Word: u2
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...U2. After the Russians captured Gary Powers and his wrecked U-2 plane in 1960, skillful Soviet dribbling of information led the U.S. from clumsy denial of the aerial surveillance to an awkward admission by President Eisenhower. As a result, Ike's summit with Khrushchev fell through; Moscow parlayed the incident into a propaganda spectacular by putting Powers on public trial. The U.S. called off further U-2 flights over Russia as a concession to disapproving opinions, although all major powers would use the same kind of airborne espionage if they had the means, and could get away with...
...February before the plane and its mission were grounded in controversy. Across the U.S., aviation experts argued that the A11 was built to fly so high (100,000 ft.) and so fast (up to 2,500 m.p.h.) that it could only have been conceived as a successor to the U2, the slow-speed (500 m.p.h.) reconnaissance plane that flew into so much trouble over Russia. But last week the A11 was publicly shown and flown. And the experts quickly reconsidered their judgment. From spearlike nose to flaring, double-delta wing, the A11 is all interceptor, all meanness and muscle...
...company $43 million into the red in 1960. Many wrote Lockheed off after this debacle, but the company had some ideas of its own. In an industry made cautious by military cutbacks, huge development costs and quick obsolescence, it has moved ahead with such exotic projects as the U2, the 2,000-m.p.h. A11 interceptor, and the still-secret RS-71 world-spanning reconnaissance plane. Lockheed has not only earned a reputation as the most imaginative of the aerospace firms, but has translated its flights of fancy into highly successful products. Result: it has surged...
Flair Under the Sea. Last week, giving further evidence of its imagination, Lockheed revealed plans for a bullet-shaped, delta-winged rocket plane that by 1975 may be carrying ten passengers and a crew of two on regular trips between earth and an orbiting space station. Like the U2, the A11 and the RS-71, the rocket plane is being developed in Lockheed's famous "Skunk Works," presided over by Clarence ("Kelly") Johnson, the company's engineering genius...
...continued regular U-2 overflights to make certain that no new missiles were sneaked back in. Though Castro raged at the flights, there was nothing he could do about it so long as his Soviet part ners controlled the SAM II antiaircraft rockets capable of bringing down a U2...