A pretty wild airplane, considering that it was designed by the same guy who designed the P-38. (Which was also a wild airplane).
I've never understood the whole Francis Gary Powers thing. (The guy who was shot down in 1960 while overflying Russia on a recon mission). When they made the prisoner trade a few months later, Powers assumed he would be coming home to a hero's welcome. Instead, he was reviled as being nearly a traitor, somehow. He was generally treated like garbage until after his death.
He was basically no different than John McCain, yet one guy makes a decades-long career out of being a war hero and the other guy is practically treated like Ed Snowden. As best I can see, the entire difference was based on some newspaper pundit types at the time who thought he should have taken his suicide pill. It followed him around for the rest of his life.
U-2 trivia question: Who was the only man in Russia who had seen a U-2 up close at the time Powers was shot down?
A. Lee Harvey Oswald. He had worked at the U-2 base in Turkey before defecting.
