I’ve been fortunate enough during my working career to be involved in a number of interesting projects. Recently, a movie was released about an incident that occurred in 1960 – the capture of an American pilot, Gary Powers, after he was shot down while “spying” over the Soviet Union. The airplane that Powers was flying was U-2. This is one of the programs I was fortunate enough to have worked on.
From what I can tell, the movie seems to indicate that this was Powers first mission in the U-2. The fact is that it was his 28th mission. When Gary Powers was shot down, the US had been flying U-2 reconnaissance missions over Russia for nearly four years. The Soviets knew these overflights were taking place, but didn’t have the capability to shoot down an airplane flying at 70,000 feet – the altitude that the U-2 operated to take photos. Powers last mission was the first south to north traversal of the Soviet Union — previously, flights into the Soviet mainland generally turned around and went back the way they came.
The U-2c that made the first overflight of the Soviet Union on July 4, 1956 is on display at the Air and Space Museum. The U-2 gave the U.S. a capability to capture high-resolution images of huge plots of land. It proved the “missile gap” and “bomber gap” the U.S. thought heavily favored the Soviet Union was nothing but a myth.
The installation of Soviet missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles of Key West, Florida was detected by U-2’s in 1962 and sparked the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Kelly Johnson, Lockheed Aircraft’s chief engineer (and his team) was responsible for designing and building the world’s first dedicated spy plane for the CIA. Amazingly the task was accomplished in a little over eight months.
The U-2 is still flying intelligence-gathering missions today — almost 60 years after its first flight. It has been challenged by satellites, the SR-71 Blackbird and unmanned drones, but the U-2 continues to produce valuable intelligence — flying above 70,000 feet for up to 12 hours at a time.
I’d call this a success story…..
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