Jim Carter
Sky Spy, Memoirs of a U-2 Pilot
In loving memory of Sally,
who inspired us all.
Acknowledgments
To those who made this idea a reality:
Pam Bronson, Dillon Carter, and especially Debra Carter.
Author’s Note:
The events in this book are true. Many of the names have been changed to protect their privacy or for national security reasons.
Preface
The frail, old priest bent down close to the bed-ridden woman. He tenderly caressed her forehead as he administered the last rites of the Catholic Church. He placed a small piece of the Eucharistic host in her mouth but she was unable to swallow it. I filled a cup with water from the bathroom sink and held my mother’s head as she tried to sip the water.
My mother has advanced Alzheimer’s disease and she has withered away to a mere shadow of her former self. Last month she fell and fractured her right hip. I studied her shrunken face as she lay in bed at the nursing home and my thoughts travelled back in time. This was the woman who had given me life and inspired my life. I was the last one she knew. Everyone else had faded from her mind. In time, she also forgot who I was. She hadn’t spoken a meaningful word to me in three months and now she lay before me barely clinging to life. When the priest finished his blessing, I bent over my mom, Sally Carter, to stroke her hair and say goodbye. As I did so, she opened her eyes, looked into mine, and said “Thank You.” Once again, my mother had amazed me. I shouldn’t have been surprised; she had been amazing me my entire life.
I lived with my dad, mom, and three brothers in a row house in Philadelphia. I was 12 when my mom fled from my abusive, alcoholic father. One night, after a violent scene that included multiple cops and neighbors, my mom took my three younger brothers, Raymond, Randy, Greg and me to her parents’ home in Wildwood, New Jersey. Their house was a safe haven for us. But simply being safe wasn’t good enough for Sally. Jersey was very boring and the only people we knew there were my grandparents. She wanted nothing to do with my dad but all of our friends and relatives were in Philadelphia and she wanted to go back and find a new place for us. As soon as things stabilized and she was able to save some money, we moved back to Philadelphia. We couldn’t afford a nice, middle-class neighborhood like the one we left. The only thing we could afford was a two-bedroom apartment at the back of a hardware store in the Germantown section of Philadelphia.
My mother worked two jobs in order to pay the bills. Her full-time job was a hostess in the local Howard Johnson’s restaurant, and she had a part-time job as a supervisor in a Laundromat around the corner from our apartment. She took no public assistance and made a point of reminding us of that fact. She told us that life was difficult and if we ever wanted to improve our situation we had to work hard. She preached self-sufficiency and she practiced what she preached.
Since she was gone so much working, I became the male head of the house. I took care of my brothers. I got them up in the morning, made sure they dressed properly, served them breakfast, made their lunches, and got them off to school. After school, we did homework, and then had dinner. An old standby that I made for my brothers countless times was a dinner of fish sticks and French fries; thank God for Mrs. Paul’s.
Mom would come home exhausted from work, but she was never too tired to talk. She would tell me about her day at the restaurant and I would tell her about school or what my brothers had done that day.
The entrance to our apartment was through an alley, which led to a small, fenced-in yard of packed dirt. The door to the apartment opened to a small kitchen. Next to the kitchen was the living room, which had enough room for a small sofa and one single chair. The bedrooms were upstairs. My brothers and I shared one and Mom had the other. Our shared bathroom separated the bedrooms.
From our bedroom we could climb out on to a flat section of roof about ten feet square. Since we didn’t have air conditioning, on stifling hot summer nights, we would climb on to the roof to cool off. The five of us would talk about our future. A common topic of conversation was how we were going to escape from this living hell we called our apartment. We also talked about our dreams and what we wanted to become. I had wanted to fly for as long as I could remember. Mom encouraged me to pursue my dream by stressing the importance of education. We lay on that roof looking up at the stars. The stars weren’t that bright because of the light pollution from the city. Nevertheless, I could see them and wanted to reach them. From that roof behind the hardware store in Germantown, that seemed like an impossibility to me, but not to my mother. She assured me I could get there. If I worked hard and made the right choices, my dreams could come true. I just had to believe in and rely on myself. No one else was going to do it for me or give it to me. Encouraged by my Mom’s example, I graduated from high school and then from St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. I was lucky enough to be accepted into the Air Force ROTC program at St. Joseph’s and I would be on my pathway towards becoming a pilot.
Years later, when I achieved my dream, I vividly recalled those rooftop talks with Mom. Her work ethic had been passed on to me and made my dream a reality. This book tells the story of the journey to reach that dream.
PART I
Chapter 1
I attended St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. My acceptance into the Reserve Officer Training Corp (ROTC) program at St. Joe’s was my ticket into Air Force pilot training. I tested for the program as a sophomore and was one of four students chosen for the ROTC flight program. The ROTC program was a two-year program (junior and senior) and began with a sixweek summer camp after my sophomore year. Our camp was held at Rickenbacker Air Force Base in Columbus Ohio. During these six weeks we learned all the basics of military life from marching to military courtesy. We also got a ride in a T-33 jet. It was truly a thrill for this 19 year old to go spinning through the sky in a real Air Force fighter plane. After the six-week course we knew how to march, knew all the ranks, both officer and enlisted, and we knew how make a proper military bed. But most important of all, I knew I loved to fly.
The ROTC pilot candidates were given a forty-hour course at the local airport flying a Cessna 150. The purpose of this course was to weed out those pilot candidates who may be best suited for other careers. This early screening process prevented sending an obviously weak candidate to pilot training only to have him wash out and then get re-assigned. The Cessna 150 we flew in the ROTC flight program was your basic single-engine, propeller driven, flight trainer. I soloed after about 10 hours of dual instruction. That feeling of accomplishment and freedom was unmatched in my life up to that time. We also went cross-country solo and got to see something other than the local traffic pattern. My first solo cross-country went from the Northeast Philadelphia airport to the Lancaster Pa. airport. After reaching Lancaster in good weather, I proceeded on the next leg of my great adventure to Cape May NJ airport. After landing and refueling in Cape May, I returned to my home base, PNE, Philadelphia Northeast airport. Every hour I spent in the air increased my confidence and stoked my excitement for the next phase of my career, USAF Pilot Training.
I was commissioned as an officer and as expected, married my high school girlfriend, Doreen, after graduation. I was assigned to Laredo Air Force base. My new wife and I packed our stuff and headed for the Lone Star state