Francis Powers - Operation Overflight

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.”

Walter J. Boyne and Peter B. Mersky

Aviation Classics are inspired non-fiction and fictional accounts that reveal the human drama of flight. The series covers every era of military and civil aviation, is international in scope, and encompasses flying in all of its diversity. Some of the books are well-known best-sellers and others are superb, but unheralded, titles, which deserve a wider audience.

Ploesti: The Great Ground-Air Battle of 1 August 1943 by James Dugan and Carroll Stewart

Thirty Seconds over Tokyo by Ted W. Lawson

Copyright © 2004 by Claudia E. Powers and Curt Genry

Published in the United States by Potomac Books, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Powers, Francis Gary, 1929–

Operation Overflight: a memoir of the U-2 Incident / Francis Gary Powers with Curt Gentry.

p.cm.

ISBN 978-1-57488-422-7 (alk. paper)

1. Powers, Francis Gary, 1929– 2. U-2 Incident, 1960. 3. Cold War. I. Gentry, Curt, 1931– II. Title.

DK266.3 .P64 2002

973.921’092—dc21

2002071149

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper that meets the American National Standards Institute Z39-48 Standard.

Potomac Books, Inc.

22841 Quicksilver Drive

Dulles, Virginia 20166

First Edition

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

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.