Word: pilots
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Soviet press had no more trouble changing itstune than the U.S. State Department had forgetting its original "weather-flight" fantasy. The rocket, said a Moscow dispatch, had exploded under the U2's tail, damaging the ejection seat. Pilot Powers had ridden his crippled ship down to 40,000 ft. before bailing out. Presumably, the Russians were claiming that the ship then fluttered in for a not-too-damaging crash landing on its own. Whether it did, or whether Powers flew his plane all the way down, this version neatly demolished Khrushchev's story that Powers had been afraid...
...they displayed some convincing wreckage. The long, gliderlike wings were remarkably intact. The Pratt & Whitney J57 jet engine was easily identifiable, as were the U.S. manufacturers' labels on cameras and electronic gear. Along with the varied supply of foreign money that Khrushchev had reported in the captured pilot's possession, the Soviets also laid out a pistol, a tube of morphine, a flashlight, a half-pack of Kent cigarettes, a Social Security card (No. 230-30-0321), a couple of pocketknives. Powers' suicide needle, they said, had been tested on a dog, and the animal had died...
...defector was quickly denied in Washington. In an age of such sophisticated third-degree methods as "truth se rums," agents are taught to recognize the inevitable - and talk. Powers, for one, had little to tell beyond his own personal history. He had been trained as a pilot, not a spy. His instruments did his snooping...
This story may have placated allies in case of U-2 trouble, but it was bound to fall apart if both plane and pilot were captured. Conventional cloak-and-dagger types argued that the U.S. should have kept a discreet silence in the face of all talk about the U2. They wondered, too, why the U.S., if it really wanted to ensure against detection, could not have subcontracted the job to a foreign pilot without a country, perhaps a refugee from a Communist satellite...
...such subterfuges would probably not have satisfied critics or kept Khrushchev from making whatever use he wanted of the incident. And for all Khrushchev's claims, the U.S. was convinced that an oxygen-system failure or an en gine "flame-out" had forced Pilot Powers down within rocket range, and, most importantly, that the Soviets still do not have an antiaircraft rocket capable of reaching the U2's operating altitude...