Word: u2
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...Force first lieutenant, was off on an intrepid flight that would ultimately carry him up the spine of the Soviet Union. From south to north, his high-flying instruments would record the effectiveness of Russian radar, sample the air for radioactive evidence of illicit nuclear tests. The U2's sensitive infra-red cameras could sweep vast arcs of landscape, spot tall, thin smokestacks or rocket blasts-if there were any-on pads far below...
Cloak & Dagger. But Pilot Powers had bad luck: he got caught, and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev says that he talked. Thus Khrushchev had the chance to tell the world about the U2's mission last week-with all the embellishment and distortion that best suited his case...
...able to fly far above the possibility of interception-out on the fringes of space. And it must manage its lofty missions while burdened with a maximum of intricate electronic and camera gear. In an astonishing one year later, Lockheed's most expert design team delivered the U2...
Inevitably, though, there were a few crashes, and, inevitably, word got around. In 1957 the Pentagon officially acknowledged the U2, described it as a high-altitude, single-engined weather research plane-which it surely is. But the public rarely got a look at it. Then one day last September members of a Japanese glider club were shooting landings at a light-plane strip 40 miles southwest of Tokyo. In midafternoon a black jet, its engine dead, wobbled down on the strip...
Grim Gamesmanship. U.S. intelligence officers believe that the Russians have long known of U-2 surveillance flights. But the U2, flying at least as high as 80,000 ft., was beyond the reach of their antiaircraft weapons. To have accused the U.S. of overflights would have been to admit an inability to defend the country against U.S. planes. Whether Khrushchev indeed got himself an accurate new antiaircraft rocket, or whether-as first U.S. stories had it-Pilot Powers came dangerously low with trouble in his oxygen system, the U.S., at week's end, did not know. In any event...