Lockheed U-2
The Lockheed U-2 is a single-seat, single-engine jet built by Lockheed's Skunk Works for the CIA as a high-altitude strategic reconnaissance aircraft. From 1956 it photographed the Soviet Union from above 60,000 feet, work that ended over Soviet territory when one was shot down in 1960; U-2 photographs of Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962 precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis. Enlarged, modernized descendants remain in U.S. Air Force service, and NASA flies the type's ER-2 variant as a high-altitude research aircraft.