Francis Gary Powrs U2 Pilot
Francis Gary Powers
Born: 17 August 1929
Birthplace: Jenkins, Kentucky
Died: 1 August 1977
(helicopter crash)
U2 Pilot Shot Down by the Soviet
Union in 1960
Gary Powers (1929-77) was a spy and aviator, born Francis Gary Powers in Jenkins, Kentucky, with Melungeon ancestry, and raised in Pound, Virginia. Born August 17, 1929, Powers attended Milligan College in Johnson City, Tennessee. After graduating from Milligan College, he was commissioned in the United States Air Force in 1950 becoming a military pilot. Powers received training in resisting brainwashing, survival techniques, and protocol in the event of capture, and he also was trained in the dropping of atomic bombs. Upon completing his training (52-H) he was assigned to the 468th Strategic Fighter Squadron at Turner Air Force Base, Georgia as an F-84 Thunder jet pilot. He was assigned to operations in the Korean War, but was recruited by the CIA because of his outstanding record in single engine jet aircraft. By 1960, the 31-year old Powers was already a veteran of many covert aerial reconnaissance missions.
When he was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency, they trained him in piloting the U2, a top-secret high-altitude reconnaissance plane used to photograph enemy installations, and he made a number of flights over the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. He left the Air Force with the rank of Captain in 1956, to join the CIA U2 program. Francis Gary Powers was the U2 pilot who was shot down while flying over Soviet Union airspace on May 1, 1960, sparking one of the greatest international crises of the Cold War. At the time he was shot down, Francis Gary Powers was married to Barbara Moore. They were married in 1955 and remained married until 1962.
Powers was flying a U2 high-altitude, photographic, surveillance plane over Russian airspace. When he was shot down, Powers bailed out of the crashing plane and was captured by the Soviets. Since the U2 was designed for covert surveillance, the Soviet government immediately imprisoned Powers as a spy.
In May 1960, as President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev met in Paris to attempt to defuse Cold War tensions, a U2 piloted by Powers was shot down by a surface-to-air missile over Soviet territory. At first the U. S. government claimed Powers had been conducting weather research, but later admitted that the U2 was a spy plane. The United States initially denied the plane was on a spy mission, but the wreckage was sufficiently intact for the Soviets to discern the plane's function, and Eisenhower was forced to admit the truth. The summit collapsed amid angry charges from Khrushchev; Powers was tried as a spy, convicted of espionage, and sentenced to 10 years in prison. After two years, Gary Powers was pardoned by the USSR in February of 1962 and sent back to America in exchange for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.
When he was released on February 10, 1962, Gary was exchanged for Soviet Col. Rudolf Abel, in a dramatic East-West spy swap, which took place on Berlin's Glienicke Bridge spanning the River Havel. Powers stood at the eastern end of the bridge, Abel at the western end, and at the appointed time, the men walked towards each other, crossing with a nod, in the middle of the bridge. This was the first of many such swaps between the two super-powers. Gary was awarded the Intelligence Medal in 1963.
Gary married Claudia "Sue" Edwards in 1963 and they remained married until his death in 1977.
In 1970, Francis Gary Powers co-authored a book about his personal experience. The book was called Operation Overflight: A Memoir of the U2 Incident. In 1976, the book by Powers and Curt Gentry became a television movie, entitled Francis Gary Powers: The True Story of the U2 Spy Incident. Lee Majors (TV's 6-Million Dollar Man) played the part of Powers.
