Operation Overflight (6 page)

The U-2 was much too distinctive an aircraft, either on ground or in flight, to be kept completely secret. Too, with the movement of the various groups overseas, some leak was inevitable. To forestall comment and speculation, a series of cover stories was released.

The first appeared late in April, 1956, in the form of a NACA press release announcing that “a new type of airplane, the Lockheed U-2,” had been developed, which, with the logistical and technical assistance of the Air Weather Service of the USAF, would be used to study turbulence and meteorological conditions. Although indicating the U-2 was capable of high-altitude flight, the release gave no particulars. It did state, however, that initial flights were made from “Watertown Strip, Nevada.”

The first U-2 group, which had completed its training early in April, a month before our arrival at Watertown, and which had been officially designated the Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, (Provisional), had been sent to Lakenheath, England.

The second release, covering this, announced that NACA was extending its weather program to Europe. Again the release was long on rhetoric, short on details. There was no mention of the U-2's altitude, its range, its duration of flight. Nor were photographs of the plane released.

The cover story was not entirely fictitious. Some of the U-2s were being used for weather research, and doing a superb job of it.

They were also, at this time or very shortly after, being used for purposes the news releases didn't mention.

Our unit, which was officially designated the Second Weather Observational Squadron (Provisional), and, more informally, Detachment 10-10, completed its training early in August, 1956. Our destination, Incirlik AFB, Adana, Turkey, was mentioned in no press releases, however.

While the U-2s we would be using were disassembled and flown to Incirlik, we were given two weeks' leave.

Before it began we were provided with new identification, in our real names, as civilian employees of the Department of the Air Force, GS-12. We were also given a card which stated that we worked for NACA, that we were authorized to fly Air Force aircraft, but that we were not subject to Air Force flying regulations. The latter stipulation was important, because it would permit us to take off from Air Force bases when regular Air Force pilots would be grounded by weather minimums.

As cover story for parents and friends, we could say that we would be going overseas as a part of NACA's program for studying weather phenomena in various parts of the world. If we felt it necessary, we could also drop some comment that this was tied in with the forthcoming scientific International Geophysical Year.

Two weeks was barely enough time to care for the minor business matters I couldn't handle once overseas; however, the agency had taken care of many details, including supplying a mailing address and a twenty-four-hour agency number in Washington, D.C., which Barbara could use for emergencies.

We did manage to work in a brief visit to The Pound. My father asked quite a few questions, more, in fact, than I had anticipated. But I got around them fairly well, or so I thought.

At the airport, before taking off for overseas, I called home to say good-bye.

When my father came on the line he said, “I've figured out what you're doing.”

“What do you mean? I told you what I'm doing.”

“No, I've figured it out,” he stated emphatically. “You're working for the FBI.”

Hanging up, I had to laugh. He was far more perceptive than I'd realized. But I suspect parents usually are. His guess was close. At this time few people had heard of the CIA.

May 1, I960, I regret to say, would change that.

One

G
eographically, Adana was an excellent choice as takeoff point for the overflights. Situated in the southern portion of Turkey, near the Mediterranean, it was sufficiently distant from the USSR for the Russians to have no radar coverage of the site, yet close enough for a plane to make the flight without too great an expenditure of fuel.

There were other advantages. Though a Turkish base, Incirlik already housed a small USAF detachment and was functioning primarily as a refueling stop for American planes on trips across the Middle East. From the point of cover and logistics, this was ideal, since it meant the fuel and equipment required for the U-2 flights could be brought in without attracting undue attention.

Presumably there was still another reason for the choice. Since little of what occurred at diplomatic levels made its way down to the pilots, we could only guess whether the government of Turkey knew our real mission and had granted approval for such use of the base. It was our presumption—perhaps erroneous—that they were at least aware of the border-surveillance flights, though possibly not of the overflights. For a weather unit, Detachment 10-10 had suspiciously tight security, something obvious to any Turk who worked on other portions of the base.

If we did have approval, tacit or otherwise, we were one up on the first U-2 group. Shortly after arrival at Lakenheath, the British government, learning their mission was something more than the collection of weather data, requested them to leave, in the interim restricting them to training flights. Kicked out of England, the unit had been transferred to Wiesbaden, Germany, from which the first U-2 overflight took place.

Although a combined military-agency operation (USAF providing logistics, the agency planning and operations), Detachment 10- 10 was patterned after a regular squadron. There was a commanding officer (USAF) and an executive officer (agency), who together ran the outfit. In addition to the operations officer, who had under him the flight planners, navigators, and weather personnel, there was an administrative officer, intelligence officer, security men, flying-safety officer (one of my extra duties), pilots (seven of us at this time), ground crews, medics, and radio, radar, and photographic
personnel. About all that was missing was an actual, legitimate representative of NACA. Briefings and debriefings were conducted similarly to those in the Air Force. Even the size of the unit, close to one hundred members, was of squadron strength.

But there was one great difference. Each person, from crew chief to pilot, had been especially picked for the operation. Too, since most of us had been together at Watertown, we were already functioning as a well coordinated team before arriving overseas. As a result, 10-10 was run with an efficiency rarely if ever, encountered in service.

Each man was a specialist in his field. As pilots, the seven of us had been assigned a specific job. We were aware of its importance. And were anxious to get on with it.

This had to wait, however, for additional training.

Although we had flown some of the same U-2s at Watertown, each had to be checked out again after they were reassembled. The U-2 was not a mass-produced, stamped-out-of-sheet-metal aircraft. Each was custom-made, with its own peculiarities. One might fly heavy on one wing, another might consume an inordinate amount of fuel, while still another might be a bastard to land. Since there was no assurance that a specific plane might be available for a particular flight, the pilots had to know the characteristics of each.

Much time was spent studying maps of Russia. These were, for the most part, badly outdated. Part of our assignment would be to act as cartographers—in seeing a new city, a new military or industrial complex, an unmarked airdrome, to jot it down. We would be making our own maps as we went along.

Because we could depend neither on available maps nor on radio contact with our unit, we also spent considerable time listening to Russian civil broadcast stations. Intelligence provided lists of stations, showing their locations and ranges. These were annotated on the maps. With the use of a radio compass, we could home in on them while in flight, establishing navigational fixes.

As new equipment was developed and shipped over—and it was a continuous process—we would have to be thoroughly checked out. It was also necessary to check out personal equipment we would be carrying, such as survival gear.

Most of this was contained in the seat pack. Its contents included a collapsible life raft, clothing, enough water and food to sustain life for a limited time, a compass, signal flares, matches, chemicals for starting fires with damp wood, plus a first-aid kit, with such
standard items as morphine, bandages, dressings, APCs, water-purification tablets.

The clothing was heavy-duty winter hunting gear. It occurred to me on first sight that it not only didn't look Russian but was probably of better quality than even the best-dressed Russian hunter would wear. And it was definitely not the type of clothing you would put on if you wanted to blend inconspicuously into a crowd.

Also included was a large silk American-flag poster, bearing the following message: “I am an American and do not speak your language. I need food, shelter, assistance. I will not harm you. I bear no malice toward your people. If you will help me, you will be rewarded.” This message appeared in fourteen languages.

In addition, the pack contained 7,500 Soviet rubles; two dozen gold Napoleon francs (it being presumed that even though we couldn't speak Russian, gold was a universal language); and, for baiter, an assortment of wristwatches and gold rings.

Like the seat pack which was strapped onto the pilot and carried on all flights, no matter what their objective, two other items were also standard—hunting knife and pistol.

The hunting knife was usual survival gear, for use, for example, in severing parachute lines if caught in a tree, ripping up the chute to make a sleeping bag, shaving wood for a fire.

The pistol was especially made by High Standard. It was .22 caliber and had an extra long barrel with a silencer on the end. Although rated Expert in the service, I was out of practice and tested it periodically on the range. While the silencer obviously decreased the velocity, it was far more accurate than I had expected. Not completely silent, it was quiet enough that if you were to shoot a rabbit you could do so without alerting the whole neighborhood. Only .22 caliber, however, it wouldn't be a very effective weapon of defense.

In addition to what was in the clip, there were about two hundred rounds of extra ammunition in the seat pack.

It was September before I flew my first electronic surveillance mission along the borders outside Russia, the specialized equipment monitoring and recording Soviet radar and radio frequencies. Routes on such flights varied. We usually flew from Turkey eastward along the southern border of the Soviet Union over Iran and Afghanistan as far as Pakistan, and back. We also flew along the Black Sea, and, on occasion, as far west as Albania, but never penetrating,
staying off the coast, over international waters. While our territory was the southern portion of Russia's perimeter, the U-2 group in Germany presumably covered the northern and western portions.

Since these “eavesdropping” missions were eventually to become fairly frequent, there was a tendency to minimize their importance, but in many ways they were as valuable as the overflights, the data obtained enabling the United States to pinpoint such things as Russian antiaircraft defenses and gauge their effectiveness.

Of special interest were Soviet rocket launches. For some reason, many of these occurred at night, and, from the altitude at which we flew, they were often spectacular, lighting up the sky for hundreds of miles. When they were successful.

Many never made it off the pad, and some exploded immediately after doing so.

But there were no “failures.”

When the United States planned a major launching, they bally-hooed it in advance, even permitting television coverage. When it failed, the whole world knew it. But the Russians never publicized their launches until after they had occurred, and then only if they were successful and if it served their purposes to do so. As a result, it appeared that the United States had a lot of failures, Russia none.

Because of our flights, we knew better.

At this time our intelligence on the rocket launchings was exceptional. We knew several days in advance when one was scheduled to occur. Although intelligence did not discuss its sources with us, it was our guess that in the monitoring—both by the U-2s and ground-based units—we were picking up the actual countdowns, which at this time took several days.

The equipment we carried on such occasions was highly sophisticated. One unit came on automatically the moment the launch frequency was used and collected all the data sent out to control the rocket. The value of such information to our own scientists was obvious.

There was a cardinal rule on all such flights—don't penetrate, even accidentally. When the time came to cross the border and violate Russian air space, it was for a purpose.

There were numerous other flights, including weather research. Far more than just cover, these provided much heretofore unavailable information on atmospheric conditions. Also, on occasion, such as after a Russian nuclear test, we did atomic sampling. The information gathered from this, together with other intelligence,
made it possible to determine the type of detonation, where it occurred, its force, fallout, and so forth.

Because of our location in relation to wind patterns, however, we did less of this than the U-2s flying above Alaska and, later, Japan and Australia.

And there were other “special” missions.

It was important work; we knew it. But it was not the work we had come over to do.

Living arrangements at Incirlik were similar to those at Watertown, with one important exception: the food was much worse.

Again trailers provided housing, two pilots to a unit. Each had a tiny living room, kitchen, bathroom, and one small and one medium-size bed (I won the toss). There was a small PX on the base, but it stocked few items. As a change of pace, occasionally we would go into Adana at night for drinks and dinner. There was only one place you could eat safely, a restaurant located above a hotel. Tales of throat cutting and robbery being common, we did little wandering around the streets at night, and then only in groups.