Supersonic Thunder: A Novel of the Jet Age (13 page)

Like when it feels good when you stop hitting yourself in your head,
he mused.

The MC-3 partial pressure suit was an uncertain life belt, uncomfortable as it squeezed its seams into your skin, extracting a flow of perspiration that partially compensated for the inability to urinate. The suit was dangerous because it restricted movement and visibility, turning sensitive hands into unfeeling claws that fumbled at every switch. The suit had to be worn because the U-2, essentially a jet-powered glider, flew at 70,000 feet. Air bled in from the engine brought the cabin pressure down to about 28,000 feet, so the pilot always had to breathe supplemental oxygen, drying his lungs and throat. If the plane depressurized, the suit would pressurize, preventing the body fluids from exploding and vaporizing as it would if unprotected at altitudes above 63,000 feet. When the pressure suit functioned as designed, it enabled the pilot to get down to an altitude where he could survive. But pressure suits had fatal failures in the past and everyone regarded them with distaste before, during, and after a flight.

Powers was of part of an incredibly skilled volunteer pool of pilots, all men of strong character, carefully selected and trained to use this delicate instrument of espionage that the genius of Kelly Johnson and his Skunk Works had created. The challenge of flying the U-2 was irresistible to military pilots, who had to pretend to drop out of service and become employees of Lockheed to disguise their real relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency. The process was called sheep dipping and the pilots were supposed to retain all of their promotion and career opportunities. “Supposed” is the operative word, as many served as U-2 pilots but subsequently lost out in the competitive race for rank.

Despite separation from home and the difficulties of the mission—this was Power’s twenty-seventh operational sortie, with several of them overflights of the Soviet Union—there were many compensations. Oddly enough, the least important of these was the extraordinary pay, twenty-five hundred a month, several times what Powers had received as an Air Force captain and an unbelievable sum to a boy brought up by a Kentucky coal miner.

Yet the real motivation that captivated the pilots was the mission’s exclusiveness. This small band of U-2 pilots was privileged to fly the newest, highest-flying reconnaissance plane in history, and they were laying open the secrets of the Soviet Union as if they were mounted on a slide in a microscope. It was a cliché, but it was rare for a U-2 pilot, no matter how tired, how uncomfortable, or how hazardous the mission, not to think,
I cannot believe they are paying me to do this,
at least once on every flight.

Powers was a little uneasy today, sensing that he might be pushing his luck. First of all, the aircraft, Article 360, had a long history of maintenance problems, including a previous forced landing in Japan. None were sufficient to ground it, but cumulatively they were more than enough to worry about. Second, the takeoff had been delayed an insufferable hour, keeping him sweating in the suit, waiting for the personal approval of President Eisenhower to make the flight. The delay was not just inconvenient; it had also destroyed the utility of Powers’s pre-flight navigation computations, thus rendering the sextant useless. Now navigation was going to be time and distance, just as it had been in the North American T-6 in which he had learned to fly. Finally, there was the timing. The U-2 missions over the Soviet Union first began on a great American holiday, July 4, 1956, and had been expected to last for only one or two years before Soviet countermeasures stopped them. Today was May 1, 1960, International Labor Day, a great Soviet holiday—and the missions had been flown for almost four years, plenty of time for the inventive enemy to devise countermeasures.

Curiously, the U-2 had become a symbol of both American and Soviet power. The incursions of the spy plane demonstrated American technical genius, as did the internal cameras and sensors. But the Soviet determination to respond and retaliate fueled enormous research efforts that improved their science, technology, and tactics. This incessant race for superiority brought the Cold War to its penultimate level, the crucial but indeterminate point just before nuclear bombs were dropped. The difficulty was that the margin for error was nil. One single miscalculation on either side about the U-2 could cause World War III, which would truly be the war to end all wars—and all living things.

The gathering undercast of clouds opened obligingly as he passed over Tyuratam at the customary Mach .72, and he flipped the switch for the cameras. If he had been lucky, he might have caught an ICBM being launched. Instead, looking down he could see swarms of interceptors climbing up toward him. He knew they were no problem; they could not climb to his altitude, and even if they could, he would be out of range before they could arrive.

Radar had picked up the U-2 before it had intruded into Soviet airspace, and as the U-2 flew its implacable course, a sea of activity coursed along ahead of it, as radar stations, fighter bases, and missile sites went on a wartime alert. The frenzied activity flowed all the way to Moscow, where Defense Minister Marshal Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky, following his orders, had Nikita Khrushchev awakened and informed of the intruder. Khrushchev’s instructions were simple: shoot down the U-2 at all costs.

Malinovsky, who had succeeded the four-time Hero of the Soviet Union, Georgi Zukhov, as Defense Minister, ordered that all air traffic within the Soviet Union be grounded, with all resources focused on the U-2, a single amber dot crawling across dozens of radar screens. Interceptors were scrambled from every base along the route as soon as the U-2 came within nominal range, but these were standard MiGs and Sukhois, without the modifications that Mikoyan had built into the MiG-19SV, and unable to get within shooting distance of the U-2.

Khrushchev began blasting Malinovsky with complaints that were, in traditional military fashion, duly passed on down the line, soon reaching the sharp end of the stick, the pilots vainly attempting to flog an aircraft capable of climbing to 60,000 feet all the way to 70,000. So far no missile batteries had been engaged, in part because of the U-2’s route, in part because they were still relatively primitive and the Soviet Air Defense Forces were not yet familiar with their operation.

Lavochkin’s staff had worked hard in the field, coordinating with the radar units and trying to speed up the five hours of checklists needed to bring an S-75 battery to operational status. The tie-in with radar sites was crucial, for there had to be sufficient early warning. The typical radar could reach out to about one hundred miles to acquire the target. Then, as soon as notice was received, the missiles had to be brought to the correct firing attitude and its own radar system had to pick the target up. Essentially, the U-2 had to be acquired at least eighty miles away by the S-75 site, or there was insufficient time to fire.

Some three hours into the flight, about 0800 Moscow time, the U-2 passed over Magnitogorsk, clearly heading for the heart of the Soviet nuclear weapon-building facilities in the Urals. When Khrushchev was told of the probable target he went white. This was the worst possible development—if the aircraft got through, it would have film of the most secret area in the Soviet Union. His mind began to drift from firing Malinovsky to being fired himself. He knew how strong his opposition was, how much they would love to dispose of him.

Looking at the horizon, Powers saw for the first time that day a clear sky unencumbered by any clouds.
Maybe my luck is changing,
he thought, and immediately cursed himself for tempting fate.

Fate responded with the nose pitching up violently. Powers disconnected the malfunctioning autopilot, retrimming the airplane so he could fly it manually. When stabilized at altitude, the U-2 was not unpleasant to fly. It was demanding, because there was very little margin between its low-speed stall and its high-speed buffet—the so-called coffin corner. He reengaged the autopilot, his hands still light on the controls. The U-2 flew normally for a few minutes and then pitched up again. Powers disconnected the autopilot and stopped the motion and knew it was trouble. He couldn’t risk trying the autopilot again—it wouldn’t take many g’s to shed his wings. Analyzing the situation, he saw that he was thirteen hundred miles into Russia and had almost twice that distance to go. Common sense told him to turn back, but the lure of the clear sky ahead of him ruled against it. The prospect of hand flying the airplane for another six hours was daunting, but he knew he could do it. He just might need more than one beer after he landed.

In Moscow, Khrushchev had both Malinovsky and Lavochkin on the phone. “He’s nearing Chelyabinsk. Are the missiles there ready?”

There was the slightest hesitation before both Malinovsky and Lavochkin replied simultaneously, “Yes, Comrade Khrushchev.”

But they were not, and the U-2 sailed over the S-75 battery, with Powers unaware of how close a call it was. Frantic workers determined that the battery radar had malfunctioned. When he heard this, Malinovsky knew immediately that this was something he would have to withhold from Khrushchev, who constantly screamed that the air defense system got everything it asked for but could not defend the country. In his current mood there was no telling what the Premier might do. Instead, Malinovsky called him and said that a last-minute turn by the American had placed the U-2 outside of the missile radar capabilities.

Powers had been a great reader in his youth, and he remembered a Richard Halliburton book that told of the murder of the Czar and his family in Yekaterinburg—now called Sverdlovsk. It was an hour away, and despite concentrating on the instruments, maintaining as smooth a flight path as possible to conserve fuel, he wondered about the last days of the Romanovs and the Anastasia story.

On an air base to the south of Sverdlovsk, ground crew men swarmed around two MiG-19SVs and two Sukhoi Su-9s, topping them off with fuel and preparing them for launch, the mechanics taking special care with polishing the cockpit canopies. Both the MiG and the Sukhoi aircraft had pressurized cockpits, but the MiG pilots had pressure suits, while the Sukhoi pilots did not. All four were under orders to bring down the U-2, by ramming if necessary. Only the Sukhoi pilots thought they would get close enough for shooting, much less ramming.

Utter confusion now reigned in the ranks of the missile batteries. It was a national holiday, and many of the senior staff were on leave. At the district headquarters where the command post controlling the Sverdlovsk missile batteries was located, the battery commander was away, and his deputy, Major Mikhail Voronov, was new to his job and terribly hungover from last night’s drinking bout.

Hunched over their sets, three radar operators watched for the first appearance of the U-2, now traveling at more than 9 kilometers a minute along the periphery of their radar signal.

Voronov sat behind the technicians at his own complex, staring at the screen, perplexed, wishing he were anywhere but there. If he fired the missiles and they missed, he would be in enormous trouble. If he didn’t fire the missiles, he’d be court-martialed and probably shot.

One of the operators called, “Automatic tracking,” then, moments later, “Missile-tracking mode.” Another technician leaned over Voronov’s shoulder, pointing a grubby finger at the screen where the amber dot was now enclosed in a phosphorescent circle that followed it relentlessly. The U-2 was 24 kilometers away at an estimated altitude of 21,000 meters. His mind made up, Voronov yelled, “Launch three missiles.”

The launch control officer looked at him stupidly. They had practiced this many times but never actually fired.

“Fire!”

A sheet of flame burst from the booster rocket of one S-75 missile. The other two missiles remained on their launch pad.

Powers continued on, checking his map for the next set of cameras to be used at Kirov, unaware that the deadly missile with his name on it was now at Mach 2.0, its second-stage rocket exhausted, homing directly in on his U-2, ready to explode its 130-kilogram fragmentation warhead either on a command from its guidance system or from a proximity fuse when it closed on the target. When the warhead blew, it would send thirty-six hundred pellets ahead of it in an expanding ball of steel.

Four Soviet fighters struggling for altitude watched the long trail of smoke from the first S-75 they had ever seen fired. None of the planes were in striking distance, but each pilot hoped to be in on the kill if the missile damaged the U-2 and forced it down from its ungodly height.

Powers was dutifully recording his instrument readings when a huge explosion thrust the U-2 forward like a ball hit by a bat. A garish red sheet of flame surrounded him, lighting up his cockpit like a torch.

His reactions were automatic—shove the throttle to cram power on, level the wings with the control wheel, pull back on the column to bring the nose up. The wings leveled, but the nose wouldn’t come up, and the frail U-2 pitched down, accelerating swiftly past its structural limitations and shedding its wings exactly as Kelly Johnson had predicted a hard landing would cause it to do. Now Powers was inverted, spinning in a wingless, tailless fuselage, his once-despised pressure suit inflated and keeping him alive. He fought to eject, realized he could not, jettisoned the canopy, and was flung, still spinning, into the cold Siberian sky, suddenly blind as his faceplate, his blessed, life-saving faceplate, frosted over.

On the ground, Voronov guessed uncertainly at his triumph—the radar indicated no forward movement of the target now, and the technicians cheered, sure that the U-2 was destroyed. Neither they nor Powers, free-falling above them, had any idea that their swiftly concluded battle was the future of jet aviation in microcosm: surface-to-air missiles versus ever more sophisticated aircraft.

CHAPTER TWENTY

September 6, 1960

Burbank, California