In the 1950s, political and intelligence officials were obsessed with the reputed “bomber gap,” the oft-repeated assertion that the Soviet Union had more and better intercontinental bombers than the United States. To disprove such assertions, President Dwight Eisenhower needed the imagery that the U-2 could provide. He reluctantly allowed overflights of the Soviet Union before a scheduled May 1960 Paris summit meeting but none after 1 May, the date of the flight for which Powers—who was “driven by the desire to do something patriotic for his country” (50)—was selected as the pilot.

When Powers took off from a base in Peshawar, Pakistan, on Sunday, 1 May 1960, he decided this time to take the silver dollar that contained a poison-dipped needle in case he was captured and unable to endure the torture that might ensue. The authors reiterate the key point that U-2 pilots were neither required nor even expected, to use the poison pin to avoid capture. Powers was thankfully unaware that recent improvements to Soviet SAMs, particularly the SA-2, colloquially known as the “flying telephone pole,” enabled it to reach the maximum altitude for a U-2, although he discovered that unfortunate fact some four hours into Mission 4154, known as “Grand Slam.”

Powers was taking notes when his thoughts were powerfully interrupted by a bright orange flash that he later estimated was behind and to the right of his aircraft, at his current elevation of 70,500 feet. The shock wave apparently detached the tail of the aircraft and caused the wings to break off. As the aircraft spiraled out of control, Powers realized that if he activated his ejection seat, the explosion would likely sever his legs. He instead decided to blow the canopy and bail out, but as soon as the canopy fell away, he was thrown out of the aircraft before he could reach the button that would destroy the camera but not the aircraft itself. He thought of using the poison needle, but decided not to because of his religious beliefs and an earlier conversation with his father about the eternal consequences of suicide. He landed in a plowed field, with onlookers standing by, one of whom relieved Powers of his sidearm. The authorities were notified, and within hours the captive pilot was on a commercial flight to Moscow, courtesy of the KGB.

Barbara, in government quarters at a military base in Adana, Turkey, was notified that Powers’s aircraft had not returned from the mission. As officials promptly flew her back to the States, she hoped “Frank,” as she and others knew him, was alive and would soon return home. Key administration officials hoped just the opposite—“It would be much more convenient for the American government if he were dead.” (74)  By Monday morning, President Eisenhower was assured that the aircraft was likely destroyed and the pilot dead, and within hours NASA had released a cover story that the U-2 had gone down on a routine weather mission. To keep Eisenhower above the fray, the decision was made that the State Department would take the lead in dealing with Russian authorities.

Meanwhile, Powers had been taken to the notorious Lubyanka Prison in Moscow for interrogation, which continued for 19 days, sometimes for 11 hours a day. An exultant Premier Nikita Khrushchev bided his time before he sprang his trap, displaying not only pieces of the wreckage in a Moscow park but also the very-much-alive pilot. A cornered Eisenhower confessed the true nature of the mission, for which he was roundly condemned. The captive pilot fell into a “fatalistic despair” over how his wife and family would take the news. In Milledgeville, Georgia. The physician, Dr. Baugh, treating Barbara Powers for a broken leg and a bronchial infection was asked by a CIA friend to keep an eye on Mrs. Powers, especially her mental health.

In Powers’s hometown of Pound, Virginia, his distraught father, Oliver, wrote Khrushchev a letter, one father to another, begging for Frank’s release. In response, the Soviet leader invited Oliver for a visit but made clear that his son would not be released. When Oliver sold Frank’s story to the media, it drove a wedge between Powers’s wife and his parents, and the two parties flew to Moscow separately for the trial, with CIA paying for the travel of Barbara, her mother, attorneys, and Dr. Baugh. Powers’s trial began on 17 August, his 31st birthday, and featured his contrite address, which appeared to many as overly conciliatory. Powers spoke of his shame and regret, a display prompting the authors to note, “The indignity of a US serviceman apologizing to the Soviets was difficult for many of Powers’ fellow citizens to accept.” (100)  At the conclusion of the three-day trial, Powers was found guilty of espionage and sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment—three years in prison, the remainder in a labor camp.

The authors describe the downing of Powers’s U-2 as “like a grenade tossed into the bitterly contested 1960 presidential election” (104). Adding fuel to the fire was the presumption—based on the erroneous belief by some that Soviet missiles could not reach the U-2 at maximum altitude—that Powers had to have descended, making his downing more likely and leaving him more culpable, a perception that refused to be dispelled. However, the election of John F. Kennedy as president prompted the freeing of two American RB-47 bomber crewmen, who had also been interrogated at Lubyanka, giving Powers the hope of a similar release. But the debacle of the Bay of Pigs invasion and the construction of the Berlin Wall dispelled any such hopes. However, an offer made by Oliver Powers to swap his son for imprisoned Soviet KGB Colonel William Fisher, aka “Rudolph Abel,” ultimately led, some 21 months later, to the famous spy swap of 10 February 1962 that freed Powers, an event popularized in the recent film Bridge of Spies. A US Air Force plane was dispatched to fly Powers home, but the aloof and hostile treatment by the crew proved to be an omen, a visible and palpable symbol of a nation’s persistent discomfiture with the young U-2 pilot and his experience.

Frank was reunited with his parents at a CIA safe house in Maryland, along with Barbara, 30 pounds heavier and smelling of alcohol. A reporter’s embarrassing discovery of the safe house prompted relocation to the Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, area for three weeks of debriefing. Although DCI Allen Dulles told Powers that “We are proud of what you have done,” that was a minority opinion and not shared by Dulles’s successor, John McCone, who appointed a board of inquiry to investigate the shootdown. Following eight days of closed-door hearings, the board exonerated Powers, authorized him $52,500 in back pay, and returned him to CIA.

For Powers, his inconvenient survival and his apparent display of contrition would plague him the rest of his days. He was shocked by media articles that questioned his patriotism, dubbing him as “something less than a hero.” (119) Writer of the James Bond novels and World War II intelligence veteran Ian Fleming caustically commented, “He was expendable. Expend him!” (123)  The most hurtful blow, however, came from the White House, which at the last minute cancelled his scheduled 6 March 1962 personal meeting with the president—no explanation was given, though it soon became known that Attorney General Bobby Kennedy wanted to try Powers for treason. Powers was especially pained when he recalled that the RB-47 pilots had been welcomed to the Oval Office.

Meantime, much as the U-2 had, Powers’s personal life went into a death spiral. Divorce, remarriage, and relocation to California in service as a test pilot for Lockheed followed. While there, he wrote an autobiography, over CIA objections, published as Operation Overflight. Lockheed then fired him, which both Frank and his son believed was done at CIA’s behest, fueling Frank’s “creeping cynicism and resentment” of the agency. (137)  Frank then became a reporter for local radio station KGIL, piloting a traffic helicopter. Just 10 months later, on 1 August 1977, his chopper crashed while he reported on California wildfires, and Frank was killed instantly.

Francis Gary Powers Jr. was nine years old at the time, and his reaction to the tragedy in the coming years would cause him to go increasingly off the rails—cutting class, drinking alcohol, breaking and entering, stealing test results, picking locks. But as his internal compass righted itself, he had a growing desire to learn the truth about his dad, becoming what he termed “a vigorous defender of my father’s memory.” (170)  In 1990, at 25 years old, Frank Jr. managed to wrangle an invitation to the 30th anniversary of the shootdown in Moscow, where he saw from afar pieces of his dad’s plane, stood in his dad’s former cell, and immersed himself in his father’s experience and thoughts. Five years later, he met Sergei Khrushchev (who became a US citizen in 1991), and in 1996, when Powers Jr. founded the Cold War Museum, Sergei became a member of the board of directors; as he put it, “It is important that we remember.” (169) 

Following a 1998 declassification conference at Ft. McNair, Powers Jr. located a document indicating that when his father was shot down, he was flying at 70,500 feet, finally dispelling the idea that Frank had descended before the explosion. Powers Jr. continued to push the Air Force to award his dad the POW Medal, which the service ultimately did, and donated a large collection of items to the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum in 1995. Not until after the fall of the Soviet Union did Powers, Jr. learn from former Soviet officials an unknown part of his father’s story—in a “friendly fire” incident, one of the MiG fighters dispatched to shoot down the U-2 was destroyed by another SA-2 missile, killing the pilot, Sergei Safronov. Powers Jr. tells of connecting with Safronov’s son and coming to a touching reconciliation. (262)

Reminded that the RB-47 pilots had received Silver Star medals, Frank Jr. was energized to push for one for his dad, a request finally approved in December 2011. It took the approval of President Jimmy Carter to do so, but he was able to get permission to have his father buried at Arlington National Cemetery, although the Air Force allowed only an Honor Guard to represent the service. Still looking for answers, he returned to Moscow in December 2017 and, in the company of a pair of former KGB officers, visited the Hall of Columns, where his father’s trial had taken place 57 years earlier. During this trip Frank Jr. became, as he put it, “a man at peace”—with his father’s actions, with the restoration of his father’s good name, and with his mission to tell the story of the Cold War, with a powerful personal twist.

Regrettably, the book is marred by several factual errors, items not mentioned in Joseph Goulden’s February 2019 review of the book in the Washington Times. The authors misidentify OSS as the “Office of Special Services” (28) and exhibit ignorance of both the origins of CIA and the way the agency conducts covert action. The implication that CIA’s presence in the offices on E. St. Northwest in Washington in the early days was somehow “spooky” is belied by the CIA sign that hung outside for all to read. The authors also used poetic license in spelling the “Bridge of Spies” as the “Glienicker Bridge” (164).

On the other hand, the authors note that one of the first Americans to see the wreckage of the U-2 in Moscow was, amazingly, the father of Steven Spielberg, who was on business in Moscow at the time, and who also expressed the opinion that “CIA failed its pilots by not preparing them to be captured,” (72) a lesson apparently not learned from the experiences of World War II POWs, who made the same lament. The text is nicely complemented by several photos, including three from the Center for the Study of Intelligence publication The CIA and the U-2 Program, 1954–1974, though readers will note the glaring omission of any photos of Barbara.

In sum, Spy Pilot is a brief but engaging and readable book on a significant event in Cold War history, a deeply personal book about a young man’s relentless search for the truth about his often-maligned father and his ultimate recognition as a hero.

*     *     * 

The Reviewer: David A. Foy is the Intelligence Community historian on the History Staff of the Center for the Study of Intelligence. He is a frequent contributor of book reviews.

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All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed in this journal are those of the authors. Nothing in any of the articles should be construed as asserting or implying US government endorsement of their factual statements and interpretations. Articles by non-US government employees are copyrighted.

State Department Version:

U-2 Overflights and the Capture of Francis Gary Powers, 1960

On May 1, 1960, the pilot of an American U-2 spyplane was shot down while flying though Soviet airspace. The fallout over the incident resulted in the cancellation of the Paris Summit scheduled to discuss the ongoing situation in divided Germany, the possibility of an arms control or test ban treaty, and the relaxation of tensions between the USSR and the United States.

Francis Gary Powers with model of U-2 plane

As early as 1955, officials in both Moscow and Washington had grown concerned about the relative nuclear capabilities of the Soviet Union and the United States. Given the threat that the nuclear arms race posed to national security, leadership in both countries placed a priority on information about the other side’s progress. At a conference in Geneva in 1955, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower proposed an “open skies” plan, in which each country would be permitted to make overflights of the other to conduct mutual aerial inspections of nuclear facilities and launchpads. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchevrefused the proposal, continuing the established Soviet policy of rejecting international inspections in any form. Meanwhile, Khrushchev also claimed that the Soviet Union had developed numerous intercontinental ballistic missiles, which only motivated the United States Government to look for new ways to verify developments in the Soviet nuclear program.

The U-2 spyplane program grew out of these concerns. The U-2 was a special high-altitude plane that flew at a ceiling of 70,000 feet. Because it flew at such heights, it was thought it would be possible for the planes to pass over the Soviet Union undetected by radar on the ground. It was important that the overflights be undetected, because normally an unauthorized invasion of another country’s airspace was considered an act of war. Operated through the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the first flight over Moscow and Leningrad (St. Petersburg) took place on July 4, 1956. The flights continued intermittently over the next four years. It was later revealed that the Soviets did pick up the flights on radar, and the United States lost a plane over the Soviet Union in 1959, but as long as there was no definitive proof connecting the flights to the United States there was no advantage for the Soviets to raise the issue publicly lest it draw attention to the Soviet inability to shoot down the offending flights.

Powers Trial

On May 1, 1960, the situation changed. On the eve of the Paris Summit and during the May Day holiday, CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers took off from a base in Pakistan bound for another base in Norway, with his planned flight path transgressing 2,900 miles of Soviet airspace. Near the city of Sverdlovsk Oblast in the Ural Mountains, Powers’ plane was shot down by a Soviet surface-to-air missile. Powers ejected and parachuted safely to the ground, where he was captured by the KGB, and held for interrogation. The plane crashed, but parts of it were recovered and placed on public display in Moscow as evidence of American deceit.

Although the capture of Powers provided the Soviets the concrete proof that the United States had been conducting the flights, it was not immediately clear what the impact would be for the Paris Summit. At first, and before they had confirmation that Powers had survived, U.S. officials claimed that the U-2 had been conducting a routine weather flight but experienced a malfunction of its oxygen delivery system that had caused the pilot to black out and drift over Soviet air space. On May 7, however, Khrushchev revealed that Powers was alive and uninjured, and clearly had not blacked out from oxygen deprivation. Moreover, the Soviets recovered the plane mostly intact, including the aerial camera system. It became instantly apparent that the weather survey story was a cover-up for a spy program. Khrushchev had publicly committed himself to the idea of “peaceful coexistence” with the United States and the pursuit of détente, so from his perspective, if U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower denied any knowledge of the spy program and the United States apologized, he would have continued the summit. Spying was common, and of course, the Soviet Union had its own agents reporting on developments in the United States. Eisenhower, however, refused to issue a formal apology to the Soviet Union; he had taken a great personal interest in the spyplane program, and considered the violation of Soviet airspace and the reconnaissance of Soviet nuclear facilities serious enough to personally approve each flight. On May 11, Eisenhower finally acknowledged his full awareness of the entire program and of the Powers flight in particular. Moreover, he explained that in the absence of an “open skies” agreement, such spy flights were a necessary element in maintaining national defense, and that he planned to continue them.

Wreckage of crashed U-2 Plane

Eisenhower’s statement left Khrushchev in a difficult position. If he did nothing, that would be tantamount to acknowledging implicitly the right of the United States to spy. But any action Khrushchev did take had the potential to scuttle the upcoming conference and his larger plans for a Soviet-American détente. Ultimately, he demanded that Eisenhower apologize for the past flights and promise to discontinue them as a precondition for entering into the planned negotiations on Germany. Eisenhower’s refusal led the Soviet delegation to leave Paris just as the summit was about to begin.

After extensive questioning by the KGB, Powers was convicted of spying and sentenced to three years in prison and seven more of hard labor. In February, 1962, however, he and a detained American student were traded for a captured Soviet spy, Rudolf Abel. Although Eisenhower refused to end the U-2 program, it was quickly overtaken by new technology, as satellite images replaced aerial photographs. For his part, Khrushchev abandoned his attempts to cooperate with Eisenhower, opting instead to wait for the inauguration of the new U.S. President, John F. Kennedy, elected to office in November, 1960.