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It’s May the 1st, 1960.
In the USSR it’s the Day of the International Solidarity of Workers.
A day of military parades and the demonstration
to the peoples of the Soviet Union of the unshakable success of communism.
There’s no time for celebration though at a radar station in Soviet Kazakhstan as alarms blare.
They know exactly what it is, it’s a spy plane.
This blip on the radar has been a thorn on the side of the USSR for half a decade.
Flying at an absurd 70,000 feet,
there has been little the Soviets have been able to do about it, much to their frustration.
They know the name of their nemesis as it’s spoken of in hushed tones in top secret meetings…
The U2.
How is it possible the Americans can have anything that goes that high and that fast?
The Soviet missiles and interceptors always fall short.
That is,
until today.
High Command scrambles absolutely everything to intercept the American plane
as it blazes its way deep into the Soviet heartland, further than any U-2 has ever gone.
The Major General in charge, Solodovnikov, receives the news of the contact, and much to his anger.
The higher ups have been furious about the overflights for a long time and demand immediate results.
Under immense pressure he’s determined to take the plane down, no matter the cost.
He immediately orders all Surface-to-Air Missile installations in the flight path onto high alert
and every air unit commander to intercept.
At a training ground near Sverdlovsk,
Major Mikhail Voronov adjusts his parade uniform in preparation to meet with officers from other nearby divisions.
As it’s a holiday many are taking the chance to relax.
Suddenly he receives an urgent call from the Headquarters.
There’s an American spy plane incoming and he’s to go to his post immediately.
Caught completely by surprise, Voronov runs to gather whichever soldiers from his unit haven’t yet gone on leave.
Meanwhile, inside the spy plane, pilot Francis Gary Powers of the CIA
calmly and methodically follows his flight plan,
unaware of the events going on below.
He keeps the plane steady as he overflies Chelyabinsk-65, a secret plutonium production facility.
30,000 feet below him is a Mig-19,
the pilot struggles to see the U-2 from here and is completely unable to shoot it down
due to the height difference,
but he shadows it and reports its position.
Somewhere else in the vicinity, is an Su-9 fresh out of the factory.
The pilot is delivering the plane to its airbase with no armament or pressure suit
when he receives a frantic transmission from The Major General himself
ordering him to find and ram the American out of the sky.
The Pilot, Mentyukov, is shocked, he questions the order, but the Major General shuts him down.
“Ram the intruder! That's an order!” he hears through the radio.
Faced between two impossible choices, the pilot solemnly and bravely replies
“Take care of my family, will you?” and gives chase.
Back on the SAM site
the Major and his soldiers rush to get the S-75 “Dvina” Surface-to-Air missile battery system online
before the intruder passes over.
The men take off the weather covers, unpack the radars, get the generators running,
they check and recheck every system is on and ready to launch.
The launcher is declared fully operational mere minutes before Powers high above streaks into range.
In the air the SU-9 pilot is having a hard time.
He’s getting transmissions all the time in his ear shouting at him
the location of the intruder and what to do to get there.
But no matter what he does in the Su-9 he can’t see the American.
He has to use a lot of afterburner to maintain such an extreme altitude,
but without a visual all he is doing is wasting precious fuel.
At the SAM site a ping appears on the radar, then a second ping at a lower altitude.
The radar operator selects the higher ping and the system quickly locks on to it.
“Fire three!” The major orders.
The operator presses the button, and the missile rockets off its platform.
It snakes left and right in the air as it gains altitude before it finally straightens out and heads for its target.
It’s the first time he’s fired the missile
and the operator watches it with concern and forgets to fire the other two.
“Fire! Fire!” Major Voronov orders,
but it’s too late and the lock has been lost.
Command warn Mentyukov of incoming missiles and he immediately breaks the chase, making for safety.
On the ground The major can see the U-2 and his missile on the radar screen.
The blips inch closer together with each radar refresh.
Just closer. And closer.
The missile detonates behind the plane.
Inside the U-2, Powers notices that the sky is suddenly lit orange, then he feels a jolt forward.
The plane starts to careen to the side and Powers adjusts the controls.
But then the plane pitches nose down and then nose up.
The tail is blown off and there’s nothing he can do.
The U2 then starts to roll and the wings separate from the fuselage.
The U-2
starts to fall like a rock from 70,000 feet in the sky.
Powers gathers himself from the shock.
His dash is lit with warnings and the altimeter is rapidly falling.
Acting fast, he frees himself from the harness and opens the canopy.
He doesn’t have time to destroy the top secret camera
as the cockpit violently decompresses in an instant, ripping off the canopy and sucking Powers alongside it.
Everything becomes a blur as he is hit by the barrage of air,
he is stuck halfway out of the plane, held on by the oxygen tube.
The wind shoves him against the falling fuselage as he falls through the clouds,
fighting desperately for his life.
He fights with the tube, each passing second seeming like an eternity.
Finally he rips it off and the wind flings him away from the craft.
The plane drifts away and he pulls his chute.
While descending under his parachute,
Powers scatters his escape map,
and disassembles a silver dollar suspended around his neck containing a poison-laced injection pin.
He secrets the poison pin in his uniform but doesn’t use it.
He was still hopeful of escape.
Back on the SAM site the men see the two radar pings touch.
Then a cloud of pings.
Then nothing.
The soldiers cheer,
that’s a hit.
Major Voronov gleefully reports back to base
“Target destroyed.”
But Headquarters shut him right down.
“No! He dropped decoys! Seek the intruder!” comes the reply.
The major is taken aback, but there’s nothing his crew can do now anyway.
Two MiGs are sent to find the American pilot while The Major General orders the anti-air commanders to keep firing.
Some commanders ask if they should be careful if there are friendly forces in the area.
They are told in no uncertain terms, there aren’t any friendly forces in the area.
Meanwhile in the Mig 19s Sergei Safronov and his wingman, Boris Ayvazyan,
enter the area as instructed
searching for what they believe is a still-flying U-2.
What they don’t know, is that due to holiday,
technicians haven’t switched their friend-or-foe transponders to the new codes for May.
The MiGs appear on the Surface to Air missile radars and they are fired upon.
Warning alarms screech inside the MiGs as they instantly break off into evasive maneuvers.
Two missiles streak past one Mig before he manages to flee,
but Safronov isn’t so lucky.
He is hit and his plane all but disintegrates around him.
He ejects.
At that time Powers falls hard on the floor.
He is met by farmers from a local village.
They help him believing him to be Soviet at first, but the obvious is quickly realized.
One of the farmers writes “USA?” on a windshield of a dusty truck
and Powers begrudgingly nods.
By the time the dust settles,
over a dozen missiles had been launched that day over a course of half an hour,
long after Powers was already on the ground.
The U.S. government, when informed of Powers' disappearance over the Soviet Union, had to make a decision.
What was the official line?
They didn’t know if Powers was alive or dead.
They chose to issue a false statement that said
“a US weather plane had strayed off course after its pilot had difficulties with his oxygen equipment".
What the CIA did not realize was that the plane had crashed almost fully intact
and that the Soviets had recovered its pilot and the plane's top-secret high-altitude camera.
Taken to Moscow, Powers was interrogated by the KGB for months
but eventually made a confession and a public apology for his part in the espionage.
Despite the interrogation Powers still managed to keep some secrets including the maximum ceiling of the U2.
Despite resisting interrogation for months, after his apology to the Soviets,
the American media frequently portrayed Powers as a coward and even as a symptom
of the decay of America's "moral character”.
The Major of the SAM site,
Mikhail Voronov and his men would be distinguished for their actions in shooting down the U2 on that day.
The Mig Pilot who ejected, Sergei Safronov would sadly pass away from his injuries.
Major General Solodovnikov was expelled from the military for his handling of the situation on that fateful day.
Mentyukov, the SU-9 pilot, would get to take care of his family himself.
His wife gave birth just 4 months later.
On the other side of the Iron Curtain the U2 incident rocked the American government.
It deteriorated Soviet-American relations and triggered political mayhem in the United States
as all attempts to cover up and make excuses for the incident backfired.
Powers was released a year and a half after the accident in a prisoner exchange.
Which was later portrayed in the Tom Hanks film “Bridge of Spies”.
He would be awarded the CIA’s Intelligence Star upon his return to the United States
and personally congratulated by sitting Senators for his actions.
In 1977 Powers was piloting a helicopter for KNBC Channel 4 over San Fernando.
Due to a faulty gauge he ran out of fuel.
While trying to conduct an emergency landing
he noticed children playing in the area and directed the helicopter elsewhere to avoid crashing into them…
Powers died in the crash. It’s been speculated that he may survived were not for this selfless act.
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