Project Genetrix, also known as WS-119L, was a

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...

program designed to launch

General Mills General Mills, Inc., is an American multinational manufacturer and marketer of branded processed consumer foods sold through retail stores. Founded on the banks of the Mississippi River at Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, the company orig ...

manufactured surveillance balloons over Communist China,

Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russ ...

and the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

to take aerial photographs and collect

intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can b ...

. The Genetrix balloons reached altitudes of 50,000–100,000 feet (15–30 km), well above any contemporary fighter plane. In 1955 a number of AN/DMQ-1 gondolas were launched from

Lowry Air Force Base Lowry Air Force Base (Lowry Field in 1938–1948) is a former United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) training base during World War II and a United States Air Force (USAF) training base during the Cold War, serving as the initial 1955–1958 si ...

in Colorado as a test of the system. One was recovered years later in

New Brunswick New Brunswick (french: Nouveau-Brunswick, , locally ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. It is the only province with both English and ...

. Between 10 January and 6 February 1956, a total of 516 high-altitude vehicles were launched from the five different launch sites Gardermoen, Norway;

Evanton Evanton ( gd, Baile Eòghainn or gd, Am Baile Ùr) is a small village in Easter Ross, in the Highland council area of Scotland. It lies between the River Sgitheach and the Allt Graad, is north of Inverness, some south-west of Alness, and ...

, Scotland;

Oberpfaffenhofen Oberpfaffenhofen is a village that is part of the municipality of Weßling in the district of Starnberg, Bavaria, Germany. It is located about from the city center of Munich. Village The village is home to the Oberpfaffenhofen Airport and a m ...

and

Giebelstadt Giebelstadt is a municipality in the district of Würzburg in Bavaria in Germany. History The town is the birthplace of Florian Geyer (1490–1525), also known as "Florian Geier from Giebelstadt", a Franconian nobleman who led the Black Compa ...

, West Germany; and Incirlik, Turkey; 54 were recovered and only 31 provided usable photographs. Numerous balloons were shot down or blown off course, and the flights led to many diplomatic protests from the target countries. MiG fighter pilots learned that at sunrise the balloons had dipped into shooting range because the balloons floated to a lower altitude. The lifting gas cooled at night and became denser, reducing lift, so the balloons descended to lower altitudes where the air was denser. Authorized by President

Dwight D. Eisenhower Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; ; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, ...

on December 27, 1955, Project 119L was the first

espionage Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangibl ...

use of the balloons that had been tested in previous projects, such as "Moby Dick High". Project 119L was a follow up to

Project Skyhook Skyhook balloons were high-altitude balloons developed by Otto C. Winzen and General Mills, Inc. They were used by the United States Navy Office of Naval Research (ONR) in the late 1940s and 1950s for atmospheric research, especially for con ...

Project Mogul Project Mogul (sometimes referred to as Operation Mogul) was a top secret project by the US Army Air Forces involving microphones flown on high-altitude balloons, whose primary purpose was long-distance detection of sound waves generated by Soviet ...

and Project Grandson. The balloons were used to monitor the

for such things as

nuclear tests Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine nuclear weapons' effectiveness, yield, and explosive capability. Testing nuclear weapons offers practical information about how the weapons function, how detonations are affected by ...

, and returned photography of more than 1.1 million square miles (more than 2.8 million square km) of the Sino-Soviet bloc. Top-secret high-altitude balloon programs such as Moby Dick, Moby Dick High and 119L may account for many of the

UFO An unidentified flying object (UFO), more recently renamed by US officials as a UAP (unidentified aerial phenomenon), is any perceived aerial phenomenon that cannot be immediately identified or explained. On investigation, most UFOs are id ...

sightings starting around the mid-20th century. The U-2 spy plane was later developed to replace the Genetrix balloons. The Soviets recovered many of these balloons and their temperature-resistant and radiation-hardened filmUsing film from U.S. spy balloons to take pictures of the Moon
/ref> would later be used in the

Luna 3 Luna 3, or E-2A No.1 ( rus, Луна 3}) was a Soviet spacecraft launched in 1959 as part of the Luna programme. It was the first mission to photograph the far side of the Moon and the third Soviet space probe to be sent to the neighborhood of th ...

probe to capture the first images of the far side of the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

References

Citations {{reflist Bibliography *Sagan, Carl. ''The Demon-Haunted World''. p. 83 (and others) Projects of the United States Air Force Soviet Union–United States relations Balloons (aeronautics) Cold War Violations of Soviet airspace 1956 in military history

See also

References