jul 4, 1956 - The U-2 spy plane flys over Moscow and Leningrad and confirms the limited capabilities of Soviet weapons

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"On July 4 1956 a new American spy plane, the U-2, made its maiden flight directly over Moscow and Leningrad, snapping excellent photographs from a height well above the range of Soviet fighters and anti-aircraft missiles...
The U-2 photographs quickly confirmed the limited size and inferior capabilities of the Soviet long-range bomber force. (Gaddis 2006, p. 73)

"By the end of 1959 [Khrushchev’s] engineers had only six long-range missile launch sites operational... Khrushchev decided that the U-2 incident made further cooperation with the lame-duck Eisenhower administration impossible. “I became more and more convinced that our pride and dignity would be damaged if we went ahead with the conference as if nothing had happened" (Gaddis 2006, p. 74)

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