Cuban Missile Crisis Reconnaissance

The U-2 photography that revealed Soviet missile sites in Cuba, October 1962

Overview

A U-2 flight piloted by Major Richard Heyser on October 14, 1962 photographed Soviet missile sites under construction in Cuba, and photointelligence analysts confirmed the find overnight. The imagery let President Kennedy and his advisers track construction site by site and choose a naval quarantine over immediate air strikes. Major Rudolf Anderson, whose U-2 was shot down over Cuba on October 27, was the crisis's only combat death. Overhead reconnaissance proved decisive in the most dangerous standoff of the Cold War.