Building the U-2

Here’s the American Heritage story of the interesting personalities and process behind production of the U-2 spy plane. An excerpt:

Of course, the plane wasn’t designed for sightseeing. On July 4, 1956, the pilot Hervey Stockman took off from Wiesbaden, Germany, on the first Soviet overflight. He flew above East Germany and Poland and then across the border into the U.S.S.R. As he neared Leningrad, he peered through the cockpit’s driftsight, a downward looking periscope, and saw MiG fighters making futile attempts to reach him. He finished his mission without incident and landed back in Germany after 8 hours and 45 minutes.

The next day Carmine Vito used the same plane for the second Soviet overflight, this time flying directly over Moscow. Three more flights took place during a 10-day window Eisenhower had granted. Bissell recalled standing next to Allen Dulles as they chuckled with amazement over the first pictures. “From 70,000 feet you could not only count the airplanes lined up on the ramps but tell what they were without a magnifying glass,” he said. “We were astounded. We had finally pried open the oyster shell of Russian secrecy and discovered a giant pearl.”

Read the entire article here.