Shadow Flights

by Curtis Peebles

Book Overview

Peebles is a NASA historian working at Edwards Air Force Base. His account focuses on the period from the end of WWII to the early 1960s. Coverage includes the first covert overflights after the end... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0891417001
• ISBN13: 9780891417002
• Release Date: November 2000
• Publisher: Presidio Press
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.48 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

captivating Account

This book relates the story of American aerial reconnaissance during the Cold War. It makes it clear that the American government was violating Iron Curtain airspace repeatedly, motivated by an urgent need to get a peek that their military preparedness. The author relates in great details how the various missions were organized, and how the U-2 and other reconnaissance aircraft were developed and employed. Overall, it's a good read.

Great book

I had to read this book for a research paper about the Cold War, and must admit, found a great deal of enjoyment in it. It explains, down to the smalles detail, what took place in terms of aerial reconnaissance in the 1950, and at the same it is neatly divided into small sections so that its easy to find information quickly

An Insightful Look into Cold War Aerial Surveillance

As in "Dark Eagles," Peebles again demonstrates in "Shadow Flights" an amazing amount of research and insight into the world of classified and black-project aviation during the Cold War. Unlike "Dark Eagles," "Shadow Flights" is a much more integrated read, but is no less informative. Peebles accurately and conscisely recounts the history of Cold War reconnaissance flights and methods in a manner that is interesting to both the informed and casual reader. In so doing, Peebles covers everything from the development history of the U-2 to the shootdown of a USAF C-130A, s/n 60528, over Soviet Armenia in September 1958, including enhanced Soviet gun camera photos of the doomed ELINT aircraft.Though the book lacks the detailed minutae of "The Price of Vigilance," it also covers a much larger subject and does so superbly. Reading this book immediately before Norman Polmar's slightly more recent U-2 history, "Spyplane," I found Peeble's style to be more accomodating to the average reader, and "Shadow Flights" in general to be more informative and accurate.

Military history coverage of America's secret air war

Curtis Peebles' Shadow Flights deserves ongoing mention as an exceptional, in-depth military history coverage of America's secret air war against the Soviets at the beginning of the Cold War. Pilots sought information on how the USSR might be preparing to attack the West: Shadow Flights follows the history of the secret, dangerous missions which were numerous and risky.

A "must" for Cold War era history buffs.

Shadow Flights provides a treatise on America's secret air war against the Soviets during the Cold War, documenting top secret intelligence gathering missions largely unknown to the world. Previously top secret Soviet and U.S. documents are used to explore the history of the secret U-2 program's flights in this intriguing survey.