A Cold War Spy Operation
I quit high school to join the Navy . Back then you signed up you went to boot camp, then at your first assignment you went to school. The school was called USAFI, the United Stated Armed Forces Institute. That’s where I got my GED. I was assigned to the Seabee’s in 1960 at the Naval Air Station in Adak, Alaska, a base in the Aleutian Islands. The base was used as a refueling base for US spy planes flying over Russia. I was trained to run heavy equipment (excavating), but it was also where I first became involved in intelligence gathering. While I was at the base, my duty was to keep track of the traffic, in and out of the planes . When the planes came in, the pilots would sleep while it was being refueled. They would put 20 or more marines, circling the plane to guard it. There was one pilot named Francis Gary Powers was shot down over Russia and became a POW. Well, the government wanted to know how they (Russians) knew when he would be in a certain place, so they began gathering information about the traffic patterns, and when the announcement about the planes was received by the ground . You see, we should have only had about 20 minutes advance notice on their arrival, but some
“Kelly’s planes” were hand-made in the high security Lockheed plant in Burbank, California for a total of $850,000.00 each . After arguments with jet engine manufacturers on how an airplane would work at 70,000 feet Johnson eliminated weight by losing the tricycle landing gear and using only two wheels and “pogo” sticks on the ends of the wings . The sticks would drop off after takeoff. The first model U-2 was flight tested in August 1955.The film taken from 50,000 feet produced a clear picture of golf balls on the green of a golf course . Powers recounts his resignation from the Air Force as unusually quick . The formality of the end of his Air Force career and his signing a contract with the CIA occurred four years to the month of his capture by the Russians. Power’s contract covered his terms of employment and the specific of his pay. As a pilot in the Air Force Powers took home around $500.00 per month, now as a CIA agent he would be making $1500.00 per month when he was stateside and $2500.00 per month when stationed abroad . There was some criticism of the provisions for the pilots being lavish, the so-called amenities of the living arrangements, travel and food. Powers describes the housing on the bases as house trailers that four pilots shared, there where no PXs, no clubs but the food was excellent. The weekends were free to return home to family and their true identities. Monday morning the pilots would return to the base and resume their cover names and their training . August 17th the trial started in Moscow with Powers wife and parents present. On August 19th Francis Gary Powers was convicted in a Russian court and sentenced to serve ten years in prison. Eighteen months later Powers found himself walking across a bridge in Germany so he could be exchanged for a Soviet master spy, Rudolf Abel, who had been serving a thirty year prison sentence in a U.S. federal prison . With the long awaited end to his 27th mission Powers returned to the United States. The newly formed NASA informed aviation publications the U-2’s were used for gathering weather data that would be put to u
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Approximate Word count = 1430
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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