The lack of information on the countries behind the iron curtain (A term coined by Winston Churchill to describe the nations of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Block) led to much speculation and paranoia. At the forefront of these fears was the fear that the Soviet Union had been building a huge fleet of intercontinental missiles capable of penetrating the United States defense perimeter and delivering a nuclear bomb to any major city in the country. In July of 1957, the Soviets flew showed of a "several" wings of state of the art Bear and Bison bombers past American spectators. However, in truth this was actually the same flight group circling around them. These people brought word back to the US that the Soviets had a very strong air force.
The United States Air Force wanted to take immediate action to strengthen the American bombers and to create a tighter air defence perimeter. However, the Eisenhower administration would not take action until they had more hard evidence. Eisenhower funded a civilian based company, Lockheed, to create a super-light plane to fly above Soviet radar and collect information on their current military power.
The response to this call was the U2 spy plane. The designer behind the famous aircraft was Kelly Johnson. He made the aircraft as simple and lightweight as possible. The aircraft was completed within eight months and exceeded expectations. It had a flight radius of 3000 nautical miles, and a maximum safe altitude of 70,000 feet, 20,000 feet higher than Russian interceptors, making the U2 the most difficult plane to engage at the time.
Within months of the U2's creation, the United States had collected enough evidence to prove that the bomber gap did not exist. However, the CIA still feared that the Soviets had greater missile capability than America. It wanted the versatile spy plane to fly many risky missions over Russia to determine its nuclear status. The plan was to send a pilot in a strait line from one side of the Soviet Union to the other. Eisenhower rejected this plan, stating that if one flies in a strait line long enough, they're bound to be found; however, under pressure from the CIA, Eisenhower agreed. Gary Powers, an American pilot left Pakistan on May 1, 1960. Before sunset, Powers serving the first night of a ten-year sentence in a Soviet prison camp. The capture of Powers marked the end of espionage missions over the Soviet Union. After seventeen months, Gary was released in exchange for the release of a Soviet spy captured by America. The U2 spy plane also played a critical part in the discovery of Russian missiles in Cuba in 1962, and was even used in the Gulf War of 1991 to locate Iraqi SCUD missile platforms.
