Because of our location in relation to wind patterns, however, we did less of this than the U-2s flying above Alaska and, later, Japan and Australia.
And there were other “special” missions.
It was important work; we knew it. But it was not the work we had come over to do.
Living arrangements at Incirlik were similar to those at Watertown, with one important exception: the food was much worse.
Again trailers provided housing, two pilots to a unit. Each had a tiny living room, kitchen, bathroom, and one small and one medium-size bed (I won the toss). There was a small PX on the base, but it stocked few items. As a change of pace, occasionally we would go into Adana at night for drinks and dinner. There was only one place you could eat safely, a restaurant located above a hotel. Tales of throat cutting and robbery being common, we did little wandering around the streets at night, and then only in groups.
Even so, there were a few close calls. About one hundred miles from Adana was what must be one of the greatest trout streams in the world. On one trip—which I’m happy to say I missed—the men awoke to find that during the night they had been visited by Kurds, the nomadic tribesmen who wander the crescent from the Persian Gulf up into Turkey. Great thieves, they had taken not only fishing gear, cameras, food, and clothing, but also the blankets off my friends’ backs. Fortunately no one woke during the raid, the Kurds having a rather cavalier attitude toward human life.
Late one afternoon I saw, not more than a mile or two away from the base, one of their caravans, a string of some hundred camels traveling along a ridge silhouetted against the sunset. Ancient Persia come to life, it provided a vivid contrast to our twentieth-century electronic gadgetry.
As transportation, most of us bought small motorcycles, which we used for excursions through the countryside. Not far from Adana, there were crusader castles, mostly in ruins—shepherds used them as pens; Roman aqueducts; the remains of a sunken Roman bath; and a huge area of old tombs, which we spent much time exploring. The beaches along the Mediterranean were beautifully virgin, much like those in Southern California once were, before the days of population explosion and oil slicks. During the long warm season, which stretched from spring well into fall, we swam, skin-dived, snorkled. As for hunting, there were ducks on the lakes and on occasion an expedition in search of wild boar, the latter less than successful, at least from our point of view. The Turks, who acted as guides, were highly excitable; as soon as they saw a boar they began firing. Most of us never got a shot.
But, except for these occasional activities, the social life was decidedly limited. The poker games frequently lasted three days. Leave was set up on a military basis, thirty days per year. With little to do in Turkey itself, R&R (rest-and-recuperation leave) was established. For each weekend spent in Turkey, compensatory time was accrued that could be spent in Greece or Germany. Since planes frequently landed at Incirlik for refueling, there was little trouble catching a hop. We saved up the time, to make the trips worthwhile.
In the interim, we had to create our own diversions.
In an attempt to provide a touch of much needed domesticity, one of the pilots bought a box of cake mix at the PX and invited us all over for coffee and cake.
Not wanting to be remiss socially, I decided to bake some cakes too.
I baked one, but extended no invitations. As a cook, I decided, I made an excellent pilot.
We were restless, for several reasons. One was that none of us was flying as much as he wanted to.
Among pilots it is proverbial that the more you fly, the more you enjoy it. But when you lay off awhile and then go up again, you approach it with hesitation; everything a little strange, you’re not as sure of yourself as you should be.
We were flying the bare minimum to preserve the plane. The U-2 was too fragile to last, the engineering experts reiterated; its life span was limited; it wouldn’t stand up under prolonged stress and strain.
Although we saw little evidence of this ourselves, a tragedy occurred not long after our arrival overseas which seemed to bear this out most graphically.
In September, 1956, Howard Carey, a contract pilot I had known at Watertown, was killed in a U-2 crash in Germany. There was some confusion as to what actually happened, initial speculation ranging all the way to sabotage. It was later determined, however, that while in flight Carey had been buzzed by two curious Canadian Air Force interceptors. Caught in their wake turbulence as they passed him, his U-2 had apparently simply disintegrated.
With sad irony, Carey had not started with the first class at Watertown but had come in late, to replace the pilot killed in the first crash.
Not considering that this might be a freak accident, the experts cited it as further proof of the U-2’s fragility. As a result, we were flying the bare minimum; so far as most of us were concerned, it wasn’t nearly enough.
Nor was it the flying we had been told we would do.
By November we still hadn’t made our first overflight.
Although the 10-10 detachment had its own section of the base, closed to all except authorized personnel, within those boundaries some sections were even more tightly restricted. The photo lab was one. By far the most secret, however, was the communication section, which housed not only the radio apparatus but also the cryptographic unit. It was through here that the orders would come, when they came. After a while we began, almost unconsciously, to study the faces of the personnel who worked there, as if expecting clues.
When the order came, it was a surprise. Stopping me as I was walking through the area one day, the detachment commander, Colonel Ed Perry, said simply, “You’re it, Powers.”
“When?”
“If the weather holds, a couple of days.”
I’d been picked for the first overflight out of Turkey.
This was to be the pattern.
Target priorities were established in Washington. It was our understanding that the White House then approved “packages,” or series, of flights. Once approval was given, the orders were relayed to Incirlik in code via radio. With one later, and quite important, exception, which will be mentioned.
Weather usually determined when the flight occurred. Almost always we would be briefed several days in advance of the actual flight in order to have time to study maps of the various routes and work out the navigation. Alternate targets were provided on each flight so that if we went up and found clouds covering one area, we could switch to another without sacrificing the mission. Approval, it was reiterated over and over, was difficult to obtain. When it came, we were to make the best of it.
At times intelligence would tell us what they were looking for: an airfield here that isn’t on the map; a complex of new buildings there to watch out for. Usually, however, we weren’t told anything, our only instructions being when and where to switch on what equipment. The equipment itself, however, was sometimes a clue. A camera with a telescopic lens pinpointing a tiny area, for example, meant an entirely different type objective than one which photographed a strip 100 to 150 miles wide.
We were aware that when we returned, the photographs would undergo intensive scrutiny by experts, the pictures providing information on things we knew nothing about. While we might be instructed to photograph a missile-launching site and the area around it, thinking intelligence was most interested in the missile on the pad, their real interest might lie in the railroad tracks leading away from the site, which, if followed, might lead to factories where the missiles were assembled.