Richard S. Heyser (3 April 1927 – 6 October 2008), Lieutenant Colonel, USAF (Retired), was a pilot in the United States Air Force whose photographs taken in a Lockheed U-2 revealed Soviet medium-range ballistic missiles in Cuba, precipitating the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962. Heyser, a native of Apalachicola, Florida, joined the United States Army Air Forces in 1944, after watching World War II pilots training at nearby Tyndall Field. His father was a U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary aviator. Following the war, Heyser graduated from what would become Florida State University.