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During the Cold War arms race, both the US and USSR were testing top-secret, cutting-edge technologies that seemed beyond belief to deliver nuclear warheads effectively to the other side. The goal was to strike as quickly, quietly, and as devastatingly as possible. To accomplish this, in 1964 the Soviets began developing an audacious plan that turned their focus to a most unlikely place. While US attention was trained upwards towards aerial superiority, the USSR would instead target the ground beneath their feet. Underground, in fact… with a brand-new experimental vehicle nicknamed the "Battle Mole."

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As images and footage of actual events are not always available, Dark Docs sometimes utilizes similar historical images and footage for dramatic effect. All content on Dark Docs is researched, produced, and presented in historical context for educational purposes.

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As Cold War tensions grew in the 1950s, the U.S. relied upon the U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance spy planes and reconnaissance balloons from its Genetrix Program. But these tools, unable to surveil some of the darkest and farthest reaches deep within the USSR, did not provide enough aerial coverage to accurately determine Soviet military operations, movements, and capabilities.

Instead, the US was forced to reach even higher with its reconnaissance missions using the “Keyhole” series of satellites. Unlike modern digital spy satellites, the KH-series relied on the use of physical film that had to be secretly jettisoned and returned to Earth. To keep the film out of enemy hands, each KH satellite utilized a simple but effective trick. When their missions were complete, the KH satellites dumped their top-secret film into a reentry capsule and dropped it back to Earth. If the fiery descent went to plan, the capsule would jettison its heat shield and a parachute would deploy. All that would be left was for an airplane to hook it in mid-air some 60,000 feet above the ground...

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Pictured: the KH-9 Hexagon spy satellite. It is rumored the space shuttle specifically was built to carry it and other top-secret payloads at the behest of US intelligence and the military... At the height of the US Space Shuttle program in the 1980s and 90s, NASA was never really in full control of its missions. At least 11 top-secret shuttle flights were conducted to honor a deal that dated back to 1969 with the National Reconnaissance Office, or NRO, an organization within the Department of Defense so secretive that its name could not be published at the time. The NRO reportedly requested many classified modifications of the shuttle’s design to suit its clandestine objectives against the Soviet Union in the space race, and the military even hand-picked and trained its own team of 13 shuttle astronauts who would be embedded as payload specialists. Little is known about about their missions, even today...

Pictured: The aggressive take-off profile of the Soviet TU-144 supersonic passenger airplane (right) vs. the French-British Concorde (left).

At its peak, the Anglo-French Concorde was the epitome of technological prowess and super sleek design in 20th-century aviation. It was considered the most beautiful commercial plane the world had ever seen - and, being the West's first supersonic jet, it was also the fastest of its era. However, the Concorde was not the first supersonic plane to make it to market. This honor went to a Soviet aircraft that reached supersonic speed months before the Concorde, and one that briefly became the pride of the USSR, before its ultimate failure.

The communist version of the Concorde was the Tupolev Tu-144, and it was the first passenger aircraft to fly at more than twice the speed of sound. The Tupolev's first flight occurred three months before the Concorde took to the air on March 2, 1969. But the Tu-144, which was dubbed 'Concordski' by Western observers for its similarities to its Western rival, never became quite as popular.

It was perhaps most notable as the first commercial supersonic plane to have a crash landing - which it did not once but twice.