

the time of Hexagon program approval in April 1966, and once engineering 

development got well underway even that changed significantly.39
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Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

been preceded by a rather unsettling special review 

of Hexagon engineering work undertaken to the end 

of 1968; the review report highlighted 14 major and 

28 lesser system faults that required prompt attention. 

Camera subsystem development costs increased in 

the first quarter of calendar 1969—a foretaste of much 

larger cost growth to come—and various slippages 

and redesign requirements forced the allocation of 

additional funds to Lockheed.40

The CIA’s Sensor Subsystem Program Office 

initially reacted to word of potential slippages in 

camera development schedules by proposing to 

compress and abbreviate elements of the thermal 

testing program, but that expedient became 

inadvisable when the camera section proved to be 

more sensitive to minor temperature variations than 

had been assumed earlier. 

Although to that time only about two months of 

unrecoverable slippages in the total Hexagon program 

had been positively identified, and schedules had been 

designed to accommodate at least that much slack, 

in June 1969 Dr. McLucas* assigned to his principal 

deputy, Dr. F. Robert Naka the task of determining the 

viability of the Hexagon launch schedule (which then 

called for first flight no later than December 1970). 

Naka’s evaluation,** forwarded to members of the NRP 

Executive Committee on 20 June, contained carefully 

qualified expressions of caution.

In addition to evaluating the probability that 

Hexagon would be launched as scheduled, Naka 

estimated the degree of confidence the NRO should 

have that the first Hexagon mission would be 

successful, and looked at various ways of optimizing 

search mission products at least possible cost. An 

unavoidable parallel issue was whether Corona 

vehicles additional to those then on order should be 

purchased as a safeguard against a lapse in search 

coverage that might occur if Hexagon operations 

began appreciably later than December 1970.

Naka calculated a 95-percent probability for a first 

Hexagon launch no later than June 1971, rated at 

75 percent the probability of a first launch by March 

1971, and assigned a 50-percent probability to launch 

no later than January 1971. He concluded that about 

75-percent confidence should be assigned to the 

possibility of mission success on the initial flight and 

foresaw a 95-percent probability that at least one of the 

* Dr. J. L. McLucas succeeded Flax as Director, National Reconnaissance 

Office, in April 1969.

** Dr. Naka signed and reported the findings as spokesman for a committee 

that included the CIA’s sensor project office and Colonel L. S. Norman of 

the NRO’s Directorate of Special Projects. Although preliminary findings were 

forwarded to the Executive Committee in June, formal reports seem not to 

have been prepared until September 1969.

first three missions would be successful. Given those 

odds, he suggested that the 12 Coronas programmed 

for launch at about two month intervals between 

June 1970 and July 1971 should be rescheduled to 

allow for at least two missions after July 1971, thus 

insuring a minimum overlap of Corona with Hexagon 

and providing some search coverage in the event of 

either a Hexagon slippage past June 1971 or mission 

failure. Given the existing uncertainties of Hexagon 

scheduling, Naka also cautioned that the need for 

more Coronas should be reassessed in December 

1969.41

The Naka report, standing alone, was cause 

for mild uneasiness. Taken together with revised 

estimates of Hexagon costs in fiscal 1970, however, it 

prompted a serious Executive Committee discussion 

of the future of Hexagon as a system. Both PerkinElmer and Lockheed had advised program managers 

of potentially massive Hexagon cost growth—a 

particularly disheartening development at a time 

when other elements of the National Reconnaissance 

Program were also in financial distress. Part of 

the difficulty arose from the necessity of diverting 

defense dollars to the increasingly costly IndoChina 

War; another part derived from President Nixon’s 

assignment of a high priority to the effort to develop 

a near-real-time readout system for reconnaissance 

satellite applications—the target date being 1976. The 

program had been cancelled and there still was no 

agreement on whether ultra-high resolution or readout 

should receive funding priority. David Packard, 

chairman of the Executive Committee, asked flatly 

on 8 August 1969 whether there was agreement in 

the Committee that Hexagon development should 

be continued. The vote was in favor of proceeding; 

there was no real alternative, although various 

substitute means for providing search coverage in the 

1970’s still were being examined. ClA’s Carl Duckett 

assured Packard that costs had been brought under 

control and that Perkin-Elmer, the chief offender, had 

promised to be attentive to the need for careful control 

of costs. Although the system was somewhat behind 

schedule, the quality of systems then in test seemed 

quite good, Duckett added. 

In the end, the Executive Committee approved 

the Hexagon budget for fiscal 1970 about as 

submitted, merely adding a caution that the National 

Reconnaissance Office must keep a sharp eye and a 

tight hand on costs.42

Costs were not unrelated to schedules, of course, 

and in the late months of 1969 schedules were 

becoming almost as worrisome as costs. To maintain 

the required pace of progress, several contractors had 

resorted to double and triple shifts and the extensive 
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PERRY HISTORY - HEXAGON

use of overtime. Conduct of that sort was somewhat 

out of fashion by late 1969, at least for most defense 

procurements, but for Hexagon there seemed to be no 

useful alternative. In the development and production 

of many weapon systems, the schedule urgency 

attached to programs was largely artificial. Major 

systems had characteristically been delivered from 

one to three years late without significantly lessening 

total defense effectiveness. The customary response 

to development delays was to slip delivery schedules 

and to extend the in-service life of whatever was 

currently in the inventory rather than to trade money 

for time. Aircraft program schedules, for instance, 

could be restructured to offset cost increases in a 

given fiscal period and the worst consequence was 

to delay the availability of some system that probably 

need not meet whatever schedule had originally 

been established. Thus overtime generally was not 

encouraged for normal defense procurements, and 

multiple shifts usually were permitted only when some 

critical item like ammunition was in dangerously short 

supply. 

But the Hexagon case was in quite another 

category. Satellite reconnaissance systems did not 

stay quietly in the weapons inventory; they were 

expended, regularly and inevitably. If Hexagon did 

not appear as scheduled, some provision would 

have to be made for obtaining substitute coverage of 

target areas—and in late 1969 the alternatives were 

alarmingly few. Hexagon overtime and multiple-shift 

work was necessary to meet schedules that were 

based on the planned expenditure of existing stocks 

of reconnaissance satellites, chiefly Corona systems. 

Corona J-3 could not offset Hexagon requirements, 

and by 1969 there was no reasonable possibility of 

developing an improved Corona in time to substitute 

it for Hexagon. Indeed, within a few months it would 

become impossible to order additional Corona J-3 

systems in time to offset a major delay in Hexagon 

availability; the lead time for Corona was 18 to 

24 months, which meant that systems ordered in 

December 1969 could not be delivered sooner than 

June 1971. The question of whether to spend money 

for Hexagon overtime and multi-shift operations or to 

keep Hexagon on a normal schedule and buy Corona 

vehicles (or the only other feasible option, Gambit 

systems configured for high altitude flight and artificial 

search capability thereby), was more academic than 

real. The Executive Committee had little choice.

Concern did not vanish, nor did the Committee 

lose sight of the problem. In October 1969, Dr. Naka 

again reviewed Hexagon status and although an 

indicated additional slippage of at least one month 

had appeared since August, he recommended that the 

decision on an additional Corona buy be postponed 

until January 1970. By January there had been no 

significant change, so the Committee somewhat 

reluctantly decided to forego the option of ordering 

more Corona vehicles.43

Dr. Naka’s report did not stand alone and 

unsupported—or supported only by classical 

contractor and program office optimism. In December 

1969, Brigadier General W. G. King (who in August 

1969 had succeeded Major General John L. Martin, Jr., 

as NRO head of Program At the Directorate of Special 

Projects) convened a special meeting of Hexagon 

principals from the program office, the sensor project 

office, and the major contractors to reevaluate the 

prospect of meeting the scheduled December 1970 

launch date.*

All agreed that although the schedule was getting 

tighter with the gradual disappearance of slack time that 

had earlier been provided to accommodate inevitable 

engineering and test difficulties, the December 1970 

deadline was reasonable—but staying on schedule 

would require “vigorous action” by all concerned.44

Thermal control testing had, by late 1969, disclosed 

that the camera section was not immune to internal 

temperature variations of as much as 20 degrees 

(Centigrade), as had been intended. In practice, a 

variation of from three to seven degrees was as much 

as the camera could tolerate, and in a 60-foot vehicle 

exposed to variant sun angles the ambient internal 

temperature range was much larger. Heat had to 

be provided for part of the system, a modification 

that required adding both solar panel area and more 

electrical power. Recalibration and rework problems 

disarranged the combination camera-midbody tests at 

Perkin-Elmer in February and March 1970, causing 

Lockheed to substitute available satellite vehicle 

test sections for those originally scheduled to be so 

tested, but by adroit shifting about of test sections 

both contractors managed to stay reasonably close 

to the milestone schedule imposed by the December 

1970 launch date. But that sort of test rescheduling 

caused expenditure of very nearly the last remaining 

reserves of slack time in the pre-launch test program. 

In early July 1970, Dr. McLucas was able to report 

to the NRP Executive Committee that notwithstanding 

“...the normal difficulties one can expect with major 

development programs,” the December launch date 

for Hexagon still seemed achievable.45

* Nearly seven years earlier, then-Colonel King had somewhat abruptly 

been named to head the Gambit program office at a time when that system 

was in a situation of technical, financial, and schedule crisis. A decade still 

earlier, he had been called on to rescue the Snark missile system after it 

had experienced a 300 percent cost overrun, a five-year availability slippage, 

and a succession of incredible technical shortfalls. He had performed 

admirably in both assignments. (NB: General Martin’s departure was a routine 

reassignment after seven years with the NRO.)
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Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

Unhappily, even while Dr. McLucas was 

assembling his report to the Executive Committee 

the validity of his cautious optimism was eroded by 

events at the Perkin-Elmer plant. On 7 July, the first 

flight-article twin camera assembly (P-1) suffered a 

catastrophic failure during low temperature chamber 

testing. It had been scheduled for 31 July shipment 

to Lockheed. The extent of damage was so great that 

no possibility of timely repair and recalibration could 

realistically be entertained. On 10 July, therefore, 

the sensor program office confirmed the contractor’s 

judgment that the second sensor system (P-2), 

originally scheduled for 5 September shipment, had 

to be substituted in first-flight schedules. It was 

conceivable that P-2 could be qualified and shipped 

by 26 August, but given the earlier disappearance of 

virtually all remaining slack time in the flight readiness 

schedule; there was slight prospect of meeting the 

17 December 1970 first flight target date. Indeed, Dr. 

Naka reported to McLucas that even if the schedule 

were allowed to slip by three months (into March 

1971), confidence in meeting the new flight schedule 

would remain low. By adopting a seven-day, threeshift operation, Lockheed conceivably could complete 

qualification and calibration of the combined cameravehicle midsection assembly late in September, after 

which arrangements for a December launch still might 

possibly be made, but the effort would cost more 

in additional funds for Lockheed and Perkin-Elmer 

efforts, and still the assurance of launch would be 

tiny.46

Although the full extent of the problem was not 

known at the time the NRP Executive Committee 

met on 17 July, the implications were plain. J. R. 

Schlesinger, then acting Deputy Director of the Office 

of Manpower and Budget, promptly resurrected the 

proposal to buy Corona systems to fill the searchsystem gap that seemed certain to develop if the 

Hexagon camera failure was symptomatic of a major 

defect. Dr. Naka, whose committee had recommended 

bypassing that option six months earlier, explained that 

the last chance to order Corona systems had lapsed 

the previous February. If Hexagon failed, and Corona 

launches continued at their planned rate, there would 

occur a lapse of about six months before new Corona 

systems could be delivered. At that time (July 1970), 

an 11-month overlap still existed—assuming that 

Hexagon could meet a June 1971 launch date, the 

worst possible contingency previously examined in 

detail and that at least one of the first three launches 

was successful in returning search photography. The 

decision that had to be made, Naka explained, was 

whether to push for an early launch so as to learn 

promptly what on-orbit problems Hexagon faced, or 

to complete a thorough sequence of tests in order to 

generate high confidence in flight success and accept 

the resulting schedule slippage.47

Although on the surface the potential for launching 

in December 1970 looked hopeless, the sensor 

project office held stubbornly to that goal for nearly a 

month after the failure of P-1. The chosen course had 

been to opt for an early launch rather than extended 

testing. Perkin-Elmer and Lockheed overtime costs 

were accepted as the price of the effort. But following 

arrival of the second camera payload (P-2) at 

Lockheed’s Sunnyvale facility, major problems with 

the film transport mechanism again stalled the test 

program. Faulty platen functioning and film supply 

operations were simultaneously delaying qualification 

tests at Perkin-Elmer’s Danbury (Connecticut) plant. 

The situation having degenerated so completely, the 

sensor project office conceded “...that they don’t have 

a prayer of meeting the 17 December launch date.”48

Formal acknowledgement of the inevitable 

launch date slippage came from General King on 15 

September: “Problems principally associated with 

acceptance testing of the sensor subsystem...” had 

invalidated the December 1970 launch schedule. 

Lockheed’s overtime authorization had been revoked 

a week earlier. King believed that if the various camera 

and film tracking problems encountered at Sunnyvale 

and Danbury were promptly solved, a March 1971 first 

flight might still be possible. Not until he heard King’s 

opinion did Dr. McLucas officially advise the United 

States Intelligence Board that the Hexagon schedule 

had come thoroughly unstuck.49

Most of the problems proved to be electronic rather 

than mechanical or optical, which may have made 

long-term prospects seem brighter, but that did not 

lessen the immediate gravity of the situation. Late in 

September, King named select teams of specialists to 

review the status of sensor subsystem work and once 

their preliminary findings had been received sent off 

additional “tiger teams” to look into the state of affairs 

at the space vehicle and recovery vehicle plants. Their 

reports reinforced King’s preliminary judgment: if “...

no additional significant problems occur...” the first 

flight midsection should be ready for mating by midOctober and first launch should follow in March. Four 

months had been allocated for systems integration 

and checkout at Sunnyvale and Vandenberg.50

Although nothing resembling the major testing 

failures of July and August marred the Hexagon 

development program for the remainder of 1970, by 

January 1971 it had become apparent that “March 

1971” (which had widely been interpreted to mean 

“about 1 March”) had better be restated as April, and 

9 April became the new official target date—although 
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PERRY HISTORY - HEXAGON

in private session the Executive Committee received 

advice from Dr. Naka that “about May 10, 1971” was 

a better estimate. Somewhat less inclined than in 

the past to accept schedule assurances at their face 

value, the NRP Executive Committee endorsed Dr. 

McLucas’ action in providing additional insurance 

against extended Hexagon troubles by authorizing 

work on a Gambit modification (Higherboy) that would 

permit Gambit to operate as a makeshift search 

system by flying at altitudes of about 525 nautical 

miles. At that distance, Gambit swath widths would 

approximate those of Corona, and resolution would 

be about the same. The first of three Higherboy kits 

ordered for insurance would be ready by November 

1971 but would not be needed before April 1972, in 

the worst possible case. Considered as no more than 

Corona equivalents, they would add approximately 

six months to the existing overlap between Corona 

and Hexagon. They represented, at best, a means 

of offsetting the consequences of a temporary loss of 

search satellite capability through an extended delay in 

Hexagon availability. Higherboy was an expensive but 

expedient means for providing Corona-scope search 

capability, with perhaps somewhat better resolution 

than Corona, but in no sense could Higherboy be 

considered a Hexagon replacement.51

Dr. Naka’s cautious appraisal of the worth of 

“official” Hexagon launch schedules proved sound 

almost immediately. By the end of March, problems 

encountered in acoustic and thermal tests of the first 

payload-vehicle assembly caused program managers 

to reschedule the initial launch for “not earlier than 3 

May 1971,” and by April it had become apparent that 

the four-month allowance for payload integration and 

checkout should have been seven months. Late in April 

new delays intervened, and 20 May became the target 

date. Then on 26 April the program office learned that 

extended testing of the shutter assembly on the second 

and third camera payload sections had disclosed that 

failure was liable to occur after only 28,000 cycles 

of shutter operation. Colonel Buzard sadly advised 

Brigadier General Lew Allen, new Program A director, 

that because the shutters in the payload then being 

prepared for launch had experienced 20,000 and 

28,000 cyclic operations respectively, there was a 

high probability of shutter failure on orbit. The design, 

he said flatly, was marginal. He therefore proposed to 

delay the first launch until at least June.

Allen reacted immediately. Categorizing the 

possibility of on-orbit failure as “unacceptable,” he 

halted launch preparations. Perkin-Elmer estimated 

that three weeks would be required to modify and 

retest the shutters.

The problem, when diagnosed, was almost 

simplistic. The shutters were of focal-plane types, with 

the opening and closing blades operating in separate 

slots in a rail and overlapping at the end of their travel. 

The shutter blades were .010 inches thick, and the 

slots .015 inches wide. Bearing surfaces on the shoes 

on the closing blade were .015 thick. There simply was 

insufficient room for both blades and bearing shoes 

when the blades overlapped at the end of shutter 

travel. The correction was simplicity itself: remove 

the end of the blade so that it no longer rubbed on 

the rail; blade failure (from that cause) thus became 

impossible. Accelerated tests of the modified blade 

assembly proved it capable of surviving 110,000 cycles 

of operations. But diagnosis and shutter modification 

(and retesting) had chewed up so much time that 

“about 14 June” had to become the new launch target 

date. (Because Hexagon payload vehicles could not 

be trucked over California highways on weekends, 

when traffic was heaviest, and because the payload 

would not be ready for trucking before 28 May, four 

additional days delay were imposed by the unfortunate 

coincidence of the Memorial Day weekend and the 

completion of payload testing at Sunnyvale.)52

But that was the last. Payload delivery was on 

schedule, pre-launch checkout was almost uneventful, 

and on 15 June 1971 the first Hexagon satellite went 

into orbit. Carrying Hexagon from program approval 

to first launch had taken five years rather than two 

and had cost rather more than twice as much as 

initially estimated, mostly for camera development, 

which cost three times as much as the CIA had 

anticipated,53 but a launch had been brought off. And 

in the end the critical scheduling estimates provided 

by Dr. Robert Naka and his associates in 1969 had 

proved remarkably accurate: Hexagon did indeed fly 

in June 1971 (the “95-percent probability” date), and 

it did indeed function successfully (the “75-percent 

confidence” evaluation).
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Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

Hexagon:

Initial Operations

Although first flight did not occur in October 1970, 

as anticipated, Hexagon operations, when they began, 

conformed in other respects to careful plans designed 

to meet that deadline. Operation of Hexagon would 

be as complex as the management and hardware and 

software problems that had proved so troublesome in 

the months between April 1966 program approval and 

June 1971 first flight. The functional and organizational 

interrelationships of Hexagon operations would have 

astonished reconnaissance program managers of the 

early 1960’s, when verbal agreements and informal 

memoranda constituted the bulk of operational 

program documentation. 

The list of organizations participating in Hexagon 

operations was awesome—even if only principals 

were counted. It included COMIREX* (the United 

States Intelligence Board—USIB—Committee on 

Imagery Requirements and Exploitations); Eastman 

Kodak; the Global Weather Center (GWC) of the Air 

Force Air Weather Service; the Imagery Collection 

Requirements Subcommittee (ICRS) of COMIREX; 

the National Photographic Interpretation Center 

(NPIC); the Office of Special Projects (OSP), CIA, 

the Satellite Operations Center (SOC) of the National 

Reconnaissance Office (NRO); the Satellite Test 

Center (STC) of the Air Force Satellite Control Facility 

(SCF); the Sensor Subsystem Project Office (SSPO) 

of CIA’s OSP; the System Program Office (SPO) at 

the NRO’s Directorate of Special Projects (SAFSP); 

the Air Force Special Projects Production Facility 

(SPPF); and the U.S. Army Topographic Command 

(TOPOCOM). The acronyms alone were enough to 

engage the attention of a trained philologist.

Both the System Program Director (General Allen at 

the time of first launch—Colonel Buzard was Program 

Manager) and the CIA’s Director of Reconnaissance 

(John Crowley) reported to Dr. Flax for purposes 

of managing the operational aspects of Hexagon. 

The System Program Office (Los Angeles) and the 

Sensor Subsystem Project Office (Langley, Virginia) 

* (Acronyms and organizational abbreviations generally have not been 

used on these pages, except for such often-used sets of initials as NRO, 

NRP, USAF, and CIA. The following brief summary of operational program 

participants and their responsibilities is so dominated by organizations known 

almost exclusively by their abbreviations that it is not feasible to continue that 

felicitous practice, however desirable. Some acronyms are so well entrenched 

in conversational usage in the intelligence community that even constant users 

have to stop and rummage through their memories when asked to provide 

the full titles of such as COMIREX, SPPF, and ICRS. The reader baffled or 

infuriated by bureaucratic fondness for acronyms and their verbalization may 

pass by this section without appreciably weakening his understanding of the 

Hexagon program. The section has been included in deference to the canons 

of historiography: some muddled scholar may someday need to know what 

element of jargonese referred to what organization. R. P.)

were respectively responsible for mission operational 

software (computer programs) and participation in the 

development and analysis of the software. CIA’s OSP 

developed simulation and special study software, and 

the Satellite Operations Center participated in various 

aspects of software development as required.

Mission guidance for operational activities came 

from ICRS/COMIREX, which also provided any details 

of intelligence requirements not defined previously by 

USIB standing requirements. The Satellite Operations 

Center selected launch dates, orbits, and mission 

objectives to satisfy general intelligence requirements 

or such special mission requirements as might from 

time to time be levied. The Office of Special Projects 

(CIA) provided pre-mission software, and the System 

Program Office determined vehicle performance 

characteristics, established flight objectives, defined 

operational constraints, and provided for vehicle launch 

preparation and mission operations preparations.

The Satellite Test Center, in support of the System 

Program Office, constructed mission profiles and a 

software data base and performed mission software 

rehearsals. NPIC furnished target lists. The System 

Program Director exercised complete responsibility 

for Hexagon operations from launch through recovery. 

Assisted by the Sensor Subsystem Project Office, 

the Hexagon Operations Command Post (part of the 

Satellite Test Center) conducted on-orbit operations.

Global Weather Center was responsible for 

providing weather forecasts for each one-eighth of 

the full Hexagon swath width of photography for each 

orbital revolution, expressing the forecasts in terms of 

percentage probabilities that any area would be more 

or less than 90-percent cloud-free. 

Eastman Kodak and the Special Projects 

Production Facility (a superbly equipped photographic 

processing laboratory at Westover, Massachusetts) 

each processed two working prints of each set of 

negatives. The National Photographic Interpretation 

Center provided preliminary readouts of the film 

returned by the first and third operational reentry 

vehicles; Eastman Kodak and the Special Projects 

Production Facility (with NPIC participating) did the 

actual film processing and distribution. TOPOCOM 

provided the final operational report on cloud cover 

during flight, the Satellite Operations Center evaluated 

mission accomplishments, and the System Program 

Director furnished a post-flight analysis of operations 

for all but the camera system, which was the analytical 

responsibility of the Sensor Subsystem Project Office.
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PERRY HISTORY - HEXAGON

Software capabilities resident in Hexagon 

included three simulation programs called CRYSPER, 

HAMPER and HSIM, relating respectively to sensor 

subsystem performance, mission performance, and 

camera operations. TUNITY was the name assigned 

to the mission targeting, command and control, 

and reporting program; trans-operational mission 

reports were mostly based on TUNITY products. 

The probability that mission objectives were being 

satisfied was calculated through use of a program 

called ACCOMP.54

Preparations for the first Hexagon launch had not 

gone unremarked by the press, which was scarcely 

surprising if only because the Titan IUD launch vehicle 

was so enormous (although it used the same booster 

core that put Gambit-3 in orbit). Oddly enough, none 

of the major newspapers of the country noticed the 

operation. Aviation Week printed a small post-launch 

notice that singled out Hexagon as a previously untried 

system but completely misstated mission and function. 

A feature writer for the San Jose News represented 

Hexagon to be “a giant super spy satellite known 

as ‘orbiting Pueblo’...” and alerted local residents to 

watch for “the most volcanic blastoff ever witnessed 

on the West Coast.” The imaginative writer attributed 

to the satellite the combined capability of being able 

to “photograph the whiskers on the chin of a Soviet 

general...” and “monitor whispered conversation from 

115 miles in the sky”—which might have been true for 

some Soviet general with a waist-length beard who 

was sunning himself on a well-lighted black-sand 

beach just as Hexagon passed directly overhead, 

cameras operating, but was in other respects 

somewhat exaggerated.55 The Air Force routinely 

announced the successful launch of a “Department 

of Defense satellite” after Hexagon went into orbit 

and a few newspapers printed the now-customary 

paragraph reporting that event, but nothing in the way 

of real publicity disturbed the launch.56

Perhaps all of the trauma and disorder fated 

for Hexagon had been used up in the exhausting 

gestation and development phases; perhaps by 1971 

reconnaissance satellite development had become 

more a science than an art. But in any case, the launch 

and orbital operations of Hexagon 1201 were as nearly 

flawless as any first launch of the decade. Camera 

operations presented “only minor problems,” and until 

the final minutes of film capsule recovery there was 

nothing in the mission approaching drama. The C-130 

retrieving aircraft nearest the first descending capsule 

easily spotted the target but the pilot elected to let it 

fall into the ocean after observing that the parachute 

was badly torn and descent rate was very rapid. A 

helicopter crew retrieved 1201-1* from the sea less 

than 30 minutes later, intact and undamaged.

As with other untried systems, the first few Hexagon 

flights were primarily intended to provide data on 

capabilities and operational problems. In that sense, 

useful photography was a bonus. But unlike Gambit, 

the last preceding major photographic satellite system 

to enter the service of the National Reconnaissance 

Program, initial Hexagon operations were also 

planned to return as much overflight photography as 

possible. Much of the film captured images of ground 

targets distributed over parts of the western United 

States. But Hexagon carried more than 200,000 feet 

of 6.6-inch film, and even if the cameras had operated 

randomly it would have been difficult to expend 

50,000 feet of film (the quantity contained in each 

recovery capsule) without managing to photograph 

some targets of interest to the intelligence community. 

In the case of Hexagon, of course, exposure was 

never random in character; camera operations were 

precisely calculated to provide photographs of denied 

areas. Dr. McLucas had his first look at the product on 

22 June. He immediately advised all Hexagon program 

participants that it was outstanding, representative of 

a great technical achievement, and of remarkable 

value.57

As compared to other reconnaissance satellite 

first flights, Hexagon 1201 may have been relatively 

trouble-free, but there were operational difficulties 

nonetheless. Battery overheating, apparently the 

product of solid-rocket exhaust contamination of 

reflective surfaces, perturbed on-orbit control to some 

extent, and the parachute malfunction on 1201-1 was 

symptomatic of a potentially serious problem. Capsule 

1201-2 also developed parachute problems, although 

in that instance an air catch (26 June) proved feasible 

nonetheless. But 1201-3, which reentered on 10 July, 

was another matter. All went well to the instant of main 

parachute deployment, but at that point a catastrophic 

overload developed, the parachute lines failed, and 

the capsule hit the ocean with such great force that 

the impact ruptured flotation devices. Before nearby 

helicopters could arrive, the capsule sank to the ocean 

floor some three miles below. 

The battery overheating problem foiled plans to 

extend the first Hexagon mission to 45 days. By early 

July, degradation of the primary batteries threatened 

a shift to reserve batteries (carried on the first mission 

* In order to limit confusion in discussions of the four-capsule Hexagon system, 

it seems advisable to adopt here the convention used in Hexagon mission 

reporting, identifying the mission by number (in the 1200 series, starting with 

1201) and the mission phase and reentry vehicle by sequence of capsule 

use. Thus “1201-1” identifies both photography returned by the first of the four 

capsules to be retrieved in the first Hexagon operation and the capsule itself.
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Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

only) and there were indications that the batteries used 

to ignite reentry pyrotechnics were failing. When one 

set of pyro batteries did fail, on 14 July, Buzard had 

the cameras operated at every possible opportunity 

for the next eight hours and then recovered 1201-4 

on Friday, 15 July, after Hexagon had been 31 days 

on orbit.

The battery problem had constrained camera 

operations earlier in the mission, indications of 

overheating being responsible for a decision to limit 

photography to about 15 minutes for each of four 

orbits, a provision that was subsequently relaxed and 

eventually cancelled. Nevertheless, the availability of 

reserve batteries protected against a total failure of 

Hexagon 1201 if the main batteries and solar panels 

were to prove defective. Hexagon 1201 had been 

programmed for only 30 days of orbital operations, 

and realization of a 31-day mission represented 

performance marginally better than planned.

During the transfer of film take-up operations from 

1201-3 to 1201-4, some undiagnosed disorder in the 

film transport mechanism caused two brief automatic 

shutdown operations, but resort to ordinary recovery 

measures restored the cameras to full function shortly 

after each incident.

On balance, Hexagon mission 1201 had to 

be adjudged an outstanding success. Returned 

photography from 1201-1 alone contained coverage of 

more than two-thirds of all known Soviet missile sites 

and one set of photography taken in one pass over 

Albania was sufficient to permit identification, by class 

and type of weaponry, of that country’s entire inventory 

of aircraft and ships. The battery overheating defect 

seemed likely to be cured by battery repositioning. 

Film transport difficulties appeared to be of no great 

consequence, although when the recovered capsules 

were unloaded it began to appear that less film had 

been exposed than planned, the outcome of faulty 

transport mechanism operations that caused film 

to twist and double over itself from time to time on 

both sides of the platen.* But with 50,000 feet of film 

available for each of the four mission phases, the 

occasional loss of a hundred feet here and there did 

not seem important for a first mission.

Parachute problems were quite another matter; 

only one of the four recoveries (1201-4) had been 

free of parachute malfunctions, two of the capsules 

had gone into the ocean (1201-1 and 1201-3), and 

* Some unexposed film was programmed: film rewind between camera 

operating phases was not scheduled for Hexagon 1201 in the interests of 

simplifying first-flight operating modes. Film twisting and overlapping caused 

the metering instruments to register more film on the take-up spools than 

actually reached them.

one had been lost altogether (1201-3). Happily, the 

damaged parachutes of 1201-1 and 1201-2 had both 

been retrieved, as had the ablative cone of 1201-2, so 

analysis of the problem did not have to be conducted 

on the strength of telemetry and photography alone.58

Analysis of parachute defects, and later redesign 

and test activities, continued for several months after 

1201-4 had been retrieved. Modified parachutes 

were eventually provided for 1202, and a new canopy 

and rigging design was adopted for 1203 and later 

Hexagons.** The failures, it appeared, had been the 

products of design and testing oversight. Because 

tests of the parachute assembly used for 1201 had 

not fully explored the high-shock region of initial 

parachute deployment, the parachutes used for 

1201 were at best marginal. That three of the four 

capsules had been retrieved later began to seem 

almost miraculous; by all odds, the ratio should have 

been reversed. The main parachute lines had been 

overstressed by a factor of about two. Discovery of that 

situation, and the provision of adequate parachutes, 

eventually contributed to a decision to delay launch of 

Hexagon 1202, although in fact 1201 had returned so 

much still undigested information that in July the head 

of the Defense Intelligence Agency suggested to Dr. 

McLucas that Corona and Gambit operations would 

more than satisfy intelligence needs for the moment.59

And Hexagon 1201 provided an opportunity no 

earlier reconnaissance satellite could have matched: 

for the first time the United States seriously attempted 

to retrieve a space capsule from the bottom of the 

Pacific Ocean.

The capsule at issue was 1201-3, which lay at a 

depth of about 16,000 feet on the floor of the Pacific 

Ocean off the Hawaiian Islands. Capsule designers 

were confident that the water impact had not shattered 

the capsule, although it was quite likely to have been 

damaged and would not be water-tight. 

The feasibility of recovering 1201-3 was first 

considered almost casually in a 27 July conversation 

between Dr. Naka and Carl Duckett of the CIA. 

Intrigued, Duckett discretely asked the Navy if 

the deep-submersible Trieste II, an experimental 

submarine of considerable versatility, could do the 

retrieval task. The Navy assured Duckett that the 

Trieste II could operate safely to depths of 20,000 

feet, could quite probably manage a “hook and cable” 

retrieval operation, and that the precise location of 

the capsule could probably be established by Scripps 

Institute undersea survey ships then under charter to 

** The redesigned parachutes were originally planned for incorporation in 

1205, but schedule slippages caused by other factors eventually allowed their 

addition to 1203.
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PERRY HISTORY - HEXAGON

the Navy—at a cost of only $100,000. The Trieste II 

would be provided cost-free, if wanted.

Upon hearing the first informal suggestion that 

the capsule might be recovered, an NRO staff officer 

*asked Eastman Kodak if the film conceivably could be 

exploited after retrieval. The answer, surprisingly, was 

“yes”; the edges of the tightly rolled film would swell 

upon exposure to sea water, thus sealing off the center 

of the roll. In Eastman’s judgment, a “considerable 

portion” of the film might survive. Because the 

weather over the Soviet Union had been good while 

the film returned by 1201-3 was being exposed, and 

because the film included coverage of some regions 

of particular interest to the intelligence community, its 

recovery might be highly worthwhile. D. W. Patterson, 

the CIA’s program director for Hexagon sensor 

subsystems, had earlier obtained EK’s assurance 

that the film could be safely despooled by hand. He 

concluded that if a search could be started by late 

August there would be a “good chance” of recovering 

useful film from 1201-3 during September.60

Once the informalities had been disposed of, 

Dr. McLucas formally asked R. A. Frosch, Assistant 

Secretary of the Navy (R&D), to authorize use of 

the Trieste II and Scripps Institute survey ships in 

the recovery effort. Frosch assured McLucas that 

the Navy would be “pleased to assist” and that the 

exercise would cost the NRO very little.

The effort, once begun, proved to be somewhat 

more troublesome than first assumed. An initial 

afterthought prompted a decision to design and 

fabricate a special basket container with claw-like 

clamps rather than to make retrieval dependent 

on hooks, cables, and the eyebolts of the capsule. 

Because weakening or disintegration of the 

magnesium parts of the capsule would occur during 

exposure to seawater, an enclosing “basket” would 

provide greater assurance that the capsule could be 

brought to the surface more or less intact. Delays 

imposed by “basket” procurement, bringing the 

Trieste II to the scene, and precisely locating the 

capsule delayed the start of recovery operations until 

winter weather arrived, in December 1911. (A start 

had been scheduled for late October.) But thoughts 

of abandoning the attempt could not realistically be 

entertained once it had begun. As Colonel Buzard 

pointed out, Soviet interest had almost surely been 

piqued by the unconcealed activities of such seabottom survey ships as the White Sands, Apache, 

and De Steiger, and given that the Soviets had 

precisely the same rights in the open Pacific as the 

United States, a Soviet effort to recover whatever the 

U.S. had been seeking was not at all inconceivable. 

* U.S. Army, assigned to the NRO.

The Soviets were known to be able to operate deepsubmergence vessels at depths as great as 33,000 

feet and were notoriously persistent. (A Soviet ship had 

then been keeping station over a sunken Novemberclass submarine in the North Atlantic for more than 

18 months, presumably to preclude any U.S. effort to 

recover hardware.) In such circumstances, Buzard 

argued it would be foolhardy to abandon the effort to 

retrieve 1201-3. Should that be unavoidable, however, 

he suggested that the on-station ships should pretend 

that the recovery operation had been successful—

sending congratulatory messages, tying off logistics 

arrangements, and otherwise presenting a bold front.

Dr. McLucas decided to persist. With the passing 

of bad weather in the Central Pacific in the Spring 

of 1972, the Trieste II returned to the scene and 

recommenced its deep-sea search. The survey ships 

reported success in locating what appeared to be 

capsule 1201-3 in mid-April. During the afternoon of 26 

April, the Trieste II completed a two-hour submersion 

operation and after a search of three and one-half 

hours sighted first debris and then the actual capsule 

at a depth of 16,400 feet. Three and one-half hours of 

careful maneuvering preceded basket closure and the 

start of a cautious ascent. More than nine hours after 

starting its dive the Trieste II surfaced. Unhappily the 

action of surface waves proved too much for the nowfragile capsule structure, which broke into pieces so 

small that most fell through the tines of the recovery 

device. Only some inconsequential bits and pieces 

remained.

Disappointing as the outcome may have been, it 

was one instance in which the death of the subject 

following a successful operation proved a thoroughly 

acceptable alternative to recovery. Nothing suggestive 

of U.S. reconnaissance capability remained for others 

to find. The eight-month effort had to be considered 

at least a partial success even if deterioration of the 

capsule had prevented full recovery: as McLucas told 

Frosch, the Navy had established and demonstrated 

“a unique capability vital to the security of the United 

States” that might conceivably be called into use again 

if the circumstances so warranted.61

Hexagon 1202 had initially been scheduled for

launch about three months following reentry of the final 

capsule- from 1201, but engineering modifications 

dictated by the performance of the first Hexagon 

payload were expensive of time, and the alternative of 

launching one of the few remaining Corona vehicles 

seemed preferable to a hasty patch job. In the event, 

assurance of a successful mission would have been 

lessened if battery overheating problems and the 

parachute malfunctions encountered during operation 

of Hexagon 1201 went uncorrected, and both required 
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Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

more effort and took longer than had initially been 

planned. Nor was the urgency of Hexagon coverage 

as pressing as had been anticipated; even though 

one capsule of film had been lost, the amount of film 

recovered from the first operation inundated photo 

interpreters. The notion of providing continuous 

coverage of the Soviet Union and Mainland China by 

keeping either a Gambit or a Hexagon in orbit at all 

times had to defer to the realities of staff and dollar 

resources; processing and evaluating Hexagon and 

Gambit film in the quantities that the two systems were 

capable of returning would force enlargement of the 

cadre of photo interpreters, a course neither the NRO 

budget nor NPIC training facilities could accommodate. 

Moreover, the concept of continuous coverage 

implied a capability for crisis reconnaissance rather 

than constant operation of orbiting reconnaissance 

vehicles, and systems other than Hexagon appeared 

to be better prospects for that assignment. (By 1971 

the premise of near-real-time readout by means of 

an electro-optical imaging system had proceeded 

to a system development phase, 1976 operational 

availability having been approved as a schedule goal.) 

What with lessened pressure for early launch 

of Hexagon 1202, some difficulties of system 

modification, and the availability of one additional 

Corona system for use in an emergency, it was 

December 1971 before Hexagon 1202 reached the 

launch stand. Preparations for a 21 December launch 

were aborted by elusive booster-system electrical 

problems, and correction was so lengthy that a 

complete revalidation of the spacecraft eventually 

had to be undertaken. The resulting delays caused 

program managers to reschedule Hexagon 1202 for 

a 19 January launch, a date that had to be slipped by 

one further day when last-minute checkout operations 

uncovered a minor system fault. Hexagon 1202 went 

into orbit on 20 January 1972 without encountering 

any major problems. There proved to be no warrant 

for qualms about the complete reliability of the 

modified parachute recovery system; 1202-1 and 

1202-2 reentered and were uneventfully retrieved 

on 26 January and 8 February respectively, just as 

planned. But attitude control subsystem effectiveness 

had begun to degenerate by early February, so flight 

managers reluctantly reprogrammed Hexagon 1202 

for 39 rather than 45 days of operation. (Premature 

control gas exhaustion owing to frequent vehicle 

repositioning maneuvers was assumed to be the 

source of the difficulty.) A much more serious problem 

occurred immediately following the start of camera 

operations for 1202-3; the film being fed through 

the aft camera developed a ragged tear that quickly 

became a film break, and for the remainder of the 

mission only the forward camera was operable. 

Capsules 1202-3 and 1202-4 reentered routinely and 

were recovered without further incident on 17 and 

28 February respectively, but imagery was entirely 

monoscopic. (Worry that the reentry vehicles might 

be unstable because one of the two take-up spools 

of each was empty proved unfounded.) De-orbiting of 

1202-4 eventually became dependent on the back-up 

recovery system (“Lifeboat”) with the final exhaustion 

of attitude control gas on the last day of the operation, 

but the reserve system functioned with commendable 

effectiveness and no unexpected problems developed. 

On the whole, the film imagery returned by 

Hexagon 1202 was somewhat better in technical 

quality than that of 1201, displaying a best resolution 

and a “normal” resolution ranging between 30 and 33 

inches. Because of poorer weather and sun angle, 

it contained no better detail in ground coverage, 

however. A variety of minor defects marred the 

operation, some of them the apparent consequence 

of having camera subsystem remain inactive on the 

launch stand some four weeks longer than planned, 

but on balance 1202 had to be counted a successful 

operation. The principal qualifier in that judgment was 

the major camera system malfunction midway through 

the mission, the product of film breakage. In terms of 

film lost or unused, 1202 and 1201 were about equal. 

Diagnosis of the cause of the film failure was 

difficult. There appeared to be no reason to conclude 

that it was related to rewind operations first attempted 

during mission 1202. (In the interests of mission 

success on 1201, film had been fed through to the 

take-up cassettes continuously, rewind operation 

being bypassed. Although that operation had caused 

wastage, film being passed through the system while 

the camera was inoperative, it obviated concern for 

the proper functioning of the rewind mechanisms at 

a rate of 55 inches per second, probably the most 

complex elements of the Hexagon’s camera system.) 

Inspection of recovered film suggested that some 

large particle of foreign matter had become enmeshed 

in the film transport mechanism of the aft camera, 

causing a puncture that quickly became a tear when 

tension increased during rewind and forward transport 

of unexposed film immediately following the start of 

1202-3 events. But the diagnosis had to be tentative 

because there was evidence of several malfunctions 

in film transport. Relatively large quantities of film 

were twisted, overlapped, and tangled on the takeup spools. (Some sections of recovered film had to 

be torn loose from the spindles during despooling, 

being so tightly jammed between the spool hub and 

the spool framework that they defied ordinary removal 

efforts.) Part of the film damage apparently resulted 

from an unprogrammed spool rotation after film takeup had been transferred from one recovery capsule to 

the next in line.
126

PERRY HISTORY - HEXAGON

In addition to the film break that had to be counted 

as the principal defect of Hexagon mission 1202, 

analysts cited two other major problems. One was 

a repetition of the thermal heating anomaly that had 

affected the batteries during mission 1201. Although 

the batteries of 1202 had been relocated to avoid heat 

imbalance caused by launch debris that contaminated 

the reflectant paint, they proved to be almost as 

susceptible to overheating as those of 1201. Careful 

control of the angle of exposure (beta angle) of the 

battery section to solar radiation kept any major 

difficulty from developing in 1202, but that requirement 

imposed unwanted constraints on the launch window 

for the Hexagon vehicle and contributed to the 

premature exhaustion of attitude-control gas.

The second problem was attitude control. Postmission analysis suggested that the failure of the 

reaction control system late in the mission, forcing 

early recovery of 1201-4, had probably been caused 

by contaminated hydrazene. The hydrazene at 

Vandenberg proved, upon inspection, to be “less pure 

than expected.” The most immediate way of correcting 

for the problem would be to lessen demands on the 

reaction control system during mission 1203 by flying 

at the 100-mile altitude of 1201 rather than the 82- to 

85-mile altitude of mission 1202. That would somewhat 

adversely affect resolution potential, but it would 

reduce the requirements for vehicle maneuvering and 

improve the potential of flying a full 45-day mission.

The post-mission critique on Hexagon 1202 

highlighted another problem, but one unrelated to 

system functioning. Midway through the operation, 

intelligence officials in Washington had cancelled premission requirements for operations that would have 

completed the required annual survey of selected 

Soviet land areas. The change had been justified in 

terms of potential savings in film, given the availability 

of generally adequate earlier coverage of several 

sensitive areas, but in fact Hexagon operations were 

in no way constrained by film supply during 30- to 

45-day missions. Program officials suggested, rather 

bluntly, that it was not the function of the intelligence 

requirements community to manage mission 

operations, and that it was particularly inappropriate 

for the Committee on Imagery Requirements and 

Exploitation to intervene in ongoing operations that 

were so heavily dependent on pre-programming. 62

Hexagon 1203 did not go into orbit until July 1972, 

more than four months after the final bucket from 

1202 was retrieved. The search-mission gap created 

by the delay was partly filled by launch of the last 

Corona in May and Hexagon program managers took 

advantage of the respite to incorporate in 1203 several 

system modifications that had originally been planned 

for later vehicles. The spacecraft and sensor system 

of 1203 had encountered more than the ordinary run 

of qualification difficulty during final tests late in 1971, 

but those problems were not direct contributors to the 

launch delay. Test indications of faulty operation in 

various aspects of film transport did portend similar 

problems on orbit, but the problems seemed to be 

almost basic to the complex film transport mode 

adopted for Hexagon. System validation tests applied 

to 1203 were somewhat more carefully attuned to film 

transport and attitude control functions than had been 

the case for earlier Hexagon systems, but that was 

no more than ordinary prudence given the difficulties 

actually experienced in those earlier launches.

The parachute redesign undertaken following the 

unhappy outcome of Hexagon 1201 capsule reentry 

operations reached fruition in time to permit 1203 to 

take advantage of it. Delays in the readiness of 1202 

and 1203 permitted the incorporation of redesigned 

parachute systems in the recovery capsules of 1203 

rather than 1205, as had been initially planned. The 

third Hexagon was also the first of its kind. Problems 

with platen positioning and film tracking slowed final 

checkout of 1203, causing the launch to be put off 

from June to July. The space vehicle finally qualified 

for launch and left the factory for Vandenberg on 

21 June. No serious checkout difficulties occurred 

thereafter, and 1203 went routinely into orbit on 7 July 

1972.

Reentry vehicle 1203-1 deboosted and was 

recovered by air catch on 15 July after storing film 

from the first eight days of operation. During the-next 

14 days, until 1203-2 was recovered, the reaction 

control system experienced excessive attitude-control 

gas consumption. The problem became acute while 

film was being exposed for return in 1203-3; flight 

controllers eventually had to switch to the backup 

attitude control system. Concurrently an emergency 

shutdown occurred in the aft camera system, causing 

curtailment of stereo photography. Recalling the 

catastrophic failure that had marred Hexagon 1202, 

the program office decided to satisfy as much of 

the coverage requirement as possibly by using 

monoscopic photography.

The wisdom of that decision became obvious upon 

inspection of capsule 1203-3 following its 12 August 

retrieval. Severe film folding was the determinate 

cause of the stoppage in aft camera operations. The 

source of the problem appeared to be misalignment 

of film on the transport rollers. Passage of a section 

of folded film past the metering capstan had distorted 

measurements of the lengths of film being transported, 

causing the control mechanism to call for SLOW 

speed take-up in combination with fast film feed. 
127

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

The looper system (which held excess film passing 

through the camera section) promptly overfilled 

and an emergency stoppage resulted. The remedy, 

employed for the balance of mission 1203, was to 

operate the film transport system at slow speeds. But 

the prescription had a price: unless rewind speeds 

reached 55 inches per second, unexposed film passed 

to the take-up reels. Yet with the system operating at 

full speed, intermittent accordion folds occurred in 

the film, each more than 50 feet long. Even at slow 

speeds the transport system continued to double film 

back upon itself, but the folds averaged only about 

3.5 feet in length. Before the emergency shutdown, 

roller misalignment had caused edge folds that in 

one instance extended for 1800 feet and in another 

affected 400 feet of film. Although it was not possible 

to determine precisely what sort of misalignment had 

caused the problem, the malfunction seemed to have 

occurred in the last set of cluster rollers over which 

the film passed before entering the take-up spool of 

1203-3. 

Another emergency shutdown occurred while 

film was being fed into 1203-4; it was cleared 

without great difficulty and stereo camera operations 

continued to the end of the mission. But hopes for 

a successful 65-day mission were dashed when 

the backup attitude control system began to use 

propellant at an abnormally high rate. Discretionminded flight controllers brought 1203-4 down on 2 

September, eight days sooner than programmed, but 

still 57 days after mission start. After film recovery had 

been completed, the satellite operations group began 

a series of attitude control experiments using the 

capsule-less orbiting vehicle, attempting to find the 

source of the control gas wastage. They were able 

to maintain control for another 12 days. Evaluation 

of telemetered data indicated that valve seats in 

the control gas system had somehow become so 

thoroughly fouled that leakage was continual.63

Hexagon 1204 was like its immediate predecessor 

in many respects, although film tracking problems 

were fewer. Following a 10 October 1972 launch, 

operations during the first phase of the mission were 

quite routine. Reentry vehicle 1204-1 was recovered 

on 21 October without incident. Early in the second 

phase of the flight, telemetry indicated an incipient 

failure of attitude control forcing temporary reliance 

on the backup system. A film tracking problem caused 

an emergency camera stoppage on 8 November, 

three days after 1204-2 had separated and reentered, 

but careful manipulation of control devices limited 

the shutdown to a single day and once the jam was 

cleared the problem vanished. Until that time the 

camera system had been operated in the slow-rewind 

mode and the vehicle under maneuvering restrictions 

in an effort to avoid any recurrence of the film tracking 

difficulties that had troubled 1203. After 9 November, 

both constraints were cancelled and the system 

operated at design film transport speeds and without 

pointing restraints. Excessive yaw and roll rates were 

recorded intermittently after 14 November, forcing 

another camera shutdown and another reversion 

to the redundant attitude control system. Capsule 

1204-3 reentered on 23 November, again without 

incident. (The new parachute system was functioning 

magnificently.) 

The final phase of mission 1204 proceeded 

without encountering major problems, although the 

command system gave cause for some concern on 27 

November when it ignored a series of reprogramming 

instructions. Flight controllers disabled the offending 

circuitry and proceeded to the end of the flight without 

further difficulty. Late in the mission (after 9 December), 

the satellite control group began to inject payload 

command directions daily rather than on alternate 

days, as had previously been the rule. The greater 

frequency of command instructions permitted flight 

controllers to better utilize weather data in directing 

camera operations, thus significantly improving the 

quality of ground imagery. (Hexagon pictures had 

rather mysteriously been more degraded by cloud 

cover than earlier Corona pictures. That was in part 

the consequence of nothing more alarming than a run 

of bad luck in weather prediction, but it also reflected 

the fact that Hexagon photographic swath widths were 

far wider than Corona swaths and thus recorded more 

clouds as well as more ground area.) 

The final capsule of Hexagon 1204 reentered 

and was recovered on 17 December; primary 

mission time was 68 days, three days longer than 

the earlier “extended” goal. Photography was superb, 

characterized as the best the system could hope to 

produce. 64

The fifth Hexagon mission, 1205, was distinguished 

by the inclusion, for the first time, of the 12-inch focal 

length mapping camera and a small fifth reentry 

vehicle to return its exposed film. Originally scheduled 

to be flown in the 1207, later in 1206, and finally in 

1205, the mapping camera benefitted both from faster 

than expected progress and from the slower than 

expected rate of Hexagon launches. Nonetheless, 

the first mapping camera intended for flight failed 

during thermal vacuum testing early in 1972 and 

required complete overhaul before retesting. Shutter 

malfunctions also interrupted qualification testing later 

that year. 

Hexagon 1205 had additional problems with the 

attitude reference module, telemetry equipment, and 
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PERRY HISTORY - HEXAGON

other specialized modules of the satellite vehicle. 

Delays in delivery of a flight-qualified attitude 

reference module provided the pad of time needed 

to install the mapping camera in 1205. There was no 

longer great pressure for an earlier launch date, the 

returns from the first four Hexagon missions having 

been sufficiently impressive to support a decision that 

only three such vehicles need be operated each year. 

(Budget pressures also contributed to the three-peryear decision.)

Thermal vacuum tests were completed on the 

entire satellite except for the attitude reference 

module by 27 November, and acoustic chamber tests 

by 11 December 1972. By the end of the year only 

the solar arrays and the attitude reference module 

remained to be added for flight readiness. After the 

attitude reference module was finally delivered, the 

mated satellite was shipped to Vandenberg on 21 

February 1973 for a 9 March launch. As delivered, 

1205 included relatively large elements of equipment 

originally planned for initial use on 1206, the launch 

schedule relaxation having provided time needed to 

move improved items forward in the program. (Until 

late January, a 15 February launch date had been 

scheduled.)

The mission began on schedule with a routine 

launch and orbital injection. A loss of telemetry data on 

camera temperature and pneumatic gas caused initial 

search camera operations to be postponed for a full 

day past the fifth revolution—the usual starting point. 

In order to minimize the potential for film transport 

malfunctions, modest rewind speed and scan angle 

constraints were maintained. The mapping camera 

was slated to begin operations on the eighth revolution, 

but its lens-cover door jammed momentarily. On the 

next and all but the last few orbits of 1205 the door 

functioned correctly, but mapping operations for the 

balance of the mission were restricted to targets 

below 50o North latitude on the descending portion of 

each revolution to protect against a recurrence of the 

temperature problem that had caused the pneumatic 

door activator to stick.

As in previous flights, the first mission segment 

was completed without major incident. Capsule 1205-

1 was recovered on II March. Shortly thereafter, the 

propellant leak difficulty experienced in earlier flights 

became troublesome. Recovery vehicle 1205-2 was 

de-orbited and successfully recovered on 4 April and 

flight phase three began before it was necessary 

to switch to the redundant reaction control system, 

however. A yaw rate bias developed subsequent 

to the shift to a backup attitude control system, but 

mission controllers were able to use image motion 

compensation to overcome the smear problem thus 

created. The third and fourth reentry vehicles were 

successfully recovered on 18 April and 11 May 1973, 

respectively. The mapping film recovery capsule, 

carried in a separate compartment in the forward part 

of the satellite vehicle reentered independently on 20 

April.

A number of minor problems occurred with 

the mapping camera during the course of the flight 

additional to the sticking camera door. On four 

separate occasions, shutdown commands were 

ignored. Eventually flight controllers had to call on 

an alternative command system to reactivate the 

cameras. (Redesign of the door actuating circuitry 

was undertaken immediately after Hexagon 1205 

completed its mission.) 

About 95 percent of the mapping camera film had 

been successfully exposed and resolution was some 

30 to 40 percent better than had been predicted. The 

film product of the main cameras was again of excellent 

quality, approaching in “best” resolution. It seemed 

even to surpass the product of Hexagon 1204 in one 

instance (1205-1), but that was the consequence of 

excellent weather and lighting rather than any optical 

superiority.65

Hexagon: 

Program Reorganization and 

Product Improvement (1971-1973)

The success of Hexagon in satisfying the 

requirements against which the system had been 

developed could best be judged from the fact that 

as many as six missions per year had been planned 

while the system was in evolution, but by 1972 returns 

from early missions were so satisfying that launches 

at four-month intervals (three each year) served 

needs. As early as November 1971 it was apparent 

that Hexagon and Gambit in combination would return 

twice or three times as much information as the United 

States Intelligence Board had formally required, and 

both systems were susceptible of relatively modest 

improvements that would substantially extend their onorbit operational lives. Hexagon, intended for 45-day 

operational mission, had early demonstrated 60-day 

capability and there were no obvious technological 

obstacles to flying 75-day missions. In that event, each 

Hexagon would perform tasks originally assumed to 

require 1.8 successful operations.

National Reconnaissance Program managers 

were not at all displeased by such trends. Hexagon 

had cost nearly, three times as much money and twice 

as much time to develop as anticipated when the 

program was approved, and the cost of operational 
129

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

effectiveness considerations had to be counted in the 

equation.69

Although the happy outcome of early Hexagon 

flights induced many senior officials to assume 

that a 75-day orbital life for the system was readily 

achievable, no such premise was valid in late 1971. 

General Allen cautioned Dr. McLucas that “...ongoing 

procurement actions... do not at present include 

preparations for obtaining this extended life capability.” 

Hexagon vehicles through 1212, then on contract, 

were designed to satisfy 45-day mission requirements 

and to have 60-day-qualified components. The orbit 

adjust system originally built into Hexagon was design 

limited to 45-day operations at normal altitudes, 

although provisions had been made for extending to 

60-day missions “when desired.” The 60-day missions 

achieved in 1973 were made possible by increasing 

perigee altitude, with some loss in system resolution 

and with acceptance of a slightly lessened probability 

of successful mission completion. The absolute limit 

of Hexagon life, in its original configuration, was 750 

camera operating cycles. (That constraint was imposed 

by the limited supply of pneumatics required for camera 

functioning.)70

Discussions of potential Hexagon improvements 

continued for more than a year after they first were 

proposed. By the spring of 1973 they had progressed 

to the stage of a potential new camera competition, 

a possibility created in part by Itek’s unsolicited 

submission of a new camera design remarkably similar 

in many respects to the Itek design that lost to PerkinElmer’s Fulcrum based proposal in 1966. Brigadier 

General David Bradburn, who by that time had replaced 

General Allen as the NRO’s Director of Special Projects, 

urged Dr. McLucas in April to approve and fund a new 

panoramic camera definition study by Itek. The goal, 

as Bradburn saw it, should be “...an alternative sensor 

subsystem with improved performance and simplified 

design, and at reduced cost,” that could be incorporated 

in the first “Block IV” Hexagon (still the nineteenth 

production system). 

The source of the proposal was a “HEXAGON 

Panoramic Camera Improvements Study” prepared by 

Bradburn’s staff in the spring of 1973. He proposed to 

sponsor a technical evaluation that could conceivably 

lead to a formal Block IV Hexagon competition in May 

1974. The new camera would incorporate a faster 

(f/2.0) 60-inch focal length lens than the Perkin-Elmer 

design, reduced film velocities at the film plane (the 

chief problem generator in the original Hexagon), 

but full compatibility with other principal elements 

of the existing system (film supply, telemetry, takeup section, test equipment, and vehicle design). 

Its principal attraction, apart from potentially better 

systems was nearly twice that planned. But the real 

cost of satisfying requirements for which Hexagon had 

been specified would approximate early predictions 

once 75-day missions were achievable, and few 

outcomes could be more satisfying. Real budget 

reductions could be enacted. However, it was likely 

that 75-day missions would overload the interpretation 

capability of the National Reconnaissance Program, 

driving costs upward in another area, a possibility 

that prompted David Packard, Deputy Secretary 

of Defense, to urge a reduction in the frequency of 

operating other intelligence collecting systems in 

order to avoid such problems.66

Proposals for significant improvements in various 

aspects of Hexagon performance entered a phase 

of serious discussion virtually as soon as Hexagon 

1201 had completed its operations. Some of the 

notions first formally considered within the NRO in 

August 1971 involved improvements earlier proposed 

but temporarily tabled because of the urgency of 

starting Hexagon operations before the supply of 

Corona systems was exhausted and a gap in search 

coverage developed. The CIA’s sensor project 

office had concluded by the summer of 1971 that a 

change in Hexagon configuration should be made 

effective with the nineteenth system (then planned 

for launch late in 1976). The spectrum of attractive 

presumably achievable changes extended from a 

relatively modest extension of mission life to about 

90 days using essentially the original camera system 

(though preferably simplified in details of film transport 

and electronics) through a major redesign leading to 

145- to 180-day missions (which implied a two-peryear Hexagon requirement). Plainly, a 180-day on-orbit 

capability would involve, as a minimum, increasing the 

number of reentry capsules and enlarging film capacity. 

A complete camera redesign could not be excluded 

from consideration. The broad goal, established by 

Dr. McLucas, was to provide for competition in sensor 

subsystem procurement and to reduce the recurring 

costs of operating Hexagon.67

NRO staff officers considered the CIA’s proposals 

to be rather more optimistic than circumstances 

warranted, but nonetheless the NRO budget was 

altered to provide for fiscal year 1973 funds to begin 

work.68 The objections were not entirely on feasibility 

grounds, however. No requirement for missions of 

more than 75 days had been validated, the effect of 

having a near-real-time readout satellite operational 

had not been assessed, and as one NRO staff officer 

tartly put it, “hardware changes should not be funded for 

the sake of hardware changes...” Technical feasibility 

was not a valid reason for making major system 

changes: timeliness, national requirements, and cost-
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PERRY HISTORY - HEXAGON

resolution arising in improved optics that permitted use 

of slower high-resolution film, would be to eliminate 

the troublesome film rewind operation designed into 

the original Hexagon camera.

After considering the proposal in detail and 

insuring that its approval would not create major 

funding problems, Dr. McLucas on 4 May 1973 

approved starting the study. (Dr. J. R. Schlesinger, 

newly-installed CIA director, had informally approved 

the approach in the course of a 17 April discussion of 

Hexagon improvement potential.)71

A second development of mid-1973 that had 

considerable significance for the future of Hexagon 

was the transfer of camera subsystem responsibility 

from the CIA’s Sensor Subsystem Program Office to 

the NRO’s Program A, the West Coast Directorate of 

Special Projects. Proposals for that shift of authority 

had been informally considered two years earlier and 

had reached the stage of a formal plan by October 

1971.

The motivation for the transfer was not obscure. 

On 23 September 1971, President Nixon approved 

a plan to develop a highly ambitious near-real-time 

readout reconnaissance satellite,* on a schedule that 

called for initial operations during 1976. Most was 

to be a CIA responsibility. With limited resources for 

managing reconnaissance satellite development, 

the CIA faced a future that encompassed both the 

most costly and complex of ongoing reconnaissance 

satellites (Hexagon) and a yet more costly and 

complex future system. In the circumstances, handing 

over Hexagon to the NRO’s West Coast establishment 

seemed a wholly sensible course.

The plan for transferring Hexagon sensor 

responsibility reached Dr. McLucas on 21 October 

1971, the only point of residual disagreement being 

whether responsibility for Hexagon 1207 through 1212 

(Block II) should be reassigned on 1 July 1972 or 1 

July 1973, the CIA’s principal spokesman holding out 

for the later date.** There was no controversy about the 

transfer of responsibility for Block III Hexagons (1213 

through 1218) or the still undefined Block IV model; 

all were agreed that action should be completed as 

rapidly as possible so that orderly planning for an 

improved Hexagon might proceed.72

Dr. McLucas chose to accept the argument for 

transitory CIA retention of responsibility for systems 

1207 through 1212. On 29 November he assigned 

* Generally referred to as “the EOI system,” for electro-optical imaging.

** Participants in the preparation of the transfer plan were General Allen, 

Harold Brownman (CIA), Dr. Naka, (NRO Comptroller), and then-Colonel 

Bradburn (Director of the NRO Staff).

immediate responsibility for Hexagon 1213 and later 

systems to General Allen and expressed to the director 

of the CIA’s reconnaissance programs his wish that 

arrangements be made for the timely transfer of 

systems 1207 through 1212. (Only the contracts with 

Perkin-Elmer were at issue; all other CIA-managed 

Hexagon contracts were shifted to Allen’s custody 

at once.) Dr. McLucas hoped to complete all actions 

essential to the reassignment by the summer of 

1973, exempting only those functions (like mission 

simulation and statistical prediction studies) in which 

the CIA had an unduplicated competence.

The formal transition plan, completed and 

forwarded for NRO and CIA approval in March 1972, 

provided very largely what Dr. McLucas had suggested 

in response to the initial plan the preceding October. 

Systems 1207 through 1212 would be transferred 

(to the Director, Program A—the West Coast group) 

effective 1 July 1973 in accordance with contractual 

agreements with Perkin-Elmer which were to be 

formalized no later than 1 September 1972. Certain 

specialized Hexagon-related activities of the CIA 

were exempted (in addition to the software work) and 

the CIA would retain full responsibility for Hexagon 

systems through 1206,*** but virtually all else would be 

captured by the shift. The CIA agreed to provide full 

engineering support to Program A during the transition 

period. Interestingly, in light of the strong feelings that 

had existed at the time Hexagon working relationships 

were first established in 1966, the transfer agreement 

explicitly provided for “a free exchange of information 

between CIA/OSP and SAFSP on all elements of the 

HEXAGON Program to be transferred.”73

The Program A contract with Perkin-Elmer for 

systems 1207 through 1212 actually became effective 

on 1 December 1972 rather than 1 September, as earlier 

planned, but other aspects of the transfer proceeded 

very nearly on schedule. The overlap of CIA-Program 

A efforts was generally smooth and effective. The 

only substantial change in procedures that resulted 

from the transition was a shift of acceptance point 

for the camera systems from the Perkin-Elmer plant 

at Danbury, Connecticut, to the Lockheed facility at 

Vandenberg. The original justification for accepting 

camera systems at the Perkin-Elmer site had been 

the need for the contractor to deal directly with 

chamber test problems, part and component failures, 

and similar events, and the desire on the part of the 

Hexagon program office to make test qualification 

rather than extreme schedule urgency the prime 

*** In March 1972 the flight schedule called for Hexagon 1206 to be launched 

in April or May 1973; various technical problems and a major revision of 

coverage requirements delayed that event past 1 July 1973 and 1205 became 

the last Hexagon to be launched in fiscal year 1973. Nevertheless, the CIA 

kept responsibility for 1206.
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Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

contract incentive. As Perkin-Elmer became more 

familiar with space program operations, the need for 

the special arrangement at Danbury disappeared.*

On Friday, 29 June 1973, L. C. Dirks, the CIA’s 

senior Hexagon-responsible official, advised General 

Bradburn that effective 1 July all responsibility for the 

camera systems for Hexagon 1207 through Hexagon 

1212 was transferred to his organization. The Agency 

would continue to monitor the delivery and operation 

of 1206 (still awaiting launch), but funds transfer 

would be complete by 6 July 1973, and that would 

effectively end the CIA role in Hexagon development 

and operations. 

On the following day, General Bradburn notified Dr. 

McLucas of his formal acceptance of the assignment 

and sent a final message to Dirks: “I congratulate you 

on the success of the program under your leadership 

and I assure you we will do our very best to continue 

that proud record.”74

* It will be recalled that the CIA arrangement with Perkin-Elmer in 1966 and 

1967 was also influenced in some part by the residual distrust of the Program 

A staff by CIA satellite specialists, a consequence of the factionalism that had 

marked CIA-NRO relationships in 1964 and 1965.
132

PERRY HISTORY - HEXAGON

Endnotes

1. Details of the E-5, E-6, and Corona-Mural programs are to be 

found in the chapters devoted to those topics.

2. See ltr, B. McMillan, DNRO, to V/Adm W. F. Raborn, Dir CIA, 3 

May 65, no subj, in DNRO files.

3. Additional details of relevant Corona, E-5, E-6, M-2, J -3, and 

Lanyard developments are included in chapters dealing with Corona 

and Samos programs. The management controversies of 1963-1966 

are described in Volume V, this study. See also: Memo, E. M. Purcell, 

Chm, Recon Panel, to DCI, Jul 63, subj: Panel for Future Satellite 

Reconnaissance Operations; memo, M/Gen R. E. Greer, Dir/Progm A, 

to DNRO, 15 Apr 63, subj: Comparison Evaluation, and encl, Report 

of the Findings of the Ad Hoc Group Appointed to Evaluate Potential 

Systems for an Improved Search Type Satellite Reconnaissance 

System, Apr 63; memo, E.G. Fubini, DDR&E, to USecAF, 30 Jun 

64, subj: Broad Coverage System; MFR, E. Fubini. “Dictated in Mr. 

McCone’s Presence,” 13 Jan 64; memo, C. B. Clifford, Chm, FIAB, 

to the President, 2 May 64, subj: National Reconnaissance Program; 

memo, B. McMillan, DNRO, to D/SoD, 12 Jun 64, no subj, all in DNRO 

files.

4. Memo, A. D. Wheelon, D/Dir S&T, CIA, to DCI, 31 Aug 64, subj: 

Conduct of the FULCRUM Program; memo. E.G. Fubini, DDR&E, to 

SAFUS, 3 Jul 64, subj: Broad Coverage System; MFR, B. McMillan, 

DNRO, 7 Jul 64, subj: CIA Management of Satellite Projects. The SPAS-63 episode is detailed in Vol IIB, this mss (Ch XI).

5. Ltr, C.R. Vance, D/SOD, to DCI, DNRO, 8 Jul 64, no subj; memo, 

A. D. Wheelon, DI Dir (S&T), CIA, to DNRO, 9 Jul 64, subj: Funding for 

Project FULCRUM; memo, Col J. C. Ledford, Dir/Progm B, to DNRO, 

10 Jul 64, subj: Addendum to Pgm B’s FY 65 Budget.

6. See ltr, McMillan to Raborn, 3 May 65; SOR Description and 

Preliminary Plan for a New Photographic Search and Surveillance 

System, 15 Oct 65, quoting USIB Reqmts Stmts of 27 Jul and 31 Jul 

64; see also SAFSP Quarterly Program Review, 31 Dec 64 (hereafter 

cited as QPR with date).

7. 7. For the Itek affair, see MFR, Col P. E. Worthman, 24 Feb 65; 

MFR, Worthman, 25 Feb 65; MFR, LtCol H. C. Howard, n/d (prob 25 

Feb 65); MFR, B. McMillan, 25 Feb 65; and memo, McMillan to C. 

Vance, D/SOD, 25 Feb 65, no subj, all in NRO files.

8. Msg, B. McMillan, DNRO, to BGen J. L. Martin, Dir/SP, 24 Jun 

65; QPR 30 Jun 65; ltr, McMillan to V/Adm W. F. Raborn, Dir CIA, 3 May 

65; ltr, Raborn to C. Vance, D/SOD, 25 May 65, no subj.

9. Memo, B. McMillan, DNRO, to D/SOD and Dir/CIA, 13 Jul 65, 

subj: New Satellite Search/Surveillance System; memo, W. F. Raborn, 

DCI, to C.R. Vance, D/SOD, 20 Jul 65, no subj.

10. Agreement for Reorganization of the National Reconnaissance 

Program, signed by C. R. Vance, D/SOD, and W. F. Raborn, DCI, 11 

Aug 65.

11. Memo, D. F. Hornig, Spec Asst to the Pres for Sci and Techn, to 

C. R. Vance, D/SOD, 30 Jul 65, no subj, in DNRO files. 

12. Msg, B. McMillan, DNRO, to BGen J .L. Martin, Dir Progm A, 23 

Aug 65.

13. Msg, SAFSP to SAFSM, 12 Aug 65.

14. Msg, B. McMillan, DNRO, to BGen J. L. Martin, Dir/SP, 22 Sep 

65; msg, McMillan to Martin, 29 Sep 65.

15. Minutes, Meeting of the NRP Executive Committee (hereafter 

cited as NRP ExCom) on 6 Oct 65.

16. Minutes, NRP ExCom Mtg of 16 Nov 65.

17. DNRO Action Memo No.1, 15 Oct 65 (signed by A. H. Flax, 

DNRO): Terms of Reference for the Project Management Task Group 

for the New Photographic Satellite Search and Surveillance System; 

NRO Actn Memo No.2, 15 Oct 65: Terms of Reference for the 

Technical Task Group... (as above); System Operational Requirement, 

Description, and Preliminary Plan for a New Satellite Photographic 

Search and Surveillance System, 15 Oct 56 (signed by Col D. L. Carter, 

chm of task grp).

18. Msg, BGen J. L. Martin, Dir /SP, to Dr A. H. Flax, DNRO, 27 Oct 

65; msg, Flax to Martin, 5 Nov 65; msg, Martin to Flax, 7 Nov 65; msg,

Flax to Martin. 15 Nov 65.

19. Msg, BGen J.L. Martin, Dir/SP, to EK, 22 Nov 65.

20. Msg, BGen J. T. Stewart, Dir/NRO Staff BGen J.L. Martin, Dir/

SP, 7 Dec 65; msg, Stewart to Martin, 8 Dec 65; DNRO Actn Memo 

No 6, 7 Dec 65; memo, Col D. L. Carter, Task Grp Chm, to A. H. Flax, 

DNRO, 28 Jan 66, subj: RFP for the Photographic Subsystem for a 

New Search/Surveillance System; QPR, 31 Mar 66.

21. Minutes, NRP ExCom Mtg of 26 Apr 66; memo, BGen J. L. 

Martin, Jr. Du/SP, to DNRO, 4 Nov 65, subj: Comments on Alternative 

Management Arrangements for the New Photographic Search and 

Surveillance System (in SAFSS files).

22. Memo, A.H. Flax, DNRO, to D/Sec Def, DCI, Spec Asst to 

Pres for Sci and Techn, 22 Apr 66, subj: New General Search and 

Surveillance Satellite System; memo, Flax to BGen J. L. Martin, Dir/SP, 

30 Apr 66, subj: Implementation of Hexagon Program.

23. See memo, Flax to D/Sec Def et aI, 22 Apr 66, and incls, 

DNRO files.

24. QPR, 30 Jun 66.

25. QPR, 30 Jun 66; msg, BGen J. L. Martin, Dir/SP to A.H. Flax, 

DNRO, 6 May 66; msg, Flax to Martin, 13 May 66; msg, Flax to Martin, 

3 May 66.

26. Ltr, H. W. Paige, VPres and GenMgr, GE Miss and Space Co, to 

A.H. Flax, ASAF (R&D), 14 Jun 67, no subj (reviewing “points made last 

year”); ltr, Flax to Paige, 29 Jun 67, both in DNRO files.
133

Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance Classics 

27. QPR, 30 Jun 66, memo, A.H. Flax, DNRO, to Hexagon System 

Project Office, 25 May 66, subj: Instructions for Satellite Basic Assembly 

Source Selection; memo, BGen J. L. Martin, Dir/SP to Flax. 16 Jun 

66, subj: Re-entry Vehicle Study for the HEXAGON System; msg, Flax 

to Martin, 6 Jul 66; memo, Flax to Re-Entry Vehicle Source Selection 

Advisory Council, 6 Jul 66, subj: Instructions for Re-Entry Vehicle 

Source Selection Study.

28. QPR 30 Sep 66; memo, L. C. Dirks, Chmn, Sensor Subsystem 

Source Selection Board to DNRO, 30 Aug 66, subj: HEXAGON Sensor 

System Source Selection Board Recommendations; msg, DNRO to 

BGen J .L. Martin, Dir/SP, 11 Oct 66.

29. NRP ExCom Minutes, 17 Aug 66, 23 Nov 66, 16 Dec 66, 17 

Nov 67.

30. QPR’s of 30 Sep 66 and 31 Dec 66; minutes, NRP ExCom mtg 

of 23 Nov 66; memo, J. Q. Reber, Secy, NRP ExCom, to NRP ExCom, 

9 Dec 66, subj: Agenda for NRP ExCom Meeting of 16 Dec 66.

31. QPR, 31 Mar 67; msg, A.H. Flax, DNRO to BGen J.L. Martin, Dir/

SP, 21 Feb 67; QPR, 30 Jun 67; msg, Flax to Martin, 8 May 67.

32. Msg, A.H. Flax, DNRO, to BGen J .L. Martin, Dir/SP, 14 Jul 67; 

msg, Flax to Martin, 19 Jul 67; QPR, 30 Sep 67, 31 Dec 67, 31 Dec 68; 

minutes, NRP ExCom, mtgs, 17 Nov 67 and 20 Dec 67.

33. QPR, 31 Mar 68 and 30 Jun 68; msg, A.H. Flax, DNRO BGen 

J. L. Martin, Dir/SP, 20 May 68; msg, NRO Compt, to LtCol J. McBride, 

SP, 10 Jun 68.

34. Minutes, NRP ExCom mtg of 20 Aug 68.

35. BoB Position Paper, “The Need for the Hexagon Photographic 

Satellite,” Nov 68, in NRP ExCom files. (Holograph notes by A. H. Flax, 

DNRO, on margins of file copy.) 

36. Ltr, R. P. Mayo, Dir/BoB, to R. Helms, DCI, 22 Mar 69, no subj; 

ltr, L. A. Bross, CIA, to J. L. McLucas, DNRO, 4 Apr 69; ltr, Mayo to 

R. M. Nixon. Pres, US, 21 Apr 69, subj: FY 1970 Intelligence Program 

Savings, with incls. See also memo, BGen R.A. Berg, Dir NRO Staff, to 

McLucas, 28 Apr 69, subj: BoB Paper on HEXAGON (All in NRO files)

37. Endnote Redacted

38. See Ch III, Vol I, this history for an account of the final Corona 

program extension proposals (1970-1971). 

39. Minutes, NRP ExCom Mtg of 15 Jul 71.

40. QPR’s, 30 Sep 68, 31 Dec 68, 31 Mar 69; minutes, NRP ExCom 

mtg of 20 Aug 68 and 13 Nov 68. The engineering review was conducted 

by a special committee headed by Dr A. F. Donovan of Aerospace Corp: 

see rpt. 15 Jan 69.

41. Memo, F. R. Naka (D/Dir NRO) to J. L. McLucas, DNRO. 4 Sep 

69, subj: Report of HEXAGON Review Committee, with atchd rpt, 20 

Jun 69.

42. Minutes, NRP ExCom Mtg of 8 Aug 69.

43. Rpt, Second Report of HEXAGON Review Committee, 4 Nov 

69; minutes, NRP ExCom Mtg of 25 Nov 69; Third Report of HEXAGON 

Review Committee, 22 Jan 70; memo, F. R. Naka. D/DNRO, to DNRO, 

28 Jan 70, subj: 2nd and 3rd Reports of the HEXAGON Committee; 

memo, J. L. McLucas, DNRO, to NRP ExCom, 2 Feb 70, subj: 

Adequacy of the CORONA/HEXAGON Overlap.

44. QPR, 31 Dec 69.

45. Rpt, Director’s Report to the NRP Executive Committee on FY 

1970 Status, FY 1971 Program, by J. L. McLucas, DNRO, 15 Jul 70; 

QPR’s 31 Dec 69, 31 Mar 70, 30 Jun 70.

46. Memo, F.R. Naka (D/DNRO) to J. L. McLucas, DNRO, 31 Jul 70, 

subj: HEXAGON. 

47. Minutes, NRP ExCom Mtg of 17 Jul 70.

48. Memo, NRO Staff, to Col E. Sweeney, Dir NRO Staff, 31 Aug 70, 

subj: HEXAGON.

49. Msg, BGen W.G. King, Dir/SP, to J.L. McLucas, DNRO, 15 Sep 

70; memo, McLucas to USIB, 18 Sep 70, subj: HEXAGON Status.

50. QPR, 30 Sep 70, 31 Dec 70; msg, King to McLucas, 15 Sep 70.

51. Minutes, NRP ExCom Mtg of 29 Jan 71. 

52. Msg, Col F.S. Buzard. Hexagon program mgr, to BGen L. Allen, 

Dir/SP, 26 Apr 71; msg, Allen to F.R. Naka, D/DNRO, et aI, 27 Apr 71; 

memo, Hexagon Sensor Sys Progm Dir to D/DNRO. 30 Apr 71, subj: 

Transmittal of Shutter Replacement Schedule.

53. See Minutes, NRP ExCom Mtg of 13 Jul 71.

54. For details of operational responsibilities and related matters, 

see Rpt, Hexagon Concept of Operations, prep by SOC and publ by 

NPIC, Sep 70. 

55. San Jose News, 20 Mar 71.

56. See, for example, San Francisco Chronicle, 16 Jun 71; msg, Dir 

/SP to NRO staff, 25 May 71; ltr, J. L. McLucas, DNRO, to R. Helms, 

DCI, 14 Jun 71, no subj.

57. Msg, J. L. McLucas, DNRO, to Dir/SP, et aI, 22 Jun 71; rpt, 

Report [of the DNRO] to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory 

Board on the National Reconnaissance Program, July t, 1970 to June 

30, 1971, prep by NRO staff, 1 Jul 71.

58. Msg. Col F.S. Buzard, Hexagon SPO, to J. Hughes, CIA, 16 Sep 

71; ltr, A. Lundahl, NPIC, to J. L. McLucas, DNRO (holograph ltr), 13 Jul 

71 (incorrectly dated 1970 on original), no subj; QPRs, 30 Jun 71, 30 

Sep 71; memo, LtGen D. V. Bennett, Dir DIA, to DNRO, 14 Jul 71, subj: 

Photographic Satellite Launch Schedule.

59. Memo, Bennett to McLucas, 14 Jul 71, QPR, 30 Sep 71, 31 

Dec 71.
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PERRY HISTORY - HEXAGON

60. MFR, D. W. Patterson, Hexagon Sensor Subsys Prog Dir, 28 Jul 

71, subj: RV-3 Recovery Planning Meeting: memo, to J. L. McLucas, 

DNRO, 3 Aug 71, subj: Possible Recovery of HEXAGON mission 1201 

RV-3.

61. Interview, LtCol F. L. Hofmann, NRO Staff, by R. L. Perry, 7 Jun 

73; msg, Col F. S. Buzard, Hexagon Prog Dir, to Col D. D. Bradburn, Dir 

NRO staff, 7 Jan 72; memo, USN, NRO Staff, to J. L. McLucas, DNRO, 

9 May 72, subj: Deep Sea Recovery of HEXAGON; MFR, NRO Staff, 

14 Sep 71, subj: Status of Recovery Effort as of 14 September 1971; 

memo, J. L. McLucas, DNRO, to Asst Sec Navy (R&D), 15 May 72, 

subj: Deep Sea Recovery of HEXAGON Reentry Vehicle; rpt, Report 

to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board on the National 

Reconnaissance Program, July 1, 1971 to June 30, 1972 (aprox 30 

Jul 72).

62. MFR, Sat Ops Center, 8 May 72, subj: Trip Report—Mission 

1202 Critique; msg, all EK to Hexagon Progm Office et aI, 30 Jan 72, 

13 Feb Il, 21 Feb 72; minutes, NRP ExCom Mtg, 23 Nov 71; memo, 

Bennett to DNRO, 14 Jul 71; rpt, Director’s Report to the NRP Executive 

Committee on Current Status and FY 72-77 Fiscal Program, prep by 

NRO Staff, 11 Nov 71; QPRs, 31 Dec 71, 31 Mar 72.

63. Memo, LtCol H. B. Peake, NRO Staff, to J. L. McLucas, DNRO, 

21 Aug 72, subj: Aft Camera Problem; QPR’s, 31 Dec 71, 31 Mar 72, 

30 Jun 72, 30 Sep 72.

64. QPR’s, 30 Sep 72, 31 Dec 72; MFR, LtCol H. B. Peake, NRO 

Staff, 18 Apr 73, subj: HEXAGON Program Review—16 April 1973.

65. QPR’s, 31 Mar 72, 30 Sep 72, 31 Dec 72, 31 Mar 73 and 30 Jun 

73; memo, LtCol F.L. Hofmann, NRO Staff to Col J. Shields, 22 Jan 73, 

no subj.

66. Minutes, NRP ExCom Meetings of 23 Nov 71, 19 Jul 72, 27 Sep 

72; memo, R. E. Williamson, Lockheed, to Office Dir/Spec Proj, 16 Nov 

71, subj: Dr. Sorrels Briefing on 12 Nov.

67. MFR, no sig, 15 Sep 71, subj: HEXAGON Block II, atchd to note, 

to NRO Compt, 16 Sep 71, no subj.

68. MFR, 15 Sep 71; note, to NRO Staff, 16 Sep 71, no subj.

69. Informal note, NRO Staff, to Maj, 27 Sep 71, subj: HEXAGON 

Block II.

70. Msg, BGen L. Allen, Jr, Dir/SP, to J.L. McLucas, DNRO, 22 Nov 

71, and CIA SSPO to Dir/SP, 19 May 72.

71. Msg, BGen D. D. Bradburn, Dir/SP, to J. L. McLucas, DNRO, 20 

Apr 73; msg, McLucas to Bradburn, 4 May 73; memo, Col J. E. Kulpa, 

Dir NRO Staff, to McLucas, 1 May 73, subj: HEXAGON Panoramic 

Camera Improvement Study.

72. Memo, M.R. Laird, SecDef, to Pres U.S., 17 Aug 71, subj: 

Readout Satellites; memo, H.A. Kissinger, Spec Asst to Pres, to Sec 

Def, et al, 23 Sep 71, no subj; memo, Col D. D. Bradburn, Dir NRO 

Staff, to J. L. McLucas, DNRO, 22 Oct 71, subj: Transfer of HEXAGON 

Sensor Subsystem Contracts from OSP to SAFSP; memo, F. R. Naka, 

Dep/ DNRO to McLucas, 21 Oct 71, subj: Hexagon Transfer.

73. Rpt, Hexagon Transition Plan, Mar 72, prep by D. L. Haas (CIA), 

(CLA/SSPO), Col R.H. Krumpe (Prog A), with concurrence of (CIA/

Dir Rec Progms) and approval of BGen L. Allen, Jr (Dir/Prog A); msg, 

DNRO to Dir/CIA Recce Progms and Dir/Prog A, 29 Nov 71.

74. Msg, L. C. Dirks, CIA, to BGen D. D. Bradburn, Dir /Prog A and J. 

L. McLucas, DNRO; Bradburn to Dirks and McLucas, 30 Jun 73.
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