The United States performed many overflights of the Soviet Union to gain intelligence, perhaps most memorably with the U-2, culminating in the shoot down of Francis Gary Powers. Did the Soviet Union perform any flights over the United States in a similar manner? If not, how did they gain similar intelligence?
This is asked frequently, the short answer is that no, the Soviets did not try to penetrate the U.S. This was due to them having long distances to get there and also having to have to go through Canada, which would notify the U.S. Instead the Soviet Union took advantage of the fact that the United States is an open society: They sent KGB agents into the US and tried to subvert it from within. The U.S. had to do overflights because the U.S.S.R was a closed society and they couldn't get agents there.
Overflights - not so much. Soviets focused on human intelligence, and in a country as open as the U.S., it worked pretty well for a fraction of the cost.
They did try overflights, but it was usually TU-95's coming up over the north pole and into Canada or Alaska - mostly wilderness. TU-95's may have a great range, but they are slow and you can see them on radar QUITE far away, so there was always plenty of time to intercept them, and guide them into a flight corridor away from sensitive areas.
Some folks speculated about AEROFLOT routes into Cuba (that did pass over the U.S.) but I would LOVE to see someone come up with a real source on that rumor.
Something to note, is that while the most famous intelligence from overflights was about military installations and specific details about them, they also provided far more basic information. That was a simple geographic picture of the Soviet Union. Official Soviet maps were intentionally distorted and filled with misinformation. On a large scale, that meant simple features like cities, rivers and roads could be shown in incorrect locations, or show some that were completely fictional while some real ones weren't shown at all. On a small scale Soviet city maps were quite unreliable. Therefore before the U-2 flights and later satellite surveillance, the two main sources the US had on the basic layout of the Soviet Union were Tsarist era maps, which could be useful but were obviously quite outdated, and captured WWII German documents, where they had mapped out the Soviet Union as far as their advance had taken them. U-2s helped create a clearer picture.
Incidentally, UK pilots in US planes also overflew the USSR (to get around occasional presidential restrictions).
To summarize these threads, the Soviet Union did overfly Alaska on more than one occasion in the 60s, typically being intercepted by F-106/F-15s stationed there. But otherwise not really. (always excepting the permitted civilian flights to the Uk/US etc)
The recent russian T-95 flights don't count as they were in international airspace off alaska.
However, the US being an open society, (unlike the ussr) the soviet union could get intelligence without risky military overflights, by humint and later by spy satellites.
Soviet strategic bombers and reconnaissance did overfly north europe including norway, finland etc...more often.
In general it is worth noting that geographically the USSR and the USA were in very different situations. I made this rather simplified map of US nuclear weapons deployments, 1945-1958, to illustrate this point for my students. As you can see, the continental US is actually a long way from any useful Soviet bases. By contrast, the USSR is positively ringed by American forces. This geopolitical asymmetry is one of the reasons the USA invested heavily in heavy bombers while the USSR focused primarily on putting things into space. (And this doesn't show the radar coverage for the US, which by the late 1950s extended well over Canada.)
Of note the Open Skies treaty currently does allow unarmed over flies by Russian aircraft over the US and vice versa to allow for some level of trust and verification.
Well that was one thing that Sputnik helped establish though. "Space flight" over any country was fair game. I've actually heard arguments that the reason why the US "allowed" the Soviets to gain an advantage in the Space Race was to allow them to set certain precedents and to engage in some "scaremongering" about Soviet military capabilities. I do find that argument hard to believe as there is very little evidence the say that the US "let them win" early in the space race. In fact everything that I've read in declassified documents in the Eisenhower Library (Including all the original briefing papers on Sputnik), point to the US being somewhat surprised at the Soviet success.
yes in space beginning with Sputnik 1957
