The Gambit and Hexagon spy satellites — declassified on the office’s 50th anniversary last year and on display at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force — highlighted the engineers and scientists that put sophisticated cameras in orbit beginning in the 1960s.
The Air Force museum has the largest collection of reconnaissance platforms ever assembled, said James D. Outzen, the reconnaissance office’s senior historian. The museum has the venerable SR-71 Blackbird and U-2 spy planes, and a C-119 cargo aircraft that snatched capture “buckets” parachuting film back to Earth.
“This is not science fiction of the future,” said Douglas N. Lantry, curator of the museum’s research division. “This is national security fact of the recent past.”
McDonald and Outzen will talk about the history of the pioneering spy satellite programs in a lecture 7:30 p.m. today at the Carney Auditorium at the museum, 1100 Spaatz.
“This is a great opportunity to demonstrate to the public, and explain to the public, a Cold War capability that heretofore had to be classified because of it’s (nature),” McDonald said.
The nation needed a way to determine the scope of the former Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal and monitor verification with arms treaties. Authorities needed information from sources other than manned spy plane missions that flew over denied territory, officials said.
“There was a great fear that they were ahead of us,” Lantry said. “Systems like these helped dispel those fears.”
The highly publicized downing of a U-2 spy plane over Soviet territory in 1960 highlighted the need for satellites as the new eyes in the sky, Lantry said.
The United States launched dozens of Gambit and Hexagon photo reconnaissance spy satellite missions from the mid-1960s through the mid-1980s.
On display at the museum’s Cold War gallery, Gambit 1, first launched in 1963, housed a KH-7 photo reconnaissance system with a 77-inch focal length camera capable of resolution of about four feet in diameter from low earth orbit.
Gambit 3, which followed in 1966, housed a KH-8 photographic system with a 175-inch camera that had a resolution of less than two feet and verified, among other things, a failed Soviet attempt to reach the moon in July 1969 weeks before the United States landed on lunar soil, according to the Air Force.
While the imagery was detailed, the amount of territory Gambit covered was limited. In 1971, the reconnaissance office first launched Hexagon, also known as “Big Bird,” a giant satellite 55-feet long and 10-feet in diameter. The satellite’s KH-9 photo system snapped photos that spanned a distance of 400 miles a frame, or a swath of land from about Cincinnati to Washington, D.C. A single Hexagon mission carried more than 60 miles of film.
“When they were operational, they were very impressive in their capabilities and even retrospectively, their capabilities are impressive,” McDonald said.
The nation launched 112 Gambit and Hexagon satellites from Vandenburg Air Force Base in California, and had 97 successful missions, according to the recon office.
Companies such as aerospace firms Lockheed Corp. and General Electric, and camera markers Eastman Kodak and Perkin-Elmer had to surpass technological hurdles and make sure the systems worked together, officials said.
The people who worked on the classified projects were sworn to secrecy until the satellites were declassified decades later.
The nation has switched to near real-time digital imagery and new technologies using radar and infrared satellites, among other capabilities, that allowed the old systems to be revealed, officials said.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2363 or bbarber @DaytonDailyNews.com.
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