Book Review: The Corona Project

One of the enduring lessons of warfare is the advantage of taking and holding the high ground. The edge gained from being able to look down upon the enemy, detect his scheme of maneuver, and counter it from a position of dominance has long been recognized by military strategists. The need to deny this advantage to the enemy led to pioneering efforts in aerial combat in the early twentieth century and, in turn, revolutionized warfare. Today, and increasingly so in the future, that high ground is represented by space.

Just as present-day airmen trace their roots to the storied men from Dayton, future members of the US military who ply their trade above the surface of the earth will someday look back to the pioneers of the American space community. One of the central stories of the birth and early growth of our national efforts in space is detailed in The Corona Project. With this book, Curtis Peebles has completed a protracted struggle to bring to light the long-classified tale of how our nation went about preventing another Pearl Harbor during the cold war. Many aspects of that program led to today's highly protected "national technical means" of intelligence collection, but this account gives the reader great insight into the long and difficult rise of our first space-based reconnaissance capabilities. An aerospace historian with an international audience, Peebles has woven together primary source documents recently declassified on Corona with first-person interviews and has then married this insider knowledge with leading historical texts on the early space period. The combination is a compelling story of American "can do" spirit.

Following World War II, the United States and the USSR emerged as the two major world political and military powers. Among other rationales, the USSR's detonation of an atomic bomb in 1949 made it absolutely critical to the American leadership that military developments in the Soviet Union be closely monitored in order to prevent another Pearl HarborÐ'--this time directed against the continental United States and with potentially far more catastrophic results. The challenge was the closed nature of the Soviet Union and the tight security measures that began at its borders. Under President Eisenhower classified, high-altitude, unmanned balloons and manned U-2 aerial-reconnaissance overflight programs were initiated to peek into the Soviet interior. Both, however, featured serious limitations. Since the balloons were subject to the capriciousness of the winds, they could not be directed to collect against specific targets. The U-2 did not have this problem, but its shortfall became all too evident with the shoot down of Francis Gary Powers. Clearly, we needed an alternative, and with a boost from the Soviets' sputnik launch, space-based collection gained momentum as the preferred option. Project Corona represented that option.

Corona combined the ability of Americans to overcome the technological and sometimes bureaucratic barriers to gaining the "higher ground" of space. Despite many early failures, Project Corona left an extensive trail of significant accomplishments. With 145 launches from 1959 until the project's end in 1972, Corona missions were successful in debunking the concern over suspected numerical advantages of Soviet bombers and missiles (the famous "gaps") in the 1960s, providing key understanding of the level of effort the Soviets eventually did put into these programs. The missions also gave the United States a clear edge over any other nation in "strategic" intelligence. In addition to military intelligence, Corona missions provided the West with news of the dramatic failure of the USSR's moon project. But as Peebles points out, Corona's greatest legacy stems from the lessons it taught US national leadership about groundbreaking and often costly programs and the fact that they often must be pursued despite what accountants might say. In the long run, our nation is respected around the world because we dare to try.

Peebles recounts three main themes that are set against the strategic drama of the cold war: the development and flight of the satellites, the development of recovery techniques by some unique airmen, and the impact of the information these early spy satellites gave the National Command Authorities. Getting the program literally "off the ground" was an unprecedented challenge. Imagine a groundbreaking development effort whose genesis lay in plans developed in a hotel room and hand-drawn on letter paper. Then try to see yourself as the program manager who must convince the president that, despite 12 unsuccessful missions, the program still needed to go forward. Although each failure actually carried the program closer to the goal of photos from the ultimate high ground, it was still a hard sell. Nevertheless, Ike didn't hesitate to give the order to press ahead.

Closer to home were the equally experimental methods developed to recover the film as it returned to earth. First with specially configured C-119s and later C-130s, aircrews practiced and perfected techniques that resulted in a midair catch of the film-return capsule's parachute. This method was successful only due to the flying skill of the airmen and their willingness to experiment with different methods of rigging the hook assemblies. On a few occasions, the capsule went into the ocean and was recovered by US Navy or US Air Force pararescuemen. During one such situation, the capsule landed in the water