The U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, though designed and developed in great secrecy five decades ago, has somehow never fully emerged from the shadows even though it has outlasted one successor, the SR-71 Blackbird, and its production line has been re-opened twice. Now, the U-2 carries imaging and signals intelligence sensors that are as sophisticated as any in the US inventory.

"Aviation buffs will go to a cornfield to look at an aircraft," says retired Maj. Gen. Charles D. Metcalf, director of the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson AFB, near Dayton, Ohio. "But more than the hardware, the story of the Air Force is what people come to see. Most of our visitors know little about the aircraft we have on display. They are more interested in the history of the people who flew the aircraft and the wars they fought."