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Spies Lies

Posted on 18th November 2015

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The topic of this BBC report Gary Powers, is very much in the news at the moment because of the movie "Bridge of Spies".

The thrust of the report is that Gary Powers, pilot of the USA's U2 spy plane which was shot down over Russia, was rather hard done by. When he returned home after being swapped for Soviet spy Vilyam Fisher (also known as Rudolf Abel), the American public felt he had betrayed his country (apparently he should have ensured that the U2 was destroyed, and the committed suicide), despite having followed his orders to the letter.

I feel sympathy for Gary Powers. It is all to easy to be labelled as a traitor by the fickle American public. That, however, is not the reason for this post.

What really concerns me is the blatant disregard for known facts, and the blind faith showed by the US military and the CIA in the supposed superiority of American technology.

The CIA knew, long before Gary Powers flew his doomed mission, that the U2 was not as out of sight and out of reach as they claimed. When the U2 was still being tested over West Germany, before being put into active service, it was spotted by the British RAF, and buzzed from above by a flight of lightnings. This was done several times, as part of a series of RAF trials. The simple fact that it was detected blows a huge hole in the myth of the U2 being out of sight, and made it highly likely that the Russians would see it too. The U2 did indeed fly above the official ceiling height of all other known military aircraft at the time (the RAF lightnings flew a parabolic arc from a much lower altitude to be able to come at the U2 from above, as they were also unable to maintain that altitude), but everyone keeps the performance specifications of their latest aircraft secret, so there was no basis to be so cocky about the U2's immunity from threats; it was probably in range for air-to-air missiles as well as ground-to-air missiles, and possibly also able to be hit by guns on Russian aircraft using the same trick as the RAF lightnings used.

One has to wonder, did the CIA set poor Gary Powers up for a fall, by sending him on a mission that they knew was doomed to failure?