The “Invisible” U-2 Immediately Became a Political Nightmare
This is part two in my five-part series on Cold War aerial espionage. Part 1 is here.
By the time the U-2 aerial reconnaissance plane was ready to fly in the spring of 1956, President Eisenhower was still unconvinced that okaying the mission was the right move. He worried that if a plane was somehow downed over Soviet territory — even though everyone involved said it couldn’t happen — the Soviets would have a field day claiming unfairness, aggression, and ruthlessness on the part of both himself and the United States. He worried an incident would start another world war. For all the technical challenges the U-2 presented, the political decisions were among the biggest. And it turned out, Eisenhower’s instinct to be wary was right.
The Final Pieces
In the spring of 1955, the CL-282 was getting close to test flights, which meant the program needed a testing site. There was no question of flying it out of Lockheed’s Burbank facility. Though there was a runway, it was a far too publicly exposed an area, not to mention potentially dangerous to test an unconventional design over a major city.
On April 12, 1955, Richard Bissell who was heading the program for the CIA, Colonel Osmund Ritland, the senior US Air Force officer on the project, Kelly Johnson, the…
