Francis Gary Powers. Francis Gary Powers, (born August 17, 1929, Jenkins, Kentucky, U.S.—died August 1, 1977, Encino, California), pilot who was captured on May 1, 1960, while on a reconnaissance flight deep inside the Soviet Union. The capture, known as the U-2 incident, resulted in the cancellation by the Soviet Union...
The deal allowed US spy plane pilot Gary Powers to return home - but once there he faced a chorus of criticism. Gary Powers had been in flight for four hours when his troubles began.
He is buried in the Arlington National Cemetery where his gravestone reads: "Francis Gary Powers, Capt US Air Force, Korea, Aug 17 1929, Aug 1 1977".
Francis Gary Powers (August 17, 1929 – August 1, 1977) was an American pilot whose Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) U-2 spy plane was shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission in Soviet Union airspace, causing the 1960 U-2 incident. He later worked as a helicopter pilot for KNBC in Los Angeles and died in a 1977 helicopter crash.
Donovan is widely known for negotiating the 1960–1962 exchange of captured American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers and American student Frederic Pryor for Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, and for negotiating the 1962 release and return of 9,703 prisoners held by Cuba after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion.
Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies dramatizes an incredible spy exchange that took place at the height of the Cold War. It stars Tom Hanks as attorney James Donovan, a man who first defended an accused Russian operative, then negotiated his swap for an American pilot held by the Soviet Union.
Bridge of Spies is based on the real events but the film departs from the historical record, though reviewers have praised the film and argued that such departures are permissible.
One of the most dramatic moments of the Cold War occurred Feb. 10, 1962, on a bridge connecting the then-divided states of East Germany and West Germany, when two high-profile prisoners — American pilot Francis Gary Powers and a convicted Soviet spy known as Rudolf Abel — were exchanged.
On June 21, 1957, he was arrested by the FBI, and on October 25, 1957, a federal district court in Brooklyn found him guilty of espionage, relying in part on testimony by Soviet Lieutenant Colonel Reino Hayhanen, who had defected to the West and who stated that he had been Abel's chief coconspirator in the United ...
Bridge of Spies provides a reasonably accurate portrayal of the case, but its portrayal of the late 1950s—designed by Spielberg and a team of writers who include the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan—appeals more to the prejudices of our own time than it would the reality of the world back then.
As Abel proceeds, he tells Donovan he earlier sent the lawyer a gift a painting, which turns out to be a portrait of Donovan in the courtroom. So Abel has left no doubt that Donovan will have the painting regardless of what happens on the bridge. (Interestingly, Donovan would later become president of Pratt.)
Donovan's Coat when he gets to East Berlin? A gang of boys steal it.
Abel returned to Moscow, where he was forced into retirement by the KGB, who feared that during his five years of captivity U.S. authorities had convinced him to become a double agent. He was given a modest pension and in 1968 published KGB-approved memoirs. He died in 1971.
Rudolf AbelAfter the war, he began working for the KGB, which sent him to the United States where he worked as part of a spy ring based in New York City....Rudolf AbelCodenameEmil Robert GoldfusCodenameMark CollinsCodenameMARKCodenameALEC14 more rows
He was released in 1962, however, in exchange for the Soviet spy Rudolf Abel. Powers returned to the United States and wrote of his view of the incident in Operation Overflight (1970). In 1977 he died in the crash of a helicopter that he flew as a reporter for a Los Angeles television station.
Frederic Pryor, an American graduate student who was jailed in East Germany in 1961 on suspicion of espionage but later freed as part of the famous prisoner trade between the United States and Soviet Union dramatized in Steven Spielberg's film “Bridge of Spies,” died on Sept. 2 at his home in Newtown Square, Pa.
However, Barbara Powers , the wife of Gary Powers, was often drinking and allegedly having affairs. On June 22, 1961, she was pulled over by the police after driving erratically and was caught driving under the influence.
The program was produced by Indigo Films. In the 2015 movie Bridge of Spies, dramatizing the negotiations to repatriate Powers, he is portrayed by Austin Stowell, with Tom Hanks starring as negotiator James Donovan. In April 2018, The Aviationist featured an article about the song "Powers Down", a tribute to Powers.
His family eventually moved to Pound, Virginia, just across the state border. He was the second born and only male of six children. His family lived in a mining town, and because of the hardships associated with living in such a town, his father wanted Powers to become a physician.
The CIA, in particular, chief of CIA Counterintelligence James Jesus Angleton, opposed exchanging Powers for Soviet KGB Colonel William Fisher, known as "Rudolf Abel", who had been caught by the FBI and tried and jailed for espionage. First, Angleton believed that Powers may have deliberately defected to the Soviet side. CIA documents released in 2010 indicate that U.S. officials did not believe Powers's account of the incident at the time, because it was contradicted by a classified National Security Agency (NSA) report which alleged that the U-2 had descended from 65,000 to 34,000 feet (20 to 10 km) before changing course and disappearing from radar. The NSA report remains classified as of 2020.
During a speech in March 1964, former CIA Director Allen Dulles said of Powers, "He performed his duty in a very dangerous mission and he performed it well, and I think I know more about that than some of his detractors and critics know, and I am glad to say that to him tonight."
Lieutenant General Borisoglebsky, Major General Vorobyev, and Major General Zakharov presided. Roman Rudenko acted as prosecutor in his capacity of Procurator General of the Soviet Union.
In the 1976 telemovie Francis Gary Powers: The True Story of the U-2 Spy Incident, Powers was played by Lee Majors. In 1999, the History Channel aired Mystery of the U2, hosted by Arthur Kent as part of their History Undercover series. The program was produced by Indigo Films.
Powers was born in Kentucky, the second of six children in a working-class family. He graduated from Milligan College in 1950 and immediately enlisted in the United States Air Force, where he was trained in photographic equipment.
In May 1960, Powers took off from a base in Pakistan on his 27th and final U-2 mission. His orders were to overfly and photograph military installations in Soviet territory.
In the Soviet Union, Powers was charged with espionage, put on trial in Moscow and sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment. He was released 18 months later, in exchange for a KGB colonel who had been caught spying in the US.
Powers’ capture and eventual release are taken up in the new Steven Spielberg movie, Bridge of Spies. Ron Capshaw interviewed Powers’ son, Gary Francis Powers, Jr., about it via email.
An enraged Nikita Khrushchev, premiere of the Soviet Union, cancelled a summit with President Eisenhower. Meanwhile, Powers was interrogated extensively by the KGB. Although he made a public apology, he was nevertheless tried by the Russian government for espionage, convicted, and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
FGP: There was no physical torture but a lot of mental anguish / mental torture. Threats of death, sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, some roughing up, yelling and screaming at him, trying to provide him with incentives to cooperate, etc.
He is buried in the Arlington National Cemetery where his gravestone reads: "Francis Gary Powers, Capt US Air Force, Korea, Aug 17 1929, Aug 1 1977". It then lists two honours, both awarded posthumously: the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the Prisoner of War medal.
The deal allowed US spy plane pilot Gary Powers to return home - but once there he faced a chorus of criticism. Gary Powers had been in flight for four hours when his troubles began.
Powers was traded for the Soviet intelligence officer, Vilyam Fisher - also known as Rudolf Abel - who had been serving a 30-year prison term for espionage against the US at a penitentiary in Georgia. The exchange took place on the famous Glienicke bridge in Berlin - referred to in the title of the film, Bridge of Spies.
In a radio report from late 1960, BBC correspondent Ian McDougall described one of the pilot's Moscow court appearances. "There stood this crew-cut, diffident, simple, rather polite man, surrounded by the entire apparatus of Soviet law, and knowing himself to be, as he said himself, the cause of a lot of trouble.
image copyright. Alexander Nemonov. image caption. Gary Powers Jnr. with the wreckage of his father's U-2 plane, on display in Moscow. But while he had indeed been issued with a poisoned pin, he was under no orders to take his own life.
Steven Spielberg's most recent movie, Bridge of Spies, tells the story of a Cold War prisoner exchange between the Soviet Union and the US. The deal allowed US spy plane pilot Gary Powers to return home - but once there he faced a chorus of criticism. Gary Powers had been in flight ...
Francis Gary Powers (August 17, 1929 – August 1, 1977) was an American pilot whose Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Lockheed U-2 spy plane was shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission in Soviet Union airspace, causing the 1960 U-2 incident.
He later worked as a helicopter pilot for KNBC in Los Angeles and died in a 1977 …
Powers was born August 17, 1929, in Jenkins, Kentucky, the son of Oliver Winfield Powers (1904–1970), a coal miner, and his wife Ida Melinda Powers (née Ford; 1905–1991). His family eventually moved to Pound, Virginia, just across the state border. He was the second born and only male of six children.
His family lived in a mining town, and because of the hardships associated with living in such a t…
Powers was piloting a helicopter for Los Angeles TV station KNBC Channel 4 over the San Fernando Valley on August 1, 1977, when the aircraft crashed, killing him and his cameraman George Spears. They had been recording video following brush fires in Santa Barbara County in the KNBC helicopter and were heading back from them.
His Bell 206 JetRanger helicopter ran out of fuel and crashed at the Sepulveda Dam recreational ar…
Powers received the CIA's Intelligence Star in 1965 after his return from the Soviet Union. Powers was originally scheduled to receive it in 1963 along with other pilots involved in the CIA's U-2 program, but the award was postponed for political reasons. In 1970, Powers published his first—and only—book review, on a work about aerial reconnaissance, Unarmed and Unafraid by Glenn Infield, in the monthly magazine Business & Commercial Aviation. "The subject has great i…
Powers's son, Francis Gary Powers Jr., founded the Cold War Museum in 1996. Affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution, it was essentially a traveling exhibit until it found a permanent home in 2011 on a former Army communications base outside Washington, D.C.