Years later Powers became a helicopter pilot for a local news station in LA...Then he ran out of fuel, crashed and died. My pop knew Powers.....
Many years ago, Lee Majors played Powers in a made for TV drama. Quite compelling, as I recall.
Boy I remember this...it was nuts...I was 16.
AVIATION Ping!....................
Just finished reading the U-2 chapter in “Skunk Works” by Ben Rich.
Turned out a Russian fighter pilot was also hit and Powers saw his chute.
Almost sounded like a lucky missile hit. Used to think I read that Powers had to descend a bit for some reason making him vulnerable.
They had been trying soome early radar spoofing stuff and one might have acted like a beacon for the missile.
Anyone who could fly a U2 is one hell of a good pilot. And flying it over the Soviet Union… balls of iron.
I was in the army in Germany in 1983 and was sent on a tour to Berlin. We also spent a day in East Berlin. One of sights we saw was the bridge where Powers was exchanged.
It was disgraceful the way Powers was treated when he returned. Basically driven out of military flying, and died piloting a TV helicopter in Los Angeles. The CIA was angry that he didn’t commit suicide!
Same with Bud Mahurin...they hounded him out of the service.
Some of our bravest men were utterly thrown away like garbage.
The Rooskie AA missiles kept getting progressively closer and Kelly Johnson knew it was just a matter of time until the Russians hit one of his U-2s. That’s why he began working on the SR-71 in 1958.
Johnson had a magic crystal ball be could see the future with. He’d started working on the P-38 Lightning in 1937 without anyone telling him too. In 1943, that still was the only fighter in the US inventory with the range to hunt down and kill Admiral Yamamoto. No Kelly Johnson, no dead Yamamoto.
Not to mention he brought in most of his projects ahead of schedule and under budget. When they made him, they broke the mold.
And the fact it was falling tail-first (if they’re telling the truth) would mean it must have lost a significant amount of the airframe forward of the reference datum line. That’s the only reason it ever would get stable free-falling tail-first, a change moving the center of gravity aft of the designed reference datum.
He was provided with a small poisoned needle, hidden in a silver dollar, by the C.I.A.
He was supposed to destroy the cameras and TS stuff kill hisself before capture by the godless communists. Oops