How Gary Powers, who was shot down over Sverdlovsk, sat in the Vladimir Central

On May 1, 1960, an American Lockheed U-2 aircraft was shot down over Sverdlovsk. Pilot Francis Gary Powers was captured. Powers was interrogated for three months, then a trial took place, which on August 16, 1960 sentenced the American to 10 years in prison.

On February 10, 1962, Gary Powers was exchanged on the Glienicke Bridge in Berlin for the Soviet intelligence officer Rudolf Abel, who was discovered by the FBI in 1957 in New York. In 2015, Steven Spielberg directed the film Bridge of Spies about these events. The plot of the picture focuses on the identity of the lawyer James Donovan and his participation in the exchange, but there is also about the flight of Powers. Of course, Spielberg is not a documentary filmmaker, but historians have noted several important inconsistencies in the film that stuck to Powers’ story.

In the film, Powers is shot down during his first flight. However, in fact, before the fall, the American made 27 successful missions, including over the territories of the USSR and China.

Powers had a dollar with a poisoned needle hidden in it. Francis Gary Powers, Jr., who was a Bridge of Spies consultant, most lamented the fact that in the film the pilots are told that they must commit suicide in order not to fall into the hands of the enemy and betray state secrets under torture. In reality, the use of a poison needle was optional, in case of brutal torture or severe injuries.

By the way, the court showed a hollow dollar with a poisoned needle. Vladimir Tumanoff, an employee of the American embassy in Moscow, spoke about this in an interview in 1999. According to Tumanoff, a special commission concluded that Powers planned to kill Soviet citizens with a needle. Powers objected, calling the needle part of an emergency package that he was supposed to use in case of receiving terrible wounds in order to die quickly and painlessly.

In the United States, Powers was then branded a coward for not pricking himself with that needle. And also for the fact that he did not press the button to self-destruct the aircraft. In fact, there was no full self-destruct button. The U-2 had to be as light as possible in order to fly at an altitude of 21 km. Therefore, he would not have pulled a device for self-destruction. The first U-2s weren’t even painted for lightness. However, Powers could destroy the camera with which he took pictures of secret objects on the territory of the USSR. But he didn’t have time to press the button.

In the picture, Powers is being tortured in prison. An article on the US National Museum of Aeronautics and Astronautics website says that Powers was quite normal in the Soviet Union and was unlikely to be tortured, because the wreckage of the U-2 revealed all the secrets much more eloquently than he did. The author of the article even claims that the pilot had a much worse time in the USA, where he became persona non grata, despite the fact that his reputation was officially restored.

About Powers’s stay in a Soviet prison, his diary, which he kept during his 18-month imprisonment, will tell us. The American did not make notes every day, because all the days were similar. He mainly complains about a tasteless dinner consisting of potatoes and cabbage, talks about Soviet films and amateur concerts.

Today I watched a Soviet film for the first time. It’s about deep sea diving. I was able to understand the plot as my neighbor translated for me.

I was at a concert organized by prisoners from the third barracks. Liked. The head of the prison ruined the whole day. The first son of a bitch I came across in Russia.

I watched a film about a poet and an artist in the pre-revolutionary years. Good, but I did not understand everything, so I could not fully enjoy it.

November 7, 1960. There is a big holiday here. Sundays and holidays in prison are dreary. You know that people are having fun behind the wall, it’s more lonely than ever.

I talked to a KGB colonel. I asked him questions about communism. He did not answer questions about the United States. He said I’ll find out later. Didn’t brainwash.

Today is a good movie. About French pilots who fought alongside Soviet pilots during the war.

Movies were shown in the morning. One of the best films I’ve seen here. It’s called “Lullaby”. Liked it very much.

Powers wove a rug in prison. He often writes that he again ordered wool for the carpet, or that he spent the whole day behind the carpet. He also learned Russian and read “War and Peace”, “Anna Karenina” and some other Russian novels in Russian.

Finished the first volume of War and Peace. Excellent book.

I finished the second volume, I’m starting the next one, I don’t want the book to end. I can read it forever.

Much more than potatoes and cabbage for dinner, Powers worried about his wife, who did not write to him for a long time.

When a person is in trouble, he can determine who loves him and who does not, by learning how they reacted to this trouble. It seems my wife can’t set aside three hours of her time a month to write me a letter.

I am very angry with my wife. When they let me out, the first thing I’ll do is divorce her. I know my wife.

Later, Barbara Powers wrote to her husband, and he forgave her. However, Powers kept his promise and the first thing he did, being at large, divorced his wife. Barbara cheated on him and suffered from alcoholism, which is why she did not write when the CIA put her in a clinic so that she would not do anything.

In the United States, Powers was fired from his previous job, and then he got a job as a helicopter pilot in a television news agency. In 1977, his helicopter crashed while returning from filming wildfires.