It's cold in the morning of the 8th of February 1962. Francis Gary Powers, US soldier, is standing in the nomansland between Potsdam and Berlin. Right here, on the Glienicker Brücke (bridge) the first exchange of secret agents of the Cold War era is about to happen: Powers is returning to the USA. His mission was a failure. This is the initial. By shooting down Powers "Operation Overflight" – pilots of the USA flying illegally over the Soviet Union – became the U2-crisis. In the spatial essay Überflieger (also meaning something like high-flyer) several occasions of illegal aerial reconnaissance from the Cold War era are shown. This story shows the beginning of tactical aerial reconnaissance, which nowadays are performed by drones and satellites, and seem by media images or google earth slightly self-evident to us.

2012