For educational purposes
From a picture taken aloft by Wilbur Wright in 1909 and the first use of an observation aircraft in 1911 to the U2, AWACS and spy satellites, including the SR71 "Blackbird," regarded by many as the finest plane ever built.
It flew from Los Angeles to Washington's Dulles Airport in 62 minutes.
From the observation balloons of the Civil War to modern electronic surveillance aircraft, the secret world of spyplanes is examined.
Designed specifically for undercover reconnaissance, the U2 serves as the greatest example of strange spy planes.
Flying under the radar and out of missile range, the U2 was a boon to American warfare. It flew higher than any plane had before and sported lengthy, graceful wings.
"Strange Planes : Eyes in the Sky" takes a look at the people behind covert operations and the inventions that hid in the clouds.
From a picture taken aloft by Wilbur Wright in 1909 and the first use of an observation aircraft in 1911 to the U2, AWACS and spy satellites, including the SR71 "Blackbird," regarded by many as the finest plane ever built.
It flew from Los Angeles to Washington's Dulles Airport in 62 minutes.
From the observation balloons of the Civil War to modern electronic surveillance aircraft, the secret world of spyplanes is examined.
Designed specifically for undercover reconnaissance, the U2 serves as the greatest example of strange spy planes.
Flying under the radar and out of missile range, the U2 was a boon to American warfare. It flew higher than any plane had before and sported lengthy, graceful wings.
"Strange Planes : Eyes in the Sky" takes a look at the people behind covert operations and the inventions that hid in the clouds.
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LearningTranscript
00:00The Lone Ranger
02:39Four years later, in 1862, the American Civil War saw the successful use of balloons as observation platforms by the Union troops during the siege of Richmond and at other engagements during the conflict.
02:52On the 24th of April 1909, another significant event took place.
03:03Wilbur Wright took a cameraman aloft to shoot the first moving pictures from a plane in flight.
03:09By then, the progressives in the military had noticed the airplane and concluded that the days of the observation balloon were numbered.
03:17Here was controllable mobile battlefield intelligence and probably a means to reconnaissance on a depth never before possible, a very useful tool.
03:27Those who forecast that the airplane would one day dominate were thought to be a bit wild-eyed, but the importance of the airplane to espionage and reconnaissance was recognised.
03:41Very gradually, armies began trials of planes and developed small specialist air corps to perform as spotters.
03:48The balloons were retained to serve as observation and fire correction for specific batteries, but a few airplanes were added to allow assessment to see how much use they could be.
03:59Even for such a significant innovation, the reluctance of the establishment to respond actively to the arrival of the airplane is surprising.
04:08However, the gradual introduction of the craft into military use led to the establishment of a small but growing clique within the armed services,
04:16who were both experienced and knowledgeable concerning the airplane and enthusiastic and vocal proponents of it.
04:23Geopolitics at the time was showing signs of hyperactivity as European nations jostled for empires,
04:29and the first recorded use of an airplane in war occurred on the 22nd of October 1911.
04:35In fighting between Turkey and Italy in North Africa, an Italian officer, Captain Piazza,
04:41flew his French-made airplane on a one-hour-long reconnaissance of the Turkish positions around Tripoli.
04:46Throughout the campaign, the Italians made some show of their use of aircraft.
04:52They also used airships and conducted extended surveys from the air.
04:57The machines they employed and the use to which they put them were representative of the level of sophistication of the general military appreciation of the airplane and its power on the eve of the First World War.
05:08Then again, the machines of the day were pretty unsophisticated too.
05:13The war to end all wars was actually the war to end the illusions about the limited role of aircraft.
05:20Factors, from the rule of the machine gun to generalship on both sides that lacked inspiration, saw the war bog down in a waste of trench-veined mud.
05:30Above the lines hung the observation balloons, and wobbling around the battlefields were the early rudimentary planes.
05:36From the Fokker-Eindecker onwards, however, the tempo of the air war quickened, as did the speed of development of the planes.
05:43The blow torches of urgent need and money were applied to research and development during the war, and the result was a great expansion of the airplane's range, lift, speed and strength, coupled with advances in engines to the point where they were a little more trustworthy.
05:58The cameras being used evolved rapidly too, becoming more and more specifically designed for their mission and producing more predictable results.
06:08As the aerial reconnaissance aircraft and its cameras were developing, the balloons were simply still there, doing their unwieldy work as battery observation points and keeping an eye on no man's land.
06:20The balloon companies persisted through the war, but by the end of it, the role of the battlefield observation balloon had gone.
06:29Too risky, too static, and thoroughly redundant.
06:33The skies now teemed with aeroplanes, in a whole range of hostile and dangerous geysers.
06:45The mistaken belief that the aeroplane was good only for scouting had been effectively demolished, and the war's end saw all the belligerents involved in building large bomber aircraft, though few had been deployed before the armistice.
06:58The aeroplane's newly found violence was, from this time, to overshadow the original observation application.
07:06Fighter and bomber types were the need. Improvement in cameras was to be largely part of the evolution of the camera, and only fortuitously improving the capacity of aerial reconnaissance.
07:17Between the First and Second World Wars, where discussed at all, reconnaissance and espionage were seen as secondary roles for bomber and fighter types.
07:25Apart from the occasional exchange of diplomatic protests at the erratic routes taken by airliners, which tended to stray over military installations, there was little to suggest covert aerial espionage.
07:38The airliners metamorphosed into military aircraft in 1939, with the outbreak of the new war.
07:50This war was to reinforce the fact that air power was now the dominant force in battle.
07:55The outbreak had seen the German Luftwaffe holding a lead in tactics, organisation and machinery that had made them almost unstoppable.
08:03But as the British, with well-trained pilots in competitive aircraft backed by radar, would show, an offensive air fleet can be nullified by an efficiently organised defence.
08:14The first Luftwaffe activity over Britain was reconnaissance, directed at the Scottish bases of the Royal Navy, pinpointing the ships of the fleet for bombing raids.
08:24The German Heichels, making a round trip of over a thousand miles, provided the first RAF success over the British Isles, with a reconnaissance plane being brought down in October 1939.
08:35The German photographs, superimposed with details from British maps and with notations for the bomber crews, showed clearly the main geographical details and the location of targets in relation to them.
08:47The British, meanwhile, belatedly recognising the importance of reconnaissance, devoted some of their precious spitfires to the task.
08:54Over the six years of the war, aerial photography was to be one of the most important factors in the conflict.
09:00The information gathered by the cameras revealed not only targets that needed attention, but also allowed assessment of bombing raids to determine whether they'd been successful or not.
09:11Where a raid had not been successful, the target obviously remained on the list of things to do.
09:17With the United States' entry into the war, the bombing offensive against Germany entered a new phase, with the deployment of large numbers of American bombers.
09:26Now, in addition to pre-raid photo reconnaissance, the air staff could study the photographs taken by the daytime bombers during the actual raids.
09:35These photographs proved useful, not only in allowing assessment of the damage, but also in assessment of the bombers' tactics and accuracy.
09:43The British, bombing at night, were still reliant on post-strike overflights of targets for assessment of results.
09:49These photographs, taken after raids on German shipping in the port of Danzig, serve well as examples of the excellent photographic results obtained with the ever-improving cameras.
10:00They also served well to illustrate in detail the damage caused by the raid.
10:04Comparison of the photographs with earlier photographs shows where a ship has left port or been sunk.
10:13Simple scanning of the photograph reveals a ship on fire, and closer inspection shows that several other vessels have either been damaged or sunk at their moorings.
10:22In addition, of course, to post-raid analysis, the reconnaissance flights were directed towards identification of new targets, and to monitoring activity in the enemy-held territory.
10:40Such monitoring was not confined to military matters.
10:43Photographs were analysed by specialists in many fields for various reasons.
10:48Agricultural experts, for example, might be able to assess the size of a harvest, information which could be assimilated into a broader study of the enemy's economic situation.
10:57In the Pacific, as well as in Europe, there was constant reconnaissance activity.
11:02The most immediate effect and benefit, of course, from all this activity was military.
11:12On both tactical and strategic levels, the information obtained informed decision-making at all levels.
11:18As we now know, in addition, the Allies were able for much of the war to read Axis codes.
11:24Information from these intercepts often informed the mission planners on where to send the cameras.
11:30One of the outstanding Allied aerial reconnaissance successors of the war came about in this manner,
11:35with overflights of the German rocket testing base at Pinamunde.
11:39It was here that the trials of Germany's terror weapons were conducted,
11:43and photographs obtained showed the Allies for the first time the threateningly potent shape of the V2,
11:49the world's first true ballistic missile.
11:52Anything to do with V2s rapidly became a high-priority target.
12:00Throughout the war, the role of aerial photography continued to be the employment of adapted fighters and bombers.
12:19Most often, a fast fighter plane, in the main stripped of weapons,
12:23would fly flat out over a flight plan that included as many points of interest as the fuel supply would allow.
12:29Aerial defences were often unable to intervene, but the missions were extremely hazardous,
12:34and the projectable life expectancy of the pilots would have deterred insurance salesmen.
12:39Fairly obviously, belligerent powers sincerely resent having their military and war production facilities scrutinised in detail,
12:46and the Germans, being no exception, were as uncooperative as they could be.
12:51Whilst specialist reconnaissance aircraft were not designed and built,
12:56light aircraft for tactical use, such as the Y051 Dragonfly observation plane, were developed.
13:03Planes like this were clearly dedicated designs, with the functional use obviously directing each aspect of the airframe.
13:10At what it was designed for, the Dragonfly was a great success.
13:14Take off and landing were minimal, and the stall speed very low.
13:18One of these could stooge around, making a real nuisance of itself.
13:23Post war, the situation remained much the same.
13:27The cameras received some attention in partially successful attempts to bring them up to a standard that coped with supersonic movement.
13:34And, further, electronic intelligence gathering equipment was taken to the skies.
13:39However, the aircraft in which this equipment flew, were still variations of planes designed for other purposes.
13:46It was not to be until after radical improvements in air defence systems,
13:50that the role of strategic reconnaissance would require the development of specialist planes.
13:56The value of aerial reconnaissance could not be in any doubt, and experiences in Korea underlined this heavily.
14:03For a considerable length of time during that conflict, the UN forces enjoyed aerial supremacy.
14:09To help maintain this, constant reconnaissance ensured that anything which resembled an almost repaired airbase,
14:15or a new landing ground, could be given a good pounding before it was usable.
14:20In addition to tactical success, such as monitoring the arrival of the new MiG-15s,
14:25and tracking the movements of North Korean formations,
14:28the constancy of the recon effort was successful in focusing attention on its importance.
14:33This led to study of its future, its needs, its equipment, and any problems foreseen or experienced.
14:40There were rapid advances in camera speed and mountings, as the US continued to be the dominant force in the air.
14:46Pragmatically responding to the situation, the North Korean stopped doing much during the day,
14:52and most activity went on at night, relatively secure from observation.
14:57The cover of darkness, refuge for the North Korean military,
15:00became the subject of determined investigation for some of the United States' finest scientific minds.
15:07In Korea, the darkness remained largely impenetrable.
15:11The experience can, in the longer term, be seen as beginning the train of scientific and technical development
15:16that's progressively led to effective night-time photography.
15:20The appearance of fast jet fighters, and the progress being made in anti-aircraft weaponry,
15:25both artillery and missiles, also affected the thinkers considering aerial reconnaissance.
15:30If Korea underlined its importance, the increasing sophistication of air defences suggested that,
15:36in the future, aerial reconnaissance could quite conceivably become impossible.
15:41When President Eisenhower made his case for an open skies policy,
15:45he was attempting to head off the increasing isolation of the two camps from one another,
15:49with its attendant increasing suspicion and insecurity.
15:53With the Soviets' rejection, the lack of long-range reconnaissance aircraft,
15:57capable of sufficiently high speed or height to elude defences,
16:01became increasingly apparent and worrying.
16:03The situation led to the FICON development,
16:06deploying a reconnaissance-equipped fighter from a B-36 bomb bay,
16:10and ensured that the recon variant of long-range fighters was a priority
16:14as soon as the plane started rolling from the assembly lines.
16:18Not all the planes turned to this role were fighters, however.
16:21The British-designed Canberra, a fast and maneuverable jet bomber,
16:25was one of the planes equipped for reconnaissance,
16:27and it was this plane that was to be the basis for one of the first truly modern strategic reconnaissance areas.
16:32The Canberra may not have been designed for the role, but it was to be transformed into it.
16:39The American version of the Canberra, the Martin-built B-57, was the starting point.
16:45But the end result could not be said to have much left to do with the nimble bomber.
16:49Then again, the normal plane could not cruise to over 80,000 feet.
16:53The B-57's normal wingspan was, over two generations, to be nearly doubled,
17:01so that the final generation, the B-57F, flew with a wingspan of 121 feet, nearly twice as long as the fuselage.
17:09The initial rebuilding had been to provide long-range reconnaissance cover in the period up to the availability of the U-2.
17:16However, even after the U-2 was deployed, use was found for the big-wing B-57s,
17:22carrying equipment that was too heavy for the U-2 to manage.
17:25The F was developed to carry a 4,000-pound camera, the HIAC,
17:31which took photographs obliquely from a high-flying aircraft,
17:34and could photograph recognizable objects more than 60 miles away.
17:38First developed in 1962, the F model's wing proved to be more durable than its predecessors,
17:45and they provided valuable service around the world.
17:48Interestingly, the huge wing generated so much lift at lower altitudes
17:53that pilots found it difficult to land.
17:56The plane simply didn't want to come down.
17:59The F models also had an additional pair of engines bolted on under the wing
18:03to provide more thrust in critical moments.
18:06The big-wing B-57s were also used extensively to conduct electronics and communications intelligence flights,
18:33once again proving with their basic bomber fuselage to be well endowed with both space and lifting power.
18:39The designer's role in taking the bomber and radically altering it to a specialist reconnaissance airframe,
18:45reflected the increasing difficulty of overflying territory
18:48where the residents were sufficiently hostile to be determined to shoot you down.
18:52Hence, the mission of the F models to fly outside the airspace,
18:56but to be able to look as deeply as possible into it.
19:00Fairly obviously, with the distances involved in overflying a country as large as either the Soviet Union
19:06or the People's Republic of China, the way to overfly was to be out of range of the defences.
19:11There was no way to dash in at a lower level and see much before your element of surprise wore off
19:17and all hell turned loose on you.
19:19The next step was a specific purpose plane from its inception,
19:23a remarkable aircraft that was designed and built in eight months
19:27under the direction of the Lockheed resident design genius, Kelly Johnson,
19:31from whose fertile brain the plane had sprung.
19:34Like the B-57 surveillance aircraft, the plane employed a huge wingspan,
19:39with the wing proportions similar to those of a sailplane.
19:42It was designed to operate at extremely high altitude, theoretically out of harm's way.
19:48The U-2 first flew on August the 6th, 1955.
19:53Johnson's aim had been fairly straightforward,
19:55to make the mission of the U-2 possible for as long as it took the air defences to catch up.
20:01The pilots, in their pressurisation suits, would lose pounds on their missions,
20:06guiding the planes along flight paths that remain secret to this day,
20:10on business that remains equally classified, though not particularly hard to guess.
20:31What had started life as basically an idea for a pair of huge wings to be stuck onto an F-104 fuselage,
20:38had changed radically in its development to be a totally new aircraft,
20:42for a job unlike any that had been conceived before.
20:45Johnson and his team, without the aid of powerful computers,
20:49with slide reels and blackboards, in teams or singly, battling problems as they arose,
20:54working long hours and for long months, had created a truly remarkable and unique aeroplane.
21:00It looked like a motorised glider, but the large wing had been constructed to avoid any load penalty,
21:06and weighed around one third of a normal wing.
21:09The span allowed it to reach extreme heights, though its lightweight construction was fragile.
21:14The structure and equipment of the plane had been paired to the minimum,
21:18to effect weight savings to allow a greater range.
21:22The cockpit boasted no ejection seat, for example. It would have been too heavy.
21:33The first operational flight of the U-2,
21:35which from the accounts available successfully penetrated Soviet airspace in July 1956,
21:40was followed by a period of just under four years,
21:43where U-2s operating from bases in Europe, Turkey and Japan,
21:47conducted their clandestine flights without incident.
21:50The Russians complained, and the US denied.
21:53Then, on the 1st of May 1960, a U-2, piloted by Francis Gary Powers,
22:00made what must be the most famous flight in the history of aerial espionage,
22:04to be shot down near Sverdlovsk in the Soviet Union,
22:07downed by the shock waves caused by exploding surface-to-air missiles.
22:11The National Spacemons
22:12The National Spacemons
22:13The National Spacemons
22:14The National Spacemons
22:15The National Spacemons
22:16THE PROTESØ©
22:17A MRS TROPES
22:25The National Spacemons
22:26Powers succeeded in climbing from the cockpit of his plane.
22:39He succeeded in climbing from the cockpit of his plummeting plane
22:42and landed on his feet to face trial and imprisonment
22:45until being released in exchange for a captured Russian agent.
22:52The U-2s have not disappeared since the shooting down of Powers' plane.
22:56They still roam the skies doing whatever it is that they do.
23:00The design is a success in all the respects it was intended
23:04and in some, like carrier capability,
23:06that are perhaps simply the bonuses on a job well done.
23:21Perhaps the second most famous exploit of the U-2 came in 1964.
23:26On October the 14th, a US Air Force pilot in a U-2
23:30took off on a mission that was obscured by clouds and only partially successful,
23:35yet the photographs that it obtained were sufficiently alarming
23:38to cause a confrontation between the superpowers that made the world hold its breath.
23:43The plane overflew the island of Cuba
23:46and the evidence it returned with indicated
23:48there was a massive build-up of armaments taking place there,
23:51including the preparation of launching sites for missiles.
23:55Fairly obviously, the missiles on Cuba were not going to be directed against Jamaica.
24:00They were to be aimed at the United States and they would represent a grave threat.
24:08Flights on subsequent days managed to clearly photograph the whole island
24:12and the prints were carefully scrutinised and revealed a wealth of further detail
24:16that served to deepen the crisis.
24:19The island had the appearance of being an armed camp.
24:22Missile sites under preparation marked the countryside
24:25and there were large numbers of new weapons installations,
24:28some complete, some under construction,
24:30with more armaments stacked on the docks,
24:32including crated bombers, missile equipment and batteries of guns.
24:40The flights continued on a daily basis,
24:43monitoring developments and continuing to provide pictures
24:46that showed almost frantic construction continuing.
24:49With the threat of Soviet attack now moved right up to the US border,
24:54the possibility of pre-emptive sudden strike at the US could not be ignored.
24:58And as the work on the island went on,
25:00the United States cameras continued to look down.
25:03Given that the Soviets would presumably have tightly targeted US mainland bases,
25:20the High Command made redeployments of its forces to protect against possible attack.
25:25The new dispositions to civilian airports were completed in less than 30 hours.
25:30The United States then made plain its intention to eliminate the Soviet build-up in Cuba.
25:38President John Kennedy made a strongly worded and direct statement to the world,
25:43warning the Soviets of his resolve.
25:45I have directed the armed forces to prepare for any eventualities.
25:49And I trust that in the interest of both the Cuban people
25:53and the Soviet technicians at the sites,
25:55the hazards to all concerned of continuing this threat will be recognised.
26:01It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba
26:07against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States.
26:13As the crisis deepened, the US Navy mounted a blockade of Cuba.
26:19With the assistance of an umbrella of Strategic Air Command aircraft
26:23and the high-flying U-2s, the Navy monitored all shipping
26:27and the Russian freighters, with their loads of arms, were turned away.
26:31The aircrafts dogged the ships, making low-level passes over them to take photographs,
26:36with the deck cargoes proving on occasion to be very interesting.
26:53The information revealed by the shadowing of the Russian ships was not comforting.
26:57By now it was clear that the missile sites were equipped to handle medium and short-range ballistic missiles,
27:03and the types being deployed in Cuba would have been able to lay waste
27:07much of the continental United States.
27:10The Russians replied that the American missiles based in Turkey
27:13were in much the same position vis-Ã -vis the Soviet Union,
27:16but the logic of this did not meet with much acceptance in the US.
27:21To keep the crisis going, the SAC reconnaissance missions flown with B-47s
27:26produced photographic evidence which showed a Russian freighter
27:29with storage tanks for missile fuel heading for a Cuban port.
27:33Needless to say, this was one of the ships turned away by the Navy.
27:39The next phase of proceedings saw the commencement of low-level missions,
27:43flown by Army and Navy aircraft to provide more detailed information
27:47about what was happening on the island.
27:49These daring flights were made at treetop height,
27:52with the fighter reconnaissance aircraft slipping below the Cuban radar net
27:55and going as fast as possible along their mission routes.
28:09The amount of munitions involved in the flood of arms to Cuba
28:12was truly in excess of that country's needs.
28:15The photo interpretation officers worked long and hard
28:18to both keep up with the flood of photographs
28:20and identify all the military hardware and installations that they revealed.
28:40The Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had been his normal blustery self during the affair,
28:45and there was no notice given that the Russians were about to back down.
28:49The tension remained high when on October 28th,
28:52Moscow radio broadcast a statement saying that the missiles would be removed.
28:56The missiles were trucked to the harbours and loaded back onto cargo ships.
29:00The ships, with their hatches open and uncovered deck cargoes,
29:04were observed by the recon planes as they departed.
29:07The crisis had seen over 400 flights across the island,
29:11and a U-2 had been shot down.
29:14The crews of the aircraft were glad that it was over
29:16and they could go back to being peacetime organisations.
29:19For a couple of horrible moments, it had looked like war.
29:22The Southeast Asian conflict, unlike Cuba, did not leap whole, large and threatening from nowhere in one day's news.
29:35The American involvement was gradual.
29:40Beginning with advisers and a bit of recon assistance.
29:55However, in the course of the US engagement there, the levels of deployment rose and rose,
30:00and the American units, now independently operating, took some heavy casualties.
30:05To this theatre came the U-2s, to do their distinctive thing,
30:10photographing virtually every twig in the area.
30:20The standard photo recon plane early in Vietnam was the F-101.
30:26The F-101 flew well, and had taken part in many exploits,
30:31including probable intrusions over Russia and China, as had the B-57.
30:37The latter period in Vietnam belongs to the F-4 Phantom.
30:41This two-man workhorse, practical and capable, took over as the war progressed,
30:46and still does the job.
30:48The fact that it remains in use is testimony to the good work and inspiration
30:52of the MacDonald design team who produced it.
30:56the audience.
30:57The F to the lark.
30:58The f to the lark.
30:59The f to the lark.
31:01THE END
31:30The popularity of the photographs themselves is demonstrative of the improvements in the cameras. With the aid of the information provided by the reconnaissance aircraft and the complementary monitoring of electronic intelligence aircraft, the U.S. was not only able to keep a very close eye on the activities of the North Vietnamese Air Force, but in fact was able to so dominate the North's airspace that for large parts of the war, the North Vietnamese aircraft stayed wisely on the ground, mostly parked within the bombing exclusion zones.
31:58Throughout the war, the Air Force employed remote piloted vehicles as reconnaissance aircraft for missions into the more heavily defended areas of the North.
32:07There were essentially two mission descriptions for the drones. Some flew very high, taking photographs to cover an area of ground approximately 870 miles long and 24 miles wide on each mission.
32:21Others were capable of following pre-programmed courses very low above the Earth's surface. These photographic drones came back with high-quality aerial photographs at a fraction of the cost of other advanced reconnaissance aircraft, without having put the lives of pilots in the balance.
32:37The constant surveillance meant that the North was unable to do much without it being observed.
32:48They tried desperately to hide their fuel and munitions storage facilities, but time and again would be observed in the process and the bombers would follow soon afterwards.
32:57The SAM sites were also pinpointed, both as targets and as places for planes to avoid.
33:03Throughout the war, communications in the North were constantly disrupted.
33:23As fast as the North Vietnamese could repair bomb damage to their roads and railways, the bombers, informed by recon work, would return to recreate the damage.
33:34Ultimately, though the U.S. could not suppress the insurgency without the reduction of North Vietnam,
33:41neither could the North Vietnamese complete their aim of the reunification of Vietnam while the U.S. remained actively involved.
33:47Through a long and sometimes theatrical series of peace talks, the basis for U.S. withdrawal was established.
33:55The bombing campaigns were stopped and restarted several times, in emphasising to the Northern leaders their ultimate powerlessness in the face of the USAF's technical might.
34:05Part of the final settlement was that the U.S., despite the North's stated resentment, would continue to send reconnaissance aircraft over the North to monitor activity there.
34:16The flights continued until August the 15th, 1973, and with that final flight, the U.S. active involvement drew to a close.
34:24On the battlefield, the role of the small spotter plane was refined and extended during the Vietnam War.
34:34The activity of forward ground control liaison aircraft allowed pinpoint strikes to be called down on targets.
34:40These light battlefield spotters performed invaluable service, and, in recognition of this, there has been a post-Vietnam drive to develop more specialist and able aircraft dedicated to the battlefield tasks identified in Vietnam.
34:54The OV-10A counterinsurgency aircraft is a case in point.
35:17Clearly reflecting the experience of Vietnam, this little plane is a highly refined specialist battlefield weapon.
35:23Its whole design is totally dominated by its mission.
35:27From the pilot's exceptionally large field of vision to the plane's trailing arm undercarriage, everything reflects its intended use.
35:35It's designed to be capable of take-off and landing lengths of less than 500 feet on unprepared strips.
35:41Hence the, let us say, unconventional surface prepared for it to land on during tests.
35:53In addition to the drones and reconnaissance planes and the little forward control aircraft,
36:04the improvements in electronic espionage and communications intelligence gathering meant that there were also planes flying around packed with equipment for these purposes.
36:13As electronic equipment had become more capable and more discriminating, it offered an attractive complementary input to photographic surveillance.
36:23On days when the enemy could not be photographed because of the weather, they could still be seen by radar and the scope picture could be photographed.
36:30Passively, the enemy's radio message traffic could be monitored and analysed, as could his radar transmissions.
36:38In Vietnam, the Big Eye aircraft monitored the North's MiGs to the point where it became fairly pointless for the North Vietnamese pilots to take off,
36:46as they would immediately have large numbers of fighters directed to intercept them.
36:50This is probably the clearest example of the worth of the electronics intelligence aircraft.
36:56However, the missions carried out by such planes, all over the world, reveal an enormous amount of information on a whole range of subjects.
37:03The end of the Vietnam conflict in no way sent the big planes home.
37:16ELINT, or electronic intelligence, has increased greatly in importance.
37:21It has become far more vital than ordinary photography.
37:25It involves sensing, measuring, classifying and recording every electromagnetic emission over hostile territory.
37:32To yield information on the enemy's communications, missile guidance, navigation aids and other electronic equipment.
37:40It demands bigger and heavier reconnaissance loads and has been backed up with the development of highly sophisticated new systems.
37:48Infrared line scan radar, for example, presents a picture of the heat over the enemy's territory
37:52and can show which engine in a line of trucks is running or where an aircraft has been parked.
37:59Side-looking airborne radar, another advance, gives a continuous strip picture,
38:04sensed by radar instead of visible light, of the ground to each side of the aircraft's flight path.
38:10Advanced warning and electronic espionage aircraft are constantly in the air all around the world.
38:35In much the same way as it's difficult to establish what the U-2s get up to, there's a grey area around these planes as well.
38:43We can assume that there have been advances in technology that are still effectively secret.
38:48It would be safe to assume that this has been the case ever since the Second World War
38:51and there's no reason to suspect otherwise today.
38:54The big planes carry large crews of specialists aloft on long trips
38:59and we can assume that little of interest to them escape their attention.
39:03Planes whose mission is far more obvious are those engaged in anti-submarine roles.
39:27Though these aircraft obviously carry highly sophisticated and equally highly classified equipment
39:33to enable them to find the submarines, at least we know what their role is.
39:38From the Second World War onwards, it's been recognised that the aeroplane is probably the most effective anti-submarine weapon
39:44and fleet defence and maritime surveillance aircraft have become both specialist and effective.
39:50The submarines, meanwhile, have become more dangerous and more important
40:01and there has not been much controversy surrounding the need for the development and deployment of anti-submarine aircraft.
40:08The world's navies deploy these aircraft constantly
40:11and it's unlikely that the world's submarines are often lost track of.
40:20These fleet defence aircraft look reasonably normal.
40:48There are no canards or swing wings, they all seem to have tails and fuselages
40:53and resemble small airliners or business jets.
40:56However, they've been designed for their task
40:59and their shapes represent the designer's assessment of what was needed for the role.
41:04The U-2, of course, represents a response to a different need
41:07and though its shape would make a reasonably recognisable glider,
41:11it's not a normal-looking powered aeroplane.
41:13It's astounding that not only was the shape of this plane developed so fast
41:17but that the actual planes were built so fast
41:20and that none of the major elements of the plane have in any way failed
41:24to live up to the design team's aims.
41:26In this case, the intuition of the chief designer, Kelly Johnson,
41:30led to the creation of an outstanding aircraft
41:33which has performed its role so well
41:35that in June 1979, 24 years after the original U-2 flight,
41:40it was announced that the plane was to go back into production as the TR-1.
41:49Not all U-2 missions involve espionage.
41:53NASA has used the planes for conducting large-scale geophysical surveys
41:56and other Earth sciences missions or experimentation.
42:00NASA have also taken over the big-wing B-57s
42:03with their load-carrying capacity to conduct other aerial studies.
42:08A good example of NASA's use of out-of-work spy planes
42:11is in relation to crop disease monitoring.
42:14Through enhancements of images captured by the high-flying planes,
42:18it's been possible to map and follow the spread of, say, southern leaf blight,
42:22a disease that's affected the U.S. corn harvest.
42:24music plays
42:37ORGAN PLAYS
43:07ORGAN PLAYS
43:37ORGAN PLAYS
43:38ORGAN PLAYS
43:40ORGAN PLAYS
43:41And you can tell your friends what it is you actually do for a job without getting black
43:44marks from the CIA.
43:47These NASA missions have also allowed a better general understanding of what, say, the U-2
43:52or TR-1 is capable of.
43:55The TR-1 was first rolled out on the 15th of July 1981.
44:00In contrast to the secrecy surrounding the first U-2, it was publicly presented to a
44:04fairly large crowd.
44:13Virtually everything about these planes is classified or denied.
44:17To give an example of the secrecy that surrounds their activities, the world knows that a U-2
44:22flown by Strategic Air Command pilots overflew Cuba on October the 14th, 1962 and recorded
44:29the presence of the Russian missiles.
44:31The missiles had actually been logged by CIA overflights as early as August the 29th.
44:36A U-2 was then lent to SAC for the October flights so that the Pentagon could make public the
44:42intelligence that had been gathered.
44:44It was against policy to even acknowledge any connection between the CIA and the U-2.
44:50Even to the point of specially training the pilots, the October flights can be seen as
44:54theatrical.
44:57The remarkable SR-71 has long been the most famous, totally secret aircraft in the world.
45:03Its fame is due to its remarkable record.
45:06It has been and remains generally recognised as the finest aeroplane ever built.
45:12It and the U-2 were designed and built by the team at Lockheed within the space of 10 years.
45:18Both planes were the product of the fertile mind of Kelly Johnson.
45:23They are so dissimilar in their approaches to the same task that it's hard to believe they
45:27owe their creation to one man and his team of draftsmen, engineers, test pilots and construction
45:33specialists.
45:35The Skunk Works must have been a pretty amazing place to work during those years.
45:39Certainly its products were very amazing.
45:47Next in Strange Plains, a big program devoted to the huge.
46:00From the Hindenburg via the Spruce Goose to today's Jumbos, don't miss Giants.
46:05Jumbos.
46:12Jumbos.
46:13See you then.
46:19Chissons.
46:19All right.
46:24I'll be right back.