Word: u2
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Present-day spy planes, with their elaborate electronic gadgetry, come in two main varieties. The more glamorous type is the fast, sleek jet that darts through another country's airspace to photograph anything of military interest, from missile installations to arms depots. Best known is the subsonic U2, which precipitated a major cold-war crisis when the Soviet Union shot down one piloted by Francis Gary Powers in 1960. Its replacement is the SR-71, the 2,000-m.p.h. Blackbird, which is probably the world's fastest airplane in sustained flight (TIME, April...
...years since Lyndon Johnson told the world of a new U.S. spy plane faster and higher-flying than the old U2, the SR-71 has remained wrapped in secrecy as dark as its dull black paint. Travelers have caught tantalizing glimpses of the mysterious jet at Thailand's Udorn airbase, from which it has flown over Red China and North Viet Nam; there has been talk of speed "faster than a bullet" and a ceiling of 100,000 ft. An occasional unrevealing photograph has been declassified by cautious military censors. But only recently have any more significant details...
...Touch. More than 30 of the superplanes have been built in Lockheed Aircraft's fabled "Skunk Works" under the supervision of Aeronautical Engineer Clarence ("Kelly") Johnson, the man who also designed the U2. The Air Force admits to one squadron, stationed at California's Beale AFB, but the planes are also known to fly out of Okinawa, the Philippines and Thailand. Although a few other aircraft can challenge the SR-71 in a brief dash, the Blackbird can fly 2,000 m.p.h. at 120,000 ft. for as long as an hour, far outdistancing any rival...
Since President Johnson restricted bombing to the area south of the 19th parallel, surveillance missions above the line have been flown by the successor to the U2, the supersecret SR-71, double-delta-winged, 2,000-m.p.h. manned missile. Boring ahead faster than a rifle bullet, it takes pictures of astonishing clarity from as high as 80,000 feet. Over the panhandle and Laos, most of the monitoring is the task of the 432nd Tactical Reconnaissance Wing flying out of Udorn in northern Thailand. Its droop-nosed RF-4C Phantoms, unarmed and unescorted, shoot up to a cumulative seven miles...
...become a plane builder at twelve, joined Lockheed as soon as he won a master's in aeronautics from the University of Michigan. His drawing-board magic has created 19 of Lockheed's famed planes. Among them: the Hudson bomber, P-38, P-80, Constellations, F-104, U2...