[jariel]

"stunned to find his U2 spyplane tumbling from the skies in 1960 thanks to what I can only imagine is inherent bias in the war room against the enemy"

The U2 has been flying for literally decades, even to this day, relatively unencumbered. The performance ratio is way in the favour of 'confident war room'.

Also - it's hard to say anything about submarines, they're so clouded in secrecy, I think the truth tends not to come out until a couple of decades after the fact.

[jki275]

It certainly hasn't been flying over the Soviet Union.

It became obsolete in 1960. That doesn't mean it was no longer useful anywhere.

[jariel]

It's running 10-15K mission hours a year since 1960, that's pretty far from obsolete.

[jki275]

Yeah, I know what it does -- it's had many different missions grafted onto it. It's a cool plane.

But I mean it's obsolete for its original mission. It can't fly higher than Soviet SAMs anymore. It hasn't been able to since the 60s.

[boc]

Because the US had a new spy satellite program that took its place.