Part of the Roswell activity were likely to have been experiments with high altitude ballon recon for future use over the Soviet Union. Very classified in the early 1950s.
At high altitude they were very hard to see from the ground.
The ballons used metallized mylar, a very new material for the 1950s. Now used in the helium ballons sold in the mall.
Since big shiny ballons at various altitudes are visible to public, at least on the way up and down, and the Air Force could not say anything....
The ballons worked, but of course the ballons' path could not be controlled.
The U-2 later took over much of this function, and then the Corona projects of film cameras in satellites. SR-71 and possible successors ( "Aurora" projects ) also did this.
Later, TV cameras and video records were but into sattelites, then solid state CCD image sensors. The mechanical records, which had lots of reliability issues in space, were replaced by solid state memories, first core and bubble memories, then solid state.
Today we have unmanned aerial vehicles UAVs - Predator, Global Hawk, etc.
******
Much of the history of aerial recon in the US is now open, especially with the release of Corona history.
A good place to start is with Sherman Fairchild, who developed the first aircraft for dedicated to aerial photography. Also funded Fairchild aircraft and Fairchild Semiconductor. |
