Approved for Release: 2013/06/25
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Secret NOFORN
Chapter 4
177
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area. The plane began spiraling down toward the ground and Powers looked for a way out. Unable to use the ejection seat because centrifugal force had thrown him against the canopy, he released the canopy and prepared to bail out, waiting to arm the destruction device at the last minute, so that it would not go off while he was still in the plane. When he released his seatbelt, however, he was immediately sucked out of the aircraft and found himself dangling by his oxygen hose, unable to reach the destruction switches. Finally, the hose broke and he flew away from the falling aircraft. After he fell several thousand feet, his parachute opened automatically, and he drifted to earth where he was quickly surrounded by farmers and then by Soviet officials.²⁹ His aircraft had not been destroyed by the crash, and the Soviets were able to identify much of its equipment when they put it on display 10 days later. Even if Powers had been able to activate the destruction device, however, it would not have destroyed the aircraft. The small explosive charge was only designed to wreck the camera.
How had the Soviets succeeded in downing the U-2? Although some CIA project officials initially wondered if Powers had been flying too low through an error or mechanical malfunction, he maintained that he had been flying at his assigned altitude and had been brought down by a near miss of a Soviet surface-to-air missile. This turned out to be the case, for in March 1963, the US air attache in Moscow learned that the Sverdlovsk SA-2 battery had fired a three-missile salvo that, in addition to disabling Powers’ plane, also scored a direct hit on a Soviet fighter aircraft sent aloft to intercept the U-2.³⁰ Mission planners had not known about this SAM site before the mission because they always laid out flight plans to avoid known SAM sites.
THE AFTERMATH OF THE U-2 DOWNING
The first indication that something was wrong with Powers’ mission came even before he was overdue at Bodo, Norway. The CIA Operations Center learned on 1 May at 0330 hours Washington time
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²⁹ Powers, *Operation Overflight*, pp. 82-84; Beschloss, *Mayday*, pp. 26-28; Transcript of Debriefing Tapes of Francis Gary Powers, 13 February 1962, Board of Inquiry on the Conduct of Francis Gary Powers, Operations MUDLARK files, OSA records, job 74-B-605, box 6 (S).
³⁰ Cunningham interview, 4 October 1983 (TS Codeword); *OSA History*, chap. 14, p. 55 (TS Codeword).
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Secret
Approved for Release: 2013/06/25