The Lockheed U-2, nicknamed "Dragon Lady", is an American single-engine, high altitude reconnaissance aircraft operated since the 1950s by the United States Air Force (USAF) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

After World War II, the U.S. military desired better strategic aerial reconnaissance to help determine Soviet capabilities and intentions, and to prevent being caught off-guard as it had been in the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The British had already produced the PR3 photo-reconnaissance variant, but the USAF asked for English Electric's help to further modify the American-licensed version of the Canberra, the Martin B-57, with long, narrow wings, new engines, and a lighter airframe to reach 67,000 feet (20,400 m).

To save weight and increase altitude, Lockheed executive John Carter suggested that the design eliminate landing gear and not attempt to meet combat load factors for the airframe.

The USAF's Seaberg helped persuade his own agency to support the CL-282, albeit with the higher-performance J57 engine, and final approval for a joint USAF-CIA project (the first time the CIA dealt with sophisticated technology) came in November 1954.

[25] In August 2015, the 60th anniversary of the U-2 program, Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works revealed they were internally developing a successor to the U-2, referred to as the UQ-2 or RQ-X, combining features from both the manned U-2 and unmanned Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk and improving upon them.

Disclosed details say the design is essentially an improved U-2 airframe with the same engine, service ceiling, sensors, and cockpit, with the main differences being an optional manning capability (something Lockheed has proposed for the U-2 to the USAF several times, but has never gained traction) and low-observable characteristics.

When in 1960 the CIA realized that a pill breaking inside the cockpit would kill the pilot, it destroyed the L-pills, and as a replacement, its Technical Services Division developed a needle poisoned with a powerful shellfish toxin and hidden in a silver dollar.

Six-thousand-foot (1,800 m) reels of film were used, with the emulsion being coated on a polyester (PET) base that offered significantly improved dimensional stability over extremes of temperature and humidity compared to conventional cellulose acetate.

Pilots had to adjust to the U-2's unusual combination of jet engines and enormous, high-lift glider wings; because of the "coffin corner" they learned of the need to pay complete attention to flying when not using the autopilot.

The lake bed had no markings, making it difficult for LeVier to judge the distance to the ground, and the brakes proved too weak; he bounced the U-2 once before it stopped rolling, but the aircraft suffered only minor damage.

The commander of Kirtland Air Force Base near Albuquerque, New Mexico, was told to open his orders, prepare for the arrival of an unusual aircraft making a deadstick landing, and get it inside a hangar as soon as possible.

U-2s flew some real weather-related missions, taking photographs that appeared in the press,[67][68] and sometimes had civilian government decals,[69] but few believed in the cover story; in May 1957 the UK's Daily Express newspaper reported the U-2 operating east of the Iron Curtain.

While contemplating appropriate retaliatory steps, he ordered Soviet Ambassador to Washington, Georgy Zarubin, to protest vehemently to the U.S. State Department that very day, explaining that the recent trust-building to ease tensions between the two countries was undermined by the overflight provocations.

Beginning on 5 November, flights over Syria showed that the Soviets had not sent aircraft there despite their threats against the British, French and Israelis, a cause of worry for the U.S.[79] In the four years following the Suez Crisis, repeated U-2 missions over the Middle East were launched, particularly in times of tension.

[80][81][69] Eisenhower refused CIA pleas in September 1956 to reauthorize overflights of Eastern Europe but the Hungarian Revolution in November, and his reelection that month, caused the president to permit flights over border areas.

[88] In April 1958, CIA source Pyotr Semyonovich Popov told his handler George Kisevalter that a senior KGB official had boasted of having "full technical details" of the U-2, leading Bissell to conclude the project had a leak.

The U-2 intelligence caused Eisenhower to state in a press conference on 9 October that the launch did "not raise my apprehensions, not one iota", but he refused to disclose the U-2's existence as he believed that the Soviets would demand the end of the flights.

Powers—who apologized on the advice of his Soviet defense counsel—was sentenced to three years in prison, but on 10 February 1962 the USSR exchanged him and American student Frederic Pryor for Rudolf Abel at Glienicke Bridge between West Berlin and Potsdam, Germany.

Scientists such as Edwin H. Land and James Rhyne Killian, who had originally conceived the U-2 and had advocated for its development and deployment as a tool of scientific reconnaissance, felt betrayed by the use of the U-2 for "dirty tricks" covert operations, such as the Bay of Pigs invasion.

On a 27 October sortie from McCoy AFB, one of the U-2Fs was shot down over Cuba by an SA-2 Guideline surface-to-air missile, killing the pilot, Major Rudolf Anderson; he posthumously received the first Air Force Cross.

[110][111] Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was dismayed, warning President John F. Kennedy in a private message that U-2 overflights could inadvertently cause WWIII: "Is it not a fact that an intruding American plane could be easily taken for a nuclear bomber, which might push us to a fateful step?

U.S. Navy pilot John Newlin, flying an F-4B assigned to VF-74, was scrambled from Naval Air Station Key West, ordered to intercept Hickman before he violated Cuban airspace, and, if necessary, shoot him down.

[citation needed] CIA overflights of Asian targets began in spring 1958 when Detachment C moved from Japan to Naval Air Station Cubi Point in the Philippines to overfly Indonesia during an uprising against Sukarno's "Guided Democracy" government.

In late November 1962, Detachment G was deployed to Takhli Royal Thai Air Force Base, Thailand, to carry out overflights of the Chinese-Indian border area after Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru requested military aid following the Sino-Indian War in October–November 1962.

U-2 flights confirmed the balloon's surveillance package was outfitted with multiple antennas capable of conducting signals intelligence collection operations and that the craft had large solar panels to power them.

[102][168] Although the RAF unit operated as part of Detachment B, the UK formally received title to the U-2s their pilots would fly, and Eisenhower wrote to Macmillan that because of the separate lines of authority, the nations were conducting "two complementary programs rather than a joint one".

A further layer of security and secrecy was enforced by all U.S. military and CIA/government personnel stationed in Taoyuan assigned to Detachment H having been issued official documents and IDs with false names and cover titles as Lockheed employees/representatives in civilian clothes.

However, with the overwhelming threats from SA-2 missiles and MiG-21 interceptors, along with the rapprochement between the U.S. and the PRC, the ROC U-2s stopped entering Chinese airspace, only conducting electronic intelligence-gathering and photo-reconnaissance missions using new Long Range Oblique Reconnaissance (LOROP) cameras on the U-2R from above international waters.

While not coming to a consensus, the myth was found to be "plausible" because, among other things, the extremely bad field of vision during landing required a chase car to follow the plane to give the pilot additional visual references on the ground.