Mere months after China tested its first nuclear bomb at Xinjiang, a Lockheed U-2 ‘Dragon Lady’ took off from a runway in Orissa. The high-altitude endurance spy plane was a staple of the Cold War, and its presence in India was a marked shift in U.S. foreign policy towards the country.
China, then emerging as the USA’s newest threat after the Soviet Union, was flexing its muscles and the USA wanted to run reconnaissance missions over Chinese territory. But on returning to the World-War-II-era Charbatia airfield in Orissa, the plane had a bumpy landing – and got stuck in the slush. Extricating it from the mud and out of the country without any of the press finding it gave the CIA nightmares. From then onwards, the Dragon Lady only flew from bases in Thailand.
It’s a telling analogy for the state of Indo-US cooperation during the cold war. These stories only came out in 2013, with the declassification of old CIA documents. But in the larger picture, it was an unlikely alliance that fell apart with time. But while it was alive, it was a tale of espionage in the Himalayas.
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