On August 1, the team assembled for the unofficial first flight, which was scheduled as merely a taxi test, with LeVier at the controls to check the engine and the breaks. They experienced some last-minute trouble with the fuel, and after the pilot followed his boss’s instructions to rev the engine to 70 knots, the plane leapt off of the dry lakebed and into the air, about 35 feet off the ground. It wanted to fly. LeVier had never known an aircraft capable of gaining flight at such a low speed, and he was simultaneously impressed and unnerved. “The lakebed was so smooth, I couldn’t feel when the wheels were no longer touching,” he recalled, adding, “I almost crapped.”24 When he touched down and slammed the breaks, both tires blew and the breaks caught fire, which brought out the fire truck.
Now fully acquainted with the lightness of the airplane, LeVier piloted the official first flight three days later, taking the U-2 to 8,000 feet in a driving rainstorm. On the radio with the boss, who was chasing in a C-47, he said the plane flew “like a baby buggy.”25
Given the inclement weather, they decided to cut the flight short, but when he tried to land it nose first, it began porpoising, or bouncing violently, because of the unusual aerodynamics at play, and he pulled up. Johnson began to sweat, concerned about losing his precious prototype. It took LeVier two more passes, but he finally stuck the landing. He could see the U-2 was not going to be an easy plane to learn how to fly. (Ben Rich, one of Johnson’s engineers and the man who would one day succeed him as the head of the Skunk Works, called the U-2 “a stern taskmaster [that was] unforgiving of pilot error or lack of concentration.”26) But they were in business. That night, huddled in one of the hangars in a place that did not exist, they all drank themselves silly and took turns arm wrestling, celebrating their new baby.
A few weeks after committing to stay in the Air Force, Powers returned from a routine training flight in his F-84 and noticed his name typed onto a sheet of paper on the squadron bulletin board, ordering him to report to a certain major the next morning. His was one of several names. Naturally, he was curious, thinking, What could this be about?
The meeting left him with more questions than answers. He learned only that he and the other officers had been identified because they had all achieved exceptional pilot ratings and had been granted top secret security clearances; amassed a certain number of hours in a single-engine plane; and signed up for an indefinite period of service.
Like his colleagues, Powers was offered the chance to take another meeting, if he was interested. He was interested, although he found the whole business rather strange: “The Air Force was not in the habit of arranging outside job interviews for its officers.”27
The next meeting took place at night, far from the base.
Arriving at the Radium Springs Inn, a motel on the outskirts of town, he knocked on the appropriate cottage door at the appointed time. A dark-haired, medium-build man who appeared to be in his thirties answered the door. He was wearing civilian clothes and was flanked by two other men similarly attired.
Feeling unsure of what he was walking into, the First Lieutenant said, “I was told to ask for a Mr. William Collins.”
“I’m Bill Collins. You must be…”
Collins paused.
Finally, the Air Force man answered, “Lieutenant Powers.”28
During the meeting, Powers learned that the men, who never said who they worked for, were recruiting pilots for a special mission that was “risky” but “important for your country.”
Immediately intrigued by the opportunity, which stirred his patriotism and his sense of adventure, Frank was disappointed to learn that the assignment would require him to be overseas for eighteen months, without the ability to take his wife. He knew this would never work.
Nine months into his marriage, he was increasingly concerned about Barbara’s state of mind. The behavior that had concerned him before their wedding day had not improved. His relatives had already been exposed to her excessive drinking.
Standing in the motel room, Frank doubted they could survive such an extended separation.
To his surprise, however, when Frank went home that night and told his wife what he was allowed to tell her, she was enthusiastic about the opportunity for her husband’s advancement, especially when she learned it would pay him, while overseas, the incredible sum of $2,500 per month, about five times the median American income at the time. They talked about what they could do with the money, including buying a house and providing for the children surely to come in the years ahead.
Convinced by Barbara’s assurances, Powers took another meeting at the motel, where Collins—not his real name—pulled back the veil on his operation: If the lieutenant passed the various tests, he would be working for the CIA, flying a brand-new top secret airplane that flew higher than any airplane ever produced. At the end of his assignment, he would be allowed to reenter the Air Force at a rank comparable to his peers, his time with the agency counting toward his military service.
His heart racing with excitement, Powers then heard the sentence that would define the rest of his life:
“Your main mission will be to fly over Russia.”29
Not long after this meeting, he packed up his clothes and other belongings and moved out of the Albany house. After completing some paperwork, he was honorably separated from the Air Force, becoming a civilian once more. No one could know exactly what he was up to—not even his wife, although he was allowed to tell her that he was to make reconnaissance flights near the Russian border—and the boys at Turner were left to wonder, too caught up in their own lives to linger too much on one pilot’s sudden vanishing act.
Toward the end of January 1956, Frank flew to Washington under an assumed name, complete with a fake identification card, and checked into the DuPont Plaza Hotel, feeling the full weight of his career choice. He was now entering the realm of spies.
By this time, Kelly Johnson and his dedicated team of skunks had routinely taken the U-2, code named Angel, above 70,000 feet, higher than any other aircraft in the world, which the experts believed made it invisible to Soviet radar and invulnerable to Soviet defenses. (Their various altitude records remained secret for years.) They had demonstrated a range of roughly 4,000 miles, which meant it could fly deep into the USSR and out again without needing to refuel.
With four versions of the plane in the air, nine more being assembled, and seven more on the drawing board, Lockheed and the CIA continued to work through various problems, including achieving the proper calibrations to ensure the engine, updated through several versions, and fuel pump worked effectively at such a high ceiling. The engine problems persisted and would take time to solve.
During one flight near the Mississippi River, Jake Kratt experienced a flame-out. Learning on the spot, he descended to around 30,000 feet—aware that trying to light in the thin air at maximum altitude could burn it out—and eventually he reignited the burner, only to suffer another engine failure. This time he had no luck getting the burner to start. Leaning on the plane’s glider-mimicking characteristics, he allowed it to sail through the air for several hundred miles while heading toward the Ranch, before landing at an Air Force Base in New Mexico. Never one to leave a thing to chance, Dick Bissell, when informed of the impending touchdown, placed an urgent telephone call to the commander of the base, carefully instructing him to move the special aircraft to a remote part of the base and to secure it with a tarpaulin and an armed guard. No one was to see it.30