Operation Overflight

One

Geographically, Adana was an excellent choice as takeoff point for the overflights. Situated in the southern portion of Turkey, near the Mediterranean, it was sufficiently distant from the USSR for the Russians to have no radar coverage of the site, yet close enough for a plane to make the flight without too great an expenditure of fuel.

There were other advantages. Though a Turkish base, Incirlik already housed a small USAF detachment and was functioning primarily as a refueling stop for American planes on trips across the Middle East. From the point of cover and logistics, this was ideal, since it meant the fuel and equipment required for the U-2 flights could be brought in without attracting undue attention.

Presumably there was still another reason for the choice. Since little of what occurred at diplomatic levels made its way down to the pilots, we could only guess whether the government of Turkey knew our real mission and had granted approval for such use of the base. It was our presumption—perhaps erroneous—that they were at least aware of the border-surveillance flights, though possibly not of the overflights. For a weather unit, Detachment 10-10 had suspiciously tight security, something obvious to any Turk who worked on other portions of the base.

If we did have approval, tacit or otherwise, we were one up on the first U-2 group. Shortly after arrival at Lakenheath, the British government, learning their mission was something more than the collection of weather data, requested them to leave, in the interim restricting them to training flights. Kicked out of England, the unit had been transferred to Wiesbaden, Germany, from which the first U-2 overflight took place.

Although a combined military-agency operation (USAF providing logistics, the agency planning and operations), Detachment 10- 10 was patterned after a regular squadron. There was a commanding officer (USAF) and an executive officer (agency), who together ran the outfit. In addition to the operations officer, who had under him the flight planners, navigators, and weather personnel, there was an administrative officer, intelligence officer, security men, flying-safety officer (one of my extra duties), pilots (seven of us at this time), ground crews, medics, and radio, radar, and photographic personnel. About all that was missing was an actual, legitimate representative of NACA. Briefings and debriefings were conducted similarly to those in the Air Force. Even the size of the unit, close to one hundred members, was of squadron strength.

But there was one great difference. Each person, from crew chief to pilot, had been especially picked for the operation. Too, since most of us had been together at Watertown, we were already functioning as a well coordinated team before arriving overseas. As a result, 10-10 was run with an efficiency rarely if ever, encountered in service.

Each man was a specialist in his field. As pilots, the seven of us had been assigned a specific job. We were aware of its importance. And were anxious to get on with it.

This had to wait, however, for additional training.

Although we had flown some of the same U-2s at Watertown, each had to be checked out again after they were reassembled. The U-2 was not a mass-produced, stamped-out-of-sheet-metal aircraft. Each was custom-made, with its own peculiarities. One might fly heavy on one wing, another might consume an inordinate amount of fuel, while still another might be a bastard to land. Since there was no assurance that a specific plane might be available for a particular flight, the pilots had to know the characteristics of each.

Much time was spent studying maps of Russia. These were, for the most part, badly outdated. Part of our assignment would be to act as cartographers—in seeing a new city, a new military or industrial complex, an unmarked airdrome, to jot it down. We would be making our own maps as we went along.

Because we could depend neither on available maps nor on radio contact with our unit, we also spent considerable time listening to Russian civil broadcast stations. Intelligence provided lists of stations, showing their locations and ranges. These were annotated on the maps. With the use of a radio compass, we could home in on them while in flight, establishing navigational fixes.

As new equipment was developed and shipped over—and it was a continuous process—we would have to be thoroughly checked out. It was also necessary to check out personal equipment we would be carrying, such as survival gear.

Most of this was contained in the seat pack. Its contents included a collapsible life raft, clothing, enough water and food to sustain life for a limited time, a compass, signal flares, matches, chemicals for starting fires with damp wood, plus a first-aid kit, with such standard items as morphine, bandages, dressings, APCs, water-purification tablets.

The clothing was heavy-duty winter hunting gear. It occurred to me on first sight that it not only didn’t look Russian but was probably of better quality than even the best-dressed Russian hunter would wear. And it was definitely not the type of clothing you would put on if you wanted to blend inconspicuously into a crowd.

Also included was a large silk American-flag poster, bearing the following message: “I am an American and do not speak your language. I need food, shelter, assistance. I will not harm you. I bear no malice toward your people. If you will help me, you will be rewarded.” This message appeared in fourteen languages.

In addition, the pack contained 7,500 Soviet rubles; two dozen gold Napoleon francs (it being presumed that even though we couldn’t speak Russian, gold was a universal language); and, for baiter, an assortment of wristwatches and gold rings.

Like the seat pack which was strapped onto the pilot and carried on all flights, no matter what their objective, two other items were also standard—hunting knife and pistol.

The hunting knife was usual survival gear, for use, for example, in severing parachute lines if caught in a tree, ripping up the chute to make a sleeping bag, shaving wood for a fire.

The pistol was especially made by High Standard. It was .22 caliber and had an extra long barrel with a silencer on the end. Although rated Expert in the service, I was out of practice and tested it periodically on the range. While the silencer obviously decreased the velocity, it was far more accurate than I had expected. Not completely silent, it was quiet enough that if you were to shoot a rabbit you could do so without alerting the whole neighborhood. Only .22 caliber, however, it wouldn’t be a very effective weapon of defense.

In addition to what was in the clip, there were about two hundred rounds of extra ammunition in the seat pack.

It was September before I flew my first electronic surveillance mission along the borders outside Russia, the specialized equipment monitoring and recording Soviet radar and radio frequencies. Routes on such flights varied. We usually flew from Turkey eastward along the southern border of the Soviet Union over Iran and Afghanistan as far as Pakistan, and back. We also flew along the Black Sea, and, on occasion, as far west as Albania, but never penetrating, staying off the coast, over international waters. While our territory was the southern portion of Russia’s perimeter, the U-2 group in Germany presumably covered the northern and western portions.

Since these “eavesdropping” missions were eventually to become fairly frequent, there was a tendency to minimize their importance, but in many ways they were as valuable as the overflights, the data obtained enabling the United States to pinpoint such things as Russian antiaircraft defenses and gauge their effectiveness.

Of special interest were Soviet rocket launches. For some reason, many of these occurred at night, and, from the altitude at which we flew, they were often spectacular, lighting up the sky for hundreds of miles. When they were successful.

Many never made it off the pad, and some exploded immediately after doing so.

But there were no “failures.”

When the United States planned a major launching, they bally-hooed it in advance, even permitting television coverage. When it failed, the whole world knew it. But the Russians never publicized their launches until after they had occurred, and then only if they were successful and if it served their purposes to do so. As a result, it appeared that the United States had a lot of failures, Russia none.

Because of our flights, we knew better.

At this time our intelligence on the rocket launchings was exceptional. We knew several days in advance when one was scheduled to occur. Although intelligence did not discuss its sources with us, it was our guess that in the monitoring—both by the U-2s and ground-based units—we were picking up the actual countdowns, which at this time took several days.

The equipment we carried on such occasions was highly sophisticated. One unit came on automatically the moment the launch frequency was used and collected all the data sent out to control the rocket. The value of such information to our own scientists was obvious.

There was a cardinal rule on all such flights—don’t penetrate, even accidentally. When the time came to cross the border and violate Russian air space, it was for a purpose.

There were numerous other flights, including weather research. Far more than just cover, these provided much heretofore unavailable information on atmospheric conditions. Also, on occasion, such as after a Russian nuclear test, we did atomic sampling. The information gathered from this, together with other intelligence, made it possible to determine the type of detonation, where it occurred, its force, fallout, and so forth.

Because of our location in relation to wind patterns, however, we did less of this than the U-2s flying above Alaska and, later, Japan and Australia.

And there were other “special” missions.

It was important work; we knew it. But it was not the work we had come over to do.

Living arrangements at Incirlik were similar to those at Watertown, with one important exception: the food was much worse.

Again trailers provided housing, two pilots to a unit. Each had a tiny living room, kitchen, bathroom, and one small and one medium-size bed (I won the toss). There was a small PX on the base, but it stocked few items. As a change of pace, occasionally we would go into Adana at night for drinks and dinner. There was only one place you could eat safely, a restaurant located above a hotel. Tales of throat cutting and robbery being common, we did little wandering around the streets at night, and then only in groups.

Even so, there were a few close calls. About one hundred miles from Adana was what must be one of the greatest trout streams in the world. On one trip—which I’m happy to say I missed—the men awoke to find that during the night they had been visited by Kurds, the nomadic tribesmen who wander the crescent from the Persian Gulf up into Turkey. Great thieves, they had taken not only fishing gear, cameras, food, and clothing, but also the blankets off my friends’ backs. Fortunately no one woke during the raid, the Kurds having a rather cavalier attitude toward human life.

Late one afternoon I saw, not more than a mile or two away from the base, one of their caravans, a string of some hundred camels traveling along a ridge silhouetted against the sunset. Ancient Persia come to life, it provided a vivid contrast to our twentieth-century electronic gadgetry.

As transportation, most of us bought small motorcycles, which we used for excursions through the countryside. Not far from Adana, there were crusader castles, mostly in ruins—shepherds used them as pens; Roman aqueducts; the remains of a sunken Roman bath; and a huge area of old tombs, which we spent much time exploring. The beaches along the Mediterranean were beautifully virgin, much like those in Southern California once were, before the days of population explosion and oil slicks. During the long warm season, which stretched from spring well into fall, we swam, skin-dived, snorkled. As for hunting, there were ducks on the lakes and on occasion an expedition in search of wild boar, the latter less than successful, at least from our point of view. The Turks, who acted as guides, were highly excitable; as soon as they saw a boar they began firing. Most of us never got a shot.

But, except for these occasional activities, the social life was decidedly limited. The poker games frequently lasted three days. Leave was set up on a military basis, thirty days per year. With little to do in Turkey itself, R&R (rest-and-recuperation leave) was established. For each weekend spent in Turkey, compensatory time was accrued that could be spent in Greece or Germany. Since planes frequently landed at Incirlik for refueling, there was little trouble catching a hop. We saved up the time, to make the trips worthwhile.

In the interim, we had to create our own diversions.

In an attempt to provide a touch of much needed domesticity, one of the pilots bought a box of cake mix at the PX and invited us all over for coffee and cake.

Not wanting to be remiss socially, I decided to bake some cakes too.

I baked one, but extended no invitations. As a cook, I decided, I made an excellent pilot.

We were restless, for several reasons. One was that none of us was flying as much as he wanted to.

Among pilots it is proverbial that the more you fly, the more you enjoy it. But when you lay off awhile and then go up again, you approach it with hesitation; everything a little strange, you’re not as sure of yourself as you should be.

We were flying the bare minimum to preserve the plane. The U-2 was too fragile to last, the engineering experts reiterated; its life span was limited; it wouldn’t stand up under prolonged stress and strain.

Although we saw little evidence of this ourselves, a tragedy occurred not long after our arrival overseas which seemed to bear this out most graphically.

In September, 1956, Howard Carey, a contract pilot I had known at Watertown, was killed in a U-2 crash in Germany. There was some confusion as to what actually happened, initial speculation ranging all the way to sabotage. It was later determined, however, that while in flight Carey had been buzzed by two curious Canadian Air Force interceptors. Caught in their wake turbulence as they passed him, his U-2 had apparently simply disintegrated.

With sad irony, Carey had not started with the first class at Watertown but had come in late, to replace the pilot killed in the first crash.

Not considering that this might be a freak accident, the experts cited it as further proof of the U-2’s fragility. As a result, we were flying the bare minimum; so far as most of us were concerned, it wasn’t nearly enough.

Nor was it the flying we had been told we would do.

By November we still hadn’t made our first overflight.

Although the 10-10 detachment had its own section of the base, closed to all except authorized personnel, within those boundaries some sections were even more tightly restricted. The photo lab was one. By far the most secret, however, was the communication section, which housed not only the radio apparatus but also the cryptographic unit. It was through here that the orders would come, when they came. After a while we began, almost unconsciously, to study the faces of the personnel who worked there, as if expecting clues.

When the order came, it was a surprise. Stopping me as I was walking through the area one day, the detachment commander, Colonel Ed Perry, said simply, “You’re it, Powers.”

“When?”

“If the weather holds, a couple of days.”

I’d been picked for the first overflight out of Turkey.

This was to be the pattern.

Target priorities were established in Washington. It was our understanding that the White House then approved “packages,” or series, of flights. Once approval was given, the orders were relayed to Incirlik in code via radio. With one later, and quite important, exception, which will be mentioned.

Weather usually determined when the flight occurred. Almost always we would be briefed several days in advance of the actual flight in order to have time to study maps of the various routes and work out the navigation. Alternate targets were provided on each flight so that if we went up and found clouds covering one area, we could switch to another without sacrificing the mission. Approval, it was reiterated over and over, was difficult to obtain. When it came, we were to make the best of it.

At times intelligence would tell us what they were looking for: an airfield here that isn’t on the map; a complex of new buildings there to watch out for. Usually, however, we weren’t told anything, our only instructions being when and where to switch on what equipment. The equipment itself, however, was sometimes a clue. A camera with a telescopic lens pinpointing a tiny area, for example, meant an entirely different type objective than one which photographed a strip 100 to 150 miles wide.

We were aware that when we returned, the photographs would undergo intensive scrutiny by experts, the pictures providing information on things we knew nothing about. While we might be instructed to photograph a missile-launching site and the area around it, thinking intelligence was most interested in the missile on the pad, their real interest might lie in the railroad tracks leading away from the site, which, if followed, might lead to factories where the missiles were assembled.

We didn’t try to second-guess. We followed instructions.

Briefings were concerned primarily with navigation, and little else. I had anticipated that once overseas the question we had been avoiding would be asked and answered. It wasn’t. Nor did the pilots discuss it among themselves. Perhaps, almost unconsciously, we thought that to do so would bring bad luck.

The intelligence officer did mention in one briefing session that cyanide capsules would be available if we wanted them. Whether we did or did not choose to carry them was up to us, but, in the event of capture we might find this alternative preferable to torture.

The lessons of Korea were still fresh in mind.

The last item put on the plane before each overflight and the first taken off on its return was the destruct unit.

Easily the most enduring myth about the U-2 flights concerns this mechanism, which has engendered an apocrypha so vast it seems a shame to blow it up.

First advanced by the Russians, and later picked up and made much of by certain American writers, was the claim that U-2 pilots were worried that if the device had to be used the CIA had rigged it in such a way that it would explode prematurely, thus eliminating, in one great blast, all incriminating evidence, plane and pilot.

One simple fact quite thoroughly dispels this imaginative fiction. Prior to each and every overflight, maintenance personnel tested the timer. It was a standard part of the preflight check.

Pilots could supervise the testing if they wished to; usually we didn’t bother. We knew and trusted our ground crews. More often than not, these men were close friends (some remain so today). Had such a thing as rigging of the device even been suggested, they were not the type of people to remain quiet about it.

That the device was tested was not because of any suspicion that our employers intended to do us in, but because, as previously noted, there was a slight variance in the allotted time on some units. We were never sure which unit would be used. In a situation where a few seconds could mean life or death, it was imperative not only that we be sure that the timer was working properly but also that we know the exact seconds’ leeway between flipping the switches and the actual explosion.

As for the pilots being nervous about the device, this was quite true. We had also been nervous in the Air Force when flying with payloads. In each case there were a number of safeguards to forestall accidental detonation. But in both we were still flying with a bomb, and there was always the possibility—whether real or imagined, the fear existed—that a small electrical spark might accidentally bypass the most carefully planned circuitry. Neither was especially conducive to peace of mind.

The evening before the flight, I went to bed early. Although it was November, Turkey, being situated on the Mediterranean, had a warm climate almost year round. Made uncomfortable by both the temperature and the unusual hour, I tossed and turned.

The only difference between this and other flights I had already flown, I told myself, was that this would take a little longer and I’d be seeing a different country.

I wasn’t fooling myself. Sleep came hard, even with a couple of sleeping pills.

At five A.M. I was awakened and went to breakfast, after which I reported to Prebreathing to “get on the hose” and suit up. Because of the bulkiness and tightness of the suit, the latter required assistance. During the next two hours I restudied my maps. The routes were color-coded, in blue, red, and brown. Blue indicated the general route, along which some deviation from course was permitted. Red lines marked target areas and were to be flown exactly on course if possible. Alongside were marks indicating where specific photographic and electronic equipment was to be switched on and off. Brown lines denoted routes to alternate bases, if for some reason I couldn’t return to Incirlik.

Following a last-minute briefing on the weather, the intelligence officer asked me if I wanted to carry a cyanide capsule.

I shook my head. Not for any profound reason, rather one that in retrospect sounds a trifle silly. I was afraid the capsule might break in my pocket, and I wanted to avoid the risk of accidental contact.

The plane was already on the runway.

The suit was so cumbersome I had to be helped up the ladder into the cockpit. Once in, it was as snug as always. There was little room for movement.

After the ladder was pulled away, I started the engine. The U-2 has a whine all its own; no matter how many times heard, it thrilled me. This time the feeling was not unmixed with nervousness.

Checking the oil, fuel, hydraulic pressures, the EGT, the RPM, I closed the canopy, locking it from the inside, and turned on the pressurization system.

On signal, I began moving down the runway, pogos falling away the instant the plane left the ground. The ascent, sharp, rapid, started moments later and continued until the base was a tiny speck on the landscape below.

Reaching assigned altitude for this particular flight (it varied), I leveled off.

Periodically I checked the instruments, warning lights and gauges, the clock on the instrument panel.

Exactly thirty minutes after takeoff I reached for the radio call button.

Too close to Russia for voice contact, we had devised a code.

If everything was going well and I planned to continue the flight, I was to give two clicks on the radio.

Since I was still within radio range, this would be picked up back at base.

As acknowledgment, they would click once, indicating message received, proceed as planned. Or they would click three times, indicating that the flight had been scrubbed and I was to turn around and return to base immediately.

This would be the last radio contact until my return.

I clicked twice.

After a moment there was a single click in acknowledgment.

I continued the flight, crossing the Turkish border between Black and Caspian seas and penetrated Russian air space.

Two

There was no abrupt change in the topography, yet the moment you crossed the border you sensed the difference. Much of it was imagination, but that made it no less real. Knowing there were people who would shoot you down if they could created a strange tension. I’d never flown combat; perhaps the feeling was the same. But I thought not. In combat you knew what you were up against. Here you were apprehensive of the unknown. It was the not knowing that got to you.

Were they even aware that I was up here? At this altitude the U-2 couldn’t be seen from the ground, and, above ninety percent of the earth’s atmosphere, conditions were such that jet contrails usually did not form. As for Russian radar, we were, at this time, skeptical of its capabilities, doubtful that it could even pick us up at this height.

Were they, at this very moment, trying to bring me down? The view from the U-2 is restricted. Although you can see miles in front and to the sides, to look down, immediately below, you have to use a view sight, similar to an inverted periscope. From what I could see of the air and ground below, there were no clues. No signs of rockets. No jet condensation trails. Nothing that resembled unusual activity.

Fortunately, just piloting the aircraft and fulfilling the requirements of the mission was a full-time job. Checking the RPM, the EGT, the compass, the fire warning lights, the artificial horizon; watching the ever-critical air speed; homing in on Soviet radio stations; compensating for drift; flipping switches on and off: these were clear and sharply defined things. This was the reality. But the uneasiness remained, like the overlay on a map.

And it would remain throughout this and all other overflights.

By the time you returned to the base you were physically and emotionally exhausted. You told yourself it was because you had been wearing your helmet and breathing pure oxygen for twelve hours, because you had been in a tight-fitting suit in a cramped cockpit for ten.

But that wasn’t all of it.

As I was soon to learn, tension was not the exclusive property of those actually making the overflights. Each time a plane was out, there was a changed feeling in the squadron. The personnel went about their duties as usual, but with less comment. The good-natured joshing vanished, along with the horseplay. Remarks were spare, clipped. It was quieter. Everyone was waiting. As the hours passed, the silent tension increased. Navigation on the U-2 was so exact that you knew, almost to the minute, where the plane should be, could time almost exactly when it should reappear on the radar screen. But this only made the waiting, especially during the last minutes, more intense.

The returning pilot got no clue of this, not until the next time, when he was among those waiting.

The moment he touched down, the squadron was alive with activity.

While the pilot was being debriefed, equipment was unloaded, film and recording tape rushed to the photo lab. Once the film was developed, a copy was made of the negatives. The recording tape was also reproduced. One set of films and tapes was then flown to the United States for study.

The duplication was essential; if the courier aircraft went down, the mission itself would not have been wasted.

Occasionally pilots were shown the films, but not often. Nor were we usually told how important a specific mission had been. But there were indications. When the agency couldn’t wait for the transfer of films to Washington, but flew photo interpreters over to examine them the moment they were processed, we knew they were looking for something out of the ordinary. When, at a later date, the “big wigs”—both military and civilian—began visiting the base, they were less careful than agency personnel in hiding their enthusiasms. From their reactions we could often tell when there had been a major breakthrough.

One occurred late in 1956, although it wasn’t until later that we were filled in on its ramifications.

In the United States a battle had long raged in military and congressional circles over how much of our defense effort should be allotted to bombers, how much to missiles. It was not only a matter of “keeping up with Russia” in retaliatory strength; also at stake was whether our defenses were or were not geared to the actual threat.

There was considerable evidence the Russians had chosen to concentrate on production of heavy bombers, in particular one similar to the U.S. B-52. On Soviet Aviation Day in July, 1955, a mammoth air spectacular had been staged over Moscow. On a “flyby,” flight after flight of these planes had passed over the reviewing stand, in numbers far greater than our intelligence had believed existed. From other intelligence sources throughout Russia came supporting evidence, reports of a squadron sighted here, another there.

The U-2s revealed this “bomber buildup” for what it was, an elaborate hoax, one which had already cost the United States millions of dollars and could conceivably in time have cost millions of lives.

There was only one squadron of these planes, reappearing periodically in those places Westerners were most likely to spot them. As for the fly-by, it was now surmised that having once passed overhead, the same planes had flown out of sight, circled, and returned again and again.

The U-2s revealed more than this. Evidence accumulated proved that while the United States was busily manufacturing bombers, the Russians had shifted their major emphasis to missiles. And from photographs of their launching sites and other data, such as that picked up on the electronic surveillance flights, U.S. intelligence was able to determine how far Soviet technology had progressed in both missile development and production.

Bit by bit, mission after mission, the U-2s were penetrating, and dissipating, a cloud of ignorance which had for decades made the Soviet Union a dark and shadowy land, revealing for the first time a composite picture of military Russia, complete to airfields, atomic production sites, power plants, oil-storage depots, submarine yards, arsenals, railroads, missile factories, launch sites, radar installations, industrial complexes, antiaircraft defenses. Much later, The New York Times would call the U-2 overflights “the most successful reconnaissance, espionage project in history,” while Allen Dulles, head of the Central Intelligence Agency during this period, would observe that the U-2 “could collect information with more speed, accuracy, and dependability than could any agent on the ground. In a sense, its feats could be equaled only by the acquisition of technical documents directly from Soviet offices and laboratories. The U-2 marked a new high, in more ways than one, in the scientific collection of intelligence.”

The U-2 pilots were denied this broad overview. We caught only glimpses.

That was enough, however, to convince us of the importance of what we were doing.

And to make us aware of the risks involved.

Still no one asked the big question.

Returning from one of the “special” missions, I was handed a message from Colonel Perry. Exhausted, still mentally involved in the flight just finished, I couldn’t understand it, even after reading it several times.

The colonel explained it to me, his tone something less than happy.

“Your wife called the Washington number you gave her, Powers. To tell us she’s on her way to Athens, determined to see you.”

The agency didn’t want her in the vicinity. But they couldn’t order her to return home. I’d have to persuade her.

But Barbara had already made up her mind and wasn’t about to change it. She was going to stay in Athens and get a job. Nothing I could say would dissuade her.

And, I must admit, I didn’t try very hard. At this time we were not at all sure the overflight program would last the full eighteen months. There was the possibility we would be returning to the United States much sooner. In the interim, although I was quite aware it would displease the agency, I couldn’t see any good reason why she shouldn’t stay.

One thing bothered me, though: Barbara was given to impetuous acts. When she wanted to do something, she did it, regardless of consequences. In the States, living with her mother, there had been some check on her wilder impulses. In Athens, away from home for the first time, and separated from me except for occasional visits, she would be on her own. Yet there was the possibility this was just what she needed, to be out from under the parental roof, where she could learn self-control.

We rented an apartment in Athens. She found a steno-clerk job in one of the Air Force offices. And by arranging my off-duty time, I was able to fly over and be with her almost every other weekend.

Although Operation Overflight settled into an established routine, the flights themselves never became routine.

After a while, for example, there was no need to mention in briefings that under no circumstances was radio contact to be attempted while over “forbidden territory,” or that in the event of a bail-out or forced landing the pilot should do everything he could to see that the aircraft was not captured intact. Since we all knew this, we could take such things for granted and eliminate mention of them from the briefings, instead concentrating on the most important thing, navigation. The procedures became familiar; as for the flights, however, each was new.

There were no “milk runs.” Although there were return flights to a few specific targets, because of continuing interest in what was happening there, the route was changed each time. We did not believe the Russians yet had the capability of shooting us down; the easiest way to find out, however, would have been to make the same trip twice. We avoided any semblance of establishing a pattern. We went out of our way to avoid passing over known radar or antiaircraft installations. But in so doing we also ran another risk, inadvertently passing over installations which intelligence knew nothing about.

It was only a matter of time, we knew, before Russia would have the capability. The only question was when.

Because this risk existed on every flight, the overflights never became “old hat.”

Whether awaiting its return, or flying it, we sweated each overflight.

Three

During 1957 there was a step-up in activity in the U-2 program.

After the third and last class completed its training at Watertown, a new U-2 base was opened, this one in the Far East, at Atsugi, fifteen miles west of Yokohama, Japan.

Having received too much attention at Wiesbaden, the first U-2 group moved to a more isolated location, Giebelstadt.

It wasn’t isolated enough.

On takeoff, pilots frequently noticed a long, black limousine parked at the end of the runway. Checking license plates, agency security discovered it was registered by one of the Iron Curtain embassies.

Giebelstadt had been “compromised.” Shortly afterward, the first and second U-2 groups combined, at Adana. Although special flights were to continue to be made from West German bases, major emphasis in Europe now shifted to Turkey and its environs. By this time we were flying not only out of Adana but also, on occasion, from two bases in Pakistan: Lahore and Peshawar. There were two major reasons for the change. Being closer to targets in the Soviet Union in which we were most interested, this cut down flying time and fuel consumption. And, because of the ruggedness of the terrain, with its fierce mountains, it was one of the least defended portions of the Soviet border, decreasing odds on flights being spotted.

During 1957 there were modifications of the plane. Its silver coloration was changed to blue-black, making it even harder to spot when in flight. And an ejection seat was installed. Prior to this time, there had been few successful bail-outs from the U-2. If the plane became disabled and went into a spin, the g forces pinned the pilot in the cockpit, making it extremely difficult for him to climb out. The ejection seat was supposed to remedy this hazard.

It merely substituted another.

It was discovered that at high altitudes the plastic canopy over the cockpit, normally broken by the top of the seat when it ejected, froze and became like steel. Tragically, this wasn’t discovered until a pilot tried to escape using the ejection seat. Though he had hit the canopy with tremendous force, it hadn’t budged. He went down with the plane.

Following this, the explosive charge was increased and sharp breaker points installed on top of the seat, positioned in order to hit the canopy at its points of greatest stress, causing it to shatter.

Like many another pilot, I remained leery, hating to ride in a plane with an ejection seat. It was comparable to sitting on a loaded shotgun. There had been instances, though not yet in the U-2, where, because of some mechanical failure, pilots had been ejected while their planes were taking off, landing, or still aground.

There was a “safety pin” to keep the seat from ejecting. Pilots were supposed to remove this before takeoff. I never did, always waiting until reaching an altitude where I knew the chute had some chance to open.

Today successful ejections may be made from most aircraft while still on the ground. This was not the case during the period of Operation Overflight. Any altitude below two thousand feet was considered marginal.

In one respect our luck held. There were no incidents over Russia, not even a close call.

The year 1957 brought more changes, ramifications of which are still felt.

On August 26 the Soviet Union announced it had launched its first successful intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM.

On September 4 a new age opened with the successful orbiting of the first space satellite, Sputnik.

One month later, less one day, Sputnik II was in orbit, with the dog Laika aboard.

Russia was busy. So were the U-2s. With these events, the overflights gained a new and far greater importance. That the government of the United States was pleased with our efforts became evident when we were told that, although civilians, each of us had been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, our military records having been changed to show the award.

Another significant event during this period was a revision of attitude toward the aircraft itself. By now it was apparent the engineers had badly misjudged the reliability of the U-2. It had proven to be an extremely capable plane, able to withstand a great deal of abuse and still perform beautifully.

The number of flights increased. And, as we neared the eighteen-month expiration date of our contracts, we were asked to renew for another twelve months.

I had mixed feelings. My commitment to the program was total. I believed in what we were doing, feeling it was not only vital to our national security but that the information gathered might someday be a determining factor in our survival.

My reservations were personal.

Sometime earlier Barbara had obtained a transfer from Athens to a job at Wheelus Air Force Base, Tripoli, Libya. Occasionally it was necessary to ferry one of our T-33 instrument trainers to Wheelus for inspection; whenever possible, I would try to get the assignment. But our marriage was badly floundering and in the fall of 1957, when Barbara and I returned to the United States, we discussed the idea of a divorce.

I did not talk over my personal problems with the agency (they would not be mentioned here except for their relevance to what followed), but I did indicate that in November, when my contract expired, I might not renew.

Nor was I the only one who had made this decision. Several other married pilots had decided that an eighteen-month separation from their families was more than enough.

Having little choice, the agency capitulated. If we extended, they would let us move our families to Adana.

I gave the matter much thought. It seemed to me that many of Barbara’s and my problems could be attributed to long separations. Perhaps were we together we could still salvage our marriage. We could at least give it one more try. I did not believe in divorce—it seemed like giving up.

After taking another physical at Lovelace, I renewed my contract and brought Barbara back to Adana in time to celebrate Christmas in Turkey.

With the arrival of the wives, social life at Incirlik improved immeasurably, as did the food.

The married couples rented houses in town. Parties were frequent. Because the job was not without its tensions, when we got the chance to relax we made the most of it. This included considerable drinking. Enjoying liquor, I did my share. Barbara, I soon realized, was doing more than hers. There were arguments, incidents. Not really facing up to the fact that we had problems, I convinced myself that once she adjusted to the changed way of life, things would go more smoothly.

Because there was little to do in Turkey, the R&R leaves became much-anticipated events. We had a C-54 transport to bring in supplies from Germany. Arrangements were made for it to drop off families there one week, pick them up the next. On occasion, shopping-sight-seeing trips were set up for the wives, to Athens, Beirut, Paris, Naples. Many of the pilots bought cars and had them shipped to Adana. The detachment obtained a small boat with outboard engine. There was a reservoir not too far away. To our activities we added water skiing. Also, on one of our trips to Germany, we acquired a German shepherd, whom we named Eck. With the growing number of conflicts in the Middle East—Suez in 1956, Lebanon in 1958—Incirlik became strategically important, as both a military base and a staging area. With the increase in permanent military personnel stationed there, a few more “creature comforts” were added, including an officers’ club, which, while primitive compared to those on most modern bases, added to our social life.

The pilots made a conscious effort to separate “squadron business” from their personal lives. While it’s possible some told their wives what they were actually doing, I’m inclined to doubt it. Overriding the question of security was one other consideration: we didn’t want our wives to worry; had they known what we were doing, they would have done so.

Whether any of them suspected is, of course, another matter. As intelligence gatherers, wives rival anything ever dreamed up by the agency or the KGB.

No secret can be kept indefinitely. Despite elaborate security measures, that of the U-2 was leaking out bit by bit.

Although there had been veiled references to the U-2’s “other uses” by aviation writers in several American newspapers—including The Los Angeles Times and the New York Journal American—the most startling disclosure appeared in one of the most unlikely places. Model Airplane News, in its March, 1958, issue, carried a short article on the aircraft, complete with drawings. The article observed: “An unconfirmed rumor says that U-2s are flying across the Iron Curtain taking aerial photographs.”

We also learned, through intelligence, that Soviet Aviation, official newspaper of the Red Air Force, had published a series of articles mentioning the U-2. They had dubbed it “the black lady of espionage.” Although much of the information in the articles was incorrect or outdated—for example, the statement that U-2s were flying out of Wiesbaden—we weren’t lulled into any false sense of security.

The U-2 was a distinctive aircraft, spectacular in its takeoffs, like none other in the air. The overflight program was two years old; in addition to the two main bases, Adana and Atsugi, U-2s were also, on occasion, flying out of bases all around the globe.

Such flights couldn’t long escape notice.

How much did the Russians actually know about our outfit, Detachment 10-10? Talking it over with the intelligence officer we concluded that they probably knew a great deal. It was an unusual unit, set off by itself, flying an easily identifiable aircraft. Spying was an ancient, if not honorable, profession in Turkey. If Russian intelligence was as good as our own intelligence repeatedly told us it was, it seemed likely they not only knew how many planes we had but how many pilots, plus our names.

Of one thing we were sure. There was no longer any doubt they knew about the overflights. Our evidence of this was of the most conclusive kind. Although none of the pilots had actually seen them, electronic equipment on returning U-2s indicated the Russians were now sending up rockets attempting to bring us down.

In the fall of 1958, another country—knowingly or otherwise—became involved in the U-2 program.

That September, the Soviet Union, after a six-month suspension, resumed nuclear testing, with several large detonations north of the Arctic Circle. Flying out of Bodö, Norway, U-2s collected atomic samples and other data on the tests. We remained in Bodö for about three weeks; grounded by the weather much of the time, we got in a lot of fishing. We presumed—strictly presumption—that some understanding had been reached with the Norwegian government regarding our presence there. A Norwegian military officer acted as our liaison. Similar arrangements pertained in Pakistan.

To my knowledge no intentional overflights were made from Norway. On returning a U-2 to Adana, one pilot did accidentally stray over the border into the USSR. Recrossing uneventfully, he was more fortunate than two U.S. Air Force planes that earlier made the same mistake.

In June a C-118 transport, hauling freight from Turkey to Iran, had inadvertently crossed into Soviet Armenia during a bad storm and was shot down. The nine crew members, who had escaped injury in the crash, were released by the Russians little more than a week later. According to a strongly worded U.S. State Department protest, Russian MIGs had continued firing at the plane even when it was in flames and trying to land. Some crewmen had been badly beaten by the peasants who captured them, and one was almost lynched from a telephone pole before police rescued him from the irate mob.

Early in September another unarmed transport plane, this one a turboprop C-130, also crossed over into Soviet Armenia from Turkey and was shot down. This time the Russians returned the bodies of six crewmen, but ignored inquiries as to the fate of the other eleven men aboard.

The significance of these incidents wasn’t lost on us.

At our altitude we weren’t too worried about MIGs, but we were beginning to be concerned about SAMs, surface-to-air-missiles.

By this time a few of the “unknowns” were disappearing from U-2 overflights.

We now knew that the Russians were radar-tracking at least some of our flights; it was possible that they had been doing so from the start. Equipment on board recorded their signals; from their strength it was possible to tell whether they were “painting,” that is tracking the flight. However, this could only be determined after returning to base and studying transcriptions. There was still no way, while in flight, to know for sure.

We also knew that SAMs were being fired at us, that some were uncomfortably close to our altitude. But we knew too that the Russians had a control problem in their guidance system. Because of the speed of the missile, and the extremely thin atmosphere, it was almost impossible to make a correction. This did not eliminate the possibility of a lucky hit. In our navigation we were careful to ensure our routes circumvented known SAM sites.

We were concerned, but not greatly. In retrospect—from which everything always seems crystal clear—we should have been damn worried. The truth is, we were growing complacent.

As defense against air-to-air missiles, those fired from another aircraft, a new piece of equipment called a “granger” was installed in the tail. As explained to us, should an aircraft lock onto a U-2 with his radar and launch a missile, the granger would send out a faulty signal to break his radar lock. Whether it actually did this or not, we had no way of knowing, since we had never been threatened by aircraft.

The U-2 had a problem shared by many Americans. It was overweight. From the day of its birth, it had been gaining extra pounds, each new piece of equipment adding more, at the same time lowering the altitude at which the plane could fly.

In 1959 a more powerful engine was developed to compensate for this extra weight, lifting us back into the higher altitudes. One of the first U-2s so adapted was sent to Atsugi, where it promptly made its share of unwanted headlines.

As flying-safety officer for the detachment, I received reports on all U-2 accidents around the world, a great many of which were never publicized. By this time, U-2s had made flights not only from Turkey and Japan but also from California, Nevada, Alaska, Texas, New York, Brazil, Okinawa, Formosa, the Philippines, Australia, England, West Germany, Norway and Pakistan. Most of these, of course, were not overflights, but for collection of weather data and atomic sampling.

The Japan incident, in September, 1959, was much too well publicized. It especially interested me because the plane, number 360, had one of the new engines. Also it had set two new records, on the same day: it had flown the highest, and the lowest, any U-2 had ever flown.

Rumor had the accident as pilot error, or, to be more precise, pilot goof. Testing the new engine, he had decided to see if he could set a new altitude record. He did. He also used up more fuel than anticipated. Less than ten miles south of Atsugi he ran out of fuel and was forced to make an emergency landing at a glider-club strip.

Mired deep in mud, he set his second record that day: having flown the U-2 lower than anyone else in history.

Remaining in the cockpit, he radioed the base for assistance. Meantime, the Japanese, with their ever-present cameras, had surrounded the plane, happily taking pictures. When U.S. military police arrived, they ordered them away at gunpoint, cordoning off the area.

It was not exactly the way to avoid publicity. Japanese newspapers and magazines picked up the story and the pictures, their editorials asking why, if the U-2 was being used strictly for weather research, it bore no identification marks and occasioned such extreme security.

Still, it was a minor incident, or seemed so at the time.

I had no idea then how well I would come to know plane number 360. Nor did anyone foresee the kind of headlines it would soon make.

The original concept of Operation Overflight had been short-term, something less than the eighteen months called for in our contracts.

In November, 1957, we had extended for another year.

We had done the same in November, 1958, and 1959

In the interim, the Russians had made spectacular strides in missile and space development.

We could not shake the feeling that time was catching up with us.

Not long after the installation of the granger, the intelligence officer introduced us to another new piece of “equipment.”

We couldn’t figure it out. It looked like a good-luck charm. It seemed to be an ordinary silver dollar, with a metal loop at one end so it could be fastened onto a key chain or a chain around the neck.

Obviously enjoying our puzzlement, he unscrewed the loop. Inside the dollar was what appeared to be an ordinary straight pin. But this too wasn’t what it seemed. Looking at it more closely, we could see the body of the pin to be a sheath not fitting quite tightly against the head. Pulling this off, it became a thin needle, only again not an ordinary needle. Toward the end there were grooves. Inside the grooves was a sticky brown substance.

It was curare, the intelligence officer explained. Just one prick would suffice.

From now on, we could carry this, if we wanted to, instead of cyanide.

The majority of pilots had decided, individually, against carrying cyanide. I had never carried it.

But we were fascinated with the dollar-pin-needle device. Passing it around, quite carefully, leaving the needle in the sheath, we each examined it. It was ingenious. Who would ever think of looking inside a silver dollar for something like this?

We were again champing at the bit. Most of 1958, all of 1959, and thus far in 1960, there had been a drastic reduction in the number of overflights. Months would pass without one. Although never told the reason for the severe cutback, we presumed it was because of the political climate. We were quite capable of making many more flights than was the case, in fact were anxious to do so. We were not inactive; we continued to make border-surveillance missions, and the “special” missions, but were definitely restive. The longer the layoff, the greater the tension. The fewer the overflights, the more apprehensive we became about the next one.

Then, suddenly, after a long pause, two flights were scheduled for the same month, April, 1960.

I was to be “backup” on the first and to fly the second.

Use of a backup, or substitute, pilot was a comparatively recent change in procedure, occurring after we had started making overflights from bases other than Incirlik. Along with the lead pilot, the backup pilot went through all preflight stages, from briefings up to and including prebreathing. Should the lead pilot have a heart attack (or, considering the food, a much more common occurrence, the GIs), the backup could take over.

Some accounts, apparently confused over the role of the backup, state that on each overflight two U-2s would take off simultaneously, one to fly along the border, throwing off Russian radar, while the other made the actual mission. To my knowledge, this was never done, nor probably was it ever considered, since Russian radar was quite capable of picking up more than one plane at a time.

The backup pilot was simply a substitute for the lead pilot in the event he was unable to fly.

It was some weeks prior to the first April flight, when we were studying routes, that I finally asked the question.

It had been put off much too long. There had been no mention of it in our contracts. It had never been brought up in our briefings. We had never discussed it among ourselves. Yet I knew we had thought about it—or, at least, I knew one pilot had.

Though Operation Overflight was nearly four years old, we were totally unprepared for an “accident.” It didn’t necessarily have to be a missile. One loose screw, in just the right place, could bring an aircraft down.

The silver dollar had provided the obvious opening, and I had presumed someone would ask it then. But no one had done so. Now, as we were preparing to resume overflights, I decided to put it directly to the intelligence officer.

“What if something happens and one of us goes down over Russia? That’s an awfully big country, and it could be a hell of a long walk to a border. Is there anyone there we can contact? Can you give us any names and addresses?”

“No, we can’t.”

While it was not what I wanted to hear, his answer was at least understandable. If we had agents in Russia, as we presumably did, release of their names could place them in jeopardy also.

I persisted. “All right, say the worst happens. A plane goes down, and the pilot is captured. What story does he use? Exactly how much should he tell?”

His exact words were, “You may as well tell them everything, because they’re going to get it out of you anyway.”

As if anticipating our concern, and perhaps hoping to set it to rest before such questions were asked, the agency had set up a survival exercise the previous summer—excluding the little bit of evasion-training on the East Coast at the start of the project, the first such for most of us since we had been in the Air Force. Divided into several groups, we were driven out into the desert, with only parachute and minimal rations, and left there.

Our group managed fairly well. When our supplies finally ran out, we stumbled onto a farmer’s sugar-beet patch.

Only later, thinking about it, did we consider that had he appeared with a shotgun, and been inclined to use it, a good portion of the U.S. U-2 program in Turkey could have been wiped out.

Surviving a bad thunderstorm, we found a little village, were treated to an excellent but native meal, and, renting donkeys, rode back to the pickup point in style.

Another group was not so lucky. Some of the natives, claiming they had seen men parachuting out of planes, called the Turkish police, who arrested them as Russian spies.

If the intention was to buoy up our self-confidence, the exercise was decidedly less than a success.

Overseas, possibly because it is so limited, you consume news. What newspapers you can get, such as Stars and Stripes, you read from beginning to end.

During April, 1960, we were aware of the upcoming Summit Conference, scheduled to take place in Paris the following month; like other topics of the day, we discussed the talks, hopeful that something good would come out of them. But not optimistic. There still seemed to be no solution to the problem of Berlin; according to everything we read, Khrushchev was determined to make trouble over the issue.

But it was a minor topic. We were equally interested in Senator John F. Kennedy’s win over Hubert Humphrey in the Wisconsin Presidential primary; De Gaulle’s visit to the United States; the orbiting of a navigational satellite from Cape Canaveral. We didn’t connect it with our work, or with the sudden increase in the number of overflights.

We had our own explanation for that.

No one told us this, it was just a presumption, but we had a feeling that intelligence, suspecting the Russians were close to solving their missile-guidance problem, was trying to crowd in as many important targets as possible while time remained.

The feeling, correct or not, didn’t lessen the tension.

However, the first April flight, on the ninth, went off as smoothly as its predecessors.

There was no reason to suppose that mine, scheduled for late in the month, would go otherwise. Yet we were a little more apprehensive about it than usually would have been the case, since it would differ from all previous overflights in one respect.

Taking off from Peshawar, Pakistan, I was to fly thirty-eight hundred miles to Bodö, Norway.

It would be the first time we had attempted to fly all the way across the Soviet Union.

Four

The main reason we had never tried to fly all the way across the Soviet Union was not fuel but logistics. Previously all the overflights had returned to their originating base. Taking off from one base and landing at another required two ground crews, doubling personnel, preparation, and risk of exposure.

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.

Since arriving in Turkey in 1956, Detachment 10-10 had changed commanding officers several times. The latest, who had joined us only a short time earlier, was an Air Force colonel, William M. Shelton. Shelton handled the briefings for the flight, conducted at Incirlik, prior to our leaving for Pakistan.

As usual, they were concerned primarily with navigation.

Taking off from Peshawar, Pakistan, I was to overfly Afghanistan and cross the Hindu Kush range, an extension of the Himalayas. Once in the Soviet Union, my route would take me over or near Dushambe, the Aral Sea, the Tyuratam Cosmodrome (Russia’s Cape Canaveral), Chelyabinsk, Sverdlovsk, Kirov, Archangel, and, on the Kola Peninsula, Kandalaksha and Murmansk, from which I was to fly north to the Barents Sea and along the northern coast of Norway to Bodö. This way I would avoid overflying Finland and Sweden.

The flight would take nine hours, cover approximately 3,800 miles, 2,900 within the Soviet Union itself. With an early-morning takeoff, and considering the time changes, I would be in Bodö about nightfall.

I was thinking about this as, early on the morning of Wednesday, April 27, I packed a bag for the trip. Should I stay in Bodö a day or two, I’d need a shaving kit, civilian clothes, ID, and money. Checking my wallet, I found I had some German marks, Turkish lira, and about one hundred dollars in U.S. currency. Estimating that should be sufficient, I tossed the wallet into the traveling bag along with the other items.

With a refueling stop at Bahrein, the trip to Pakistan would take about seven hours. Barbara, fixing a lunch for the flight, asked if I’d be back in time for the party.

It took me a minute to remember which one. In the fall of 1959 the married couples had moved from town back onto the base, our trailers forming a small community at the end of the base housing area. Proximity had rendered the parties all the more frequent. Unfortunately, the drinking problem not only remained, but had grown worse. I’d miss one recent party because of being scheduled for an early flight the next morning. Barbara had gone anyway, fallen down while dancing, and broken her leg; it was still in a cast. Nevertheless, she continued to insist she had no problem with alcohol.

She did, however. But because I had never encountered it before in someone I knew, I didn’t know how to handle it. Although on flights I’d learned to leave personal concerns behind and to concentrate on the job at hand, I worried about her when I had to be gone for several days on trips of this sort. I worried not only about her excessive drinking but also about what she was apt to do when left alone.

Then I remembered. This was to be a special party. The communications chief was returning to the States; an appropriate sendoff had been planned.

I checked the calendar.

If the flight took place as scheduled, on Thursday the twenty-eighth, I should be back in plenty of time.

The party wasn’t until Sunday evening, May 1.

More than twenty of us made the Turkey-Pakistan trip, aboard a Lockheed C-130 turboprop transport. It took that many to handle each flight. In addition to the detachment commander, navigator, intelligence officer, doctor, crew chief, mechanics, and photographic and electronic specialists, radio personnel were required to pick up the O.K. for the flight, transmitted from Washington through Germany to Turkey and from there to Pakistan via radio code.

Accommodations at Peshawar were primitive. Our hangar was set off from the rest of the base; we slept there on folding cots and cooked our own food from rations.

There was one departure from routine. Rather than bringing the U-2 over and leaving it at Peshawar until the flight took place, we were trying something new. Chiefly for security, to reduce plane exposure, we were ferrying it to Peshawar the night prior to flight, then, should the flight not take place as scheduled, for weather or some other reason, we would ferry it back to Incirlik.

It was the best plane we had, which was comforting. Aside from the long layoff, and the fact that this flight would be going all the way across Russia, there was nothing else to distinguish this overflight from its predecessors. Nor did the thought of an overflight in itself make me nervous. Of the original group of pilots at Adana, I was the only one who hadn’t transferred elsewhere or returned to the States. As a result, simply by being there so long, I had accumulated more spy flights—overflights, eavesdropping missions, and “special” missions—than any other pilot. One other pilot and I tied on the total number of overflights. However, I could later claim the totally uncoveted distinction of having made the last.

Yet because this was to be the first flight all the way across Russia, I felt an additional touch of excitement and some apprehension. However, my complete trust in the aircraft helped.

The schedule called for a six-A.M. takeoff. Wednesday afternoon I went to bed about four o’clock. It was hot and noisy in the hangar; as usual, I tossed and turned, sleeping only sporadically. At two A.M. I was awakened by someone from message center. I had washed and was dressing when I received another message: due to bad weather, the flight had been postponed twenty-four hours.

This left me with a full day of nothing to do.

Thursday afternoon I again went to bed early, to be awakened at two A.M. This time I had finished breakfast and was “on the hose” when the second order came through: another twenty-four-hour postponement.

Friday afternoon, shortly before I was to go to bed, word came that there would be no flight on Saturday. A night of poker and a day of reading and loafing relieved some of the tension built up by the two false starts. But not all. For I also discovered that I wouldn’t be flying the plane I’d hoped.

The departure from routine had turned out to be less than a good idea. Periodically, after a certain number of hours’ flight time, an aircraft has to be grounded for maintenance check. Flying back and forth from Turkey to Pakistan, time on the plane I’d counted on flying had run out.

As substitute, on Saturday night U-2 number 360 was flown over.

Following its emergency landing on the glider-club strip in Japan, number 360 had been returned to Lockheed’s Burbank, California, factory for repairs. Inasmuch as we were at that time short a U-2 at Incirlik, one of our planes also having been returned to Lockheed for maintenance, number 360 was sent to us.

It was a “dog,” never having flown exactly right. Something was always going wrong. No sooner was one malfunction corrected than another appeared. Its current idiosyncrasy was one of the fuel tanks, which wouldn’t feed all its fuel. But not all the time, just occasionally. So the pilot was kept guessing.

Saturday afternoon I again went to bed early, again to be awakened at two A.M. With my backup pilot, I had a good substantial breakfast—two or three eggs, bacon, toast. It was to be the last food I’d have until reaching Norway, some thirteen hours from now. The doctor checked me over, finding me in good shape. During prebreathing my backup and I were joined by the pilot who had ferried number 360 over the night before, a good friend whom we’ll call Bob.

Bob had flown the April 9 overflight on which I was backup, and had been present when I finally asked the intelligence officer the long-avoided question. On this particular mission he would act as mobile control officer. Among his other duties, he would acknowledge when I used the radio code: single click indicating proceed as planned; three clicks meaning return to base.

There was no need for additional briefing. I had studied the maps, knew the route. There had been a slight wind change, meaning navigation had to be corrected; otherwise the weather looked good. Because of 360’s fuel-tank problem, however, Colonel Shelton suggested that if, just before reaching Kandalaksha, I discovered I was running low on fuel, I could take a short cut across Finland and Sweden, thereby saving a few minutes’ time. As for alternate landing fields, he told me I could land in Norway, Sweden, or Finland—the first being preferable, the second less so, the third to be used only in dire emergency, but added, “Anyplace is preferable to going down in the Soviet Union.”

As I was suiting up, I remembered that traveling bag, with wallet and clothing, and asked that it be put in the cockpit.

“Do you want the silver dollar?” Shelton asked.

Before this I hadn’t. But this flight was different. And I had less than complete confidence in the plane.

“If something happened,” I had previously asked the intelligence officer, “could I use the needle as a weapon?”

He couldn’t see why not. One jab, and death would be almost instantaneous. As a weapon, it should be quite effective.

“O.K.,” I replied. Shelton tossed it to me, and I slipped it into the pocket of my outer flight suit.

Though with more than sufficient time to think about it since, I’m still not sure why this time I chose to take it.

Could it have been premonition?

About 5:20 A.M., with Bob’s assistance, I climbed into the plane, the personal-equipment sergeant strapping me in.

It was scorching hot. The sun had been up nearly an hour.

Bob took off his shirt and held it over the cockpit to try to shield me from its rays.

Takeoff was scheduled for six A.M. I completed my preflight check and waited. And waited. Six o’clock came and passed with no sign of a signal.

The long underwear I was wearing was already completely soaked. Beneath the helmet, perspiration was running down my face in rivers. There was no way to wipe it off.

Finally Colonel Shelton came out to explain the delay. They were awaiting approval from the White House.

This was the first time this had happened. When Presidential approval was necessary, it usually came through well in advance of the flight.

Because I would be without radio contact, I had to depend heavily on the sextant for navigation. But since all precomputations had been made on the basis of a six-A.M. takeoff, the sextant would be useless. At this point I was sure the flight would be canceled, and was looking forward to getting out of the sweat-drenched suit, when, at 6:20 A.M., the signal came: cleared for takeoff.

Bob had been holding his shirt over the cockpit for a full hour. As he closed the canopy, I yelled my thanks and locked the canopy from the inside. Once the ladder was pulled away, there was no delay in getting started and taking off.

At top altitudes, the temperature outside the aircraft dropped to sixty degrees below zero. Some of the chill began to penetrate. Although the suit would remain damp and uncomfortable throughout the flight, at least I was no longer sweltering.

Switching on the autopilot, I completed my flight log. I had already filled in the Aircraft Number, 360, and the Sortie Number, 4154. Now I added takeoff time, 0126 Greenwich Mean Time, 6:26 A.M. local time, with the notation “delayed one-half hour.” I also filled in the date: “1 May 1960.”

Five

After the single-click acknowledgment from Bob, only silence. A lonely feeling, knowing you’d broken radio contact.

Approaching the border, I could feel the tension build. It happened on every overflight. Once across the border, you relaxed a bit. For some reason you felt that anything that was going to happen would happen there.

The weather below was worse than expected. On the Russian side, the clouds came right up to the mountains, a solid undercast. As far as intelligence was concerned, this wasn’t important, there being little of interest in this area. But it didn’t make the navigation easier. Without visual observations, I needed the sextant, but couldn’t use it, my celestial computations having been made on the basis of a six-A.M. takeoff. Instead I had to rely on time and headings. The sextant was usable, however, as a check to see if the compass was working correctly. It was.

After about one and one-half hours I spotted the first break in the clouds. I was southeast of the Aral Sea. Slightly right of course, I was correcting back when some of the uncertainty came to an end.

Far below I could see the condensation trail of a single-engine jet aircraft. It was moving fast, at supersonic speed, paralleling my course, though in the opposite direction.

I watched until it disappeared.

Five to ten minutes later I saw another contrail, again paralleling my course, only this time moving in my direction. Presumably it was the same aircraft.

I felt relieved. I was sure now they were tracking me on radar, vectoring in and relaying my headings to the aircraft. But it was so far below as to pose no threat. Because of my altitude, it would have been almost impossible for the pilot to see me. If this was the best they could do, I had nothing to worry about.

Odd, but even before reaching the border I had the feeling they knew I was coming.

I wondered how the Russians felt, knowing I was up here, unable to do anything about it. I could make a pretty good guess.

For four years the U-2s had been overflying the USSR. Much of this time, if not all of it, the Russian government had been aware of our activities. Yet, because to do so would be to admit that they could do nothing to stop us, they couldn’t even complain. I could imagine their frustration and rage. Imagining it made me much less complacent.

Ahead, about thirty miles east of the Aral Sea, was the Tyuratam Cosmodrome, launching site for most of its important ICBM and space shots.

This wasn’t our first visit to the area, nor was it a major objective of this particular flight. But since I was to be in the vicinity, it had been included. Due to the presence of some large thunderclouds, I couldn’t see the launch site itself but could see much of the surrounding area. I switched on the cameras. Some intelligence was achieved, though not one hundred percent.

The clouds closed over again and remained solid until, about three hours into the flight, they began to thin; I could see a little terrain, including a town. With my radio compass I picked up the local station. In regard to this particular station, intelligence had indicated that their information might not be accurate; the call sign, the frequency, or both, could be incorrect. The call sign was wrong, the frequency right. Again slightly off course, I corrected back.

About fifty miles south of Chelyabinsk, the clouds disappeared. To my left I got a good view of the Urals. Once the traditional boundary between Europe and Asia, as mountains they were not very high. Still snow-topped, on either side the land was green. It was spring in Russia. It was also a beautiful day, and now that I was back on course, the clouds behind me, I began to relax a little.

Predictably, number 360 chose this moment to be unpredictable. The autopilot began malfunctioning, causing the aircraft to pitch nose-up. To correct the condition, I had to disengage the autopilot, retrim, and fly the plane manually for a few minutes. When I reengaged the autopilot, the plane flew fine for ten to fifteen minutes, after which the pitch controls again went to the full nose-up position. The aircraft couldn’t take much of this. Again I went through the same procedure. With the same result. This time I left the autopilot disengaged.

Should I go on, I’d have to fly the plane manually the rest of the way.

It was an abort situation, and I had to make a decision: to turn around and go back, or to continue the flight. An hour earlier the decision would have been automatic; I would have gone back. But I was more than thirteen hundred miles inside Russia, and the worst of the weather appeared to be behind me, while ahead visibility looked excellent.

I decided to go on and accomplish what I had set out to do.

Normally, without this complication—having to navigate, compute ATAs and ETA, turn on the switches at the designated points, pay constant attention to the instruments to keep from exceeding the mach limitation on the high side and stalling the aircraft on the low side, the variance in speed also affecting fuel consumption—my work was cut out. Having to fly the plane manually called for an extra pair of hands.

Spotting a huge tank farm, I noted it on my map. Observing a large complex of buildings, which could have been either military or industrial, I marked them down also, with the notation “big outfit” as a reminder for debriefing.

Sverdlovsk was ahead. Formerly known as Ekaterinburg, it was here, in 1918, that Czar Nicholas II and his family were assassinated by the Bolsheviks. Once a small village, isolated from the mainstream of Russian life, in recent years it and the surrounding area had grown as astronomically as Southern California. Now an important industrial metropolis, Sverdlovsk was of special interest; I flipped the appropriate switches.

This was the first time a U-2 had flown over the area.

Once past Sverdlovsk, my route would take me northwest to Kirov, whence I would fly north to Archangel, Kandalaksha, Murmansk, and, finally, Bodö, Norway.

About thirty to forty miles southeast of Sverdlovsk, I made a ninety-degree left turn, rolled out on course, and lined up on my next flight line, which would go over the southwestern edge of the city.

I was almost exactly four hours into the flight.

Spotting an airfield that did not appear on the map, I marked it down. My route would take me directly over it.

Following the turn, I had to record the time, altitude, speed, exhaust-gas temperature, and engine-instrument readings. I was marking these down when, suddenly, there was a dull “thump,” the aircraft jerked forward, and a tremendous orange flash lit the cockpit and sky.

Time had caught up with us.

Knocked back in the seat, I said, “My God, I’ve had it now!”

The orange glow seemed to last for minutes, although it was probably gone in seconds. Yet I had time enough to think the explosion was external to the aircraft and, from the push, probably somewhere behind it.

Instinctively I grasped the throttle with my left hand, and keeping my right hand on the wheel, checked instruments. All readings normal. Engine functioning O.K. The right wing started to droop. I turned the wheel, and it came back up. Fine. Now the nose, very slowly, started to go down. Proper correction for that is to pull back on the wheel to bring it up. I pulled, but it kept going down. Either the control cable had severed or the tail was gone. I knew then I had no control of the aircraft.

As it kept nosing down, a violent movement shook the plane, flinging me all over the cockpit. I assumed both wings had come off. What was left of the plane began spinning, only upside down, the nose pointing upward toward the sky, the tail down toward the ground. All I could see was blue sky, spinning, spinning. I turned on the emergency oxygen supply. Sometime earlier—I hadn’t felt it at the time—my suit had inflated, meaning I’d lost pressurization in the cockpit. The suit was now squeezing me, while the gg forces were throwing me forward, out of the seat, up toward the nose.

I reached for the destruct switches, opening the safety covers, had my hand over them, then changed my mind, deciding I had better see if I could get into position to use the ejection seat first. Under normal circumstances, there is only a small amount of clearance in ejecting. Thrown forward as I was, if I used the ejection seat the metal canopy rails overhead would cut off both my legs. I tried to pull my legs back, couldn’t. Yanking at one leg with both my hands, I succeeded in getting my heel into the stirrup on the seat. Then I did the same with the other heel. But I was still thrown forward, out of the seat, and couldn’t get my torso back. Looking up at the canopy rails, I estimated that using the seat in this position would sever both legs about three inches above the knee.

I didn’t want to cut them off, but if it was the only way to get out…

Thus far I had felt no fear. Now I realized I was on the edge of panic. “Stop and think.” The words came back to me. A friend who had also encountered complications trying to bail out had told me of forcing himself to stop struggling and just think his way out of his predicament. I tried it, suddenly realizing the obvious. The ejection seat wasn’t the only way to leave the plane. I could climb out! So intent had I been on one solution, I had forgotten the other.

Reaching up—not far, because I had been thrown upward as well as forward, with only the seat belt holding me down—I unlocked and released the canopy. It sailed off into space.

The plane was still spinning. I glanced at the altimeter. It had passed thirty-four thousand feet and was unwinding very fast. Again I thought of the destruct switches but decided to release my seat belt first, before activating the unit. Seventy seconds is not a very long time.

Immediately the centrifugal force threw me halfway out of the aircraft, with movement so quick my body hit the rear-view mirror and snapped it off. I saw it fly away. That was the last thing I saw, because almost immediately my face plate frosted over. Something was holding me connected to the aircraft; I couldn’t see what. Then I remembered the oxygen hoses; I’d forgotten to unfasten them.

The aircraft was still spinning. I tried to climb back in to actuate the destruct switches, but couldn’t; the g forces were too great. Reaching down, I tried to feel my way to the switches. I knew they were close, six inches away from my left hand at most, but I couldn’t slip my hand under the windscreen to get at them. Unable to see, I had no idea how fast I was falling, how close to the ground…

And then I thought: I’ve just got to try to save myself now. Kicking and squirming, I must have broken the oxygen hoses, because suddenly I was free, my body just falling, floating perfectly free. It was a pleasant, exhilarating feeling. Even better than floating in a swimming pool, I remember thinking.

I must have been in shock.