Free Operation Overflight by Curt Gentry, Francis Gary Powers

missiles. And from photographs of their launching sites and other data, such as that picked up on the electronic surveillance flights, U.S. intelligence was able to determine how far Soviet technology had progressed in both missile development and production.
    Bit by bit, mission after mission, the U-2s were penetrating, and dissipating, a cloud of ignorance which had for decades made the Soviet Union a dark and shadowy land, revealing for the first time a composite picture of military Russia, complete to airfields, atomic production sites, power plants, oil-storage depots, submarine yards, arsenals, railroads, missile factories, launch sites, radar installations, industrial complexes, antiaircraft defenses. Much later,
The New York Times
would call the U-2 overflights “the most successful reconnaissance, espionage project in history,” while Allen Dulles, head of the Central Intelligence Agency during this period, would observe that the U-2 “could collect information with more speed, accuracy, and dependability than could any agent on the ground. In a sense, its feats could be equaled only by the acquisition of technical documents directly from Soviet offices and laboratories. The U-2 marked a new high, in more ways than one, in the scientific collection of intelligence.”
    The U-2 pilots were denied this broad overview. We caught only glimpses.
    That was enough, however, to convince us of the importance of what we were doing.
    And to make us aware of the risks involved.
    Still no one asked the big question.
    Returning from one of the “special” missions, I was handed a message from Colonel Perry. Exhausted, still mentally involved in the flight just finished, I couldn’t understand it, even after reading it several times.
    The colonel explained it to me, his tone something less than happy.
    â€œYour wife called the Washington number you gave her, Powers. To tell us she’s on her way to Athens, determined to see you.”
    The agency didn’t want her in the vicinity. But they couldn’t order her to return home. I’d have to persuade her.
    But Barbara had already made up her mind and wasn’t about to change it. She was going to stay in Athens and get a job. Nothing I could say would dissuade her.
    And, I must admit, I didn’t try very hard. At this time we were not at all sure the overflight program would last the full eighteen months. There was the possibility we would be returning to the United States much sooner. In the interim, although I was quite aware it would displease the agency, I couldn’t see any good reason why she shouldn’t stay.
    One thing bothered me, though: Barbara was given to impetuous acts. When she wanted to do something, she did it, regardless of consequences. In the States, living with her mother, there had been some check on her wilder impulses. In Athens, away from home for the first time, and separated from me except for occasional visits, she would be on her own. Yet there was the possibility this was just what she needed, to be out from under the parental roof, where she could learn self-control.
    We rented an apartment in Athens. She found a steno-clerk job in one of the Air Force offices. And by arranging my off-duty time, I was able to fly over and be with her almost every other weekend.
    Although Operation Overflight settled into an established routine, the flights themselves never became routine.
    After a while, for example, there was no need to mention in briefings that under no circumstances was radio contact to be attempted while over “forbidden territory,” or that in the event of a bail-out or forced landing the pilot should do everything he could to see that the aircraft was not captured intact. Since we all knew this, we could take such things for granted and eliminate mentionof them from the briefings, instead concentrating on the most important thing, navigation. The procedures became familiar; as for the