|
Daniel Hutchinson
This was something I sent a family member a few years ago, and while checking for my critique for Tod re the Fog Of War, I thought some of you might find this of interest? I originally posted in 2015. Still have a pretty good memory at almost 79 -- LOL.
"Boy, the time flies. I hope you find this of interest? I noticed I sent this to my high school classmates in June of 2015.
----------------
OK, here's something I just banged out on my experience with the U2 Spy Plane.
Francis Gary Powers – U2 Spy Plane Shoot Down
This goes back several years, as the years pass the memory dims, while I still have a good memory at age 71, I want to record some of these items to share some personal experiences.
This from the State Department’s Office of the Historian
”U-2 Overflights and the Capture of Francis Gary Powers, 1960
On May 1, 1960, the pilot of an American U-2 spy plane was shot down while flying though Soviet airspace. The fallout over the incident resulted in the cancellation of the Paris Summit scheduled to discuss the ongoing situation in divided Germany, the possibility of an arms control or test ban treaty, and the relaxation of tensions between the USSR and the United States.”
On my first overseas assignment with the CIA, as a Telecommunication Officer, to Nicosia, Cyprus. We used to have a major communications relay facility on the Island of Cyprus. What does this mean ‘relay facility’, and where is Cyprus? Before the days when everyone began using satellites exclusively, we used to employ High Frequency (HF) radios to transmit a message through the airwaves. HF radio frequency is refracted from the ionosphere on what is called the “E” and “F” Ion layers’ that is the signal would be transmitted up and would be refracted/bent back to earth at great distances away. I know this is getting a little convoluted, but the reason for explaining this, is for our need to have relay facilities in various locations around the world, to allow for various embassies, and other activities needing to send messages back to the U.S. could do so via a relay facility. Cyprus is an island on the eastern end of the Mediterranean.
At these relay facilities, there were quite a large number of us assigned to provide service for several locations using us to relay their message traffic. Often we would be called upon to provide someone to travel elsewhere to provide Temporary Duty (TDY), for our people other locations who needed some relief, or for special activities. One such special activity with which I was involved, was the U.S. sending a U2 Spy Plane to Cyprus, for the purpose of overflying the Suez Canal. This was early 1972. One of my friends and colleagues was sent to set up a communications facility for exclusive use in support of the U2 operation. The British had graciously given us a cover location at the Akrotiri Royal Air Force base on Cyprus. Akrotiri is near the city of Limassol. My friend was given an office in a vacant hanger right next to the runway. This friend named David was engaged to be married, and only had a few days before he was scheduled to return to the States to marry his High School sweetheart. He was fortunate in hitching a ride on a C-130 support flight back to the states. I was asked to go down from Nicosia to replace him. I drove down from Nicosia to the base, arriving late afternoon, and my buddy, left on the flight the next morning. I went into the office, with all of the equipment setting around in temporary fashion, wires draped all over the place. My first day, there was a scheduled flight over the Suez. In the same office --- large office where I was, there was also the guy who would monitor all of the systems, not only on the aircraft but the pilot as well. I had turned on all of my equipment, tuned the receivers and transmitters and made sure everything was ready to go, to pass information to Washington, related to the flight. This was done real time, with my typing directly to the Flight Operations center at Langley, and one at Edwards Air Force Base in California, where the U2 operation was headquartered. You may recall many of our Space Shuttles would land at Edwards because they have the longest runway in the world. As an aside, the runway at La Paz, Bolivia is the longest commercial runway in the world, where I lived for so many years. These spy planes had spectacular capabilities, where a long runway was not needed, but to have plenty of runway was much easier on the aircraft.
I think it’s worth mentioning what the work environment was like inside the CIA. From the day I entered on duty, we knew and sensed the professionalism, yet there was a relaxed attitude throughout. For instance, everyone from the Director of the Agency on down was on first name basis. As years went on, there was more of an air of official interaction, not quite as it was with the old timers, many of the original members who founded the Agency were still around, or their influence was felt.
I mention this because whenever we went anywhere in the world we knew we would be working with professionals, that we could trust, and the atmosphere would be relaxed and cordial. Most places we went, we would be working with total strangers, and yet we would feel like old friends very quickly.
The flight took off at about 6:00 A.M. and the fellow monitoring the machine, about the size of a large microwave oven, which printed out a tape with several channels, which represented all of the systems of the aircraft and Pilot. This tape very much resembled the tape coming out of an EKG machine. As soon as the flight began to roll down the runway, the machine was spitting out the data tape. The aircraft was so fast, it didn’t take more than 20 minutes for the plane to be making its pass down the Suez Canal. At this time, the Russians were the influencing power presence in Egypt, pretty much-controlling everything. Along the Suez Canal, the Soviets (it was still the Soviet Union then) had installed SAM III missile sites all along the Canal. The U2 had just barely begun its pass, when the monitoring equipment, constantly monitoring the revolutions of engines on the ground, including those of missiles. Most all of the time the missiles would have their engines running at an idle. If they ever exceeded a certain level of revolutions, it meant the missile was being fired. This was the case on my first day on the job. The Russians were firing a rocket at our U2 Plane. The Pilot, with these special ops planes, were called ‘Drivers’. He was able to monitor the same information in the cockpit. The two of us monitoring the tape on the ground saw the readout go first to ‘amber’ (the revolutions were going up) to ‘red’ (they were firing). The Driver immediately began taking evasive action and got out of there. Concurrent to this, I went to my Teletype machine immediately and began typing the events of what was going on, back to Washington and Edwards. Naturally, it goes without saying, things were a bit tense, but as I said, the plane had a lot of fantastic capability, and there was really no danger in the missile actually taking the plane down. The plane was too high and too fast for the missile to be effective.
The British were very hospitable to us, we would go eat breakfast at the Royal Air Force Officer Mess, and in the evenings we were welcomed into the Officers Club. Almost every evening most of us in the group would go have supper together. Since I had remembered the political backlash of Gary Powers being shot down over the Soviet Union. I asked one of the Drivers sitting across the dinner table from me if he knew Powers, he and the other Driver sitting next to him, both knew and worked with him. I asked why the plane was shot down. Both of them with giving off a ‘humph’, explained the procedure was when leaving Pakistan on its planned flight path over the Soviet Union to land in Norway, was to climb to 70,000 feet, and glide for a very long way, with the engines off, to prevent the Russians from being able to monitor or pick up the plane from the emission of the engine. Throughout almost any country, there will be areas, or what is termed hot zones, where radar is heavily painting the area. These are around military installations, heavily populated areas, and sensitive sites, like missile launch pads. There are areas in-between these heavily painted radar sites with little capability to pick up the engines or to be picked up on radar itself. Gary Powers failed to follow procedure on the flight. After gliding for say, a thousand miles, the plane would eventually descend, the procedure was to get to the altitude to prevent detection, knowing where they could turn the engine on to regain altitude again. Powers didn’t do that and waited too long. When he turned the engine on, he was picked up, and the Russians scrambled fighters to intercept him and were able to get to him before he got back up to the high altitude (which used to be classified). The Russians fired a missile which took him down. Powers was able to bail out and then was captured. The Russians made a big deal over this. If you’re interested there are some good pieces of the whole incident. Just Google U2 Spy Plane Shoot Down, and you’ll get quite a bit to choose from.
The Drivers sitting across the table from me having dinner didn’t have any sympathy for Powers, saying ‘he got what he deserved, for not following procedure’!
I believe I provided some of you with this before, but since I’m re-writing it because I must have trashed my previous version, perhaps some of the information will be new. There is always something else that comes to mind when I’m writing these things.
One of these Drivers I became to know quite well, and was a great guy, These guys are a breed of their own, almost fearless, yet very intelligent and patriotic. This one I was talking with, I asked if the stories I’d heard about the plane being able to take off and be out of sight within five seconds was true. This guy affirmed this but said it caused quite-a-bit of stress on the aircraft. He wasn’t a very tall guy, maybe 5’10’, but stocky, with board shoulders. The cockpit of the U2 was very narrow/tight. He told me to come out of my shop before flight time the next morning and watch what I do. The flight preparation/ops room was right next to where my office was, and as I said right on the edge of the runway. The following morning I went out just as a couple of support crew brought the Driver out, helping him into a box van, where there was a seat mounted right in the center of van (about the size of a UPS delivery van, maybe a bit larger), One of the guys was carrying his oxygen tank/pack, another was ensuring that there was nothing which could snag or cut the flight suit. The flight suit they wore was the same one the Astronauts wore. He told me they cost 95 thousand dollars, just for the suit. I thought that was a lot of money, particularly for 1972. The support guys had him in the van, where when seated he was facing backward. He looked out and saw me, and gave me a thumbs up.
They took the Driver to the plane which was already on the runway. The extremely long wings, which allowed the plane to glide for long distances when filled with fuel would droop almost touching the ground. They had little poles, with a caster on the bottom, which hooked to the end of the wings to hold them off of the ground. As soon as the plane took off, those poles fell off. I failed to mention, I had heard the plane could take off in about a city block. The plane itself was practically all engine, very very powerful and noisy. The crew got the Driver in the cockpit, which with his broad shoulders, he had to sit with his shoulders bent forward because it was so tight – making for an uncomfortable ride.
The Driver began revving the engine, louder and louder, and amazing it was able to be running with so much power and still sitting still. As soon as he got to the revolutions he needed, he let the brakes go, and off he went. He had only been rolling about the city block I mentioned and lifted off. He tipped the plane on end and shot straight up, virtually vertical. It took right at five seconds and he was out of sight. You could still hear the engine, but the plane was already out of sight. When he returned to base, the Ops Officer in charge of the Cyprus operation, asked him, “What the hell did you do that for”? I was standing there and the Driver said, ‘Well Hutch wanted to see it”! The Chief just looked at him, shook his head and walked off. Those Drivers were a pretty valuable commodity, so nobody really gave them too much grief. The Driver turned to me and winked.
Oh and Dave came back to Cyprus with his new bride, a beautiful blond girl, who already had her nursing degree. Our group was very close, and we all had a great time together.
Just one of my experiences – I hope you enjoyed reading it?
Dan"
Let me know if you'd like to see more of my stories.
|
