The comments from different people who were allegedly involved in the project seem to contradict each other. So I did a bit of hunting to find out what injuries the bears suffered, if any, and what their fate was. I've managed to find the "white paper" referenced by one of the commenters: Impact Acceleration Stress, 1961 [1]. There is also a feel-good propaganda movie that you can watch, detailing the program while m…
The number of seven bears fits the comment by Robert Sudderth but isn't a direct contradiction of the other comment by Lauren Anderson that says:
> 'Several hundred' bears were acquired for this purpose, all of which were destroyed 'in or after the testing process, by the testing process or by gun shot to the heart to preserve cranial damage from impacts'.
'Several hundred' and 'in or after the testing process, by the testing process or by gun shot to the heart to preserve cranial damage from impacts' are obviously quotes from the mentioned whitepaper and both make sense. The part between them is in my opinion a misinterpretation by the commenter. Given that the bears had to fulfill some obvious requirements (size and weight) and a lot of not so obvious ones (healthy, no previous injuries, etc.), it wouldn't surprise me if they acquired and examined several hundred bears for the project but ended up using only a few.
I believe the paper you linked to is not the one from the comment above because I couldn't find the quotes. It's also probably not the one describing the experiments in the original post. The original post talks about "The first live, inflight supersonic test of the escape capsule [which] took place on March 21, 1962". The experiments in the paper you linked took place in 1961 or before. The data it contains regarding the bears are measurements of drop test from various heights (9'9" to 14') and not data from in flight tests.