Operation Overflight: A Memoir of the U-2 Incident

One

I have never thought of myself as a spy, yet in a certain sense this attitude is probably naïve, for Operation Overflight was to change many of the traditional definitions of espionage, providing a bridge between the age of the “deep-cover” cloak-and-dagger agent and that of the wholly electronic spy-in-the-sky satellite.

Although as a boy I had dreamed of myself in many roles, interestingly enough, being a spy was not one of them. Looking back, however, I can see almost an inevitability in the events that led me to that motel door.

Born August 17, 1929, in Burdine, Kentucky, in the heart of the Appalachian coal-mining country, I was the second of six children of Oliver and Ida Powers. The other five were girls. The lone boy was not to follow in his father’s footsteps, however. From as early as I can remember, I was to become a doctor, not through any choice of my own but because that was what my father had decided I was to be.

His reasons were simple: doctors made money, their families suffering few hardships. A coal miner most of his years, he had known only the harshest kind of life.

A close call in the mine while I was a child had cemented his resolve. While he was working as brakeman on a “motor,” an electric engine used to pull strings of coal cars, another motor had rammed his, the force of the collision pinning him against the roof of the mine. When other miners finally extricated him, his hip was badly injured. Neither the resultant limp nor the recurrent pain kept him out of the mines, however; it was the only work available. One of my first jobs as a boy, in Harmon, Virginia, had been to walk up to the mine each morning to see if there was work that day. These being years of the Depression, more often than not there wasn’t. Sometimes at night I could hear my parents talking, not about where the next dollar was coming from, but the next nickel. Many days there wasn’t enough money for a loaf of bread.

Fortunately my sisters and I were spared the agonies of envy. None of our friends and neighbors had much more. It was a poor region.

Growing up the only boy in a family of five girls made me something of a loner. Reading was my main pastime. History, historical fiction—other times, other places—fascinated me. One of my greatest disappointments as a boy occurred when I read of Admiral Byrd’s discovery of Antarctica. It seemed there were no new worlds left unfound, that all the great discoveries had been made.

Much of the time that I wasn’t reading I spent outdoors. Although, together with the other boys, I swam in the local rivers and streams, did some fishing and a little hunting—rabbit, squirrel, bird—I most enjoyed getting off by myself and tramping the Cumberland Mountains. Best of all was to sit on the edge of a high cliff on the side of a mountain and look out over the valleys. It seemed to give me a perspective I couldn’t find in my daily routine.

Green, hilly, with abundant trees, it was beautiful country, the Virginia-Kentucky border territory—or would have been, except for the mines. Their presence poisoned everything, the water in the streams, the hope in the miners’ lives. They scarred the landscape, made people like my mother and father old before their time.

Yet even on the mountaintop I couldn’t see any other horizons for myself. An obedient son, I had accepted my father’s decision that I was to be a doctor, though the prospect interested me not at all.

My father had a second dream—to get out of the mines himself. He tried repeatedly, even enlisting as a private in the Army for three years, at twenty-one dollars per month. But always he returned underground.

I had the same restlessness. Two incidents during my teens contributed to it.

When I was about fourteen my father and I took a short trip through West Virginia, passing an airport outside Princeton. A fair was in progress, a large sign offered airplane rides for two and a half dollars. I begged my father to let me go up. He finally relented. The war was on now, the mines operating at full capacity, and money was no longer quite so scarce.

The plane, which seemed incredibly large to me at the time, was a Piper Cub. The female pilot, viewed from the vantage point of my fourteen years, seemed like an old woman, but was probably about twenty. My enthusiasm was so obvious that she kept me up double time. As my father remembers it, when we returned to earth I told him, “Dad, I left my heart up there.” I don’t recall saying it, but I probably did, since it came as close to describing my feelings as anything could. There was something very special about it. Like climbing mountains, only better.

Much as I enjoyed it, however, it led to no great decision regarding my future; that was already decided.

In 1945, during my junior year in high school, my father took a job at a defense plant in Detroit and moved the family there. It was a world apart from Appalachia. The patriotic fever of the times was contagious, and everyone seemed to be doing something for his country. Except me. Though I was certain my father would never give his permission, I was determined, on finishing high school the following year, to enlist in the Navy.

But the war ended in 1945, and we returned to the Cumberlands, where I finished my last year of high school, at Grundy, Virginia.

I was keenly disappointed to have missed World War II.

This feeling was compounded when I started college the following fall. The school, Milligan College, near Johnson City, in east Tennessee, was, like all colleges at the time, packed with returning veterans, each with stories of his wartime exploits. I envied them. It seemed I had been born too late for the important things.

I hadn’t really wanted to go to college, but was simply going along with my father’s intention that I become a doctor. I got through the premed courses, but barely; the interest wasn’t there. Too, at home nearly everyone had been poor. At college this wasn’t the case. Others had cars, new clothes, spending money. What money I earned—waiting table, washing dishes, scrubbing and waxing floors, all the typical college chores—went toward my expenses. Now in my late teens, I wanted to get out on my own, cut parental ties, be independent.

My youthful rebellion didn’t take place all at once, but in stages, the first actually occurring the summer between high school and college, when, knowing I would need money to supplement my father’s savings, I took the only work available that paid a decent wage. It was also the one thing my father had vowed his son would never do: work in a mine.

In high school I had played left guard on the football team. At Milligan I went out for track, running the 100-yard dash, 220, broad jump, 440- and 880-yard relays. Caves abounding in the area, I took up “spelunking.” It didn’t satisfy my yearnings for adventure, only fired them.

Being a church school, Milligan offered less than most colleges in the way of excitement.

There was none, I decided, in premed, at least not for me. To be a doctor required a special type of person. Whatever that was, I wasn’t it. My junior year, much to my father’s displeasure, I dropped premed, retaining as majors the two subjects which did interest me, biology and chemistry.

Summers, while at home, I worked at various construction jobs: helping build a bridge across a river; laying railroad track; digging a tunnel through a mountain between Virginia and Kentucky; erecting a tipple, a mechanism that grades, washes, and loads coal. None was a job that appealed to me as a possible occupation. More and more I began thinking of enlisting in the service, at least until deciding what I really wanted to do. Although I had not been aloft since, I had never forgotten the excitement of that first airplane ride. During my senior year in college I applied for Air Force Cadets, took the tests, passed them, and was accepted. All that remained was to sign the papers, which I intended to do the moment I graduated.

Finally, it seemed, I was going to make the break.

My father, meantime, had made an important break of his own. Some years earlier he had bought into a shoe-repair shop, in time buying out his partner. While my father was in the mines, my mother kept the shop open, collecting work for him to do when his shift ended. Eventually he was able to make shoe repairing a full-time occupation, finally escaping the mines.

That his only son also wanted to make a change was something he refused to accept.

At this time my family was living in Pound, Virginia, or The Pound, as it is known locally. Ages ago, the river had formed a natural bend, in the shape of a U. The Indians had discovered that by closing the gap at the top with a fence they had a natural corral, or pound, for horses. The first white settlers had turned the same three hundred acres into farmland. My grandfather had owned a small farm there since the start of the century. By moving onto a portion of his land, my parents were able to raise their own produce, supplementing earnings from the shoe shop.

Except for my family, there was nothing in The Pound to keep me there. Realizing this, my father, noting that I had been away from home four long years, argued that I owed it to my mother to remain home for at least a few months.

Again, I was an obedient son, although this time less easily so. Reluctantly I passed up the chance to go into Cadets.

In June, 1950, I received my Bachelor of Science degree from Milligan; the North Koreans moved into South Korea; and, while many of my classmates enlisted or were recalled, I got a job as lifeguard at a swimming pool in nearby Jenkins.

With a war in progress, it now became obvious even to my father that eventually I would have to go into the service. Changing tactics slightly, he tried to persuade me to wait for the draft. That way I would have to serve only two years in the Army; the shortest enlistment in the Air Force was four.

But I wanted to fly. That October, two months after turning twenty-one, I finally made the break, enlisting in the United States Air Force for four years.

After basic training at Lackland Air Force Base, outside San Antonio, Texas, I was sent to Lowry AFB, at Denver, Colorado, for photo school. On graduation, I was assigned to Westover, Massachusetts, where I worked as a photo lab technician.

While at Lowry I had reapplied for Air Cadets. Approval was finally received, and in November of 1951 I went to Greenville, Mississippi, for training.

Aviation Cadets was rough, intentionally so. But the concentrated work made me able to solo after only twenty hours’ flight time. The plane was a T-6, a large, 550-horsepower holdover that had been a first-line fighter plane back in the thirties. For the last ten hours of training, the instructor had rarely touched the controls. Realizing that he wasn’t there, that the back seat was empty, and I was completely alone, came as a decided shock—immediately followed by a tremendous feeling of self-assurance: I really didn’t need help, I was in full control. One of the real joys of flying, and a feeling that never dissipates but mellows the more you fly, is the satisfaction of total responsibility, of being dependent solely on yourself.

But long before discovering this, on touching down after that first solo, I knew that flying would be my life work.

After completing six months’ basic flight training, there followed another six months’ advanced flight training at Williams AFB, Arizona, where I checked out on the T-33 and F-80. Graduating from Cadets in December, 1952, with silver wings over my left breast pocket and a shiny new second lieutenant’s bar on each shoulder, I was sent to Luke AFB, near Phoenix, for gunnery school with the F-84G, on orders to Korea.

Appendicitis stopped me in the middle of training. Because of lost time in the hospital, I was washed back to the next class. By the time I graduated, signing of the armistice was imminent.

Again I felt I’d lost my chance to fight, to prove myself.

Given as choice of duty assignments peacetime Korea, Maine, or Georgia, I chose the last, and in July, 1953, reported to the 468th Strategic Fighter Squadron of the 508th Strategic Fighter Wing at Turner AFB, near Albany, Georgia.

Survival school at Hazlehurst, Georgia, and advanced survival school at Stead AFB, outside Reno, Nevada, followed. In addition to regular survival training, such as how to live with minimum provisions in a desolate area, and simulated parachute jumps from a fifty-foot tower, there were additional lessons, gathered from experiences of the Korean War, for use in the event of enemy capture. We were briefed on brainwashing techniques and we were given the task of compiling a list of questions that could be used to establish a positive identification if, for instance, we were captured and there was a prisoner exchange. These were personal things the enemy would be unlikely to know, such as mother’s maiden name, family birthdates, the position I played on the high school football team, the name of my coach. At the time, with no war in sight, it seemed unlikely I would ever have occasion to put much of this to use. Some of the training I was given, I hoped I’d never have to use. In October, 1953, I was put on special orders to report to the top-secret Sandia Base in New Mexico, for Delivery Course DD50. This was a deceptively simple title for the actual instruction—how to load and drop atomic bombs from fighter aircraft. The course, which included lectures on how atomic bombs were made and detonated, of necessity gave us not only glimpses into the extent of our nuclear preparedness but also a very clear idea of U.S. operational plans in the event of war.

It was more than just a glimpse. Should a certain alert be called, I was assigned a place to report, where an aircraft, complete with nuclear payload, would be gassed up and waiting. As preparation, I was given navigational charts so I could memorize the route I was to take. And I was thoroughly briefed on my specific assigned target, on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

In July, 1954, I made first lieutenant, bringing about a good increase in pay, enough to justify a big step the following April, when I married Barbara Gay Moore.

Barbara and I had met in August, 1953, one month after I reported to Turner AFB, introduced by her mother, a cashier in the PX cafeteria.

Barbara was a very pretty, impetuous girl of eighteen. The courtship that followed was long and erratic, with one or the other of us breaking off the engagement a half-dozen times. Although I was twenty-five, presumably old enough to know better, we decided that once we were married our problems would cease. It didn’t happen that way.

I had been hoping, when my enlistment expired in December, 1955, to become a pilot for one of the commercial airlines. On checking, however, I found that at twenty-six-and-one-half I was at the upper edge of the age limit, and therefore not eligible. Considering the other alternatives—there were few, if I wanted to fly—I signed an indefinite enlistment.

There was no reason to be dissatisfied, I suppose. Though our marriage was less than ideal, we had good friends, enjoyed many of the same things. Most of our vacations were spent in Florida, swimming and water-skiing. As for my job, I was doing what I most enjoyed, flying. My pay, over four hundred dollars per month take-home, was the most money I had ever earned in my life and was supplemented by what Barbara made. I was visiting parts of the world I had never seen before: I had flown an F-84G to England, and prior to my marriage, I’d spent three months on temporary duty in Japan. Periodically, as a break from routine, there was the excitement of the Air Force gunnery meets, my team taking several top command prizes. I had the satisfaction of knowing that my job was important, not only in the future, if war ever occurred, but now, as a small but necessary part of a collective defense effort in itself a deterrent to war.

There was no reason to be dissatisfied, yet I was. The vague restlessness since boyhood remained—not so much of an ache now, but a bother nonetheless. To date I hadn’t really proved myself, contributed anything.

This was my frame of mind when I was approached by “the agency.”

Two

Late in January, 1956, as Francis G. Palmer, a civilian employee of the Department of the Air Force, according to the official identification in my wallet, I signed the register at the Du Pont Plaza, Washington, D.C., went to my room, and waited for a telephone call, all the while feeling more than a little foolish. Such antics belonged in the realm of spy stories.

When the call came, the voice was that of Collins, informing me we were to meet in another room. Most of the other pilots were already there. Except for one man busily looking behind picture frames, back of dresser drawers, under beds, and whom I took to be an employee of the agency, everyone was familiar. A number of the men were from Turner AFB.

Collins handled the briefing, more informal and relaxed than any of those at the motel. Yet in its way, more serious.

This would not be the first attempt to photograph Russia from the air. Following World War II, modified B-36s and, later, RB-47s, had been used. These had a great advantage—the capacity to carry large quantities of sophisticated photographic and electronic equipment. But disadvantages were also great. Because the altitude at which they flew was well within the range of Russian radar, they were vulnerable to both missiles and fighters and therefore couldn’t be risked on anything other than short-range penetration missions. The most important targets, however, those in which Intelligence was most interested, were deep inside Russia. And, though unarmed and carrying only cameras and electronic gear rather than bombs, they were still, to the uninformed observer, bombers. As such, they could cause an incident.

Then something different had been tried—huge camera-carrying balloons. Set adrift at various points, these were picked up by prevailing winds and carried across the Soviet Union to Japan, where U.S. planes were sent up to shoot them down. Although this had netted some valuable footage, the limitations were obvious, and the Russians, who had shot down more than a few balloons themselves, had protested.

As far as using planes was concerned, there was one big problem—altitude. There had been no solution to it until recently, when Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson, design genius at Lockheed, had advanced plans for an entirely new aircraft capable of flying well above the range of all known rockets and interceptors.

After some delay, occasioned by the familiar “it can’t possibly fly” objections of other engineers, Johnson had been authorized to build the plane. With men working hundred-hour weeks, the first model had been completed in less than eight months. In August, 1955, it had made its first flight. The plane did everything Johnson had claimed for it, and more.

While Collins talked, one could feel the excitement generating in the room.

Reaching into his briefcase, he extracted a photograph.

It was a strange-looking aircraft, unlike any other I had ever seen. Although the picture was a long shot and gave little detail, it obviously had a remarkably long wingspan. A jet, but with the body of a glider. Though a hybrid, it was nevertheless very individual, with a beautiful symmetry all its own.

It was also a single-seater. I liked that. Whenever possible, I preferred flying alone.

We had a thousand technical questions. Collins told us to save them for our training.

“What do you call it?” someone asked.

“No one calls it anything publicly yet,” he replied. “This project is so secret that, other than those involved in the operation, only top-level government people know about it. But for your information, it’s been dubbed the Utility-2, or U-2.”

The radio was on; I was having trouble hearing Collins. Reaching over, I snapped it off.

Not only did the music stop. But as if he were plugged into the set also, Collins’ voice stopped too. Silently he glared at me.

Red-faced, I turned the radio on again. The moment the music resumed, Collins resumed speaking.

Slowly, bit by bit, I was losing my naïveté. You learn as you grow up, I suppose. And I was growing up.

The other agency man called one of the pilots into the bedroom, closing the door behind him. When he returned, with an odd look, another pilot was summoned. Later he too returned, looking strange.

“Palmer,” he said. “Your turn.”

Entering the room, I saw, on top of the bureau, what looked like an elaborate tape recorder. Only I knew, suddenly, it wasn’t.

“Ever see one of these before?” he asked.

“No,” I answered, “but I think I can make a pretty good guess as to what it is.”

“Any objection to taking a lie-detector test?”

Though I had a great many, I didn’t voice them, shaking my head. If this was a condition of the job, I’d do it. But I didn’t like it.

“Sit down. While I’m strapping you in, you can look over this list of questions.”

Knowing what he’s going to ask in advance should make it easier, I thought. Except that the opposite psychology was used. Awareness that a disturbing question was upcoming served only to increase the tension.

I had never felt so completely exposed, as if there was no privacy whatsoever. If at that moment someone had handed me a petition banning polygraphs forever from the face of the earth, I would gladly have signed it. When I was asked the last question and the straps were taken off, I vowed that never again, no matter what the circumstances, would I undergo such an insult to my integrity.

Apparently we all passed the test, for the same men attended the rest of the meetings. These took place in various Washington hotels—the Mayfair, Roger Smith, etc.—at irregular intervals over the next three months. At no time did we meet in a government building. “Covert,” as opposed to “overt,” employees, we never saw inside headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Turning up the radio and careful inspection of the room were only two of the precautions against “bugging,” I soon learned. By changing hotels and randomly selecting different pilots’ rooms, we avoided establishing a pattern.

Our travel arrangements were also carefully planned so that no routine could be detected. Sometimes we traveled singly, sometimes in groups of two, three, or four, sometimes with an agency representative along, sometimes not. Usually, when accompanied, it was by Collins, who was becoming as omnipresent as the radio in each of our hotel rooms.

When I got to know him better, he confirmed what I had long suspected, that “Collins” was just as native to him as “Palmer” to me. I learned his real name, but, the pseudonym having become habit, never used it.

With one exception, aliases presented no problem, since, being a generally friendly lot, pilots aren’t given to much use of last names. The exception was a pilot whose surname began with Mac, which, of course, was also his nickname. The agency, however, had given him the cover name of Murphy. Fortunately no one ever asked Murphy why he was called Mac.

More troublesome were the phony addresses we had been instructed to use on hotel registers. I suspect more than a few men have encountered the same dilemma, although under different circumstances. Trying to make up an address on the spot, the mind suddenly blanks. We learned, after a few curious looks from desk clerks, to manufacture our cover addresses in advance.

As covert agents, we probably left a great deal to be desired. Although we all had Top Secret clearances, and our time in the Air Force had made us security-conscious, we considered ourselves pilots, not spies, and at times the cloak-and-dagger precautions tickled our funny bones.

Orders directed us to report to Omaha, Nebraska. Inasmuch as this was the headquarters of the Strategic Air Command, to which we were all assigned, it was nothing out of the ordinary. Arriving in Omaha, however, we were given a number to call. To no one’s surprise, Collins answered. Greeting us at the airport, he asked us to resume our covers, whereupon he gave us tickets for the next flight to St. Louis.

We managed, though with some effort, to suppress our laughter. St. Louis had been one of the stops en route to Omaha.

From St. Louis we caught a flight to Albuquerque, which we now learned was our actual destination, checking into the Lovelace Clinic for a week-long physical examination.

It was incredibly thorough. I had been unaware that many of the tests given us even existed, and commented on this to one of the doctors. They hadn’t existed before, he laughed; many had been especially designed just for us. Many of the tests which we pioneered were later made a part of the astronauts’ physicals. All of the Mercury personnel went through Lovelace Clinic.

Occasionally, if we asked, we were told the purpose of a set of tests. For example, a number were designed to determine any tendency toward claustrophobia. I couldn’t understand, at the time, why these were so important.

Other tests defied guessing, until we discovered that they had nothing to do with our physical. For some time doctors had been aware that pilots as a group apparently age more slowly than other people. Lovelace was working on a government grant to determine why. We just happened to be handy guinea pigs.

At Lovelace we had our first washout. One pilot, though perfectly capable of flying for the Air Force, did not meet the rigid specifications required for this particular project.

He was the only washout in our group. As far as we knew, no one was eliminated because of a security check. To be more accurate, we were not even sure such an investigation had been made.

When a serviceman or potential government employee is given a background check for security clearance, the FBI usually questions former employers, neighbors, associates. Often some word of the investigation gets back to the individual. If the agency conducted a separate security check on us, we were unaware of it; this meant either that we were accepted on the basis of our Air Force clearances or that the investigation was more discreet than usual. Considering the extreme sensitivity of the project, I strongly suspect the latter to be the case. It is also possible the investigation occurred before we were ever approached.

As we later learned, our initial selection was less random than it first appeared.

Only reserve officers had been interviewed, no regular officers. This was because there were apt to be fewer questions asked when a reserve officer resigned.

Also, the choice of a number of pilots from the same unit was not accidental. Our wing was being dissolved, its personnel assigned elsewhere. In such a transition, with everyone moving, there was less chance the disappearance of a few pilots would evoke comment.

In April, on instruction from Collins, I submitted my letter of resignation to the Secretary of the Air Force.

Under ordinary circumstances several months would have been required for the request to be approved. It was back in less than one. On the thirteenth of May, 1956, I became a civilian again.

Within a few days I signed my contract with the Central Intelligence Agency. The document was brief and covered my terms of employment—eighteen months from the date of signing, fifteen hundred dollars per month while in the United States, twenty-five hundred per month overseas, with five hundred taken out each month and held in escrow, to be paid upon satisfactory completion of contract. This last provision, it was explained to us, had been added to make the tax bite easier.

There was also a security clause, containing the regular national security agreement that everyone in the service and most government employees must sign, prohibiting the revelation of any information adversely affecting national security, the penalty for so doing being a ten-thousand-dollar fine and/or ten years in jail.

There was only one copy of the contract, which the agency kept. Nor was I given a copy of any of the several other documents I signed. One, already cosigned by the Secretary of the Air Force, Donald A. Quarles, promised that upon completion of my contract I would be permitted to return to the Air Force at a rank corresponding to that of my contemporaries and with no time lost toward retirement. This was especially important to me, because already I had nearly six years in, and, on finishing the assignment, planned to return to the Air Force.

Following the signing of the contracts, we flew to a secret base on the West Coast to begin training.

Three

Watertown Strip was one of those “you can’t get there from here” places. Located in a desolate portion of southern Nevada desert, it was almost completely isolated: there were no towns in the vicinity, not even a ghost town, only miles of flat, uninhabited land. The only convenient way to reach it was by air, as we had, flying in from Lockheed’s Burbank, California, terminal.

As a place to live, it left much to be desired. As a secret training base for a revolutionary new plane, it was an excellent site, its remoteness effectively masking its activity, such as the U-2 crash the week before we arrived, the first fatality on that aircraft.

Pilots are always quick to deny they are a superstitious lot. Be that as it may, I’m certain each of us was hoping and praying the same thing—that this was in no way a portent of things to come.

It was silver. But the altitude at which it would fly was so high as to render it invisible from the air and ground below.

Its wings, as the photographs had indicated, were its most startling feature. Except that the photograph hadn’t prepared us for the actuality. In proportion to the length of the fuselage, which was some forty feet, they stretched out to more than eighty. Like the wings of a giant bird, they drooped slightly when on the ground; in turbulent air they flapped noticeably.

This was the U-2, basically a powered glider, jet engine inside a glider frame, only it was capable of things no glider or jet had ever accomplished before: it could reach, and maintain for hours at a time, altitudes never before touched.

But at a cost.

To achieve this height, carry a pilot, as well as a variety of electronic and photographic gear, plus enough fuel to keep it aloft for periods in excess of nine hours, it had to be extremely light. In aerodynamics there are certain balances. To achieve lightness, something else must be sacrificed. With the U-2 it was strength.

Each piece of structure was a little thinner than a pilot would have liked. Where there was usually extra support, such as joints and junctures, in the U-2 there was none. It was not a plane for heavy or drastic maneuvers.

In short, it had not been built to last. The intention was to go in, get the job done, get out. Even the eighteen months called for in our contracts seemed a highly optimistic measure of the plane’s probable life span. It was even rumored that the original concept of Operation Overflight had been a one-shot, single flight over the Soviet Union for each plane: the plane to take off without wheels, make the flight, return to its base, and belly-land.

Since both Lockheed and agency personnel were extremely tigh-tlipped when it came to matters of planning, this remained an unconfirmed rumor among the pilots.

We badly underrated the U-2 and its maker, “Kelly” Johnson.

One place where Johnson had eliminated weight was the ejection seat. There was none. To bail out, a pilot had to climb out.

Another economy was the landing gear. Rather than the tricycle type, with a gear under the nose and another under each wing, the U-2 had one under the nose and one under the tail, a bicycle arrangement. To support the wings while on the ground, a “pogo,” or extension with a small wheel on the end, was set in a socket underneath each wing. These kept the wings level while taxiing, but dropped off on takeoff.

Or were supposed to. On the fatal flight the week before our arrival, one of the pogos had failed to release. Coming back over the field, the pilot had flown in low, attempting to shake it off. Heavy with fuel, he had miscalculated, stalled, and crashed at the end of the runway.

Except for a rare accident of this sort, it was obvious just from looking at the arrangement that takeoff should present no special problems, but landing—without the pogos—would be tricky. Like riding a bicycle; only, with the ground roll finished, the plane would tilt over onto the heavy wing, the wing tip acting as part of the landing gear.

As for what it would be like in the air, it was a safe guess it would be extremely difficult to handle.

My hands itched to get onto the controls.

But that had to wait until we learned something very basic. How to breathe.

It now became apparent why we had been given some of the tests at Lovelace Clinic.

One of the risks of high-altitude flight is danger of sudden loss of pressurization in the cockpit. For safeguard, a special partial-pressure suit had been designed. Airtight, of rubberized fabric with almost no give or elasticity, it fit snugly around the body, so snugly that the slightest movement—bending a knee or arm, turning the head—would rub the skin, leaving bruises. Wearing long johns helped, but not much; even when worn inside out, the seams pressed into the skin.

A hermetic seal at the neck fastened the helmet into place. Once on, it felt exactly like a too-tight tie over a badly shrunk collar. On long flights, counting preparatory time, we would have to remain in the suit for up to twelve hours. Anyone with the slightest touch of claustrophia would have gone mad.

Nor were these the only discomforts.

Since there was no way to unfasten the suit without losing oxygen, we had to learn to curb our appetite.

Early in the program some of the pilots would occasionally loosen the face plate to take liquids. In April, 1957, Lockheed test pilot Robert L. Sieker was killed in a U-2 crash near Edwards AFB, California. It was later determined that Sieker had done this, lost pressurization, and was unable to resecure the face plate. After this the pilots kept their face plates fastened when flying.

We also, rather late in life, had to learn new bathroom habits. This wasn’t quite as bad as might be imagined. Not drinking coffee or other fluids prior to a flight lessened the need. Too, because there was no ventilation in the suit, no way for the skin to breathe, perspiration was constant, with much moisture eliminated this way, rather than through the kidneys. But this also meant there was no way for perspiration to evaporate. Following a flight, you wrung the water out of the long johns; during the flight, you had to live with it.

Before each flight we put on the suit and helmet and began what was called prebreathing. This was a denitrogenization process during which we were given pure oxygen, under slight pressure, to avoid getting the bends.

In normal breathing it takes a little effort to inhale, while exhaling is automatic. Under pressurization this is reversed. Inhaling is automatic, while exhaling is an effort. It was literally necessary to learn to breathe all over again.

As if the process weren’t tiring enough, the long use of pure oxygen often had as side effects painful head and ear aches. After two hours of prebreathing before each flight, plus actual flight time, a pilot was so exhausted that he wasn’t allowed to fly again for two days.

Each aircraft has its pecularities, most of which can be simulated in a trainer. Because the U-2 was so new, however, some phases of the testing still in progress, many of these had to be first experienced in actual flight. And, as a unique aircraft, designed for the specific purpose of high-altitude flights, the U-2 had some decidedly unusual characteristics.

Ascent was rapid and spectacular. The U-2 required very little runway for takeoff; a thousand feet would suffice. Within moments after the pogos dropped, you could begin climbing—at better than a forty-five-degree angle. (On the first couple of flights, you were sure you were going to continue right over on your back.) Within minutes, in the time most planes took to reach a few thousand feet, the U-2 had disappeared from sight.

Once in flight, other peculiarities manifested themselves. One was that at maximum altitude the fastest the plane could go was very close to the slowest it could go. This narrow range was known as the “coffin corner”; a slight miscalculation either way, and you were in trouble. If you went too slow, the plane would stall; if you went too fast, it would go into “Mach buffet” and could become unmanageable. To keep the plane at the exact speed required a great deal of attention and personal control. Although it was equipped with an autopilot, you couldn’t place too much reliance on it because of what could happen if it malfunctioned.

There was also—especially before the technical bugs were worked out—the problem of flameouts, which occurred with some regularity. During a flameout the jet engine loses its fire, and the pilot must bring the plane down to a lower altitude to restart it.

Navigation was also a challenge. Since we couldn’t depend on the Russians to provide radio fixes, we had to learn to navigate completely on our own, without radio aids of any kind.

Landing the U-2 was even more difficult than we had guessed. There was an either/or situation. A regular airplane can land while still flying. The U-2 had to be through flying to stay on the ground, as a result of which it was necessary to stall it before touching down. If you stalled it a little high, it would drop down. If you hit the ground before it stalled, it would bounce back up in the air. You had to gauge it exactly.

Once touched down, however, one problem remained. Because of the bicycle landing gear and the long wings, the plane had a strong tendency to ground-loop. Should you start turning, however slightly, the plane would try to keep turning.

These were only a few of the special problems of flying the U-2.

The pleasures were far greater.

Whatever initial worries we had about the plane soon vanished. It was not an easy plane to fly, but it was not dangerous. Once its idiosyncrasies were mastered, so long as you stayed alert, the plane behaved beautifully, so much so that you looked forward to each new flight.

And there was the excitement of pioneering a new frontier, something I had wanted to do all my life.

On August 29, 1955, British Wing Commander Walter F. Gibb, piloting a Canberra B. Mark II, had set an international record for altitude, reaching 65,889 feet.

We broke that record every day. And could stay higher for hours at a time.

If the weather below was good, the view from this altitude was unsurpassed, the country a huge map come to life. On one flight, while crossing the Colorado River in Arizona, approaching California, I could see clearly from Monterey Peninsula on the north, halfway down Baja California on the south.

Being so high gave you a unique satisfaction. Not a feeling of superiority or omnipotence, but a special aloneness.

There was only one thing wrong with flying higher than any other man had ever flown.

You couldn’t brag about it.

Like the U-2, Watertown hadn’t been built to last. Everything about it was temporary. The pilots lived in house trailers, four to a trailer. There was no PX, no club. As if to compensate for the lack of other creature comforts, there was an excellent mess, the food exceptional by any standard. But recreation consisted of a couple of pool tables and a 16-mm nightly movie. It is probably unnecessary to add that we played a lot of poker.

Weekends we deserted the base en masse, via shuttle flight to Burbank on Friday afternoon, returning on Monday morning.

Off base we used our real names and carried our own identification, plus a card identifying us as employees of Lockheed on loan to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). This enabled us to cash checks or establish credit. Arrangements had been made to verify our employment.

On returning to the base, we turned in our identification and resumed our cover names. Since we would revert to our own names once training was finished, it was a further security measure, since many of the personnel at Watertown wouldn’t be going overseas with us.

On flights we carried no identification, this being unnecessary inasmuch as we took off and landed at the same base.

Just as we had learned never to call the Central Intelligence Agency the CIA, but “the agency,” Watertown Strip became “the ranch.”

We were an unlikely-looking bunch of cowboys.

Much later, for reasons which will become obvious, it would be widely reported that the U-2 pilots were largely uninformed about the specialized equipment they carried, that they were merely “airplane jockeys” who, at points designated on the map, snapped on and off switches with no real knowledge of what they were doing.

Our job would have been simpler, had this been true, but it wasn’t. We were thoroughly checked out on all the equipment. It was essential, since if a piece of equipment broke down in flight we had to do what we could to get it working again. With a radar signal recorder, for example, we might shut it off and recycle it, this sometimes correcting the condition. Having attended photo school and worked as a photo lab technician in the Air Force, I was especially interested in the cameras and other photographic apparatus, and studied them whenever I got the chance.

Throughout our training, equipment tests continued. One piece was especially exotic. This was the destruct unit.

If it became necessary to abandon the aircraft over a Communist country, the plane carried a two-and-a-half-pound explosive charge. This would not have totally obliterated the aircraft, only the portion of it containing the cameras and electronic equipment. There was some doubt as to whether it would have even completely succeeded in this, since it is almost impossible to destroy a tightly wound reel of film or recording tape. Nor was there a worry that if the Russians captured the plane they would copy it or steal valuable technical secrets. It was common knowledge that Russian aviation was quite far advanced, equal to, in the opinion of some, if not better than our own. The only danger of having the U-2 captured intact was that it would constitute physical proof of our spying.

The destruct mechanism was arranged so that once activated by the pilot it would allow him a small but supposedly sufficient margin of time to bail out before the explosion occurred.

Testing to see how long it would take us to get out of the aircraft, we decided to try seventy seconds on the timer. We could have given ourselves longer, up to one and one-half minutes, but we wanted to make absolutely sure the plane exploded in the air. Should it crash, there was always the possibility that the charge would not go off, or if it did, that the earth would cushion some of the blast.

The destruct unit was operated by two switches. One, marked ARM, activated the circuits. To trigger the unit, however, a second switch had to be flipped. Marked DESTRUCT, this started the timer. At any time during the seventy seconds the switch could be flipped back and the whole process halted. Once done, however, the timer couldn’t be reset to compensate for the lost time. So we were instructed not to flip either switch until the last possible moment.

There was one more complication. Testing the timers on the different units by stopwatch, we discovered they did not work uniformly. On some there was a variance of as much as five seconds. This made testing the timer prior to each flight a must.

While we were at Watertown, the destruct unit was of minor interest, since the charge itself would be placed in the plane only when we arrived overseas, and then only on the actual overflights.

There was, however, during our training, some discussion as to switching from the pilot-actuated-type mechanism we were using to an impact device, to explode automatically when the plane hit the ground.

It was a short discussion. Pilots are leery of impact devices, for good reason. On returning to base, if there were some problem with the landing gear and it was necessary to belly-land, the result could be disastrous.

We quickly ruled out the proposed switch, preferring to stay with the pilot-actuated type.

One question was never asked, one subject never discussed.

It was approached only two times, and then obliquely, never directly.

The first time was when we were briefed on the destruct device. The second occurred toward the end of our training, when a group of us were flown to the East Coast and put up in one of the agency’s special facilities.

This was my first introduction to a “safe house,” a carefully guarded, maximum-security residence, from the outside resembling an ordinary home or estate, but inside manned entirely by agency personnel. In this instance, the cover was a farm, though unlike any farm I had ever seen. Its fences, some fourteen feet high, and some electrified, were identical to those found along the borders of all Communist countries. We were taught how to get through or over or under the fences. Some of its fields were mined, some weren’t. We were taught how to spot the ones that were and circumvent them. Even its ordinary plowed fields were special, similar to the plowed strips along the borders; we were taught how to walk through them without leaving telltale footprints.

It was strictly evasion training, no survival training being given, the presumption apparently being that our Air Force training was sufficient.

It was also a quickie course, lasting less than a week, and was, I suspect, intended more than anything else to build up our self-confidence.

And it was also the closest anyone actually came to mentioning the unmentionable: What were we to do if for some reason we did come down in Russia?

There was, at this time, little concern about being shot down. We knew the altitude at which the U-2 flew. Agency Intelligence sources were firm in their assurances that the Russians possessed neither aircraft nor rocketry capable of reaching us. But an airplane is a complicated piece of equipment. One loose electrical connection, one stalled engine, one unforeseen malfunction …

No one from the agency briefed us on what procedure to follow if we were forced to come down in Russia.

None of the pilots, to my knowledge, asked for such a briefing, nor, as if to do so would be to tempt fate, did we discuss it among ourselves.

It was a bad mistake.

One thing not ignored was actual flying. While at Watertown we flew the U-2 far more than we would have if we’d been in the Air Force and checking out in a new aircraft. As a result, on completing our training we had the utmost confidence in its reliability. It was a remarkable piece of equipment; perhaps it was this, more than anything else, that rendered less immediate whatever doubts we had.

Our group, the second to go through Watertown, was fortunate. We came through “clean.” No washouts, all pilots qualifying on the aircraft. No accidents, no crashes.

Three U-2 groups went through Watertown. The last class, which followed us by some months, had a fatality. A pilot, taking off on a night mission, apparently was confused by the bright lights at the end of the runway and flew directly into a telephone pole.

Another class there at the same time as we were fared less well. Shortly after our arrival at Watertown the agency brought in four Greek pilots to be checked out on the U-2.

Presumably they were mercenaries, in the program on their own and without the knowledge of their government. At least this was what it seemed to be. We were never told otherwise. There was some speculation that, being Mediterraneans, they could pass more easily and attract less attention than Americans in some of the countries from which we would be flying. And there were other theories. But all were merely speculation; we were never informed as to why they had been included.

Whatever the reason, it didn’t work out. Inconspicuous they were not, at least not in Hollywood, where they spent most of their weekends, always with an agency escort. It was no secret that none of the CIA men relished the escort job. Like playing nursemaid to four Zorbas, each intent on his own devilment. Their zest for enjoying themselves was epic.

At flying they did less well. Without exception, they failed to qualify on the aircraft. Not wanting them to return to Greece with their knowledge of the U-2 project, the agency was forced to keep them in the United States. Two, we heard later, were sent to college, at government expense, while one, it was rumored, had attempted to blackmail the agency. Unsuccessfully.

The U-2 was much too distinctive an aircraft, either on ground or in flight, to be kept completely secret. Too, with the movement of the various groups overseas, some leak was inevitable. To forestall comment and speculation, a series of cover stories was released.

The first appeared late in April, 1956, in the form of a NACA press release announcing that “a new type of airplane, the Lockheed U-2,” had been developed, which, with the logistical and technical assistance of the Air Weather Service of the USAF, would be used to study turbulence and meteorological conditions. Although indicating the U-2 was capable of high-altitude flight, the release gave no particulars. It did state, however, that initial flights were made from “Watertown Strip, Nevada.”

The first U-2 group, which had completed its training early in April, a month before our arrival at Watertown, and which had been officially designated the Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, (Provisional), had been sent to Lakenheath, England.

The second release, covering this, announced that NACA was extending its weather program to Europe. Again the release was long on rhetoric, short on details. There was no mention of the U-2’s altitude, its range, its duration of flight. Nor were photographs of the plane released.

The cover story was not entirely fictitious. Some of the U-2s were being used for weather research, and doing a superb job of it.

They were also, at this time or very shortly after, being used for purposes the news releases didn’t mention.

Our unit, which was officially designated the Second Weather Observational Squadron (Provisional), and, more informally, Detachment 10-10, completed its training early in August, 1956. Our destination, Incirlik AFB, Adana, Turkey, was mentioned in no press releases, however.

While the U-2s we would be using were disassembled and flown to Incirlik, we were given two weeks’ leave.

Before it began we were provided with new identification, in our real names, as civilian employees of the Department of the Air Force, GS-12. We were also given a card which stated that we worked for NACA, that we were authorized to fly Air Force aircraft, but that we were not subject to Air Force flying regulations. The latter stipulation was important, because it would permit us to take off from Air Force bases when regular Air Force pilots would be grounded by weather minimums.

As cover story for parents and friends, we could say that we would be going overseas as a part of NACA’s program for studying weather phenomena in various parts of the world. If we felt it necessary, we could also drop some comment that this was tied in with the forthcoming scientific International Geophysical Year.

Two weeks was barely enough time to care for the minor business matters I couldn’t handle once overseas; however, the agency had taken care of many details, including supplying a mailing address and a twenty-four-hour agency number in Washington, D.C., which Barbara could use for emergencies.

We did manage to work in a brief visit to The Pound. My father asked quite a few questions, more, in fact, than I had anticipated. But I got around them fairly well, or so I thought.

At the airport, before taking off for overseas, I called home to say good-bye.

When my father came on the line he said, “I’ve figured out what you’re doing.”

“What do you mean? I told you what I’m doing.”

“No, I’ve figured it out,” he stated emphatically. “You’re working for the FBI.”

Hanging up, I had to laugh. He was far more perceptive than I’d realized. But I suspect parents usually are. His guess was close. At this time few people had heard of the CIA.

May 1, 1960, I regret to say, would change that.