Free Republic

As the historic Norwegian airbase at Bodø, located within the Arctic Circle, closes down today as a fighter jet station, it’s a good time to look back at one of the more secretive aspects of the base. It played the role of a vital node in the early days of the U-2 spy plane. Ultimately, this little-known chapter in aerial espionage came to an end on May 1, 1960, when a U-2 flown by Francis Gary Powers was shot down by a surface-to-air missile deep over Soviet territory. Powers had been due to complete his flight by landing at Bodø,...

THE A10 WARTHOG AND THE U2 SPYPLANE I watched the late rebroadcast version of NBC news Monday night with host Lester Holt at an American air base in South Korea. Oldies are goodies as both the A10 Warthog and the cold war spy U2 plane are both used there and Holt gave us a close report of both.

On May 1, 1960, the Soviet Union shot down a CIA U-2 spy plane and captured its pilot, Francis Gary Powers. It was an international crisis for America’s intelligence agencies. A planned summit between Pres. Dwight Eisenhower and Premier Nikita Khrushchev was scuttled, much to Eisenhower’s embarrassment and to the fury of the Pakistanis, from whose territory the flight had been launched. First flown in 1957, the 63-foot-long, jet-powered U-2—capable of flying as high as 70,000 feet—is still used by the U.S. Air Force. But after the Powers incident, basing the plane in foreign countries became problematic. Their mere presence...