U-2 flights revealed that the Soviets were more concerned with building tractors than tanks. The plane was tracked by Soviet radar, but StockmanвЂ™s U-2 flew beyond the reach of Soviet interceptors and anti-aircraft fire, returning home with history-altering intelligence. On July 4, Hervey Stockman flew a U-2 from Wiesbaden, West Germany, deep into the heart of the Soviet Union, capturing detailed photos of airfields, factories and shipyards previously unattainable by other aircraft.

He would get them through the Lockheed U-2 high altitude reconnaissance aircraft.Д«y early 1956, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had declared that his country was making вЂњmissiles like sausagesвЂќ and that he would soon have a hydrogen bomb capable of striking вЂњany point in the world.вЂќ Any uninvited guests flying over Russia, he also warned, would be shot down with impunity.Д«eginning in the summer of 1956, LockheedвЂ™s U-2 would prove him wrong. President Dwight Eisenhower needed a new set of eyes in the sky. And when surveillance aircraft were sent to the edges of Russian airspace, they were often shot down by Soviet forces. The vast size of Soviet Union made it difficult to survey.

Penetrating the Iron Curtain had proven far more challenging than U.S. The U.S., which had been allied with the Soviet Union during World War II, only to see it transform - literally overnight - into its fiercest Cold War enemy. Over the skies of Red Square in Moscow, the Soviet Union had just introduced its newest bomber - the Myasishchev M-4, ominously nicknamed вЂњHammerвЂќ - during a Russian May Day celebration.Д¬oming on the heels of the Soviet UnionвЂ™s successful detonation of a hydrogen bomb the previous summer, the unveiling fueled a growing fear that Russia had not only eclipsed the West in terms of both nuclear weapons and bomber production, but was gearing up for a potential attack on the U.S.

On May 1, 1954, despite the breezy spring weather, leaders across Washington D.C.вЂ™s intelligence community found themselves breaking out in a cold, panicked sweat.

Lockheed u2