Spyflights and Overflights: US Strategic Aerial
Reconnaissance, 1945-1960
Few aviation subjects have been shrouded in more secrecy or
been more controversial than Cold War aerial reconnaissance. Former
reconnaissance pilot Robert S. Hopkins, III, offers new insights into strategic
intelligence flights during the early years of the cold war. Primarily
undertaken by RB-50s and RB-47s of the Strategic Air Command and by CIA U-2s,
other Western nations such as Britain, Sweden, and Taiwan were equally
committed to gathering intelligence about the Soviet Union and its allies, and
conducted their own peripheral and overflight missions.
Hopkins challenges longstanding beliefs that the flights
served to prevent war, curtailed needless defense spending, and were undertaken
by rogue generals bent on starting World War III.
For the first time he shows the Soviet perspective on the
flights, and makes a compelling case that reconnaissance flights did not have a
sustained adverse effect on Soviet relations with the West.
Using newly-declassified materials, interviews with crews
and policy makers, and his own experience flying strategic reconnaissance
missions, Hopkins links the daily operations of courageous fliers with
decisions by presidents and prime ministers that decided the outcome of the
Cold War.
