American Experience : Spy in the Sky (1996)
Directed by Linda Garmon
Genres - Historical Film |
Sub-Genres - Military & War |
Run Time - 60 min. |
Countries - United States |
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Synopsis by Steve Blackburn
Written, produced, and directed by Linda Garmon, this episode of the Emmy award-winning PBS series The American Experience chronicles the development of the CIA supersonic spy plane dubbed the U-2, and the international crisis triggered when American pilot Francis Gary Powers got shot down while flying the jet over the Soviet Union. As Roy Scheider narrates, the 1960 incident ended U-2 flights over the Soviet Union, but it was a U-2 that later discovered the missiles the Russians tried to sneak into Cuba. The documentary features interviews with various people involved in these historic events, including U-2 pilots Bob Ericson and Hervey Stockman. Highlights also include archival film footage from Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, the BBC, the CIA, the National Air and Space Museum, and Fox Movietone News, as well as archival photographs from the CIA, NASA Ames Research Center, and UPI/Bettmann Archive, Inc. Hosted by David McCullough.
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Keywords
airplane, CIA (Central-Intelligence-Agency), pilot, Russia, Soviet, spy