Operation Overflight

by Francis Gary Powers

  In 1970 the U-2 will celebrate its fifteenth birthday. Those few which remain, that is.

  Of the original aircraft, less than one-third survive. None died of old age. None were junked for parts. All met violent ends. Communist China accounted for at least four, Cuba two, Russia one. Communist China has released a photograph of four it downed. The actual number may be higher. These particular planes are owned and piloted by Nationalist China. In addition to the crash which killed Major Anderson, another went down while returning from a Cuban overflight.

  Ironically, the aircraft which made so many headlines during the sixties was never produced during that decade. Production ceased in the late fifties.

  It’s no secret that the U-2, manned by USAF pilots, again proved its value over Vietnam. Elsewhere, its primary use today is for high-altitude air sampling to detect and measure radio-activity. Not too long ago the U-2 also played a major role in a program to obtain data on high-level turbulence, to determine its effect on supersonic transports.

  Some have the impression that the U-2 became obsolete with the advent of the space satellite, just as the covert agent was supposedly superseded by the spy flight. Neither example is true, and I believe it is dangerous if we deceive ourselves into thinking this is so. Each had, and continues to have, its uses and can obtain information which the other can’t. As far as I know, a satellite can’t fly over a country at any time of the day or night and photograph exactly what it chooses. Nor can it fly slow enough to monitor radio and radar messages in their entirety. Too, for all the claims made by both Russia and the United States, I’ve still to see any photographic evidence that its cameras can pick out troops in the field or even smaller objects. Someday maybe. But at present I remain unconvinced.

  Yet the fact remains that as an aircraft the U-2 is a vanishing species.

  When I began working at Lockheed I had about six hundred hours’ flight time in the U-2. Today I have in excess of two thousand. I know and respect the plane, and would like to see its life extended. Of a number of possible uses which have occurred to me, two may merit mention. One is the possibility that NASA, or possibly one of the larger universities, obtain one of the Air Force U-2s and adapt it for installation of a telescope for use in astronomy. Since it flies above ninety percent of the earth’s atmosphere, the photographs would be exceptionally clear. The other possibility would be for a TV network to purchase several for transmission of weather pictures. Thus, before leaving for work in the morning, the viewer could not only see the weather picture over the area where he lived and worked, he could also follow the course of storm fronts as they moved in and know what was coming up. Only someone who has flown in a U-2 can realize how graphic such an overview can be.

  There are, I’m sure, other possibilities such as map making, particularly of heretofore uncharted areas. And in wanting to prolong the usefulness of the U-2, my motives, I must admit, are not entirely unselfish. For the year 1970 will probably mark the end of my association with the U-2. In October, 1969, as this book was in its final stages, I was informed by “Kelly” Johnson that, U-2 test work being scarce, as of early 1970 my services would no longer be required at Lockheed.

  As I write this, it’s possible I’ve already made my last U-2 flight.

  Regrets? Yes, I have a few. My greatest is not that I made the flight on May 1, I960; rather the opposite—that we did not do more when we had the chance. We had the opportunity, the pilots, the planes, and, I sincerely believe, the need. Yet from the very start of the program in 1956 we made far fewer overflights of Russia than were possible. Moreover, from early 1958 until April, I960, we made almost none. If the program was important to our survival in 1956 and 1957—and I’m convinced it was because of the single flight which exposed the Russian bomber hoax and alerted us to the USSR’s emphasis on missiles, then in itself it alone was worth the cost of the whole program, saving not only millions of dollars but, possibly, millions of lives. The overflights became even more important as Russia’s missile development progressed. We could have done much more than we did. I regret that we did not. I only hope that time won’t prove this to have been one of our costliest mistakes.

  This is my most serious regret. I have others, of course. But my participation in Operation Overflight isn’t one of them. I’m very proud of that. While I might wish that many of the things that followed had never happened, I have the satisfaction of knowing that I served my country—and, I believe, well.

  That is no small satisfaction.

  On that day when all men and all nations agree, there will be no more need for U-2s, RB-47s, EC-121s, spy ships, and surveillance satellites, and their successors.

  Until such time, it is almost inevitable that there will be more “incidents.”

  But that doesn’t mean that we can’t learn from our mistakes.

  EPILOGUE

  by Francis Gary Powers, Jr. *

  The Cold War lasted for another thirty-one years after my father was shot down over the Soviet Union. The U-2 Incident forced the U.S. government to admit publicly that a worldwide intelligence network operated by the CIA was able to penetrate the Soviet Union. This effort, in the words of President Eisenhower, was a “vital but distasteful necessity in order to avert another Pearl Harbor.”

  Although my father’s flight—the twenty-fourth over the Soviet Union—was the last to overfly that country, U-2s operated by the CIA continued to fly reconnaissance missions over Cuba, the Middle East, China, Southeast Asia, and other areas. And more U-2s were shot down by SA-2 missiles, the same weapon that downed my father’s aircraft on May Day I960. The CIA operated the U-2 until 1974, when the agency’s surviving U-2s were transferred to the U.S. Air Force.

  After his return to the United States, my father worked briefly at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, near Washington, D.C., training agents on how to conduct themselves if captured and subjected to interrogation. One day, as my father turned a hallway corner, he bumped into an attractive woman. Coffee was spilled. He offered to buy Sue Downey another cup and, with his car in the shop, managed from the subsequent conversation to get a ride to work from her. In repayment, he asked her out to lunch. She accepted that invitation and soon lunch turned into dinner, and dinner into romance. My father and his first wife, Barbara, were separated. That marriage, rocky from the start, didn’t survive the shootdown, his imprisonment, and the subsequent press coverage. They divorced officially in January 1963.

  Dad tired of the desk job at CIA. Upon his return from the Soviet Union, Dad had been told by Kelly Johnson, who had designed the U-2, that he could work at Lockheed anytime he needed a job. In the fall of 1962, Dad took Johnson up on the offer. After he passed the physical and psychological examinations and was requalified in the U-2, Dad moved to California to work for Johnson at the Lockheed Skunk Works. In the meantime, not content with his longdistance relationship with Sue Downey, Dad invited her to Los Angeles for a visit. He proposed marriage to her a few weeks later. She received two diamonds, one for each year that they had known each other. They married and started a family, which included my sister, Claudia, a daughter from Mom’s previous marriage. I came along in 1965.

  In 1969, Dad started working on his autobiography. Shortly before Operation Overflight was published in early 1970, Kelly Johnson called him into his office at Burbank to inform my father that there was no more work for him at Lockheed. Kelly also told him that the CIA had been paying his salary directly to Lockheed for his work as a U-2 test pilot. (The U-2s were being transferred to the Air Force at the time.) The agency, it appeared, was willing to pay Dad’s salary so long as he kept quiet about the U-2 Incident, but the book’s publication had ruffled some feathers at Langley, so Lockheed had to let him go.

  In 1972, after two years of promoting the book and appearing on the lecture and talk show circuit, my father found a pilot’s job, in this case reporting on weather, traffic, and news for KGIL Radio Station in Los Angeles. In 1976, he became a helicopter traffic pilot
-reporter for KNBC News Channel 4. On August 1, 1977, while conducting a traffic report over Los Angeles, his helicopter crashed, killing him and George Spears, his cameraman.

  The events between that day in August and weeks later, when I started junior high school, are a little blurred. Everything was in a whirlwind. A friend’s dad had driven me home from summer school. It was about 1:15 p.m. No sooner had I set foot inside our home than Mom dragged me out again to catch a quick meal at a local restaurant and to pick up some groceries. We missed the breaking news about my dad’s fatal crash because the car radio was broken. When we arrived home, two close family friends, Mrs. Neff and Mrs. Marlow, greeted us. Mrs. Marlow was the wife of Jess Marlow, who was the anchorman and my dad’s colleague at KNBC. Mrs. Neff said, “Sue, you had better sit down.” In reply, Mom asked her to help with the groceries and they would talk in a minute. Again Mrs. Neff said, “Sue, you had better sit down.” Suddenly my mom’s expression changed; she looked as if she had seen a ghost. As the groceries dropped, I heard my mother say, “Oh my God, it’s Frank. If he is alive, take me to him; if he is dead let me know.” All the two women could do was shake their heads and shrug their shoulders because they didn’t know yet or weren’t telling.

  I found myself in my room staring out the window thinking that Dad had been in an accident and had broken an arm or a leg. Mrs. Neff talked with me a bit, nothing that I remember other than being asked if there were a friend I would like to go visit. My automatic response was Chris Conrad, a life long friend and son of actor Robert Conrad of “Wild, Wild West” and “Baa Baa Black Sheep” fame. Chris and I had met in the second grade and grown up together.

  After a telephone call to Chris, Mrs. Neff drove me to the Conrad home in Encino. About the time we arrived, Mrs. Conrad came home and asked Mrs. Neff why we were there. Mrs. Neff explained that there had been an accident and that my father had been injured. They talked alone for a while in whispers as Chris and I poked each other. When Mrs. Conrad gave me a huge bear hug, my eyes started to water and I wiped away the tears that were forming, not realizing why I was crying and trying not to cry in front of one of my friends.

  Within a half-hour after Mrs. Neff had left, the phone rang at the Conrad’s home. Mrs. Conrad answered and I heard her say, “Yes, I know, Gary is here now.” With that she asked me to come to the phone because “Duke,” as Bob Conrad was known, wanted to speak with me. Mr. Conrad gave me a pep talk and told me how much my father meant to a lot of people and some other remarks that were meant to comfort and console me. I remember him saying that my father was a great man, a true American hero, and that I should be proud to carry his name.

  I think I spent the night at the Conrad’s house. I returned home to find a large number of people there, including another good friend of my dad’s, Gregg Anderson, who was coordinating the phone calls, burial plans, airline reservations, hotel reservations, and the press. For the next several hours different people arrived and departed, with more friends and family arriving over the next several days. A memorial service was held and I heard that Barbara, my dad’s first wife, attended, although I do not remember her. I remember riding to the service with my mother, sister, and aunts, and gazing out of the window as we pulled up to the church, which overflowed with people. The limousine doors opened and many of my friends and their parents greeted me. I also saw a gaggle of news reporters with cameras and microphones extended toward us. As we entered the church, Mom whispered to me that I should not say a word.

  Jess Marlow gave the eulogy. I heard a lot of sobbing. It seemed to end as quickly as it had begun and we exited the side door only to be met by an onslaught of news reporters with their cameras and microphones. I remember wanting to jump out and step on a microphone that was being held inches from me. Mother reminded me not to say a word and to do nothing as we walked directly towards the waiting car. The sea of reporters parted as black doors opened and we made our way home.

  The wake lasted into the early hours of the morning. I remember being downstairs in the TV room and peeking around the corner as people watched the evening news. I saw Jess Marlow give an overview of the service and I remember that he started to cry when he said that Frank would be missed by all at KNBC.

  General Leo P. Gerry, who had been the Air Force project officer for the U-2, was at the wake; he pulled me aside and said that my father had been issued the Distinguished Flying Cross and that he would make certain we received it. Some nine years passed before, in 1986, we received Dad’s medal at an informal ceremony during a U-2 reunion in Las Vegas.

  My father’s burial plans remained unsettled. Dad had told Gregg Anderson that in the event of his death he was not to let my mother attempt to bury him at Arlington National Cemetery. He felt that too many people in the CIA and government would oppose it. Every time Gregg asked Mom where Frank was to be buried she would say Arlington. Once when Gregg asked if there was an alternative, she said, “No”—only Arlington.

  Gregg called CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to gauge the agency’s attitude. He told me later that it was the oddest experience that he had ever had. Every time he called, the line would pick up but no one would say anything until Gregg spoke first. As soon as Gregg identified himself and said he was calling on behalf of the Francis Gary Powers family, the person on the other end would reply and the conversation would start. The details are not clear, but in the end Mom had her way, though she and Gregg needed the help of a congressman who assisted us in getting President Carter to authorize Dad’s interment at Arlington. While waiting in the airport lounge at the start of the trip to Washington, Mom excused herself to, as she said, check on Dad. Only years later did I learn that she had gone to look in the coffin before it was placed in the airplane.

  Subsequently, at the cemetery prior to the burial, Mom told me that my father was being buried in a section of Arlington that was off the beaten path. It was a spot on top of a hill that the tour buses didn’t visit. She also said that it was the section of Arlington where several CIA heroes were buried. At the funeral a man walked up to me and put a coin in my hand. He said that “Zigurd” wanted me to have this. Zigurd had been my Dad’s cellmate in prison in the Soviet Union. I turned around to show my mom, saying, look what this man gave me. She asked, “What man?” When I turned around to point him out he had disappeared into the crowd.

  On the flight back to California, as I was looking out the window in a clear blue sky there was one dark cloud in the distance. As we flew by the dark cloud took on the shape of a silent U-2 floating in the sky. Several minutes passed, and I asked Mom if she had seen what I had seen. She nodded her head yes, and fought to hold back tears. I said, “Mom, don’t cry. It’s Dad’s way of letting us know it will be all right.”

  *Grateful acknowledgment is made to Doubleday and Company, Inc., for permission to quote from Waging Peace: The White House Years 1956-1961, by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

  *I wish to acknowledge the help of Norman Polmar in preparing the afterword.