The Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft

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A single-engined, glider-winged high-altitude aircraft built to fly above the ceiling of interceptors and, for a few years, above the reach of surface-to-air missiles, carrying cameras of long focal length. It is the instrument through which much of the confrontation was actually observed, and its history is a compressed lesson in how intelligence changes politics. Overflights of the Soviet Union from 1956 produced the imagery that dismantled American fears of a large bomber and then missile advantage; the shooting down of one over the Soviet Union in May 1960 wrecked a summit and demonstrated that the sanctuary of altitude had closed; and a U-2 flight over western Cuba on 14 October 1962 produced the photographs that started the missile crisis. During that crisis a U-2 was shot down over Cuba and its pilot killed, and another strayed into Soviet airspace over the Far East on the same day — both incidents that could have been read as the opening of hostilities and were not. Later variants of the aircraft remained in service for decades.

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