[iowamark]

The U-2 was certainly useful, but was not a success at photographing the USSR, as Gary Powers discovered. Only satellites were successful at that.

[mylife]

You take one loss in 50 years and dis the program?

[mylife]

Satellites are on a fixed pattern.

[jonrick46]

The black and white photographic negatives produced by the U-2's advanced telescopic cameras were such fine grain that they could be examined by highly trained specialists using microscopes. I think they got some great resolution from those negatives. The 5000 feet of film weighed 300 lbs and had to be spooled from opposite directions to balance the aircraft. Each spool had a negative 9 inches wide that fed into the lens image. The combined image was 18 inches square! This enabled images with a resolution of 2.5 feet from 65,000 feet. That resolution is better than today's drones.

The camera:

Another element was thermal scanning. I am not sure if the U-2 had the same type of thermal imaging equipment as the SR-71 Black Bird. I was told that the capabilities of that equipment was stunning. In later years they used it to locate the position of buried bodies by a serial killer.