This thread was inspired by Bill's mention in
another area that he had watched the "Bridge of Spies" movie.
The movie was based (loosely) on the story of Gary Francis Powers who was piloting the U-2 spy plane that was shot down over Russia in 1960. The USA was flying spy planes over the Soviet Union and didn't think that the Russians had air defenses that could reach that high. The CCCP and the USA were ready to begin talks on arms limitations in Paris but Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev refused US President Dwight Eisenhower's offer of "open skies" which would allow each country to fly over the other and film nuclear facilities for mutual verification purposes.
Since each country was about to agree to stop further development of new arms, but to allow each to keep the arsenal they already had, the USA wanted to verify what the CCCP really had. The Soviets were rapidly developing a new generation of weapons and didn't want the Americans to verify existing stockpiles. So, the CIA and Air Force began overflights with film capabilities, thinking that at 70,000 feet the Soviets could not see on their radars, nor had missiles to reach that height. Four years later the Soviets surprised the Americans on both counts.
In fact, the Soviets had seen the flights on radar as early as the year they began; in 1956. The USA had lost one of the early planes flying over the CCCP, but thought that it had gone down in a remote area and had not been recovered. It turns out that the Soviets never mentioned the first incident because they did not wish to suffer international humiliation due to their inability to shoot that high in 1956, and because they wanted to examine the specialized spy plane and its electronics package without tipping off the Americans.
During the first years, the pilots of American U-2 missions were members of the British air force as it was thought that if captured, the Soviets would treat the presence of American pilots as an act of war, whereas historical relations with the UK might give both sides some wiggle room.
Just a month before, April 1960, an American pilot had purposely flown a U-2c spy plane over Soviet air defense installations at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the heavily guarded area where Soviet space missions were launched. The Soviets scrambled MiG-19 and SU-9 fighter jets to intercept but the American plane was much faster and avoided attempts to intercept. As that flight was a deliberate probe of Soviet air defenses, it led to American confidence that the spy flights could continue successfully.
Powers had taken off from an air base in Pakistan and was en route to Norway, flying over Soviet airspace. It was May first, during May day celebrations in Moscow, just ten days prior to the Paris Summit. As he flew high over Kosulino (Sverdlovsk Oblast) in the Ural Mountains, two Soviet surface-to-air missiles were fired. The first missed, but the second struck the plane. The Soviets recovered the plane's film which showed that the last photos taken before the shoot down were of the Chelyabinsk-65 plutonium production facility.
Powers carried a modified silver dollar containing a lethal saxitoxin needle to use if necessary. It was his responsibility to destroy the plane, but when the plane was hit, his oxygen connection and the release lever malfunctioned and he narrowly escaped being killed while trying to eject. Instead of exploding in midair, the plane crashed on Russian soil. Powers floated to the ground, aware that an official looking car was following his descent. He was immediately captured by the KGB. Committing suicide was optional if seriously injured upon ejection and landing, or if threatened with torture after capture.
The Americans told the world that the U-2 was nothing more than a routine weather plane and that a malfunction of the plane's oxygen delivery system had caused the pilot to black out and drift over Soviet air space. Understandably angry, the Soviets cancelled the Paris arms talks and denounced the USA at the United Nations. Via back channels Khrushchev indicated that if the USA would apologize, he would continue the arms talks. Eisenhower however refused to apologize at first and the talks were cancelled after the Soviet delegation walked out of the Paris conference. He did issue a formal apology 11 days too late, but told Khrushchev that until the two reached an "open skies" treaty, the flights would continue. However, the emergence of Satellite technology quickly made such flights obsolete.
Although the US government knew that Powers was alive, the American public was left to believe that the American pilot had died from loss of oxygen. Khrushchev played along for awhile until the time was right to embarrass the American government with photos of a healthy Gary Powers being prepared for trial.
Powers was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 10 years: three in prison to be followed by seven years in a hard labour (Gulag) camp. Meanwhile, parts of the recovered aircraft were placed on public display in Moscow's Gorky Park as evidence of American spying. After his capture, the CIA considered Powers to be a traitor because he had not used the special suicide needle to avoid being captured alive.
The American government was content to leave Powers to rot in Russia, especially as the 30 year old Powers had admitted to the obvious fact that he was flying a spy plane during the trial. However, Powers father, a coal miner and shoe repairman with an elementary school education, along with the help of a small town newspaper editor of the Norton, Virginia "Coalfield Progress," decided to take Gary's case to the American public. Once the major networks and major newspaper syndicates took up the story, members of Congress began to ask the government what was being done to recover the American.
Today you can visit the display of this plane's remains at the Central Armed Forces Museum in Moscow. For several years that exhibit was off-limits to Americans, but eventually the Soviets returned a small part of the plane and some artifacts to be displayed at the Smithsonian National Air and Space museum in Washington.
Powers served two years in prison before the prisoner swap described in the "Bridge of Spies" movie.
