Mired deep in mud, he set his second record that day: having flown the U-2 lower than anyone else in history.
Remaining in the cockpit, he radioed the base for assistance. Meantime, the Japanese, with their ever-present cameras, had surrounded the plane, happily taking pictures. When U.S. military police arrived, they ordered them away at gunpoint, cordoning off the area.
It was not exactly the way to avoid publicity. Japanese newspapers and magazines picked up the story and the pictures, their editorials asking why, if the U-2 was being used strictly for weather research, it bore no identification marks and occasioned such extreme security.
Still, it was a minor incident, or seemed so at the time.
I had no idea then how well I would come to know plane number 360. Nor did anyone foresee the kind of headlines it would soon make.
The original concept of Operation Overflight had been short-term, something less than the eighteen months called for in our contracts.
In November, 1957, we had extended for another year.
We had done the same in November, 1958, and 1959
In the interim, the Russians had made spectacular strides in missile and space development.
We could not shake the feeling that time was catching up with us.
Not long after the installation of the granger, the intelligence officer introduced us to another new piece of “equipment.”
We couldn’t figure it out. It looked like a good-luck charm. It seemed to be an ordinary silver dollar, with a metal loop at one end so it could be fastened onto a key chain or a chain around the neck.
Obviously enjoying our puzzlement, he unscrewed the loop. Inside the dollar was what appeared to be an ordinary straight pin. But this too wasn’t what it seemed. Looking at it more closely, we could see the body of the pin to be a sheath not fitting quite tightly against the head. Pulling this off, it became a thin needle, only again not an ordinary needle. Toward the end there were grooves. Inside the grooves was a sticky brown substance.
It was curare, the intelligence officer explained. Just one prick would suffice.
From now on, we could carry this, if we wanted to, instead of cyanide.
The majority of pilots had decided, individually, against carrying cyanide. I had never carried it.
But we were fascinated with the dollar-pin-needle device. Passing it around, quite carefully, leaving the needle in the sheath, we each examined it. It was ingenious. Who would ever think of looking inside a silver dollar for something like this?
We were again champing at the bit. Most of 1958, all of 1959, and thus far in 1960, there had been a drastic reduction in the number of overflights. Months would pass without one. Although never told the reason for the severe cutback, we presumed it was because of the political climate. We were quite capable of making many more flights than was the case, in fact were anxious to do so. We were not inactive; we continued to make border-surveillance missions, and the “special” missions, but were definitely restive. The longer the layoff, the greater the tension. The fewer the overflights, the more apprehensive we became about the next one.
Then, suddenly, after a long pause, two flights were scheduled for the same month, April, 1960.
I was to be “backup” on the first and to fly the second.
Use of a backup, or substitute, pilot was a comparatively recent change in procedure, occurring after we had started making overflights from bases other than Incirlik. Along with the lead pilot, the backup pilot went through all preflight stages, from briefings up to and including prebreathing. Should the lead pilot have a heart attack (or, considering the food, a much more common occurrence, the GIs), the backup could take over.
Some accounts, apparently confused over the role of the backup, state that on each overflight two U-2s would take off simultaneously, one to fly along the border, throwing off Russian radar, while the other made the actual mission. To my knowledge, this was never done, nor probably was it ever considered, since Russian radar was quite capable of picking up more than one plane at a time.
The backup pilot was simply a substitute for the lead pilot in the event he was unable to fly.
It was some weeks prior to the first April flight, when we were studying routes, that I finally asked the question.
It had been put off much too long. There had been no mention of it in our contracts. It had never been brought up in our briefings. We had never discussed it among ourselves. Yet I knew we had thought about it—or, at least, I knew one pilot had.
Though Operation Overflight was nearly four years old, we were totally unprepared for an “accident.” It didn’t necessarily have to be a missile. One loose screw, in just the right place, could bring an aircraft down.
The silver dollar had provided the obvious opening, and I had presumed someone would ask it then. But no one had done so. Now, as we were preparing to resume overflights, I decided to put it directly to the intelligence officer.
“What if something happens and one of us goes down over Russia? That’s an awfully big country, and it could be a hell of a long walk to a border. Is there anyone there we can contact? Can you give us any names and addresses?”
“No, we can’t.”
While it was not what I wanted to hear, his answer was at least understandable. If we had agents in Russia, as we presumably did, release of their names could place them in jeopardy also.
I persisted. “All right, say the worst happens. A plane goes down, and the pilot is captured. What story does he use? Exactly how much should he tell?”
His exact words were, “You may as well tell them everything, because they’re going to get it out of you anyway.”
As if anticipating our concern, and perhaps hoping to set it to rest before such questions were asked, the agency had set up a survival exercise the previous summer—excluding the little bit of evasion-training on the East Coast at the start of the project, the first such for most of us since we had been in the Air Force. Divided into several groups, we were driven out into the desert, with only parachute and minimal rations, and left there.
Our group managed fairly well. When our supplies finally ran out, we stumbled onto a farmer’s sugar-beet patch.
Only later, thinking about it, did we consider that had he appeared with a shotgun, and been inclined to use it, a good portion of the U.S. U-2 program in Turkey could have been wiped out.
Surviving a bad thunderstorm, we found a little village, were treated to an excellent but native meal, and, renting donkeys, rode back to the pickup point in style.
Another group was not so lucky. Some of the natives, claiming they had seen men parachuting out of planes, called the Turkish police, who arrested them as Russian spies.
If the intention was to buoy up our self-confidence, the exercise was decidedly less than a success.
Overseas, possibly because it is so limited, you consume news. What newspapers you can get, such as Stars and Stripes, you read from beginning to end.
During April, 1960, we were aware of the upcoming Summit Conference, scheduled to take place in Paris the following month; like other topics of the day, we discussed the talks, hopeful that something good would come out of them. But not optimistic. There still seemed to be no solution to the problem of Berlin; according to everything we read, Khrushchev was determined to make trouble over the issue.
But it was a minor topic. We were equally interested in Senator John F. Kennedy’s win over Hubert Humphrey in the Wisconsin Presidential primary; De Gaulle’s visit to the United States; the orbiting of a navigational satellite from Cape Canaveral. We didn’t connect it with our work, or with the sudden increase in the number of overflights.