U-2: How the Legendary Spy Plane was Born - DOCUMENTARY
In late 1955, airline pilots flying over the United States started spotting ominous sights in the skies: unidentified objects at high altitude. These pilots filed their sightings with the US Air Force Development Command in Dayton, Ohio. And the USAF collected these UFO reports as part of Operation BLUE BOOK. Of course, they knew they weren't covering the arrival of interstellar beings but were cooperating with the CIA on Project AQUATONE, the development of a classified reconnaissance plane designed to fly undetected over the Soviet Union.
I’m your host David and this week, we are looking not at flying saucers but instead the development of the legendary Lockheed U-2. This is The Cold War I wake up everyday thinking about what new things I’m going to learn as I go about my business and i am thrilled to include the sponsor of this video, MagellanTV, as one of my go-to sources! We see a lot of information about clandestine operations and if you are interested in learning about secret anti-Japanese operations in China during the Second World War, then you need to watch Operation Oblivion! This documentary looks at how MI6 trained 13 Chinese-Canadian civilians how to parachute into Japanese held territory to try and recruit local resistance fighters. You can join us and watch this documentary by using our link in the description! Don’t forget to check out other Second World War documentaries on MagellanTV including Kokoda: The Spirit Lives, all about the legacy of Australia’s war service. And the good news is MagellanTV has much more than that – there are more than 3000 documentaries waiting for you, and hundreds of them are on the history of various eras. I really love the Science and Tech documentaries on MagellanTV, as they are a great way to explore the way technology and innovation impact human lfe and history! And it’s all in stunning 4k from the comfort of your own home. New documentaries
are added weekly and all of them are in 4k and available on most devices, including phones and pcs. MagellanTV has a kind and exclusive offer for our viewers – click the link in the description to get a one-month free trial and watch hundreds of history documentaries anytime, anywhere! This story starts on May 1st 1954 in Moscow. The skies above the Red Square were streaked by the flight of the Soviet Union’s newest bomber, the Myasishchev M-4 Bison. A four-engine, long range aircraft entering service with Soviet Long Range Aviation which was the rough equivalent to the United States Air Force’s Strategic Air Command, responsible for delivering bomb payloads to their targets in Europe and the United States. Keep in mind, only the previous summer, the Soviet Union had successfully tested a hydrogen bomb. As
a result, the intelligence community in Washington spent more than a few restless nights wondering if the USSR had overtaken the West in terms of both its nuclear arsenal and its ability to deliver it. What the United States required was intelligence. It needed data. Aerial reconnaissance could and did come in handy, but previous attempts to penetrate Soviet air space had generally failed. As you can imagine, the Soviets frowned on violations of their airspace and although the use of oblique photography to take pictures from just outside the territorial borders of the USSR had resulted in a great deal of information, what analysts lacked was information on facilities well inside Soviet territory, away from the border. In the pre-satellite age, the answer was to develop a new model of aircraft, capable of flying extremely long distances at altitudes where they could not be intercepted by jets and could even evade Soviet radar systems. This high-altitude
platform was only relevant however because of recent breakthroughs in camera technology that allowed high resolution pictures to be taken at altitudes previously thought inconceivable. The project to develop this new plane was authorised by President Eisenhower, and then promptly handed over to CIA Director Allen Dulles. In November of 1954, Dulles delegated the project to his special assistant Richard Bissell. On the 3rd of December,
Bissell met representatives of the Armed Forces at the Pentagon to kick off Project AQUATONE, what has become known as the ‘U-2 project’. Normally, such an initiative would have been led by the Air Force. But the leadership, and main funding of AQUATONE, would reside with the CIA, for three key reasons: One, it would make it easier to keep the entire operation under wraps. Two, it would make it easier to provide plausible denial if the Soviets captured one of the new planes. And three, CIA control would make it easier for political authorities to authorise reconnaissance missions. So, the Air Force promised to contribute several Pratt and Whitney
J57 engines, which they would hand over to manufacturer Lockheed, already selected as the main supplier for the project but they were not in control of the development of this aircraft. The CIA’s Bissell was clearly not one for twiddling his thumbs. Immediately after the Pentagon meeting, he briefed Lockheed, who put one of their best engineers in charge: Clarence ‘Kelly’ Johnson. Kelly Johnson already had a track record at Lockheed in developing new designs,
with both the P-38 Lightning and the P-80 Shooting Star under his belt. Johnson assembled a team of 81 designers and engineers and inside Lockheed’s secretive Lockheed Advanced Development Projects department, better known as the ‘Skunk Works’ division. Johnson and his team then worked 65 hours a week until, in July of 1955 they were able to deliver the first prototype of what was first called ‘the Angel’, then the ‘Dragon Lady’ or U-2. The engineers had followed the CIA’s brief and developed a light reconnaissance plane, capable of flying above the reach of Soviet anti-aircraft batteries. To achieve overall lightness, Johnson was inspired by the sleek profile of a glider. The most striking characteristic were the wings. Their long, tapered shape allowed the plane to reach
heights up to 73,000 feet. Moreover, they weighed about one third of the wings of a standard jet. This allowed for maximum fuel efficiency, so that the U-2 could cover a range of 3,000 miles. Johnson further reduced the overall weight of the plane by using simple tension bolts. Normally jet wings would be connected by a wing spar, which passed through the fuselage. Johnson ditched the wing spars, bolting each wing separately: this technique also freed up space in the fuselage, which the engineers exploited to house 700 pounds of state-of-the-art photographic equipment.
Which was the point of the aircraft, after all. Potential pilots for the U-2 were selected through a program called Dragon Lady, a name we will return to in a moment. Naturally, Air Force pilots were selected but in order to be enrolled in the program, they had to resign their Air Force commissions, since officially the U-2 was a civilian plane. All part of the whole “plausible deniability” aspect of the program.
On the 6th of August 1955 Lockheed test pilot Tony LeVier took charge of the U-2’s maiden test flight. LeVier may have been mistaken for an astronaut on that day, wearing a specially designed flight suit that was more akin to what future space suits would look like. This was needed to protect him at extreme high altitude, but he had other problems than his appearance to focus on. The long, narrow wings of the U-2 made it hellishly difficult to bring back to earth, and the veteran pilot needed five attempts before he could successfully land his Dragon Lady, a name the aircraft earned because of its unforgiving nature towards ineptitude and incompetence. And since this was the 1950s, the racist undertone to the name didn’t matter! Further test flights revealed several major headaches: as it reached its top altitude, the U-2 engines had a tendency to ‘flameouts’ – basically the flames in the combustion chambers went out! Johnson’s team quickly came up with the solution: the development of new, low-volatility fuel to feed the J57 engines. With most of the kinks ironed out, Lockheed testers handed over their ‘Angels’ to CIA pilots for training in the spring of 1956. It had taken the program only a year and
a half to move from inception to acceptance. Many of these training flights took place at a base located near Groom Lake, Nevada, a site which most of you already know, just by a different name, Area 51. Sightings of the U-2 in flight surely fanned the imagination of Ufologists for generations. But the base personnel had other matters to worry about: test flights were a dangerous affair. A crash shortly after take-off claimed the life of pilot Wilburn S. Rose on the 15th of May. Nonetheless, testing moved forward,
and by late, June Project AQUATONE was fully operational. Its main objectives were to capture aerial intelligence on 1) the Soviet capability to build and deploy Long range bombers And 2) Moscow’s progress in the development of Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles, or ICBMs. AQUATONE set up several bases from which to launch U-2 missions. European operations were headquartered at the airfields in Giebelstadt in West Germany, as well as Adana in Turkey. The CIA had also established an office in Wiesbaden dedicated to photo analysis, because what good are the pictures if there is nowhere to process and examine them. In Asia, U-2 flights would be staged from the Atsugi Naval Air Station in Japan, with photo analysis being done at nearby Yakota Air Base. The first operational use of a U-2 took place on
June 20 1956. Eisenhower had not yet given his approval for overflights of the USSR itself, but Bissell was raring to go. Taking advantage of a previously established and far looser authorisation process for air recon over the Central and Eastern European Soviet satellite states, a U-2 flew over East Germany and Poland.. It only took until the following day, the 21st,
for the President to give his authorisation to fly over the Soviet Union … but on the 23rd a USAF delegation was to visit the Moscow Air Show as the guests of honour! Could the CIA launch a U-2 mission around that date? It would have been in such poor taste! And more impoertantly, very embarrassing had they been caught. So the next mission, flown on the 2nd of July, again flew over the skies of Central and Eastern Europe. Finally, on July the 4th 1956, the first overflight of the Soviet Union was conducted. Pilot Hervey Stockman flew his U-2 for six hours,
covering 3,000 miles, almost all above 60,000 feet. With his A-2 camera, he captured detailed shots of the Leningrad shipyards, home of the Soviet navy’s submarine construction programme. Along the way, Stockman also got shots of several airfields, to compile an inventory of the new Bison heavy bombers. On the 5th of July, pilot Carmine Vito flew along a similar route, looking for further images of the Bisons, as well as the Kaliningrad and Khimki missile plants. The results of those missions were pivotal: according to USAF estimates,
the Soviets had 100 Bisons distributed over nine main airfields. But, according to photographic evidence, there were none! As it turned out, the so-called Bomber gap just didn’t exist. This of course hadn’t stopped the USAF from using the threat of the bomber gap to obtain funding to build over 750 B-52s and 2000 B-47s. These first U-2 flights also brought to light that Soviet radar systems could spot the U-2s, but were unable to track them through their entire flight. MiG15s and MiG17s had been scrambled to intercept, but the U-2 soared too high to be harassed by the jets which had maximum service ceilings of about 54,000 feet.
So, unable to bring down the spyplane, the Soviets did the next best thing. On the 10th of July the US Embassy in Moscow received a protest note about the overflights, although the Soviets attributed them to medium bombers. They must have thought the pictures were taken from a Canberra. Probably based from RAF Luton... Now, Washington’s reply on the 19th was a masterpiece of diplomatic
half-truth: it was a complete denial that any US military planes had flown over Soviet territory. Because they hadn’t. Afterall, the CIA U-2s technically were civilian aircraft. But the Soviet protest was enough for Eisenhower to have second thoughts about AQUATONE. He had authorised it on the understanding that Soviet radar would never detect the U-2s. He was also concerned about the reaction of American public opinion.
What if they found out that the CIA had violated international law by invading Soviet airspace? The President put a halt on missions over the USSR. The U-2s however kept flying over other theatres. Between August and October of 1956 several of those missions surveyed the Middle East, as the Suez Crisis was unfolding. The photographic evidence of British, French and Israeli military build-up allowed US intelligence to predict the attack on Egypt three days in advance. Even after the conflict had started, Eisenhower himself requested frequent U-2 flights over Syria as that was where the Soviets would concentrate their forces if they intended to intervene as threatened. While the Suez Crisis played out, Bissell repeatedly pressured CIA Director Dulles, as well as the President, to resume flights over the USSR.
Eisenhower held out until early November, following the events of the Hungarian Revolution. He authorised a resumption of flights, but with a significant caveat; the U-2s should fly only above Soviet satellite states, and along the Soviet border, and not into Soviet territory itself. After months of missions over peripheral targets, in May of 1957 Eisenhower finally partially backtracked. He recognised the need for monitoring the Soviet nuclear programme and so he authorised the resumption of missions over certain territories, such as Kamchatka, Lake Baikal and the Semipalatinsk atomic testing area. On June the 8th a new mission took off, this time from Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska.
The U-2s returned to action in a big way in August of 1957, with Operation SOFTTOUCH. Nine flights taking off from Lahore in Pakistan returned with a wealth of valuable visual information. Pilot Buster Edens was the first to photograph the Soviet space launch facilities at Baikonur, otherwise known as Tyuratam. A later flight determined that Baikonur could also be used
to deploy ICBMs, although we should point out that despite Soviet boasts, the facility only had one launchpad. Another area of interest first photographed by SOFTTOUCH were the nuclear testing grounds at Semipalatinsk. Analysts were thrilled to spot within the frames evidence of a recent low-yield nuclear test. U-2 missions continued in September and October, revealing more details on the Soviet missile development programme. One flight over the Kapustin Yar Missile Test Range even took an image of a lone medium-range missile on its launchpad. And weeks later CIA pilots took detailed photos of the town of Klyuchi in Kamchatka, which confirmed their suspicions that it acted as an impact site for ICBM tests.
But, the overflight extravaganza of 1957 was followed by only a single mission in 1958, on the 1st of March. The yield was nonetheless interesting: Images of a plant in Malaya Sazanka, where detonators were assembled for use with nuclear devices. Four days later, a vigorous Soviet protest convinced Eisenhower to resume the freeze on AQUATONE flights, which lasted until late Spring of 1959. The President changed his mind following a series of worrying Soviet announcements, which led Washington to suspect that Moscow was now leading in the production of nuclear missiles, specifically ICBMs. In June, two joint CIA and Air
Force missions surveyed the Soviet-Iranian border. One of them came back with spectacular results: the first telemetry intercept from a Soviet ICBM test, caught in mid-flight! Between July 1959 and February 1960, U-2s took to the skies regularly to monitor the missile test range at Baikonur. On this last occasion in February 1960, the pilot was a British citizen, John MacArthur, whose mission participation had been authorised by Prime Minister MacMillan himself. So what were the findings of all these flights? Well, by this stage, the US Air Force had estimated that the USSR had produced some 100 ICBMs. But, while these missions did prove that Baikonur was expanding, there was little to no sign of that many missiles! In fact, photography showed that the USSR was struggling to keep up with the West. The US was well ahead in terms of the sheer number of nuclear missiles.
Moreover, images also indicated that the Soviet weapons were better suited for intermediate range strikes, rather than intercontinental attacks. And that most of them were unready to fire at all. On the 10th of April 1960, a U-2 took off from Peshawar in Pakistan for what would be the last successful U-2 overflight of the USSR. The pilot took a few snaps at Semipalatinsk before turning back to base. What the CIA did not know is that by that point, Soviet missile designers had
developed a high-altitude Surface-to-Air missile, capable of taking down a U-2 even at altitude. In fact, Premier Nikita Khrushchev noted in his memoirs that the spy plane on April 10 should have been shot down, but “our antiaircraft batteries were caught napping and didn’t open fire soon enough”. On the 1st of May, the SAM batteries and their operators had clearly already had their nap, when they picked up a U-2 flying over Sverdlosk, present day Ekaterinburg. The S-75 Dvina, or SA-2 Guideline fired its missiles at the intruder and a detonation close to the U-2 was enough to damage the fragile aircraft, forcing the pilot, Francis Gary Powers, to bail out. After parachuting down to Soviet soil, he was arrested and a major diplomatic incident was sparked. But 1960 U-2 incident is the topic for a future episode. The U-2, an aircraft which remains in service
to this day, is a creature born of necessity and whose influence and impact on the course of the events and politics of the Cold War are likely underrated by many. The data gathered by U-2 overflights was used to help create and refine US nuclear targeting plans in the Emergency War Plan of the 1950s and then the Single Integrated Operations Plan from the 1960s. The U-2 ended up being a key trigger for the Cuban Missile Crisis but also helped to bring a deescalation to the same crisis. For an aircraft that went from drawing board to the top of the Troposphere in less than two years, the U-2 has soared into the pages of history.
We hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode and to make sure you don’t miss all of our future episodes, please make sure you are subscribed to our channel and have taken clandestine photos of OUR bell button from an altitude of 70,000 feet, well above any attempts to be intercepted by any rival bell buttons.. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our patrons since without your help, none of this would be possible week after week. If you aren’t a patron, consider supporting us at www.patreon.com/thecoldwar or through YouTube membership. We can be reached via email at thecoldwarchannel@gmail.com. And we are active on facebook and instagram at TheColdWarTV.. This is the Cold War Channel and as we think about the Cold War, I will leave you with the words of JFK “In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet.
We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.”
2022-03-27 12:36
