U-2 Incident

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  Macmillan, Khrushchev and the Berlin Crisis, 1958-1960

  • Kitty Newman(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  8THE U-2 CRISIS, MAY 1960

  The story unfolds, 1–16 May 1960

  On 1 May, the most important day in the Soviet calendar, and only two weeks before the Paris Summit, which was the first East–West meeting since 1955, the skies cleared and the U-2, postponed due to bad weather, finally took off. The US Government believed the surveillance was impregnable, as in the event of an accident the plane and pilot would automatically be blown up, and the pilot was in any case supplied with suicide pills. As it happened, Gary Powers’ desire for life was greater than his superiors bargained for. No comprehensive impartial investigation of the downing of the U-2 has ever taken place, but the semiofficial US enquiry verdict concluded that on 1 May, Gary Powers’ plane, which normally should have been travelling at 72,000 feet over Sverdlovsk, was downed by a Soviet SA-2 missile.1

  On the same day, in Moscow, Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, the Minister of Defence, addressing the Soviet armed forces, said ‘the people of the whole world are expecting from the coming summit meeting a just and urgent settlement on complete and general disarmament and a liquidation of the remnants of World War II’ (i.e. a German peace treaty), but he warned the West that ‘a smashing blow would be delivered to anyone attacking his country’.2

  The Eisenhower administration believed they were justified in despatching U-2s over the Soviet Union, because Russia had turned down Eisenhower’s Open Skies proposal at the 1955 Geneva Conference. These high-altitude flights by Lockheed aircraft began in 1956, as a result of the recommendations of a scientific panel headed by James Killian. Eisenhower had been under pressure from the Democratic Party, which claimed that he had allowed an ICBM missile gap to develop. This was long before Oleg Penkovsky passed information to Greville Wynne which enabled the CIA to inform the President that the Soviet Union had no operational ICBMs, and that by mid-1960 they would only have thirty-five.3 One of the key discoveries of CIA expert Ray Kline, who interpreted U-2 intelligence, was that ‘the military’s claim of Communism hell bent on world domination was not backed up by the evidence … there was no sign that the Communists were either ready or able to resort to direct military action’.4 Thus the President was able to resist pressure from the military for increases in defence expenditure, because the U-2 programme had shown first that there was no bomber gap, and later that there was no missile gap. However, as Paul Lashmar has shown, even when the U-2 flights proved that the Soviets were not building up to the extent that the Air Force claimed, General LeMay, Head of Strategic Air Command, and his colleagues waged a publicity campaign in the media working on fear of a surprise Soviet attack. Eisenhower was caught in a trap, unable to rebut the charge that he had neglected defence matters because he did not want to reveal to Congress and the public the existence of the U-2 programme, knowing that it was most provocative to the Russians.5

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  Blackbird

  A History of the Untouchable Spy Plane

  • James Hamilton-Paterson(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Pegasus Books

    (Publisher)

  A U-2 had already made a successful and revealing excursion above East Germany and Poland when, in July 1956, Eisenhower gave his reluctant permission for ten more overflights. Almost immediately these yielded valuable information. Flying out of Wiesbaden, the pilots ventured as far east as Minsk, Kiev and the Crimea. When the rolls of film they brought back were developed, the interpreters could just make out midge-like MiG-15s and -17s falling away far below. This told them that the Dragon Ladies were safe for the moment from Russian interceptors, but not from the radars that had obviously detected them far enough away to vector in the jet fighters. Very soon the myth of the bomber gap had been debunked, much to the relief of the US Administration. This highly classified news must have come as a mixed blessing to a select few SAC generals like LeMay, for the myth had been a useful bargaining chip. However, its debunking could not be announced to the press without making it obvious that overflights must be taking place. Even though the Soviets knew this perfectly well and were complaining loudly, the American public was not allowed to know. That this was primarily a CIA project was a secret that had to be kept at all costs.

  The information the U-2s were bringing back was vital to the American military and the Pentagon clamoured for more overflights. These were soon being flown from Adana, Turkey, as well as from Germany. During the Suez Crisis in late 1956, the U-2s out of Turkey were deployed to see exactly what the British and French forces were up to, showing that they were just as useful for monitoring a war in real time as they were for taking pictures of static objects such as missile sites and airfields. Yet a new generation of Soviet jet fighters like the MiG-19 and MiG-21 was steadily becoming more of a threat and, towards the end of 1957, a MiG-19 actually fired its three 30mm cannon at a U-2, albeit ineffectually. Anything that could be done to avoid detection was tried. Ideally, the U-2s would reach an altitude of over 60,000 feet before crossing the Iron Curtain so as to avoid the betraying contrails they left lower down. The aircraft’s underside was also painted dark blue to make it less visible against the deeper blue of the stratosphere, but the penalty for this was the loss of 250 feet in altitude since every pound of paint cost a foot of height: a graphic illustration of the fine tolerances that governed flight at such rarefied levels.

  The Russians’ launch of the world’s first satellite, Sputnik, in October 1957 was devastating to American morale and a new panic, that of a missile gap, took hold. By now the US and the UK were sharing the interpretation of much of the data being brought back by the U-2s and early in 1958, in conditions of hermetic secrecy, a group of RAF pilots was recruited to fly U-2 missions. This was at a time when Eisenhower had placed one of his frequent embargoes on US overflights of Soviet territory. The British were trained in Nevada, one being killed when his aircraft apparently disintegrated at altitude, a probable victim of ‘Coffin Corner’. The following year the pilots were posted to the CIA’s ‘Detachment B’ at încirlik, Turkey, and in December the prime minister, Harold Macmillan, authorised two British overflights of the Soviet Union from there. The first went to Kapustin Yar, where the RAF Canberra had nearly come to grief six years earlier, but found no evidence of Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile testing.†

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  Comprehensive Book on Cold War, A

  • (Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Learning Press

    (Publisher)

  In the event another U-2 was shot down, they thought a cover story involving Air Force flights would be easier to explain than CIA flights. There was also some evidence that the Department of Defense and the Air Force lobbied to get responsibility for the Cuban flights. When the reconnaissance missions were re-authorized on October 8, weather kept the planes from flying. The U.S. first obtained photographic evidence of the missiles on October 14 when a U-2 flight piloted by Major Richard Heyser took 928 pictures, capturing images of what turned out to be an SS-4 construction site at San Cristóbal, Pinar del Río Province, in western Cuba. President notified On Wednesday, October 17, the CIA's National Photographic Intelligence Center reviewed the U-2 photographs and identified objects that they interpreted as medium range ballistic missiles. That evening, the CIA notified the Department of State and at 8:30pm EST National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy elected to wait until morning to tell the President. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara was briefed at midnight. At 8:30 a.m. EST on Thursday morning, Bundy met with Kennedy and showed him the U-2 photographs and briefed him on the CIA's analysis of the images. At 6:30 p.m. EST Kennedy convened a meeting of the nine members of the National Security Council and five other key advisers in a group he formally named the Executive Committee of the National Security Council after the fact on October 22 by National Security Action Memorandum 196. ______________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ______________________________ Responses considered The U.S. had no plan in place because U.S. intelligence had been convinced that the Soviets would never install nuclear missiles in Cuba. The EXCOMM quickly discussed five possible courses of action: 1. Do nothing. 2. Use diplomatic pressure to get the Soviet Union to remove the missiles. 3. An air attack on the missiles. 4. A full military invasion.

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  The Limits of Safety

  Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons

  • Scott Douglas Sagan(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Princeton University Press

    (Publisher)

  In addition, no evidence currently exists in declassified U.S. records to know whether such activities, if they really occurred, were in response to the U-2 penetration. 82 It is at least plausible, however, that the U-2 overflight produced such missile-alert actions. It would not be surprising for final preparations for combat to occur in response to a serious (though false) warning: U.S. ICBMs in 1962 were supposed to be placed on a minimum hold posture, for example, if there was a warning from the BMEWS system. 83 Similar procedures may have existed in the USSR. Until the relevant documents are declassified in Moscow, however, the existence of this particularly frightening example of unintended interactions between U.S. forces and Soviet forces cannot be confirmed. Unlikely Scenarios? All of the scenarios by which a spy plane straying over Siberia could have led to further escalation, are obviously counterfactual. The U-2 Incident became a minor footnote to history, rather than the cause of nuclear war. Yet, history could have taken a different, unexpected, course, much as Charles Maultsby did when returning from the North Pole in his U-2. 8 1 Not-for-attribution interview with retired Soviet General Staff general, Moscow, July 9, 1992. I would like to thank David Holloway for his assistance in setting up and conducting these interviews. 8 2 John Prados asserts that the Soviets placed their ICBM forces on a maximum state of alert in response to the U-2 overflight, but provides no evidence to support the statement. Prados, The Soviet Estimate: U.S. Intelligence Analysis and Soviet Strategic Forces, 2d ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 144. 83 History of the Directorate Of Plans, Deputy Chief of Staff, Plans and Programs, H Q USAF, July 1-December 31, 1961, p. 114, NSA-CMCC. Also see the analysis of the June 1980 N O R A D computer chip incident in Chapter 5.

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  Know All About John F. Kennedy Political Era

  • (Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • The English Press

    (Publisher)

  In the event another U-2 was shot down, they thought a cover story involving Air Force flights would be easier to explain than CIA flights. There was also some evidence that the Department of Defense and the Air Force lobbied to get responsibility for the Cuban flights. When the reconnaissance missions were re-authorized on October 8, weather kept the planes from flying. The U.S. first obtained photographic evidence of the missiles on October 14 when a U-2 flight piloted by Major Richard Heyser took 928 pictures, capturing images of what turned out to be an SS-4 construction site at San Cristóbal, Pinar del Río Province, in western Cuba. President notified On Wednesday, October 17, the CIA's National Photographic Intelligence Center reviewed the U-2 photographs and identified objects that they interpreted as medium ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ range ballistic missiles. That evening, the CIA notified the Department of State and at 8:30pm EST National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy elected to wait until morning to tell the President. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara was briefed at midnight. At 8:30 a.m. EST on Thursday morning, Bundy met with Kennedy and showed him the U-2 photographs and briefed him on the CIA's analysis of the images. At 6:30 p.m. EST Kennedy convened a meeting of the nine members of the National Security Council and five other key advisers in a group he formally named the Executive Committee of the National Security Council after the fact on October 22 by National Security Action Memorandum 196. Responses considered The U.S. had no plan in place because U.S. intelligence had been convinced that the Soviets would never install nuclear missiles in Cuba. The EXCOMM quickly discussed five possible courses of action: 1. Do nothing. 2. Use diplomatic pressure to get the Soviet Union to remove the missiles. 3. An air attack on the missiles. 4. A full military invasion.

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