Wow - this is a cracking thread - right up there with 'Did you fly the Vulcan' for sheer time wasting potential. Just spent over an hour reading through all this without realising.
As someone who remembers the 80s Cold War and has an interest in history, it really is fascinating. I don't know if anyone else has read it, but James Bamford's Body of Secrets also contains sections on deep penetration flights, albeit in terms of the broader intelligence collect picture rather than from a pure aviation perspective. However, it is still an interesting read as it goes into how they used the flights for various purposes including to get the Soviet AD networks to deliberately light them up so they could record their responses to the overflight.
http://http://www.amazon.co.uk/Body-...6576088&sr=1-2
Fascinating, I will be definintely keeping an eye on how this thread progresses.