The U-2 Over the Soviet Union: America's Famous Cold War Spy Plane from a Soviet Perspective

On 1 May 1960, a traditional military parade was held in Moscow. What stood it out from the previous ones, however, was the number of missiles, and in particular the ground-to-air anti-aircraft variants, that were present.

There was perhaps nothing surprising in this dominance of missiles, for Nikita Khrushchev had already declared that the so-called Rocket Troops were to be the ‘main branch of the armed forces’. Not for nothing had the Politburo allocated huge sums of money and the best sci...