Francis Gary Powers
Francis Gary Powers was an American pilot who served as a United States Air Force officer and a CIA employee. Powers is best known for his involvement in the 1960 U-2 incident, when he was shot down while flying a secret CIA spying mission over the Soviet Union. Powers survived, but was captured and sentenced to 10 years in a Soviet prison for espionage. He served 21 months of his sentence before being released in a prisoner swap in 1962.
After returning to the US, he worked at Lockheed as a test pilot for the U-2, and later as a helicopter pilot for Los Angeles news station KNBC. He died in 1977, when the KNBC helicopter he was flying crashed.
Early life and education
Powers was born August 17, 1929, in Jenkins, Kentucky, the son of Oliver, a coal miner, and his wife Ida. Powers was the only boy among the family's six children. Oliver, who often struggled to make ends meet, wanted his son to be a physician. When Powers was fourteen, he rode in a Piper Cub airplane at a state fair in West Virginia, sparking his fascination with aviation.During World War II, the Powers family briefly moved to Detroit, where Oliver had taken a job at a defense plant, before returning to Grundy, Virginia, where Powers finished high school. Powers then entered Milligan College as a pre-med student, but switched majors to biology and chemistry in his third year. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1950. Powers married Barbara Gay Moore in Newnan, Georgia, on April 2, 1955.
United States Air Force
Powers enlisted in the United States Air Force in October 1950, initially working as a photo lab technician. He was accepted for flight training in November 1951, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in December 1952 after completing advanced training on T-33 and F-80 aircraft at Williams Air Force Base in Arizona. While assigned to gunnery school at Luke Air Force Base, a bout of appendicitis delayed his training, and the Korean War ended by the time he graduated.Powers was then assigned to the 468th Strategic Fighter Squadron at Turner Air Force Base, Georgia, as a Republic F-84 Thunderjet pilot. In October 1953, Powers was trained at Sandia Base in loading and dropping nuclear weapons from fighter aircraft, and in July 1954 was promoted to first lieutenant. Powers hoped to become a commercial airline pilot when his enlistment ended in December 1955, but decided to stay in the Air Force when he discovered he was, at the age of 26-and-a-half, at the age limit for commercial training.
U-2 incident
In January 1956, Powers was recruited by the CIA, and on May 13, 1956, he was discharged from the Air Force at the rank of captain, becoming a civilian employee of the CIA with the grade of GS-13.In May 1956, Powers began U-2 training at Watertown Strip, Nevada. His training was complete by August 1956 and his unit, the Second Weather Observational Squadron or Detachment 10-10, was deployed to Incirlik Air Base, Turkey.
Powers then joined the CIA's U-2 program. U-2 pilots flew espionage missions at altitudes above, above the reach of Soviet air defenses until 1960. The U-2 was equipped with a state-of-the-art camera designed to take high-resolution photos from the stratosphere over hostile countries, including the Soviet Union. U-2 missions systematically photographed military installations and other important sites. By 1960, Powers was already a veteran of many covert aerial reconnaissance missions. Family members believed he was a NASA weather reconnaissance pilot.
Reconnaissance mission
The primary mission of the U-2s was to overfly the Soviet Union. Soviet intelligence had been aware of encroaching U-2 flights at least since 1958 if not earlier but lacked effective countermeasures until 1960. On May 1, 1960, Powers' U-2A, 56-6693, departed from a military airbase in Peshawar, Pakistan, with support from the U.S. Air Station at Badaber. This was to be the first attempt "to fly all the way across the Soviet Union... but it was considered worth the gamble. The planned route would take us deeper into Russia than we had ever gone, while traversing important targets never before photographed." - Francis Gary PowersShot down
On 1 May 1960, Powers was shot down by an S-75 Dvina surface-to-air missile over Sverdlovsk. A total of 14 Dvinas were launched, one of which hit a MiG-19 jet fighter which was sent to intercept the U-2 but could not reach a high enough altitude. Its pilot, Sergei Safronov, ejected but died of his injuries. Another Soviet aircraft, a newly manufactured Su-9 on a transit flight, also attempted to intercept Powers' U-2. The unarmed Su-9 was directed to ram the U-2 but missed because of the large differences in speed.As Powers flew near Kosulino in the Ural Region, three S-75 Dvinas were launched at his U-2, with the first one hitting the aircraft. "What was left of the plane began spinning, only upside down, the nose pointing upward toward the sky, the tail down toward the ground." According to his book Operation Overflight, Powers delayed activating the camera's self-destruct mechanism until he made sure he could exit the cockpit before the charges detonated. When g-forces unexpectedly threw him from the spinning aircraft, he could no longer reach the destruct switches. While descending under his parachute, Powers had time to scatter his escape map, and rid himself of part of his suicide device, a silver dollar coin suspended around his neck containing a poison-laced injection pin, though he kept the poison pin. "Yet I was still hopeful of escape." He hit the ground hard, was immediately captured, and taken to Lubyanka Prison in Moscow. Powers did note seeing a second chute after landing on the ground, "some distance away and very high, a lone red and white parachute".
Attempted deception by the U.S. government
When the U.S. government learned of Powers' disappearance over the Soviet Union, they lied that a "weather plane" had strayed off course after its pilot had "difficulties with his oxygen equipment". What CIA officials did not realize was that the plane crashed almost fully intact and that the Soviets had recovered its pilot and much of the plane's equipment, including its new top-secret high-altitude camera. Powers was interrogated extensively by the KGB for months before he made a confession and a public apology for his part in espionage.Portrayal in U.S. media
Following admission by the White House that Powers had been captured alive, American media depicted Powers as an all-American pilot hero, who never smoked or touched alcohol. In fact, Powers smoked and drank socially. The CIA urged that his wife Barbara be given sedatives before speaking to the press and gave her talking points that she repeated to the press to portray her as a devoted wife. Her broken leg, according to the CIA disinformation, was the result of a water-skiing accident, when in fact it happened after she had had too much to drink and was dancing with another man.In the course of his trial for espionage in the Soviet Union, Powers confessed to the charges against him and apologized for violating Soviet airspace to spy on the Soviets. In the wake of his apology, American media often depicted Powers as a coward and even as a symptom of the decay of the United States' "moral character."
Pilot testimony compromised by newspaper reports
Powers tried to limit the information he shared with the KGB to that which could be determined from the remains of his plane's wreckage. He was hampered by information appearing in the western press. A KGB major stated "there's no reason for you to withhold information. We'll find it out anyway. Your Press will give it to us." However, he limited his divulging of CIA contacts to one individual, with a pseudonym of "Collins". At the same time, he repeatedly stated the maximum altitude for the U-2 was, lower than its actual flight ceiling.During the trial, Powers' defense attorney focused on portraying him as the humble son of a coal mining family, who joined the U-2 program to make money, and shared a photograph of the family's farm. Gary testified to the court on how the Adana, Turkey U-2 group was organized under Col. William Shelton and that the base was visited by high-profile military leaders, including Gen. Thomas White and Gen. Frank F. Everest. He also described prior U-2 flights taken from Adana to Norway, skirting the border of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union took great lengths to accommodate the press during the trial, providing translation in four languages, and the trial was also attended by the daughter of Nikita Khrushchev.
Political consequence
The incident set back talks between Khrushchev and Eisenhower. Powers' interrogations ended on June 30, and his solitary confinement ended on July 9. On August 17, 1960, his trial began for espionage before the military division of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union. Lieutenant General Borisoglebsky, Major General Vorobyev, and Major General Zakharov presided. Roman Rudenko acted as prosecutor in his capacity of Procurator General of the Soviet Union. Mikhail I. Grinev served as Powers' defense counsel in the trial. In attendance his parents and sister, and his wife Barbara and her mother. His father brought along his attorney Carl McAfee, while the CIA provided two additional attorneys.Conviction
On August 19, 1960, Powers was convicted of espionage, "a grave crime covered by Article 2 of the Soviet Union's law 'On Criminality Responsibility for State Crimes. His sentence consisted of 10 years' confinement, three of which were to be in a prison, with the remainder in a labor camp. The US Embassy "News Bulletin" stated, according to Powers, "as far as the government was concerned, I had acted in accordance with the instructions given me and would receive my full salary while imprisoned".He was held in Vladimir Central Prison, about east of Moscow, in building number 2 from September 9, 1960, until February 8, 1962. His cellmate was Zigurds Krūmiņš, a Latvian political prisoner. Powers kept a diary and a journal while confined. Additionally, he learned carpet weaving from his cellmate to pass the time. He could send and receive a limited number of letters to and from his family. The prison now contains a small museum with an exhibit on Powers, who allegedly developed a good rapport with Soviet prisoners there. Some pieces of the plane and Powers's uniform are on display at the Monino Airbase museum near Moscow.