The First of May, or May Day, has been an important day of celebration or other action for many countries, organizations and peoples throughout the world, for hundreds of years and for many reasons: Nationalistic, religious, pagan, political, cultural, romantic, whatever.
It is also a day of numerous anniversaries.
Two May First events — at first glance totally unrelated — one that occurred 59 years ago and the other 53 years ago are linked together in an interesting way.
A Lockheed Martin article describes the first event:
On May 1, 1954, despite the breezy spring weather, leaders across Washington D.C.’s intelligence community found themselves breaking out in a cold, panicked sweat. Over the skies of Red Square in Moscow, the Soviet Union had just introduced its newest bomber — the Myasishchev M-4, ominously nicknamed “Hammer” — during a Russian May Day celebration.
This event was significant because it came on the heels of the Soviet Union’s successful detonation of a hydrogen bomb the previous summer. Thus, the unveiling of the “Hammer” “fueled a growing fear that Russia had not only eclipsed the West in terms of both nuclear weapons and bomber production, but was gearing up for a potential attack on the U.S. as well.”
It became therefore imperative for the U.S. to be able to penetrate the Iron Curtain and — through reconnaissance and surveillance from the air — to see what the Soviets were up to.
Because of limitations in technology, the vast size of the Soviet Union, and the aggressiveness and egffectiveness of Soviet ground-to-air and air-to-air defenses, such a task proved to be “far more challenging than U.S. intelligence agencies had anticipated…When surveillance aircraft were sent to the edges of Russian airspace, they were often shot down by Soviet forces.”
Thus, President Dwight Eisenhower “needed a new set of eyes in the sky.” He got them through the Lockheed U-2 high altitude reconnaissance aircraft.
And so we come to the second May First event, 53 years ago.
On May 1, 1960, a Soviet surface-to-air missile brought down a U-2 piloted by Francis Gary Powers, while on a reconnaissance mission deep inside the Soviet Union. Powers bailed out, was captured by the Soviets, convicted of espionage and sentenced to 10 years in a Soviet labor camp. After serving nearly two years, he was exchanged for Soviet master spy Rudolf Abel in classic spy movies style on Berlin’s Glienicke Bridge.
What happened in the intervening years, between 1953 and 1960, is a tale of classic American ingenuity, technical excellence and can-do spirit.
Already a year earlier, the legendary Lockheed Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, working under the utmost secrecy in the famous Lockheed Skunk Works® division, had conceived a light, high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft capable of flying above the reach of Soviet anti-aircraft fire:
The U-2 borrowed its sleek looks from the profile of a traditional sailplane. Its long, tapered wing —one third the weight of what was normal at the time — allowed it to fly missions covering a range of 3,000 miles and carry up to 700 pounds of the latest photoreconnaissance equipment to a staggering and unprecedented altitude of 70,000 feet.
Nine months after receiving the contract to build such an aircraft, Lockheed Martin delivered the first U-2 for a test flight on July 29, 1955, and “President Eisenhower now had his secret weapon, and he was determined to use it to prevent the Cold War from turning red hot.”
Eisenhower would dearly need this new aircraft as “By early 1956, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had declared that his country was making ‘missiles like sausages’ and that he would soon have a hydrogen bomb capable of striking ‘any point in the world.’ Any uninvited guests flying over Russia, he also warned, would be shot down with impunity.”
As history now attests, the United States and Lockheed proved Khrushchev wrong — at least for a while — as U-2’s would fly over Soviet territory at will “capturing detailed photos of airfields, factories and shipyards previously unattainable by other aircraft” revealing that “the Soviets were more concerned with building tractors than tanks” and showing that “Russia’s ability to produce high-end bombers was unimpressive at best. Its missiles, while numerous, were better suited for intermediate attacks against Europe than a long-range attack on the United States, with most being unready to fire at all.”
The United States now had the information it needed to avert a massive arms build-up — and a potential war.
But, Lockheed Martin says, “It was only a matter of time before advancing Russian anti-aircraft technology caught up with the spy plane,” and that time came on May 1 1960.
Nevertheless, the U-2 “would continue to be a critical asset for U.S. intelligence agencies, especially during the Cuban Missile Crisis,” and while “Initially projected to have an operational life of just two years, the U-2 would go on to see service in every subsequent American war, while showing remarkable versatility as a non-military aircraft.”
The Lockheed Martin article concludes:
When equipped with a wide variety of sensors, the U-2 has morphed into everything from a high-tech NASA platform for conducting physics experiments to a high-altitude tool for tracking the migration of destructive spruce bark beetles through the forests of Alaska.
Today, U-2’s are used as aerial eavesdropping devices; U-2s survey dirt patterns for signs of makeshift mines and IEDs over Iraq and Afghanistan, making these dynamic high-flyers as effective today as they were nearly 60 years ago.
Read more about this incredible aircraft here and view the first flight of the U-2 below.
U-2 Image and video: Courtesy Lockheed Martin
CODA: Air Force Capt. Francis Gary Powers was posthumously awarded the Silver Star which was presented to the captain’s grandchildren, Francis Gary “Trey” Powers III and Lindsey Barry, during a ceremony in the Pentagon, June 15, 2012, by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton A. Schwartz.
Disclosure: The author was a Lockheed Martin employee
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.