First satellite image from CORONA, the world’s first photo-reconnaissance satellite
Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev views wreckage of Powers’ U-2 aircraft
On 4 July, 1956, the first U-2 reconnaissance flight took place over the Soviet Union. The plane, flying at an altitude of nearly 70,000 feet, took high-resolution photographs of Soviet military installations around the city of Leningrad and the Soviet Northern Fleet bases around Severomorsk. For the first time the U.S. had precise insight into the Soviet military threat, but this insight came at a significant risk. Flying reconnaissance aircraft over another country’s airspace was tantamount to an act of war. Flying reconnaissance aircraft over the airspace of the ultra-paranoid Soviet Union was extremely dangerous, but President Eisenhower took the risk to gain insight into the missile and bomber threat posed by the Soviet Union.
Each U-2 flight had to be approved by President Eisenhower, and each time the CIA approached him with a flight request, Eisenhower would make the agency prove why the flight was needed. At the same time the U-2 flights were taking place, the Air Force and CIA were working on the world’s first photo-reconnaissance satellite. The satellite, called CORONA, would take pictures on film capsules, then eject the capsule over the Pacific Ocean, where an Air Force recovery plane would grab it in mid-air. There was some concern that orbiting a satellite over a country’s airspace might be the same as violating a country’s airspace with a U-2, but this concern was put to rest on 4 October, 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world’s first satellite. Sputnik orbited the Earth by passing over the United States several times a day, giving the U.S. freedom to orbit a satellite over the Soviet Union.
U-2 flights were providing valuable intelligence on the Soviet military posture, but the flights could only cover small sectors of the world’s largest country. There were many bases, particularly ICBM bases, that remained outside the approved flight paths of the planes. The launching of Sputnik in 1957 added greater urgency for more missile base coverage, since placing a satellite in orbit required a missile with a significant amount of thrust, thrust which could in turn be used for more powerful ICBM’s aimed at the U.S. In 1960 President Eisenhower was scheduled to participate in a summit with Khruschchev, President DeGaulle of France, and Prime Minister Macmillan of the UK, with a subsequent trip to Moscow. Before these trips, however, CIA convinced Eisenhower that there was the need for one more U-2 flight. This flight, launched on 1 May, 1960, piloted by Francis Gary Powers, ended disastrously with the plane’s shoot down by a SAM over the Soviet city of Sverdlovsk. Powers was captured alive, imprisoned, and put on trial for espionage.
In one of history’s greatest ironies, on the date that Powers was convicted and sentenced to 10 years for spying for flying his U-2 over Soviet airspace, the first CORONA film capsule was recovered over the Pacific. On the roll of film was the world’s first satellite image from space. The image, of Mys Shmidta Air Field, which is 600 miles from Nome, Alaska, was incredibly crude by today’s standards, but it was one of the most significant intelligence feats in history. A satellite, orbiting without the knowledge of the target country, had provided intelligence on the target country without risking the life of a pilot, or incurring the threat of war. The first CORONA mission also covered far more territory on its one roll of film than all the U-2 flights that had taken place since 1956. A new era had begun. The CORONA satellite imagery also demonstrated that the so called “missile-gap” between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was decidedly to the advantage of the United States. The same was true of the bomber gap, and this intelligence had been gathered risk-free.
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