The U2 Incident

May 1st marks an important event in Cold War, the downing of an American U2 spy plane. This incident put a strain on the relations between the US and the Soviet Union. Gary Roberson writes:

"Shot down by a Soviet surface to air missile on the morning of May 1, 1960, CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers had been on a top secret mission: to over fly and photograph denied territory from his U2 spy plane deep inside Russia. His fate and that of the entire U2 program remained a mystery for days. The story of the U2 incident; its prologue and aftermath reveals one of the most fascinating and compelling stories of the cold war.

Anxious to avoid a surprise nuclear attack, President Eisenhower was growing increasingly nervous over rapid Soviet technological achievements. By 1954, the Soviets had demonstrated a thermonuclear bomb as well as the means to deliver it with their long-range jet-powered Bison bomber. Could a Soviet ICBM be far behind?

Urged on by his Technological Capabilities Panel, Eisenhower could not wait another five or six years for the advent of photographic spy satellites to settle the “bomber gap” and other national security issues. He needed answers about Soviet intentions and technological capabilities right now. Moreover, since, typical intelligence tradecraft was ineffective against the communist bloc, and no other means were readily available, a high-flying reconnaissance plane was Eisenhower’s only hope.

In late 1954, Eisenhower approved project AQUATONE; a plan for the CIA to develop and deploy a long-rage spy plane capable of flying, with the President’s personal approval, beyond the reach of Soviet interceptors and surface to air defenses. Fortunately, development of a plane ideally suited for the task was already well under way. While an obvious choice for the CIA’s clandestine mission, the Lockheed CL-282, designed by Clarence ’Kelly’ Johnson was originally rejected by the air force as a reconnaissance platform due to its lack of armament, traditional landing gear and maneuverability. Johnson’s design, essentially a jet-powered glider, utilized a single engine and could carry its civilian pilot and camera in excess of 70,000 feet unarmed, unmarked and, so it was hoped, undetected by Soviet air defense radars.

Work on the aircraft began in secret at Lockheed’s Skunk Works almost immediately and without a signed contract. A CIA check arrived at Johnson’s Santa Barbara home sometime after an official contract for 20 airframes - minus engines was signed. Final performance design specifications would allow the U-2 to sustain 2.5gs with a maximum speed of Mach 0.8 or 460 knots at a service altitude of 70,600 feet with an absolute maximum altitude of 73,000 carrying a payload of 450 lbs.

In the early summer of 1955, Lockheed chose deserted Groom Lake (later known as Area 51) in Southern Nevada as the U2 flight testing site. The dry lakebed at Groom proved ideal. Bordered by the Emigrant Valley’s mountain range and Nevada Test Site, it was protected from prying eyes and interference. Lockheed constructed a makeshift base at Groom consisting of little more than a few shelters, workshops and trailer homes in which to house its small team. The first U2 flew at Groom on August 4th, 1955, a mere 8 months after contract approval, on time and under budget. U2s under CIA control began over flights of Soviet territory in July, 1956."

The U2 incident was one of the many near disasters that the US and the Soviets faced during the Cold War. The fear of nuclear war caused both countries to develop spying technology, and the U2 plane was one of the most advanced aircraft of the time. When the plane went down, many people held their breath... Thankfully, like many of these perilous situations, the Soviets and the United States were able to avert disaster.

Many of our readers out there remember this incident, and I invite you to add to the narrative. What do you remember? What are your thoughts?

A Tenuous Relationship

The theme for this week is relations, and as most of you know, relations were a big part of the Cold War. Sometimes relations were good with the Soviets and sometimes they were bad. Our artifact of the week is a helmet from Francis Gary Powers, and it helps represent the ups and downs of the US-Soviet relations. The U2 incident represented a low point for both countries. While Us and the Soviets knew there were spying operations going on, this was a tangible confirmation that really did not help the situation between the countries.

Helmet worn by Francis Gary Powers

Since the beginning of the Cold War, it had always been the US versus the Soviets, and capitalism versus communism. This was not merely a division between the US and the Soviets; other countries were often forced to pick a side. (Or a side forced the country to adopt its ideology.) You could not have had two more opposite ideologies than capitalism and communism, so there was already built in tension between the two. There was a real fear of invasion; not necessarily physical invasion, but the invasion by the opposing ideology.

The fear could be seen everywhere in the US and the Soviet Union. Popular fiction of the time had the opposing country as the enemy of the story. Television and movies had the "good" guys fighting the "bad" guys. Both nations were paranoid that spies were infiltrating the most top secret projects, and many were imprisoned or killed over accusations of being spies.

It wasn't all bad, though! Sometimes, relations between the two countries were surprisingly good. Some say Khrushchev's visit to America was a high point in relations. There was also the time that Andropov answered a letter from a concerned young girl in America. The US and the Soviets, once bitter space race opponents, were able to collaborate on the Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975.

The US and the Soviets were engaged in a tug-of-war for the entirety of the Cold War. The relationship between the two nations was one of complete hatered and reluctant respect. Relations between the two hit awesome highs and ridiculous lows. All of these elements contribute to one amazing story that was the Cold War. To explore this story, please visit the Cold War Museum. If you have a story to share, please leave it in the comment section. We would love to know your take on the relations between these two great nations during the Cold War!

Off Into the Sunset

Today, a great chapter in America's history came to a close. Today was the last flight of the space shuttle Discovery to her new home at the Smithsonian. For many people who were alive during the beginning of the Cold War, this marked the end of a chapter that captivated a whole nation and gave the Americans one of their greatest victories over the Soviets. The space program started during the Cold War, and was a way for both superpowers to wage a "war" without weapons.

The space race was a competition between both nations on who could be first; first into space, first on the moon, and first walking on the moon. It became a "sport" with the US and Soviets being the teams and their respective space programs were the players. Both nations rallied behind their space programs; when launches were scheduled the people would stop and watch it on TV or listen to the description on the radio. School children could recite the names of the shuttles, the men who crewed them and what each launch accomplished.

Kennedy's address on the space race spelled out the feelings of both nations: "We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too." The nation was crushed when the Soviets sent Sputnik into orbit, and we vowed to work even harder to surpass that goal. We put our best scientists to work on getting a man into orbit, travelling to the moon and eventually putting our flag and footprints on the moon's surface. The nation celebrated our achievements!

Back then we had such high hopes for our space program. At the beginning of the 20th century the moon was this white thing that hung up in the sky; a symbol for things that could not be achieved. Sixty years later, an American made vehicle landed on the moon and two astronauts emerged and stepped out onto the powdery surface. Literally, the sky became the limit! There were dreams of visiting the Martians on Mars and possibly travelling outside of our solar system. Young boys wanted to grow up and be astronauts and they knew the sacrifices necessary to achieve this goal and they were ready for it. We took pride in our space program because we wanted to be the best and we became the best.

Space fever captivated the country. On TV the Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Lost In Space and numerous other programs explored space travel. There were songs about space, parties for shuttle launches and even proms that took place on the "moon." We as a nation were proud of what we accomplished and we wanted to do more. Not only did we beat the Soviets in the space race, we moved a nation to continue to call for exploration and to push ourselves to our absolute limits.

We all know how it turned out, and the disappointment makes me feel so sick. But on this day I do not want to think about that. What I want to remember is the first time I saw a shuttle launch, the first time I wanted to be an astronaut and the first time I looked up at the sky and realized that we were there. I want to look at that beautiful picture of Discovery. It renews my passion for studying the Cold War. Without the Cold War, we would never have realized our full ability as a nation. We would have never pointed to the sky and said "we will go there." There are a lot of bad things that came out of the Cold War, but we mustn't forget the good that came out of it as well. And as a people, we cannot forget when we look up at the sky that we were there, and there is where we will hopefully return to once again.

Why Preserve the Cold War?

There comes a point in every historian's career where they have to defend the history they are trying to preserve. For me that point seems to come at least twice a day, everyday, since I have decided to become a Cold War historian. When people see my collection of Cold War items, I get a few different responses. Many people think it is a really neat collection and it really brings back memories for them. Others know nothing about the Cold War, and they are genuinely interested in hearing more about it.

All too often, though, people think that what I am doing is silly and they are not afraid to be vocal about it. They aren't afraid to tell me that my collection is "rubbish" and "silly". One woman called it garbage and another man said I should toss it all out! Their reasons vary but a lot of people believe that since nothing happened that people shouldn't bother to remember it. While it is true that the world wasn't destroyed in a thermonuclear war, I do not think this should be the reason to forget the entire thing ever happened.

I conducted an informal survey over the course of a few weeks last summer, and the results startled me. People over thirty-five had no problems telling me about the Cold War. People my age (late twenties and early thirties) knew that there was a Cold War but they really couldn't tell me what it was about. The twenty-five and under crowd gave me some really good answers. Some thought the Cold War was fought in the Arctic, some thought it was a TV battle and others thought it had something to do with WWI. Not one of the younger people I asked (and I made sure to choose people who were average as far as history knowledge) could tell me that the Cold War was fought between the USA and the Soviets. One person even thought that the Soviets were just characters from their favorite video game. (I am not going to lie and tell you that a little piece of me didn't die after they said that.)

While this was a little survey of maybe twenty people, it just reaffirmed my personal commitment to preserving the history of the Cold War. The Cold War ended in 1991 twenty-one years ago, and yet people who lived during the Cold War are having a hard time remembering it! Honestly, I barely remembered the duck and cover drill that I had in first grade. We are lucky if textbooks devote more than three paragraphs to the entire conflict, and even when I was in school we skipped over it in order to devote more time to WWII. If you really want to confuse someone younger than thirty, start talking about MAD, SALT, START or any of the acronyms from the Cold War.

The Cold War was an amazing time in the history of the world. We were literally on the brink of destruction, total destruction, and we came back. Two mortal enemies sat there with their fingers on a button that could wipe out the entire world. I cannot stress this point enough; WE WERE ALL GOING TO DIE! But we didn't. Cooler heads prevailed and the world evolved. We decided as a universal entity that mutually assured destruction should never happen. We brought ourselves back from the brink and were a better world because of it. I try to tell people that the fact nothing happened was actually a victory, and that this conflict should be studied and dissected in order to create a better future for all of us.

This is why we need to preserve this history and this is why we need a Cold War Museum. We need to study the history of the conflict and preserve it for future generations. We need a museum to consolidate all of the information and preserve it without discrimination. We need an entity that will present every side of the story, show us the very important but also the average. There is a great emphasis placed on military history, but there was also a civilian side that is rarely explored. Right now, we are just struggling to get a few more paragraphs in a middle school history book. Yet as a conflict the Cold War is as important, if not more important, than any other military conflict that the world has ever seen. We need a place where the story can be kept straight, the information conveyed without bias and the history can be preserved for many generations. We cannot let the Cold War slip away from our memories, and we need a museum to ensure that it survives for future generations.

Canned Water and the Survival of a Nation

Canned Water from the Cold War Museum's Collection

One of the most iconic images from the Cold War are fallout shelters. Depending upon where you live, work, or where you go to school you may very well have a fallout shelter in your building. The house I live in is from 1897, and around the 1950's the owners added a basement and a fallout shelter. These fallout shelters represented the optimism of nuclear war, and the will of a nation to survive the unsurvivable.

In a MAD (mutually assured destruction) situation, the only way to "win" is to survive. The idea was to crawl into a well stocked shelter before the bombs hit and stay underground until it was safe to move to unaffected areas. Things would then carry on as before and the country who had the most people survive would be the "winner". We know now, and they did back then as well, that there were no real winners in a nuclear war; only survivors.

A common misconception was that the shelter was supposed to protect you from a nuclear explosion. This is untrue because even shelters that were designed to withstand a nuclear attack would be destroyed by a direct hit. Rather, the shelter's main purpose was to protect its occupants from fallout and contamination.

A Simple In Ground Fallout Shelter

So what does canned water have to do with the survival of a nation? When you think about it the strongest, most impenetrable shelter is useless without provisions. Not only did you need a shelter, you needed to stock your shelter with enough food and water to last at least two weeks. In home shelters, this usually meant canning extra food and buying a little extra at the grocery store. In larger municipal shelters, the officials would stock these shelters full of government issued food, medical supplies, sanitary needs and water. Even those houses that did not have a shelter would usually store some food and water in case the unthinkable would happen.

Northland Center Mall, Michigan



There were many ways to create a shelter in your home, from a simple lean-to in the basement to a fully constructed underground shelter with two exits (one exterior, one interior), room enough for your entire family plus provisions for two or more months. In one of the more memorable scenes from the made for TV movie "The Day After", you see the father shoveling dirt and using sandbags in front of the basement windows in order to close off the basement to the outside. While he didn't have a prepared shelter, the father followed emergency instructions that can be found in many of the pamphlets given out to the public. The family is shown as having more than enough food, Steve Guttenberg's character produces his own food in order to stay in the shelter with them.

I don't think I would be doing it this calmly...



Not everyone had a shelter during the Cold War, but those that did were preparing for an uncertain future. There is a reason why the most common artifacts from the Cold War are pamphlets and shelter supplies; these things were needed to survive. People today look at the advice in these pamphlets and immediately write them off as nonsense. They look at the drab packaging of the food and say that it looks disgusting. During the Cold War, though, these pamphlets were distributed and widely read. The food was purchased and stored for the family. When I show off my collection I have people pick up some of my pamphlets and tell me that they read them and because of them they kept extra food around, or cleaned the basement every once in awhile in case they had to stay down there. They laugh when they see the canned water because their mothers would make them drink it when the shelter supplies were rotated, and it tasted slightly metallic.

No one really knew what would happen if there was a full on nuclear war with the Soviet Union. In fact, even today we cannot truly comprehend a MAD situation. We will never know if these shelters would have worked the way they were meant to and if the recommended food quantities were enough to sustain the family. Many of the home shelters have been turned into rec rooms, storm shelters and laundry rooms. Municipal shelters are now storage rooms, meeting rooms and classrooms. Let's pray that they stay that way.

Milwaukee Civil Defense Magazine

Today's blog will be exploring a civil defense artifact. Since I am an expert on civilian civil defense I chose this artifact because it is something I know a lot about. (And it is also from my own personal collection.) It is something that a good majority of the population may still recognize from the 50's until the late 70's and beyond. The artifact I have chosen is a copy of a civil defense magazine from Milwaukee.

"Your Civil Defense Manual: A Handbook on Personal Survival" was issued by the Milwaukee Civil Defense Administration around 1954 or 1955. This was an informational manual containing essentially everything a bigger manual would contain, but in a more condensed form. (One of the more interesting parts of this magazine for me was the fact that the phone numbers began with "UPTOWN" which is pretty neat if you were born in the early 80's and have been using area codes your entire life.)

Milwaukee Civil Defense Page

The magazine is unique because it is specific to one city. It is usually harder to find city specific manuals, but when you find them it is a rare treat! The above picture is showing the Milwaukee CD in action, and when I show these pictures to older family and friends they recognize the places immediately. The topics of the magazine range from background information on the civil defense, what to do if the bomb drops, how to recognize the different warning signals, which CONELRAD stations to tune into (640 and 1240 kHz), how to keep calm, how to treat injuries, how to evacuate (with a Milwaukee specific map) and how to stock your fallout shelter.

Evacuation Map of Milwaukee

Typical of the time, the magazine gives a very optimistic outlook on the survivability of a nuclear disaster. As we know now, if a nuclear bomb was dropped on your city there would be no chance to get to a shelter, and you would most likely perish in the shelters due to the forces exerted by a nuclear explosion. Manuals like this were published to inform the public; you were less likely to panic if thought you knew what you were doing, and if you could keep from panicking you could take away a needless obstacle to survival.

This magazine wasn't created to scare people, it was created to ultimately help people. Thankfully the information in these manuals were never tested, but we can assume that they would have worked to some degree. The manuals are in danger of disappearing from the record because, according to many people who have seen my collection, nothing happened so why should we care? A lot of people view the Cold War only from a militaristic point of view, but there was a whole other side that is beginning to fade into memory.

Do you have any civilian civil defense memories or interesting artifacts from the Cold War? Post about them below!

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to the Cold War Museum's official blog!

My name is Jo and I am the new social media manager for the museum. This blog will be a place where the museum posts information regarding the museum, artifacts in the museum, trivia and famous (and not so famous) people of the Cold War. In addition to the regular posts, we will frequently have guests write on a variety of topics related to the museum and the Cold War so please check back often! If you would like to be one of those contributors, please visit our website or private message the Cold War Museum Blog.