U-2 Spy Plane Missing Near South Korea

An American U-2 spy plane, conducting what the Pentagon described as a “routine mission” over the Korean Peninsula, disappeared in the waters off South Korea, the Defense Department said Wednesday.

The unarmed reconnaissance plane, which can be equipped to gather photographic intelligence or to eavesdrop on communications, dropped off radar screens and broke off radio contact with its home base of Osan Air Base in South Korea at 8:30 a.m. PST Wednesday.

The Pentagon said the plane was operating over South Korean territorial waters south of the Demilitarized Zone that divides North and South Korea. Capt. Sam Grizzle, a Pentagon spokesman, said there was no evidence that the plane was lost because of hostile action, adding that a search was under way for the pilot and his craft.

Grizzle said that the Defense Department “is assuming it was some sort of aircraft malfunction” that caused the airplane to crash. The U-2 that disappeared Wednesday was one of 55 of the super-secret spy planes and its derivatives built between the late 1950s and 1989 to specifications drafted by the CIA.

The SR-71 was retired in 1990. But the U-2 and its derivative, the TR-1, which flew extensively in the Persian Gulf War, remain the backbone of the U.S. strategic reconnaissance force. The United States has loaned the United Nations Special Commission one U-2 to conduct reconnaissance missions over Iraq, where U.N. inspectors have been hunting down nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.