Gary Powers served in the US Air Force from 1952, and in 1956 he was recruited by the CIA to take part in reconnaissance missions (spying) over the Soviet Union. The Soviet authorities knew that these missions were going on, but the Americans believed that they lacked the necessary weapons to intercept them.
On 1 May 1960, after taking off from the US air base at Peshawar in Pakistan, Powers's U–2 plane was hit by a surface–to–air missile over Yekaterinberg (known at the time as Sverdlovsk). Powers released the canopy and his seat belt, but was unable to activate the plane's self–destruct mechanism before he was thrown out of the plane. He parachuted to the ground, where he was immediately captured and taken to the Lubyanka Prison in Moscow.
The US government issued a cover statement, claiming that a "weather plane" had strayed off course after its pilot had experienced "difficulties with his oxygen equipment". What the Americans did not realise was that the plane had crashed almost fully intact, and the Soviets had recovered its equipment. After months of extensive interrogation by the KGB, Powers confessed and apologised publicly for his part in espionage.
Powers was tried for espionage before the military division of the Supreme Court of the USSR, beginning on 17 August 1960. His parents and sister were present, as were his wife and her mother. He was convicted after a three–day trial, and sentenced to ten years' confinement – three years in prison and seven in a labour camp.
On 10 February 1962, a well–publicized spy swap took place at the Glienicke Bridge, on the outskirts of Berlin. This bridge spans the River Havel, which formed part of the border between West Berlin and East Germany; it was used several times for the exchange of captured spies, and thus became known as the Bridge of Spies. Powers was exchanged for the Soviet KGB Colonel Vilyam Fisher, known as Rudolf Abel, who had been tried and jailed for espionage in 1957. Fisher had been born in Newcastle–upon–Tyne in 1903, to Russian parents; he moved to Russia in the 1920s, and after World War II he joined the KGB. They sent him to the United States, where he worked as part of a spy ring based in New York City.
Powers and Abel were exchanged at the Bridge of Spies. Also involved in the swap was Frederic Pryor, an American post–graduate student, who had been arrested by the East German police in August 1961 and held without charge. Immediately before the Powers–Abel swap, Pryor was released at Checkpoint Charlie (the name given by the Allies to the best–known crossing of the Berlin Wall).
Hollywood's version of the Powers–Abel–Pryor exchange is told in the 2015 film Bridge of Spies, which stars Tom Hanks as James B. Donovan, the US lawyer who defended Abel in his espionage trial and (according to the film) negotiated the exchange.
On his return home, Powers initially received a cold reception. He was criticised for having failed to activate his aircraft's self–destruct charge to destroy the camera, photographic film, and other classified parts of his aircraft before his capture, and for not using an optional CIA–issued 'suicide pill'. After an extensive debrief however, it was officially stated that "Mr. Powers [had] lived up to the terms of his employment and instructions in connection with his mission and in his obligations as an American." During a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Select Committee, he was commended as "a courageous, fine young American citizen" who "conducted himself in exemplary fashion and in accordance with the highest traditions of service to one's country".
© Haydn Thompson 2017