The Daily Observer London Desk: Reporter- Jack Brumby
If you look up “Selfie Taken from the Highest Altitude” in the Guinness Book of World Records, it might be from the U.S. Air Force pilot who snapped a photograph of China’s suspected surveillance balloon from the cockpit of a U-2 spy plane.
On Wednesday, the Pentagon released a photograph dated Feb. 3, 2023, that shows a shadow of the plane passing over the balloon. The distinctive payload is visible as it crosses over the continental United States. The Defense Department said the balloon was flying at about 60,000 feet.
The unidentified U-2 pilot’s helmet, similar to those used by NASA astronauts, is visible in the photograph.
Though the Pentagon says it had been tracking the craft earlier, the balloon was first spotted by civilians over Billings, Montana on January 28, briefly shutting the local airport.
The balloon became a public sensation and a diplomat football as it slowly traversed the continental U.S. over the next few days. Citing the possible danger from falling debris, the Defense Department held off shooting down the balloon until it headed out over the Atlantic Ocean near South Carolina on Feb. 6 — three days after its portrait was captured by the U-2.
The balloon was about 200 feet tall and carried a payload of intelligence-gathering surveillance equipment that weighed thousands of pounds, U.S. officials said.
Chinese officials contend it was a civilian weather craft that was blown unintentionally off course, calling the U.S. decision to shoot it down a “hysterical overreaction.” A planned fence-mending trip by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing was hastily scrubbed in the furor over the incident.
The Lockheed U-2, nicknamed “Dragon Lady,” is a single-seat, single-engine high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft that first flew in the 1950s during the height of the Cold War.
In 1960, U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down by a surface-to-air missile and captured while flying a secret reconnaissance mission over the Soviet Union.
