Sublime

quarter. It was a rare win. So Kelly approved my idea of painting the airplane black, and by the time our first prototype rolled out the airplane became known as the Blackbird. Our supplier, Titanium Metals Corporation, had only limited reserves of the precious alloy, so the CIA conducted a worldwide search and, using third parties and dummy compan

The resulting U-2 surveillance aircraft, designed by America’s most talented airplane designer, Kelly Johnson, was built in a supersecret area (the Skunk Works) at Lockheed’s sprawling Burbank, California, facility in 1955–56. Based originally on the Air Force’s F-104 but longer, lower, and lighter, with a wingspan of eighty feet, the U-2 was more

By 1960 it had become clear that the U-2 was fast becoming obsolete. Soviet missiles were improving in range and accuracy, and it was only a matter of time before a plane would be shot down.

Ike was stunned at the clarity of the photos. You could see not only a parking lot fourteen miles below, but you could even see “the lines marking the parking areas for individual cars.”3 In terms of intelligence work, the U-2 was a breakthrough of gigantic proportions. As one high-ranking CIA official put it, “Photography became to the Fifties wha