Dark Eagles: A History of the Top Secret U.S. Aircraft

crashed.

A search was launched, but the wreckage could not be found. It was Lockheed test pilot Herman 'Fish' Salmon who discovered the crash site.

He rented a twin-engine Cessna from Las Vegas, and three days after the crash, Salmon found the U-2 in a valley near Pioche, Nevada, about ninety miles from the Ranch. The faceplate was still in the cockpit. Sieker's body was fifty feet away. This suggested that he had revived at the last moment and jumped from the plane but was too low for his parachute to open. In the wake of this and other accidents, an ejector seat was added to the U-2. (In June 1957, following the crash, Lockheed moved its test operations from the Ranch to North Base at Edwards Air Force Base.)[89]

Finally, Johnson decided it was more practical to cover the aircraft with a paint that contained iron ferrite. Later called 'Iron Ball' paint, it absorbed some of the radar signals, which reduced the cross section by an order of magnitude.

The first 'Dirty Bird' U-2, as the modified aircraft was called, was sent to Turkey in July 1957. It had wires strung from the nose to poles on the wings, as well as the radar absorbing paint. On July 7, CIA pilot James Cherbonneaux made a Dirty Bird flight along the Black Sea coast to probe Soviet air defenses. Intercepted communications indicated the wires and coatings worked well but that the Soviets were able to pick up radar returns from the cockpit and tailpipe. Two weeks later, he made a Dirty Bird overflight of the central Soviet Union from Pakistan. It covered Omsk and the Tyuratam launch site, before landing back in Pakistan.

In the end, the loss of altitude caused by the wires was too great and they were removed. The Iron Ball paint continued to be used. At first, it was a light color. This was soon changed to midnight blue, which matched the color of the sky at 70,000 feet. This would make it harder for MiG pilots to […] appearance.

With the failure of the Dirty Bird U-2, it was now clear to Johnson that a reduced radar cross section would have to designed into a plane from the start, not added on later. Ironically, when final success was achieved, Johnson was one of those who doubted it could work.

MAY DAY

U-2 overflights of the Soviet Union remained sporadic throughout 1958 and 1959. Months would pass without one. Eisenhower continued to express fears that the overflights would provoke a Soviet response, even […] a 'feeling time was running out. Starting in […] SA-1 SAMs had been fired at the planes. Some had come dangerously close. What overflights were being made could not settle the question of the Soviet ICBM force size.

Then, in early 1960, information was received that an ICBM site was being built at Plesetsk in the northwest Soviet Union. From this site, SS-6 missiles could reach the northeast United States, including New York, Boston, and Washington, D.C. Although there had been a number of false alarms before, this report seemed solid.

After some four months without an overflight, Eisenhower approved two in succession for April 1960. One complication was the upcoming Paris Summit Conference set for May 16, 1960, to be followed in June by a visit by Eisenhower to the USSR. Eisenhower observed that the one asset he had at a summit meeting was his reputation for honesty. If a U-2 was lost during the Summit, it could be put on display in Moscow; a disclosure like that would ruin his effectiveness.[90]

Accordingly, when Eisenhower approved the two missions, he added an April 25 cutoff date. Detachment B commander Col. William Shelton selected Bob Ericson and Francis Powers for the overflights. Ericson was a member of the third group who had been originally stationed with Detachment C in Japan. He had later been transferred to Turkey. Powers was the only original member of Detachment B still with the group. He and another pilot had each made at least three overflights.

Both of the overflights were made from Peshawar, Pakistan. On April 9, Ericson took off. He crossed the Hindu Kush Mountain Range and crossed into Soviet airspace. The primary target was Sary-Shagen, the Soviet's test site for both SAMs and antiballistic missiles, as well as long-range radars.

This was not the first visit to the site, but earlier photos had been poor. This time the results were good. Ericson headed for the nuclear test site at Semipalatinsk. At this time, both the United States and Soviets were observing a nuclear test moratorium. The U-2 then headed west and photographed Tyuratam before landing at the Zahedan airstrip in Iran.[91]

The second April overflight would be different. It was to go all the way across the Soviet Union. After takeoff from Peshawar, the route went from Stalinabad, Tyuratam, Chelyabinsk, the Soviet's main nuclear weapons production facility at Sverdlovsk, suspected ICBM sites at Yurya and Plesetsk, then submarine shipyards at Severodvinsk, and naval bases at Murmansk, before landing at Bodo, Norway. [92] The flight demanded the most of both plane and pilot.

Detachment B was alerted for the overflight, but weather was bad. This mission required the whole of the USSR to be clear. By this time, the April 25 deadline had expired, and Bissell required an extension. Due to lighting conditions caused by its northerly location, Plesetsk could only be covered between April and early September, and during this period, only a few days per month were clear. If not covered now, the Summit and Eisenhower's visit could delay the flight beyond the weather-lighting window. Eisenhower agreed, with May 1, 1960, as the final allowable date.

Finally, on April 27, the weather looked good, and Powers and the support crew headed for Peshawar. The overflight was to begin at 6:00 A.M. the next morning. Powers and the backup pilot were awakened at 2:00 A.M., but almost immediately weather forced a scrub. Powers went through the same routine the next morning, but again weather forced a scrub, this time for forty-eight hours. It was not until Sunday, May 1, the last authorized day, that the weather cleared enough to allow the flight to be made. A last-minute communications problem delayed the takeoff until 6:26 A.M. This invalidated the precomputed navigation data.

As Powers crossed the Soviet border, he found the weather was worse than expected. A solid cloud cover extended below him. An hour and a half into the flight, Powers spotted the first break in the clouds. The plane was slightly off course and Powers corrected his heading. Far below, Powers could see the contrail of a Soviet fighter. He knew the U-2 was being tracked.

The clouds cleared again when the U-2 reached Tyuratam. Several large thunderheads hid the pad area, but the surrounding area was clear. The clouds closed in again until about three hours into the overflight. As they began to clear, Powers could see a town. Using the plane's radio compass, Powers took a bearing on a Soviet radio station and corrected his course again. About fifty miles south of Chelyabinsk, the clouds finally broke and Powers could see the snowcapped Urals.[93]

At this point, Powers's plane, Article 360, suffered an autopilot failure.

The aircraft's nose pitched up. Powers disconnected the autopilot, retrimmed the aircraft, and flew it manually for several minutes. He then reengaged the autopilot, and the plane flew normally. After ten or fifteen minutes, the pitch control again went full up. This could not continue, so Powers left the autopilot disconnected. He now faced the daunting task of hand flying the plane. The weather was now clear, however, and the plane was nearing the halfway point. Powers decided to press on rather than turning back. [94]

The U-2 was approaching Sverdlovsk at an altitude of 72,000 feet when it was picked up on Soviet radar. A prototype Su-9 fighter, still in testing and not even armed, was ordered to ram the U-2. The pilot was u n a b l e to spot the U-2, however, and flew far past it. Two MiG 19s were also sent up, but with a maximum altitude of 66,000 feet, they could not reach the U-2.

As yet, Powers was unaware of these intercept attempts. He had just completed a 90-degree turn and was lining up for the next photo run. As he wrote entries in his logbook, an SA-2 battery opened fire.[95] One of the missiles exploded below and behind the U-2. Powers saw an orange flash.

The shock wave damaged the right stabilizer. The U-2 held steady for a moment, then the stabilizer broke off, the U-2 flipped over on its back, and the wings broke off.[96] Powers struggled to escape from the tumbling forward fuselage. He was unable to trigger the plane's destruct system. At 15,000 feet, he was able to escape and parachute to a landing. Powers was captured almost immediately.

The Soviets did not realize they had shot down the U-2. The MiG 19 pilots saw the explosion, but thought the SAM had self-destructed after a miss. On the ground, the fluttering debris from the U-2 filled the radar screens with echoes, but the Soviets thought it was chaff being ejected from the U-2 to confuse the radar. At least three SAM sites continued to fire — reportedly fourteen SA-2s in all. An SA-2 hit one of the MiG 19s, killing its pilot, Sergei