It can fly above the range of most missiles and is able to look into one country from the airspace of another. Unlike a satellite, it can photograph a target at any time.
“I understand that they’re used on a quite regular basis to support the UN, as indeed the RAF is using Canberras but not telling anybody, and the French are using Mirage 4s – all for strategic reconnaissance,” said Paul Jackson, editor of Jane’s All The World’s Aircraft. Satellites and a new generation of spy planes have taken over much of the U2’s reconnaissance role, but the Lockheed-built aircraft still serves an important intelligence role. The jet-black U2 “spy-plane” first flew in 1955, became one of the most potent symbols of the Cold War, and was powerful enough, in one instance, to photograph Russians on a latrine from 70,000 feet, writes Jojo Moyes. It was one of three U2s based at RAF Fairford since the base at Alconbury, Cambridgeshire, closed in March.. It is understood that the jet was taking off for a mission to Bosnia, where officials from Nato and the United Nations are considering mounting air strikes in retaliation for Monday’s attack on a Sarajevo market which left 37 people deadThe aircraft which crashed was a U2R version assigned to the 9th Reconnaissance Wing at Beale air force base, California. He was airlifted to Princess Margaret Hospital in Swindon, Wiltshire, where he died from multiple injuries.Simon Rayner, aged 15, who watched the aircraft burst into flames 500 metres from his home in Kempsford, said: “I heard the plane’s thrust reversers come on as it landed but then there was a huge bang which shook all the windows.”The US Air Force is refusing to speculate on the cause of the accident, but early reports suggest that one of the “stabilisers” under the wings may have not detached itself, thereby unbalancing the wide-winged aircraft.

An RAF spokeswoman said: “I understand the pilot had difficulty on landing, so he ejected.”
Captain David Hawker was found 200 feet from the wreckage. USAF officers from Mildenhall in Suffolk were yesterday investigating the accident, which took place as the jet left RAF Fairford at about 7am. A United States Air Force pilot died yesterday after a U2 “spy plane” crashed as it took off from Gloucestershire on what was believed to be a reconnaissance mission to Bosnia. The options open to us are to detain them in a police station, invite social services to detain them on our behalf, or to release them to their parents, who are understandably shocked.”The dead woman’s husband, aged 76, was being comforted by family and friends last night after being treated in hospital for shock.. She was covered in blood, and there was blood spattered over the wall, door and floor.”Det Ch Insp Browell said the boys were being interviewed by detectives trained in coaxing information from children.”I am treating this with the seriousness of murder with the sole intention of finding out how this incident happened. When I got there, the woman’s daughter was on laid top of her mother.

A local resident, Gwynneth Mensah, said she heard screams from the block entrance shortly after noon.”I suddenly heard horribly loud screams of “ambulance, ambulance, somebody call an ambulance quick, we need help”. I thought it was a domestic incident, but the screaming continued. Residents said police had been unable to respond effectively to repeated calls about objects dropped on passers-by.Leeds city council had secured the door leading to the roof, but yesterday it had been forced. “I was walking through the same sort of door as the lady was, after coming back with my dog, when I felt something brush my leg. Then there was this loud clatter as a metal girder dropped at my feet,” Ms Cooper said.Grayson Heights is a deteriorating 1960s block in a neighbourhood where bored children are often seen playing on tower block rooftops. This sort of thing has been going on for three or four months, since it got light at nights, and the boys just think it’s something fun to do.”Madeline Cooper, 23, said she was struck on the leg by an iron girder dropped this month from the top floor of a neighbouring tower block. “The lads have been warned loads of times, but they just keep doing it Something like this was bound to happen.

“Until we can establish a criminal act has been committed, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that nothing could happen to all three of the boys,” he said.The woman, who has not been named, lived in Kirkstall, where residents last night claimed that incidents of objects being dropped on passers- by were a regular occurrence.Neighbours said the boys, two aged ten and one nine-year-old, had been accused before of “bombing” from rooftops.”Last week, I had to tell off the nine-year-old after he threw canisters off our fourth-storey roof, which only just missed my grandson,” Susan Faulkner, 43, of Kirkstall Hill, said. “A charge of murder is the very worst scenario, but the nine-year-old is below the age of criminal responsibility,” Detective Chief Inspector Bob Browell said.The three boys had been seen running away from the tower block. She died instantly, her body surrounded by a pool of blood and Kwik Save carrier bags, her daughter screaming for help.
Police said they were treating the death as suspicious. Three boys aged nine and ten were being questioned by police last night after a 20lb concrete slab thrown from a tower block roof killed a 74-year-old woman returning from shopping with her husband and daughter. The woman’s skull was shattered as she entered a side door to Grayson Heights, a 12-storey block of council flats in Kirkstall, Leeds, where her 44-year-old daughter lived. Tourism to Turkey was up 50 per cent this summer, and long-haul destinations are also popular.Economists in Greece forecast revenue from tourism falling to $2.9bn this year, compared with $3.9 bn last year. There are fears that next year will be worse again.Dearer holidays, page 3.