B8652 (19 Nov 1959)

 

Mission B8652 departed Adana for Aleppo and continued the Euphrates River, where it followed it to Raqqa and Deir az-Zor before turning up the Khabur River. It overflew Hassake and Qamishi before turning to follow the Qamishli-Mosul road into Iraq. From Mosul the plane headed to Kirkuk and then into the Iranian western Zagros mountains. It banked to the south at Dezful, continuing to Ahwaz, Abadan, and Basra. The plane headed directly to Baghdad, then west along the desert road into Jordan. It then made a long transect through Amman, Zarqa, and Deraa, before turning to the coast over Beirut. It then turned back inland to Damascus, then out into the central Syrian steppe. The pilot made a large loop before crossing Palmyra. The plane then flew to the Iraqi Euphrates near Haditha, and up into the western Iraqi steppe and into northeastern Syria.  It then turned down the Syrian-Iraqi frontier to the Euphrates and Deir az-Zor, then back out to Palmyra. The pilot then overflew Homs and Hama, turned back to Aleppo, then over Idlib before completing the mission.

Mission B8652 provided particularly good coverage of Aleppo (click here for a web map of the image, or here for an automated tour).

For data see: Ur, Jason; Hammer, Emily, 2018, "Spatial Index of U2 Aerial Photography of the Middle East, 1958-1960", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/VD74QX, Harvard Dataverse, V1.