Mysterious Empire

Author: Hao Yan, Zhang Rui Zhen, Wang Cheng Jiao
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-09-01
Features: In the turbulent early years of the Cold War, a small group of Americans led by Dwight D. Eisenhower completely reshaped the intelligence and military machinery targeting the Soviet Union. They operated covertly, outside the watchful eyes of Parliament and the media, secretly developing unconventional, cutting-edge weapons, hoping to gain insights into Soviet military movements and thereby protect the United States from surprise nuclear attacks. The Secret Empire is the first comprehensive and systematic account to bring to light the vivid stories of these individuals and their inventions. During the 1950s, a wave of intense and secretive technological innovation swept across the nation, where a small group of individuals—including scientists, engineers, businesspeople, and government officials—began actively pursuing aircraft manufacturing to expand America's air superiority. Their efforts and passion for creating these aircraft were no less than those that went into developing the atomic bomb. They designed, built, and deployed the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, the supersonic SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft, and the first reconnaissance satellite—Corona. The intelligence gathered by just this satellite in a single day about the Soviet Union's weapons and military capabilities surpassed the total amount of information that a team of spies could collect over a decade.