Posted on 05/01/2010 3:45:39 AM PDT by kronos77
MOSCOW — Fifty years ago Saturday, U.S. pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down while flying a U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union, a dramatic episode of the Cold War that pushed the rival superpowers closer to confrontation.
Now his son has come to Moscow on a mission of his own: By telling his late father's story, he hopes to help preserve Cold War history and prevent future generations of Russians and Americans from ever again facing the threat of nuclear war.
On May 1, 1960, Powers was in the cockpit of the world's highest-flying plane, concentrated on keeping his course steady to film Soviet military bases far below, when he saw an orange flash all around him. His plane had been hit by a Soviet surface-to-air missile. He parachuted to safety but was quickly captured.
In the months before Powers' plane was downed, Moscow and Washington had been moving cautiously toward a thaw. The U-2 incident shattered these efforts.
It also humiliated U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had to admit that an initial claim by his administration that the plane was on a weather mission was a lie.
"In order to understand the world today you must understand how we got here and we got here through the Cold War," the pilot's 44-year-old son, Francis Gary Powers Jr., said Friday.
"And then we have to understand how this period of time developed and expanded and how close we came to nuclear war, but through diplomacy and some luck we were able to avert it during the Cuban Missile Crisis" of 1962.
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
Francis Powers Jr. visits Russia 50 years after his dad was shot down over USSR
Tag cloud: News, Russia, Society, World May 1, 2010 14:01 Moscow Time
Francis Gary Powers jr. Photo: EPA
The son of a U-2 US reconnaissance plane pilot shot down over the USSR half a century ago to the day, has come to Russia. In the run-up to the anniversary Francis Powers Jr, the founder of a Cold War museum in the United States, met the designers of Russian antiaircraft missile systems. The S-75 missile hit U-2 and subsequently won the air war over Vietnam, said a missile system designer Karl Alperovich. The two men shared reminiscences and shook hands. On May 1st 1960 Francis Gary Powers was flying a mission at an altitude of 20,000 metres, inaccessible to the antiaircraft defences that were available at the time. But the plane was brought down, while the pilot, who catapulted, was arrested when he landed. Two years later he was swapped in Berlin for the Soviet intelligence officer Rudolph Abel.
On May 1, 1960, Powers was in the cockpit of the world's highest-flying plane, concentrated on keeping his course steady to film Soviet military bases far below, when he saw an orange flash all around him. His plane had been hit by a Soviet surface-to-air missile. He parachuted to safety but was quickly captured.
Uh .. not exactly.
If Powers had maintained his correct altitude, those SAMs never would have been near him, let alone HIT the U2, but he didn't. A few years back it finally came out that Powers took the U2 lower, well into SAM range, over some 'alleged' instrument reading.
The Soviets were tracking him on radar the moment he entered their airspace but their SAMs couldn't touch him. But as soon as he went lower, that's when the Soviets launched the SAMs and that's when things went 'boom' -- and was Powers' mistake number one.His second mistake was he didn't take that teeny cyanide capsule he was supposed to if things went wrong. And which he freely agreed to do when he signed up to fly the U2 for the CIA. He knew it was a potential suicide mission every time he climbed in the cockpit, but in plain English -- he chickened out.
That's why he became a nobody after he was exchanged for a Russian spy that we had. The USAF didn't want him back and the CIA sure as hell didn't. He was Persona non grata.
(Per a documentary I watched on the Military or History International Channel (I switch back and forth a lot so recalling which channel is hard - but I saw it with my own two eyes).
The Russians have not forgotten about Gary Powers. When I was in Irkutsk a few years ago, the Russians brought it up. Of course, they also told me that many Russians believed that Mamie Eisenhower was Russian.
I vaguely remember it, I was quite young.
The U2 is up there with some of the most incredible technologies we’ve made. Unless I’m wrong, they are still in service, or were only recently retired.
Still active. Look on the apron at Beale AFB...
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