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Cold War Projects

A surviving section of the Berlin spy tunnel on display at the AlliiertenMuseum in Berlin.

How the CIA’s 1,476-foot Berlin spy tunnel yielded 443,000 transcribed conversations even though the KGB knew about the project from its start

The tunnel ran 1,476 feet from a U.S. Air Force radar site in West Berlin

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Pave Low helicopter on museum display

How Army Special Forces raiders rehearsed about 170 times on a canvas-and-wood mock-up before raiding the Son Tay prison camp on Nov. 21, 1970, and found no POWs there

A replica prison camp built of canvas and wooden frames stood at Eglin Air Force

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Douglas X-3 Stiletto research jet on a dry lakebed

Why the Douglas X-3 Stiletto, built to test sustained flight at twice the speed of sound, topped out at about 650 mph in level flight

Two Westinghouse J34 turbojets of 3,370 pounds of thrust each were not what Douglas had

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B-50 bomber Lucky Lady II trailing a refueling hose from a B-29 tanker

How the B-50 bomber Lucky Lady II made the first nonstop flight around the world in 1949, landing after 94 hours and one minute in the air

Carswell Air Force Base, Texas, was both the start line and the finish. A B-50A

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Joseph Kittinger stepping out of the Excelsior gondola high above the clouds

On Aug. 16, 1960, Joseph Kittinger stepped out of a balloon gondola at 102,800 feet and free-fell for four minutes and 37 seconds, reaching 614 mph

More than 20 miles above New Mexico, an open balloon gondola hung over White Sands

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UH-1D helicopter landing beside purple smoke in Vietnam

The 101st Airborne returned to active duty on Sept. 21, 1956, as the Army’s first nuclear-capable Pentomic division, and in 1968 it traded its parachutes for helicopters

Five small airborne battle groups in place of three regiments: that was the shape the

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Hull of the MH-1A Sturgis nuclear power barge moored on the James River

How a World War II Liberty ship became the MH-1A Sturgis, the world’s first floating nuclear power plant, generating electricity in the Panama Canal Zone from 1968 to 1976

Before it held a reactor, the hull that became the MH-1A Sturgis was a World

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M65 280mm atomic cannon on its carriage at an outdoor display

Only 20 of the Army’s 83-ton M65 atomic cannons were built, and in a 1953 test one fired a nuclear shell that burst 524 feet above its target

Rock Island Arsenal keeps one of the rarest pieces of Cold War artillery the U.S.

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The Avrocar on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force.

The Avrocar, a flying saucer tested for the U.S. Army, topped out at 35 mph and became uncontrollable more than three feet off the ground

At Fort Eustis, Virginia, the U.S. Army Transportation Museum keeps a flying saucer in pieces.

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A Sputnik 1 replica hanging at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.

Sputnik I, launched on Oct. 4, 1957, weighed 184 pounds and rode into orbit on an R-7 rocket built as an intercontinental ballistic missile

The rocket mattered more than the satellite. When the Soviet Union put Sputnik I into

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