Kevin Myers: When historians look back at the 20th century they'll write about real U2: the Lockheed spy plane
Perhaps the festival high point of the summer so far was the confiscation of the protesters' balloon at Glastonbury calling on U2 to pay more taxes.
Justifying the seizure, Michael Eavis, the founder of the festival, and famous "defender" of its traditions of free speech, said that the criticisms of U2 were "unfair". Ah yes, truly the liberal definition of freedom: I defend to the death your right to agree with me.
As it happens, I see no reason for U2 NOT to minimise their tax debt: only the clinically insane wish to pay more taxes. I like U2's music, and I know their manager Paul McGuinness well: a man of outstanding personal integrity. Moreover, you will not hear from him, or from three members of U2, any demands that western governments give more aid to Africa. We only hear this from Bono, even as he takes advantage of tax loopholes to reduce his contribution to the central Exchequer from which aid to Africa must come.
No matter: for as U2 arrived from the US for their Glastonbury gig, they were probably unaware that it was precisely 55 years since the first U2, the real U2, had made the first unauthorised western espionage flight into Soviet-controlled airspace since the Bolshevik Revolution.
The creation of that first U2 reveals some deeply American values that are hard to comprehend in the Ireland of today. In 1954, the CIA allocated $54m to Lockheed to develop this single-seat, single-engine, high-altitude photo-reconnaissance plane. Lockheed's designer "Kelly" Johnson (alas, without a drop of Irish blood in him) was later to return almost $8m of this sum, due to cost "under-runs": neither the term, nor the abstract concept it conveys, are conceivable in the Ireland of today, or perhaps ever. Moreover, in 1955, Johnson managed to return a further $2m to the US government.
Patriotism is such a defining feature of American public life that it's hard for us here in Healy-Raeland to grasp how it motivated the US pilots who flew the U2. The first such flight, over the conquered countries of eastern Europe, took place in late June 1956, almost 55 years to the day before the rather shorter and swiftly doomed flight of the anti-U2 balloon in Glastonbury. And the first really serious flight over the USSR heartland, and potentially one of the most dangerous flights ever taken by a lone pilot, was still to come: it took place on July 4, 1956, 55 years ago last Monday.
Not many people in the US had ever heard his name when Hervey Stockman died earlier this year. That's a shame. For quite simply, this man embodied the spirit that has made the US the greatest force for freedom that the world has ever known. He had abandoned his academic career at Princeton after Pearl Harbour in order to enlist. He was later to fly 68 combat missions over occupied Europe. He left the US Army Air Force in 1945 to pursue a career in commercial design, before the Korean War called him back to the colours.
The die was cast: he became a regular officer in the new US Air Force (USAF). In July 1956, the summer when Elvis Presley was changing world popular culture -- and thereby the lives of the as yet unborn member of the band U2, with 'Heartbreak Hotel', 'Blue Suede Shoes' and 'Hound Dog' -- Stockman set off on his lonely flight across the USSR.
This was unprecedented: flying alone for nearly eight hours over enemy airspace, at no more than 300 miles an hour. Above him, the sky was black. Below, through his vertical periscope, he could see, not merely the landmass of the USSR, but also the vain attempts by many MiG interceptors to shoot him down. Contrary to Johnson's hopes, Soviet radar could detect Stockman's U2, but the fighters were unable to reach him. And so, for nearly eight hours he filmed the USSR's secrets.
It is virtually impossible today to understand the scale of Stockman's achievements. No one had ever penetrated Soviet airspace like this before, so no one in the West had the faintest idea what was going on behind the Iron Curtain. Thus he was to bring back these dazzling photographic revelations, covering more than 400,000 square miles of the Soviet military and industrial complex. In the history of espionage, nothing, quite simply nothing, compares with it.
After several more such missions, modest little Stockman returned to the regular USAF. On his 310th combat mission, over North Vietnam in 1967, and some 24 years after his first combat mission, his F-4 plane collided with another Phantom. He bailed out and was taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese. He spent 2,093 days -- six years -- in captivity, enduring the usual torture, degradation and beatings. He was released in March 1973: the following August, Lt Colonel Stockman reported back for duty.
U2 is a fine band. But when future historians consider the really significant creations of the 20th Century, the U2 they'll write about went by the name Lockheed: the U2 of freedom. And they'll also note that the only great U2 leader died in February 2011: Colonel Hervey Stockman USAF, RIP.
- Kevin Myers
Irish Independent
