News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Francis Gary Powers

Date: August 13, 2001

"Francis Gary Powers, Sr. and Jr., circa 1976
Francis Gary Powers: Traitor, Hero, Father, Spy
Jun 8, 2001
Dave Eberhart
Stars and Stripes News Editor

Forty years before the April 1 crash-landing of a U.S. Navy P-3E Aries reconnaissance aircraft on Chinese soil, U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers parachuted onto a field outside the farming village of Sverdlovsk in the former Soviet Union. He had fallen to Earth from the incredible altitude of 71,500 feet after his spy plane was fatally damaged by a near miss from a Russian missile.

Powers was to become a Cold War icon.

"It took the government four decades to finally give my father the hero's recognition he deserved," Francis Gary Powers Jr. told The Stars and Stripes May 24.

In May 2000 at Beale Air Force Base California, Gary (as he prefers to be called) stood with his mother, Sue, and sister, Dee, as his father was posthumously honored with the Distinguished Flying Cross, the POW Medal and the Central Intelligence Agency Director's Award. The same day, the Air Force, in a singular departure from its regulations, strapped Gary into the back seat of a U-2 trainer and soared him to 73,000 feet.

For a few "incredible" minutes, the son was the father--a "man who loved to fly!"

"We were a very normal family living in California's San Fernando Valley," said Gary, who was born in 1965, four years after his father's release, in a spy exchange, from captivity in Moscow. "Dad would take us in a rented Cessna down to Mexico for family vacations."

Fatal Accident
Gary was only 12 when his father hurtled to Earth again--this time fatally. On Aug. 1, 1977, flying a NBC News helicopter in Los Angeles, the meticulously careful pilot ran out of fuel and crashed.

The conspiracy theory people say it was the CIA that tampered with the fuel gauge, but that isn't so.

"The conspiracy theory people say it was the CIA that tampered with the fuel gauge, but that isn't so," said Gary. "My father had complained about the malfunctioning gauge on previous flights. The technicians fixed it--but forgot to tell my father, who continued to assume that when reading empty, he still had 20 more minutes of flying time."

Gary, who often went up with his father in the news helicopter, was not aboard that day. "I thought everybody's dad was like mine until his funeral at Arlington National Cemetery," he said. "I didn't really understand until then what a famous figure he was--and is."
Father and son had spent many evenings discussing the minutia of "Operation Over-flight," the book written by the senior Powers in 1971. "I would always ask him how high he was when he got shot down," said Gary. "He would always respond: 'Not high enough!'"

Dad was at 70,500 feet when the missile exploded just behind the tail of the U-2, damaging the stabilizer and the wings

"Dad was at 70,500 feet when the missile exploded just behind the tail of the U-2, damaging the stabilizer and the wings. The aircraft went immediately into a violent inverted spin, dropping 30,000 feet in minutes. He was afraid to use the ejection seat for fear of having his legs torn off. Finally at 15,000 feet, he unsnapped his harness and was sucked out of the cockpit--still attached to his air hose. He jerked it loose and fell away from the plane."

Accusations, Embarrassment
From that moment forward, Francis Gary Powers 's every move was to be dissected and criticized by a skeptical CIA and an embarrassed defense community.Because the high-flying U-2 was supposed to be out of range of Soviet missiles, Powers was accused of flying below his assigned altitude. Why didn't he use the poison needle he carried concealed in a silver dollar to kill himself, thus avoiding KGB interrogation? Why didn't he perform the full-destruct procedure? (Pieces of the plane's fuselage, instrumentation, wings and ejection seat are still viewable at the Central Armed Forces Museum in Moscow.) How much classified material did he betray to his captors?

Even after the 1962 Senate Select Committee hearings on my father's conduct found him to be a fine young man who followed his orders as best he could, the CIA still left him an outcast.

"Even after the 1962 Senate Select Committee hearings on my father's conduct found him to be a fine young man who followed his orders as best he could, the CIA still left him an outcast," said Gary.

According to Gary, his father told the Soviets nothing of value despite intense KGB interrogation for 16 hours each day and the anguish of months of solitary confinement. Things reached their worst when his tormentors read in The New York Times that the spy plane pilot had been trained in Area 51 in Nevada, not in Arizona as he said. Powers eventually was convicted of spying in a show trial and sentenced to 10 years' confinement. He was saved from that by the prisoner exchange.

"He was just a regular guy and great dad," said Gary. Powers's association with the CIA came about by happenstance. "My father, a Sabre jet [F-84] pilot in the Air Force, was slated to go to the Korean War, but came down with appendicitis. While recovering he was recruited by the CIA."

Gary, beyond his U-2 flight, has done much to explore his father's world. He has been to the Moscow museum and examined the wreckage of his father's plane. That was in 1990. "They knew who I was and they treated me well, but they wouldn't allow me to watch the May Day parade." In 1997 he took a "spy tour" to Moscow arranged by two former KGB agents.

Cold War Museum
His research and collecting has resulted in "a basement full of my father's stuff," said Gary. Artifacts that one day will be in a Cold War Museum, a project that Gary has been working on for years.

For the time being, as the necessary funds are pulled together, Gary must settle for his "Spies of Washington Tour," a half-day bus trip that for $45 carts Cold War buffs around the Washington, D.C., area to peer at hunks of the Berlin Wall, the Russian Embassy, code machines and sites of "international intrigue."

The planned museum may be built in Lorton, Va., or on federal property that has been offered at Fort Meade, Md., said Gary. In any event, it will be a final tabernacle of a son's love and admiration for his father.

Gary, who works at the Vienna, Va., Chamber of Commerce, can be contacted at www.coldwar.org.

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