Francy Powers Jr. - Spy Pilot - Francis Gary Powers, the U-2 Incident, and a Controversial Cold War Legacy

I was able to see the curvature of the earth and the pitch-black sky above. It was exhilarating, awesome, wonderful. And after a while, it was a little boring.

No one was firing missiles at us.

It was yet another way for me to try to understand my father’s journey on a very personal level.

After we touched down and taxied to the reviewing stand, a contingent of officials recognized my father with the POW Medal as well as the Distinguished Flying Cross, the National Defense Service Medal, and the CIA Director’s Medal.

It was a wonderful show of support, with the Air Force and the agency publicly acknowledging my father’s role in helping win the Cold War. I would never forget the look of satisfaction on my mother’s face.

When Dad was inducted into the 2000 class of the Kentucky Aviation Hall of Fame, the emcee said, “Our next enshrine endured much in the service of his country, not the least of which was the misunderstanding of the American people.” 6

Friend Bob Gilliland, who nominated him, called Powers one of “the most famous pilot ever to go aloft.” 7

The honor gratified Mom and me, but we still chafed at the periodic insults to his memory.

Despite the lingering bitterness caused by the Smithsonian Institution’s snub of the Powers family in 1986, we donated a large number of Dad’s items to the National Air and Space Museum in 1995. When the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Center opened in 2003, adjacent to Dulles International Airport, displaying several of those items, the Powers family was once again excluded. Two different officials, including the director, General Jack Dailey, told me that tickets to the grand opening were limited to financial donors, and there were no seats available for the family of an iconic aviator.

Not to be denied, I worked the phones and found a way into the event, as an aide to Congressman Tom Davis, a Republican from Virginia.

Once the festivities began, and a long list of artifact donors and the family members of prominent pilots were recognized—everyone, it seemed, except the Powers family—I was surrounded, in the back of the hangar, by a sea of empty seats.

It was yet another painful blow. It was hard not to see it as a direct insult not only to my father but also to the Powers family.

After I traded letters with the director of the National Air and Space Museum, my mom fired off her own message to Dailey. “I am again hurt by the lack of respect afforded my husband and his family… especially after our family’s artifact donations that you so proudly display at both facilities,” she said. 8

Out of this unfortunate experience, we eventually developed a good working relationship with the Smithsonian. It makes me proud to see Dad honored among all those important figures in the history of aviation.

When my mother died in June 2004, I took possession of a large collection of reel-to-reel audio tapes, featuring my father talking about all aspects of his life, which he recorded in 1969, while working with coauthor Curt Gentry on Operation Overflight . After converting the tapes to compact discs, I began methodically listening to the audio. Sometimes I played a CD while negotiating traffic. Other times I set aside time to go through a track in my office, slipping on headphones to make it easier to hear Dad’s words forming sentences and paragraphs. The details they contained proved very helpful in my journey of discovery, while producing a rather-powerful listening experience.

Oh, that’s how Dad sounded , I remembered thinking at one point. Time had stolen something that the tapes restored: I had forgotten the sound of my own father’s voice.

One reel was especially emotional. While listening to Dad discuss an aspect of his captivity, I was startled to hear the broken English of a small child’s voice injecting himself into the conversation.

“Hello, Daddy!”

It was my own voice.

“Hello, Gary,” Dad replied. “Your face is dirty!” 1

It was a heartwarming moment for the son to hear his four-year-old self, interacting with his father and then his mother, who talked about their upcoming dinner.

I played the passage over and over again, all the while wiping back bittersweet tears.

As the custodian of such things, I also took great care to preserve and transcribe the personal journal my father kept while incarcerated at Vladimir Prison, as well as a large cache of family letters, including dozens Frank wrote and received while in the Soviet Union.

One batch of letters was presumed lost for good. Fortunately, a couple from Georgia salvaged Dad’s prison correspondence to Barbara from a storage facility after the rent went unpaid in the 1960s. After hearing about my efforts to learn about my father, they sought me out. We rendezvoused while I was on the road, between speeches, and they returned the letters while sharing a meal.

I was very surprised and so grateful for their kindness.

Thus the very personal exchanges between a husband and his wife, trapped on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain during a very trying time, were safeguarded for posterity.

After filing several different Freedom of Information Act requests, and being flooded with paperwork that was mostly useless, I finally acquired the transcript of the lengthy debriefing of my father by CIA officials in February 1962.

Together, these four surviving media instruments offered me a remarkably intimate glimpse into the most difficult period of my father’s life.

It was almost like Dad was speaking to me from the grave.

Not long after arriving at Vladimir, Dad’s new cellmate encouraged him to start keeping a diary. In this Zigurd Kruminsh contributed significantly to his friend’s enduring record. (I repeatedly tried to track down Kruminsh’s family, without success, but eventually concluded that he was a KGB plant.)

Writing about the day of the U-2 Incident several months later, Dad recorded:

May 1, 1960. It is very hard to recall all that happened on this day. It is definitely a day I will never forget. I came closer to death on this day than any day I can remember….

Before and during the flight I continually thought of all the small things that could happen to cause trouble to the plane. One little screw could come loose or one little wire break and I would have to land on Soviet territory…. I was not worried at all about being shot down. I firmly believed that there was nothing that could reach my altitude and as long as I maintained my altitude and had no engine trouble I would be safe…. 2

Exactly what constituted his “maximum altitude” was to be debated for years, contributing significantly to the swirl of misinformation. CIA debriefers addressed the subject two years later:

US Interrogator: Alright. Let’s discuss altitude, ah, to the best of your recollections, Frank.

Powers: Starting at the beginning of the flight?

US Interrogator: Well, yeah, as to what your programmed altitudes were and, ah, what your recollections were.

Powers: Now briefing on that was to climb according to, ah, the regular schedule we had to carry in the climb which I did and, ah, climb to 70,000 feet—level—stay at 70,000 feet the entire flight. But the airplane will not with a full fuel load would not climb to, ah, 70,000 feet immediately. It takes normal[ly] a half hour or so, or I don’t know exactly how much time—I can’t recall. But I was at 70,000 feet I think shortly after crossing the Russian border. I don’t remember exactly where I got the, ah, altitude, but I remained at 70 the entire flight until this happened.