How the A-12 Spy Plane Helped Avert War Against North Korea
The planes were able to show that, despite North Korean provocations, they were not mobilizing for a full war.
Key point: The USS Pueblo incident nearly caused a Second Korean War. Here is how the CIA spied out North Korea to see if Pyongyang really was preparing for another fight.
On October 30, 1967, a CIA spy-plane soared eighty-four thousand feet over Hanoi in northern Vietnam, traveling faster than a rifle bullet at over three times the speed of sound. A high-resolution camera in the angular black jet’s belly recorded over a mile of film footage of the terrain below—including the over 190 Soviet-built S-75 surface-to-air missiles sites.