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| Lockheed Martin U-2 Dragon Lady (Photo: USAF) |
The U-2 also known as Dragon Lady is a black-painted, sleek-looking aircraft developed by Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works that entered service with the United States Air Force in the 1950s, and after a number of variants and latest upgrades, Dragon Lady is still in active service with USAF. The U stands for utility, and was selected to be purposely ambiguous, as was its numeric designation.
Though it looks like a normal jet-aircraft, aside from its abnormally large wingspan, the aircraft has a unique design feature that enables it to maintain a low weight and high altitude, even when laden with enough fuel for transcontinental overflights. The U-2’s tail, much like a glider or sailplane, is attached to the rest of the fuselage by only three tension bolts.
The U-2’s altitude is what make it such a capable reconnaissance platform. Flying at more than 70,000 feet, the aircraft was designed to fly out of range of surface-to-air missile systems designed and developed by Soviets to shot down low and medium altitude flying objects and jet fighters that could not intercept the aircraft at that altitude.
According to the CIA documents, its fuel was specially made by Shell Oil Company with an assist from the company’s vice president, retired Air Force Gen. James Doolittle, of the famous Doolittle raid. The fuel used certain petroleum byproducts that Shell usually used in a bug spray they sold called “Flit”, and according to the documents there was a nationwide shortage of the spray in 1955 so that Shell could fulfill the fuel requirements of the U-2 program.
Operation Grand Slam: Alarmed over rapid developments in military technology by his Communist rivals in the USSR, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who served in office from 1953 to 1961, approved a plan to gather information about Soviet capabilities and intentions. High-altitude U-2 spy planes began making reconnaissance flights over the USSR in 1956, giving the U.S. its first detailed look at Soviet military facilities.
Eisenhower was pleased with the information gathered by the flights. Photographs taken by the spy planes revealed that Soviet nuclear capabilities were significantly less advanced than had been claimed by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971). Eisenhower learned that the U.S., rather than suffering a shortage of weapons or a “missile gap,” as many American politicians claimed, instead had nuclear forces far superior to those of its Cold War foe.
The Soviets were aware of the reconnaissance flights, because they could spot the spy planes on radar. For nearly four years, however, the U.S.S.R. was powerless to stop them. Flying at an altitude of more than 13 miles above the ground, the U-2 aircraft were initially unreachable by both Soviet jets and missiles. However, by the spring of 1960, the USSR had developed a new Zenith surface-to-air missile with a longer range that can hit high altitude flying American spy planes. On May 1, that weapon locked onto a U-2 flown by 30-year-old CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers.
When Powers took-off from Peshawar, Pakistan in the early hours of “May Day” May 1, 1960, the CIA and the Air Technical Intelligence Center had already assessed that Soviet surface-to-air missile capabilities had “a high probability of successful intercept at 70,000 feet providing that detection is made in sufficient time to alert the site.” Additionally, the CIA had learned that the Soviets had tracked an earlier overflight at “a very early state” of the mission. However, no recommendations were made to cancel future flights because the intelligence gathered from each mission made the risk acceptable.
Once Powers reached his “penetration” altitude of 66,000 feet, he only clicked his radio to signal those monitoring the mission in Peshawar that everything was operating on the aircraft and the mission was proceeding as planned since radio silence was strictly enforced during penetration missions. His first target was a missile test range near Chelyabinsk, which he would photograph before flying south to north, crossing over Sverdlovsk, Kotlas, and eventually Murmansk where he would turn West and head to Bodo, Norway.
Despite a smooth launch, Soviet radar has detected Powers 15 miles south of the Soviet Afghan border and since May Day was a national holiday, air traffic over the Soviet Union was minimal. In response to Powers’ detection, the Soviets grounded civilian air traffic over large swathes of the country and scrambled 13 interceptor aircraft.
As Powers flew over Sverdlovsk (present-day Yekaterinburg, Russia), a Soviet SA-2 surface-to-air missile exploded near his plane, causing it to drop to a lower altitude. A second missile scored a direct hit, and Powers and his aircraft began to plummet from the sky. The pilot managed to bail out, but when his parachute floated to earth, he was surrounded by Soviet forces. Powers landed in the center of a major diplomatic crisis.
Did You Know: U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers carried a tiny needle filled with poison so that he could take his own life if he faced capture. Powers chose not to use the needle when he was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960, which led some critics to brand him a coward.
In response to the shoot-down, U.S. officials initiated their response based on the “best-case scenario”: one in which the plane that was shot-down, and neither the film in the on-board camera nor the pilot survived. The concocted story was that a high-altitude weather plane’s pilot went unconscious due to a malfunction causing the plane to drift off course and crash into Soviet territory.
Powers’ crash however, was a worst-case scenario, and the Russian’s played directly into this, releasing only small tidbits of information about the crash which lured the Americans into sticking with their cover story.
On May 7, 1960, almost a week after the crash, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev revealed that Powers was in fact alive and had admitted to spying on the Soviet Union for the United States.
Soon after, then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower took full responsibility for the incident, and subsequently all future U-2 overflights were canceled and overseas detachments of U-2s were either withdrawn or mothballed.
While world leaders squabbled about the spy flights, Powers remained in a Soviet prison. In August 1960, he was put on trial for espionage, convicted and sentenced to 10 years of confinement. He ultimately spent less than two years behind bars. Powers received his freedom in February 1962, when he and Soviet agent Rudolf Abel (1903-71) became the subjects of the first “spy swap” between America and the Soviet Union.
After returning to the U.S. and leaving the CIA, Powers eventually worked as a helicopter pilot for a Los Angeles TV station. In 1977, he died at age 47 in a helicopter crash and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Read the full set of documents released by CIA on U-2 missions.
Article first published by History.com and Washington Post and edited by admin.
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