* The 1950s were a time of remarkable advances in aviation, with aircraft flying ever faster and higher. The Lockheed company saw the new technologies as providing a basis for a high-altitude spyplane that could overfly the Soviet Union. The result was the U-2, which was obtained by the US Central Intelligence Agency and the Air Force. It went into service in 1956, remaining a deep secret -- until one was shot down over the USSR in 1960, resulting in a noisy international incident.
* In the early 1950s, the Cold War was well into its first severe chilly phase. The United States feared a surprise nuclear attack by the Soviet Union, and developing surveillance capabilities to allow America to keep an eye on the USSR became a high priority. From early on, surveillance flights were flown over the "Iron Curtain" -- much to the anger of the Soviets, who built up air defenses to deal with the intrusions.
In 1953, the US Air Force (USAF) issued a request for proposals to Bell, Fairchild, and Martin for a new high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, codenamed BALD EAGLE. Martin got the contract, to work on a modification of the company's B-57, a license-built British English Electric Canberra, with the reconnaissance variant designated the "RB-57D".
The Lockheed company was not included in the request for proposals -- but Lockheed's chief engineer, Clarence A. "Kelly" Johnson, felt he had a better shot at the requirement than the competition. Johnson and his team produced a design for an aircraft, the "CL-282", basically a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter that had greatly extended wings and was stripped of all nonessentials. It would be capable of flying at an altitude of 21,340 meters (70,000 feet) and speed of 925 KPH (500 KT) over a range of 4,800 kilometers (3,000 miles), returning imagery of a strip of land 320 kilometers (200 miles) wide and 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles) long. The images would have enough detail to show individual persons.
Johnson submitted the CL-282 concept to the USAF in May 1954, but the service was disinterested. However, in that same month, US President Dwight Eisenhower approved the creation of a high-level "Technological Capabilities Panel (TCP)" to consider new directions in defense technology, including intelligence gathering. The TCP was enthusiastic about the CL-282, and on 24 November 1954, Eisenhower authorized development of the aircraft under control of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), with an initial contract placed on 9 December 1954. Eisenhower knew that the CL-282 ran counter to the Air Force's high-altitude reconnaissance effort -- but the president wanted to bolster the CIA's intelligence capabilities, since he believed the armed services tended to produce self-serving intelligence.
The effort was codenamed AQUATONE, with the aircraft itself codenamed IDEALIST. The CIA's Richard M. Bissell JR was assigned to direct the project. Bissell was a Yale-educated economist. He was a managerial and organizational type; he freely admitted that he knew nothing about aircraft, so he gave Lockheed a loose leash to do what they thought best. The program was given its own office to help ensure secrecy.
Kelly Johnson similarly performed development of the aircraft in a detached company "Skunk Works" to keep it hidden. The name was derived from Al Capp's popular LITTLE ABNER comic strip, referring to the noxious "Skunk Works" where the explosive "Kickapoo Joy Juice" was brewed. The Skunk Works concept had been used on previous Lockheed secret aircraft projects. The aircraft was officially the "CIA Article 341", but engineers called the machine "Angel".
A cover story was prepared in which the aircraft was described as a high-altitude weather observation platform for the US National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA), the main predecessor organization to the US National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA). The cover story was not universally believed.
The USAF did get interested enough in AQUATONE to try to take control of the program, but President Eisenhower wanted civilian control of the effort to ensure that he got unbiased intelligence. The Air Force would obtain its own U-2s, and collaborated closely with the CIA on the program. The Air Force provided pilots, who were "sheepdipped" -- they formally resigned from the service so they could fly as civilians, being guaranteed a return to the service after their CIA time was up, their time of absence counting as part of their time in service. The authorities believed that aircraft flown by civilian personnel would be less provocative than those flown by military personnel, should one be shot down. Indeed, there was some interest in acquiring foreign pilots to fly the machine -- though the idea proved impractical and was abandoned.
* On 21 July 1955, at a summit meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, Eisenhower had proposed that the superpowers adopt an "Open Skies" policy, in which both side could perform reconnaissance flights over each other's territory, to ensure that secret preparations were not being made for war. It was a bold proposal -- but not one likely to be accepted by the Soviets, and it wasn't. Very well; the USA would perform reconnaissance overflights of Soviet territory unilaterally.
Article 341 was ready for delivery on 25 July 1955, less than a year after formal program go-ahead. The machine had evolved well away from its original definition; it no longer had much specific resemblance to an F-104. The prototype was flown to a new secret site at Groom Lake in Nevada, with the fuselage carried in one Douglas C-124 cargolifter, and the wings and engine flown out in a second C-124. It was given the cover designation of "U-2", the "U" meaning "utility" -- a code normally assigned to a light civilian transport aircraft in uniform -- instead of the "R" normally assigned to reconnaissance aircraft.
The U-2 was sent out to Groom Dry Lake, an isolated chunk of the Nevada desert that was part of an atomic test range, and so sealed off from civilian eyes. The place was officially known as "Area 51", though insiders simply called it "the Ranch". Lockheed test pilot Tony LeVier began taxi tests on 29 July 1955. Not too surprisingly given the long wings, the aircraft didn't really want to stay on the ground, and on the third test flight it hopped into the air and stubbornly insisted on staying there. LeVier managed to get it back down, though he blew out the tires on his front landing gear. The first official flight was on 1 August, with LeVier climbing to medium altitude. The machine still didn't want to land, but LeVier managed to finally put it down undamaged.
Flight trials were not straightforward, since the U-2 flew at unprecedented heights and was difficult to fly. Normal aircraft systems hadn't been designed to work at such altitudes, and sometimes they didn't work so well. At its operational altitude, the U-2 was in a "coffin corner", very close to stalling at all times. It was so lightly built that falling into anything like a dive would tear it apart; pilots had to descend with the nose slightly up. Given the wide wings, it was very sensitive to crosswinds on take-off and landing, and as noted, it also had so much lift as to make it hard to land. On the plus side, it climbed like a bat out of hell to altitudes no conventional aircraft could reach.
Problems were worked out, and by the end of 1956 the aircraft seemed ready for service, with the CIA ordered a batch of 20 "U-2A" machines. A total of 45 U-2As would be built, including the initial prototype. Their disposition is hard to trace, since they tended to change hands, but about half went to the CIA, the other half to the USAF.
BACK_TO_TOP* As it emerged, the U-2 had only a general resemblance to the original CL-282 concept, and not much in common with the F-104. The "Dragon Lady" -- as it was known, from the program name for the Air Force purchase of the U-2 -- was effectively a jet-propelled sailplane; indeed, one of the project engineers, Henry Combs, was a sailplane pilot. The U-2 had a glide slope of about 25:1, better than many sailplanes. The U-2, which was primarily made of aircraft aluminum alloy, featured mid-mounted long straight wings, and a conventional tail arrangement. Flight control surface arrangement was also conventional, with one-piece flaps, ailerons, elevators, rudder, and trim tabs.
Flight-control surface actuation was manual, except for electrically-driven trim tabs and hydraulically-actuated flaps. There was also a hydraulically-actuated dive brake on each side of the rear fuselage. Since the large control surfaces required some muscle, a two-handed yoke control was installed, instead of a stick-type control. The yoke was taken straight from a World War II Lockheed P-38 fighter.
Cockpit instrumentation was generally conventional for the era, one distinction being a periscope piped up through the floor to a "driftsight" that dominated the cockpit dashboard, to allow the pilot to see downward. The pilot could flip a switch to allow the driftsight to be re-routed to a little glass dome on the nose, just in front of the windscreen. In that mode, it worked as a sextant, with pilots trained in celestial navigation. Flying the temperamental U-2 and handling the reconnaissance payload could be taxing, though an autopilot helped.
The canopy hinged open to the left. There was no canopy jettison system, and an ejection seat was not fitted at the outset -- though Lockheed quickly designed and introduced lightweight ejection seats that would be refitted to the fleet. There was cabin pressurization, but only enough to keep the pilot's blood from boiling in low pressure; the pilot otherwise survived on bottled oxygen. A pilot had to "pre-breathe" on oxygen for an hour to purge nitrogen from his blood, so he didn't get "the bends" on reaching altitude.
The pilot wore a Dave Clark MC-3 "partial pressure suit" -- not a true pressure suit, it was just tight-fitting, with pneumatic tubes or "capstans" on it. If the cabin lost pressure, the capstans would automatically inflate, making it extremely tight-fitting. The suits were custom-tailored to each pilot. The capstan suit was very uncomfortable and the pilot sweated profusely in it. The helmet had a port in it through which pilots could drink, through a straw, or eat food from tubes.
The pilot had a survival pack, which included things like money and a 22-caliber silenced pistol. Pilots could also carry cyanide pills if they wanted to, if they thought suicide preferable to mistreatment in captivity; however, the pilots were under no orders to kill themselves rather than be taken prisoner. Indeed, to the extent that they were briefed on what to do after capture -- it was a subject that the CIA tended to not think about -- they were told to be cooperative, within limits. After it was realized that a broken cyanide pill could kill the pilot, the pills were replaced by a silver dollar containing a pin, coated with a "saxitoxin", derived from shellfish, that would kill in moments.
Airframe structural limits were designed to only 2.5 gees, meaning that the U-2 was very intolerant of rough handling. The wing spars didn't go through the fuselage; they were simply bolted on. Kelly Johnson didn't even want to fit landing gear, instead thinking it would take off on a trolley and land using its belly as a skid. Flight test engineers told him that such a configuration would make the test program impractically difficult. As a result, the U-2 was fitted with bicycle-type landing gear, large twin wheels forward and small twin "roller skate" wheels aft, which retracted forward hydraulically.
The wingtips were fitted with small landing gear assemblies called "pogos" that fell out when the machine left the ground. The titanium wingtips were turned-down and could act as skids on landing. Payload constraints meant that the positioning of the main landing gear was less than ideal, complicating landings -- in particular, making the machine prone to "ground loops", or spinning around after touchdown. The U-2 also had to be landed very gently, lest a hard touchdown damage the aircraft; a procedure was developed, in which a fast car with a radio followed the U-2 down the landing strip, with another U-2 pilot saying when the U-2 was low enough to come to earth. Once the aircraft came to a halt, the pogos were re-installed and pinned to permit it to taxi.
The U-2 was fitted with a Pratt & Whitney (PW) J57-P-31 turbojet engine, with 48.9 kN (5,080 kgp / 11,200 lbf) thrust. The prototype had been fitted with the J57-P-37, which was not optimized for high-altitude flight. It would often flame out before reaching cruise altitude -- and at low air pressure, simply spewed out oil in a thin fog. The J57-P-31 not only could function properly at high altitudes, it had an improved starter system that could get a relight without having to take the aircraft to a lower altitude.
There were two integral fuel tanks in each wing, all four tanks having their own refueling point, total fuel capacity being 5,059 liters (1,335 US gallons). Fuel could be pumped from wing to wing to maintain flight trim; U-2 fuel management was apparently a bit tricky.
Fuel was another a challenge at the heights, since the standard JP-4 and JP-5 kerosene-type fuels boiled away or froze at high altitudes. General Jimmy Doolittle, the World War II hero, had an official position with Shell Oil and was in contact with the reconnaissance community. He persuaded Shell to develop a low-volatility fuel known as "Jet Propellant 7 (JP-7)" AKA "Jet Propellant Thermally Stable (JPTS)". JP-7 used feedstocks normally used for production of insecticides, with the production of the initial batch resulting in a temporary shortage of insecticide.
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LOCKHEED U-2A:
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wingspan:
24.43 meters (80 feet 2 inches)
wing area:
55.7 sq_meters (600 sq_feet)
length:
15.24 meters (49 feet 7 inches)
height:
4.62 meters (15 feet 2 inches)
empty weight:
6,460 kilograms (14,250 pounds)
MTO weight:
10,950 kilograms (24,150 pounds)
maximum speed:
> 690 KPH (> 430 MPH / 375 KT)
service ceiling:
> 21,340 meters (> 70,000 feet)
range:
5,550 kilometers (3,450 miles / 3,000 NMI)
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The U-2 was left in natural metal colors during its first test flights, which led to public reports of mysterious lights in the sky over Nevada. The U-2s were then painted flat midnight blue to render them less visible at their edge-of-space operating altitude.
The U-2's camera was another major challenge. Although the U-2 initially carried a traditional "trimetrogon" camera system -- one camera pointed straight down, one switching from side to side, to image a panoramic strip of land from altitude -- the early "Type A camera" was soon replaced by the much more advanced "Type B camera". It was the product of a collaboration between Edwin "Din" Land of Polaroid -- inventor of the Polaroid Land instant camera, and a longtime insider in the reconnaissance community -- and an astrophysicist named James G. Baker. Land, who was also an insider in the Eisenhower Administration, politically pushed through the B camera, while Baker performed the design work.
The B camera was built by Hycon Corporation in California, with optical glass provided by the Schott Company in Mainz, West Germany. It carried a total of 1,600 meters (a mile) of film on two rolls, each 22.9 centimeters (9 inches) wide. The two rolls spooled in opposite directions to maintain the aircraft's center of gravity. The camera took images from horizon to horizon using a pivoting mirror, with the images arranged so they could be assembled into stereo pairs for analysis. It provided a best resolution of 3 meters (10 feet) at the U-2's operating altitude -- four times better than any reconnaissance camera in service to that time.
The camera payload was mounted in a "Q-bay" behind the cockpit. There was a hatch on the bottom of the Q-bay for loading the payload, a payload being arranged as a plug-in pallet. There was also a hatch on top for service and maintenance access. The need to keep the Q-bay clear was why the wing spars didn't go through the fuselage. The Q-bay could be fitted with other types of payloads, such as a "signals intelligence (SIGINT)" package named "System-V" that obtained and recorded intelligence on Soviet radars. Many different, and sometimes highly specialized, payloads would eventually be developed for the U-2.
BACK_TO_TOP* Tony LeVier performed the initial pilot training for the CIA pilot cadre. Despite the difficulty in learning how to fly the machine, pilots liked it -- partly because it was a challenge, and also because it had capabilities like no other aircraft ever built, cruising at an altitude no normal aircraft could reach. Nonetheless, it was not a job for the timid, with four crashes in 1956 alone and three pilots killed.
By the spring of 1956, the production U-2A seemed ready for operational service. In mid-April, the aircraft made eight overflights of the US as "dry runs". Results of the trials were satisfactory, and little time was wasted on getting the U-2 in action. The aircraft were originally sent to Royal Air Force Lakenheath in the UK for operations. However, on 19 April, a British "frogman" named Lionel Crabb was assigned to perform an underwater inspection of a Red Navy cruiser visiting Portsmouth Harbor. Crabb was never seen again, and the British didn't want to risk provoking the Soviets for the moment.
The U-2 overflights being seen as an urgent priority, the Angels were quickly relocated to Wiesbaden in West Germany, officially as part of the "1st Weather Reconnaissance Squadron Provisional". The operational unit was actually known simply as "Detachment A". It was under the command of a USAF colonel, with a CIA official serving as the executive officer. The very first operational flight was on 20 June 1956, with the U-2 overflying East Germany and Poland. Things also went well, and President Eisenhower authorized overflights of the USSR.
Technical difficulties and weather delayed further missions until 2 July 1956, when two U-2s performed overflights of seven Eastern European nations. The first overflight of the USSR was, appropriately, on 4 July 1956, with pilot Hervey Stockman flying a loop from Wiesbaden over Poznan, Poland; through Belorussia; up to Leningrad; and then back through the Baltic States. Particular targets of the mission were Soviet submarine yards and air bases, where Red Air Force "Bison" strategic bombers might be spotted.
The next day, 5 July, a U-2 piloted by Carmine Vito flew a loop over the USSR that took the spyplane over Moscow itself. The city was covered by clouds, but haze filters allowed some imagery to be taken. The mission did provide high-quality imagery from the Zhukovsky flight test center outside of Moscow, as well as a number of rocket and aircraft plants. Three more overflights were conducted on 9 and 10 July, covering much of Eastern Europe and the western USSR.
That was the end of the overflights for the time being. Although the CIA had hoped Soviet radars wouldn't have the "reach" to pick up the relatively small U-2s at their high operating altitude, all the overflights were spotted and tracked, with interceptors scrambled to shoot down Carmine Vito on the 5 July overflight -- though they didn't have a chance of touching him as he soared far above their heads.
On 10 July 1956, the Soviets handed the US a stiff note of protest, which actually detailed the flight tracks of some of the intrusions over the USSR. That day, Brigadier General Andrew Goodpastor, one of Eisenhower's aides, passed the order on to Richard Bissell that overflights would have to cease for the time being. That wasn't the end of them, but Eisenhower would always be reluctant to push his luck on overflights.
The Soviet complaints were an attempt to lock the barn door after the horse was gone. The imagery returned by the overflights provided floods of information. The ultimate conclusion of the first set of overflights was that USAF estimates of Soviet strategic nuclear offensive capabilities were greatly exaggerated, much as Eisenhower had suspected. The Air Force had claimed the Red Air Force had a hundred Bison bombers; the actual numbers seemed to be much smaller. Indeed, it would turn out that the Bison was a fairly unimpressive bomber that never came close to meeting the range specifications that the Kremlin had required.
* As a footnote, the fact that the U-2 was observed by the Soviets immediately led to work on schemes to render the U-2s less visible to radar, or in modern terminology "stealthy". The U-2 "stealth" effort was conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as Project RAINBOW. They came up with two schemes that were used operationally, named "Trapeze" and "Wallpaper".
The Trapeze concept appears somewhat ridiculous in hindsight. Poles, originally made of bamboo and then of fiberglass, were used to stretch a loop of wire strung with precisely-spaced ferrite beads all around the aircraft. The scheme was supposed to absorb radar signals operating at 70 MHz. Trapeze increased aircraft weight and drag and reduced the operating altitude.
Wallpaper consisted of a plastic applique containing printed circuits that would absorb radar signals in the 65 MHz to 85 MHz. The applique was laid down on parts of the aircraft's nose, tail, and fuselage. It tended to lead to engine overheating. In fact, in April 1957, a U-2 configured with Wallpaper suffered an engine flameout due to overheating. Lockheed test pilot Robert Slicker was forced to bail out; he hit the tailplane and was killed.
Kelly Johnson unsurprisingly disliked the Rainbow modifications, calling them "dirty birds". They still went into operation in July 1957. After nine overflights, the CIA realized that the Rainbow modifications were ineffective; in May 1958, the schemes were abandoned and overflights halted again. Lockheed began experimenting with radar-absorbing paint, which would evolve to become the "radar absorbing material (RAM)" on the Lockheed F-117 Stealth, which was deployed in the 1980s.
* More spy flights were conducted from Wiesbaden from late November 1956, but the orders were to stay close to the borders to reduce risk. A "Detachment B" had been set up at Incrilik Air Base in Turkey in May, with U-2s from Incrilik conducting overflights of the Sinai to observe the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt that fall. Detachment B would take over the missions against the East Bloc in 1957, with Detachment B absorbing Detachment A by the end of the year. Some of the overflights would be staged out of Lahore, Pakistan.
The British had become involved with the program, providing pilots and obtaining title to a set of U-2s; pilots of the British Royal Air Force flew missions over the Middle East, and later over the Soviet Union. There was also a "Detachment C" at Atsugi, Japan; while stateside operations were transferred from Nevada to Edwards AFB in California, as "Detachment D". It appears that nuclear tests near the Groom Lake facility forced the move to Edwards.
The USAF set up their own U-2 element, the 4028th Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron of the 4080th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing at Laughlin AFB in Texas, under control of the Air Force Strategic Air Command (SAC). The first U-2 arrived at the 4028th SRS in July 1957. The stated mission was high-altitude fallout sampling, with a number of U-2As refitted for the mission -- featuring an air scoop in the nose, and in a fairing protruding from the lower right side of the Q bay. These machines were used in the "High Altitude Sample Program (HASP)", being redesignated "WU-2A", the "W" indicating a weather reconnaissance machine.
For the time being, the CIA U-2s were flying the most significant missions. A range of targets were photographed, significantly the rocket launch center at Tyuratam in Kazakhstan. The Soviets would publicly claim the launch center was at "Baikonur", a town nowhere near the launch center, as a cover, but the Americans had a map of the place even before launches were performed from the site. Two flights were also performed over Red China from Detachment C at Atsugi, while Detachment D performed overflights of Siberia, operating out of Eilson AFB in Alaska.
After 1957, due to Eisenhower's nervousness, overflights of the USSR were cut drastically, with only one in 1958 and two in 1959. The U-2s kept busy over less risky targets; in addition, while they had been flown in natural metal finish in initial missions, they were covered with a black radar-absorbent ferrite paint to reduce their visibility and vulnerability.
Detachment C from Atsugi, flying out of the Philippines, performed overflights of Indonesia in 1958 to observe the progress of a rebellion there; they also performed surveillance of the coastal regions of Red China during the Second Taiwan Straits Crisis of that year, and observed the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1959.
By late 1959, the Americans were becoming worried about Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) development, since the USSR had performed a number of impressive space shots using the R-7 ICBM, beginning with the Sputnik 1 launch, and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was loudly proclaiming that his nation had ICBMs in mass production. A "missile gap" between the USSR and the US appeared to be opening up, with the Air Force capitalizing on the perceived threat. The CIA was working on a spy satellite program titled CORONA -- Richard Bissell was the executive on the project -- but test launches were not going well. The U-2 had to investigate.
Everyone involved with the U-2 program knew that eventually the Soviets would be able to shoot the U-2 down; early on, a study group had concluded the overflights could only continue for two years. By early 1960, the USSR had a large number of batteries of the SA-2 "Guideline" surface-to-air missile (SAM) in service, and the SA-2 had the reach to take out the U-2. However, the CIA believed that U-2s operating from Pakistan would exploit the thinness of the Soviet air-defense network in the south of the country to perform one final set of overflights. As it turned out, the agency really was pushing its luck.
* The overflights drove the Soviets crazy. They tried to use "pop-up" attacks to reach the U-2s, with MiG-19 or MiG-21 fighters going into a shallow dive and then a zoom climb in hopes of getting the spyplane in their sights at the top of the arc. A number of MiG-19s were even fitted with a big liquid-fuel belly rocket booster to get them up to the U-2's altitude. However, at the top of the arc, a fighter was about as aerodynamic as a brick, and there was no way for it to maneuver. Deflection firing on a fast-moving target like an aircraft is tricky even in normal air combat.
They never got into firing position, though U-2 pilots, who sometimes could see the fighters coming up below them, worried about mid-air collisions on occasion. In fact, in some cases Soviet pilots were ordered to ram the intruders, to take their chances on punching out and surviving. Fighters also shadowed the U-2s from lower altitude in hopes that the American aircraft either were not able to sustain their operational altitude for an extended period of time, or might suffer a malfunction that forced them down to lower altitude.
Several overflights of the USSR were still successfully staged out of Pakistan, but sooner or later the U-2's luck would have to run out. On 1 May 1960, a U-2 piloted by Francis Gary Powers -- the most experienced of the U-2 cadre, with 27 missions under his belt -- departed from Peshawar, Pakistan, on Operation GRAND SLAM, the 24th U-2 overflight of the USSR; the flight was to terminate at Bodo, Norway. This particular machine had a reputation as a "dog"; it had made a forced landing on a sailplane strip in Japan, with photographs of it obtained by the media.
Powers' agenda was to photograph the missile center at Tyuratam, then overfly a suspected launch site at Chelyabinsk near Sverdlovsk, and finishing up with a survey of the new northern launch center at Plesetsk before landing at Bodoe, Norway. Powers overflew Tyuratam, but Soviet air defenses were fully aroused and trying hard to shoot him down. MiG-19 fighters attempted to zoom up to his altitude and didn't come close. The Soviets launched volleys of SA-2 SAMs as well, even hitting one of their own aircraft and killing the pilot. They finally got lucky; when Powers approached Chelyabinsk, an SA-2 exploded nearby, blowing the wings off the U-2. It began to fall to earth.
Getting out of a stricken U-2 was troublesome. The aircraft had a self-destruct system that was supposed to detonate after a delay once the pilot got out; it wouldn't completely destroy the aircraft, but it would trash the valuable camera gear. Later, there were tales that the pilots worried the self-destruct system didn't have a delay, to ensure the pilot would self-destruct as well -- but the pilots didn't really worry about that. Their ground crews knew all about the self-destruct system, and since they were responsible for pilot safety, the pilots didn't believe they would have helped to murder the pilots.
The ground crews armed the self-destruct system and set the timer before the aircraft took off. They would happily walk the pilots through the details of the self-destruct gear, if asked. Nonetheless, of course the self-destruct system made pilots nervous. What if it went off spontaneously? What if the delay wasn't as long as specified? When Powers flipped up the covers on the destruct switches, he still thought it wisest to be in a position to get out of the aircraft before he armed the system.
Powers was being thrown forward by the tumbling U-2, and couldn't eject -- his legs would be sheared off above the knees. He decided to bail out manually, first discarding the canopy, and then releasing his seat belt. He was immediately thrown halfway out of the cockpit. He tried to reach the self-destruct switches, but his visor had fogged up, and after a bit of ineffective fumbling, he got himself out of the aircraft, parachuting to ground.
The Soviets captured Powers and the wreckage of his aircraft. After reaching the ground, he had taken the poison pin out of the silver dollar and put it in his cockpit. They eventually found the pin; he told his interrogators to be careful with it. They pricked a dog with the needle, and it died immediately. Having been told to be cooperative, Powers told them such truths as he felt he needed to, and otherwise lied -- claiming he was only informed on the general U-2 program on a "need to know" basis, and that he hadn't overflown the USSR before. The capture of the U-2 and the pilot told the Soviets about as much as they needed to know.
The fact that the U-2 didn't make it to Norway was quickly realized, but at first the assumption was that Powers hadn't survived the high-altitude bailout. The official line was that the U-2 was just a weather observation plane that had strayed off course -- way off course, getting halfway through the USSR! As part of the attempt to cover up the shootdown, NASA proudly displayed a U-2 in NASA colors, quickly painted on, to the public. NASA also announced that the U-2 had performed hundreds of flights in the agency's service. That was not completely untrue, in that NACA / NASA researchers had been obtaining high-altitude flight data from U-2 sorties even before the aircraft reached operational service; but the U-2s hadn't been owned or flown by NASA. Fortunately for NASA, nobody paid much attention.
The Soviets kept quiet long enough to let the Americans feed themselves more rope, and then paraded Powers and the wreckage of the U-2 before the world. The Americans had lied and been caught at it. Premier Khrushchev milked the incident for all it was worth, and Eisenhower was humiliated.
That was the very last direct overflight of the USSR by an aircraft. It wasn't necessary any longer, since the CORONA was beginning to work right, and satellite overflights of the USSR would become routine. Although the CIA had driven the CORONA program, the US spy satellite program ended up under the control of a new entity, the "National Reconnaissance Office (NRO)". The CIA ended up downsizing their U-2 fleet by passing half of their dozen or so aircraft over to the USAF. The detachment in Turkey was shut down. Extensive work was performed to improve the U-2's survivability so that it could continue to perform overflights of Red China and other targets.
As for Powers, he endured extensive interrogation -- much more persistent than brutal -- and a show trial. The Soviets made much of the poison pin in the trial, claiming that Powers had been under orders to commit suicide rather than be captured -- which Powers kept on denying, saying that carrying the poison pin and using it were up to a pilot's discretion. Although he was sentenced to ten years in prison as a spy, he finally came home in early 1962, after being "traded" for Red spy Rudolf Abel. Powers was accused of being a defector, but the CIA and a Senate panel cleared him. He died in a helicopter crash in 1977.
* As a footnote to the Powers incident, the Soviets developed their own answer to the U-2, the twin-engined long-winged Yakovlev Yak-25RV "Mandrake" aircraft, which went into service in the late 1950s. It was an index of Soviet frustration with the U-2 that some Mandrakes were actually produced without reconnaissance gear, just to be used as targets for practice intercepts in hopes of developing procedures to shoot down U-2s. Some sources claim the Mandrake was also designed to intercept U-2s, but this appears to be a myth.
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