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202 SPACE, Spy SHIPS AND SCANDALS
pilots had flown more than twenty successful missions; however,
Soviet technology was catching up. Mentyukov's new SU-9
fighter engaged afterburners from the moment of take-off,
turning it into a veritable rocket. When he finished his momentous
climb he was very close to Powers, but his high speed
caused him to overshoot. Somewhat relieved to find that he
was already perilously low on fuel, he was excused the more
demanding part of his mission and was ordered back to base. 3
About ten minutes later, Powers came within range of a Soviet
surface-to-air missile battery. Three missiles were launched. One
missed its targe~, the second destroyed a hapless Soviet MiG-
19 that was speeding towards the intruder, but the third exploded
just under the U-2, badly damaging its tail and sending it into
a spin. Powers made an inelegant exit from the doomed aircraft,
failed to press the self-destruct mechanism that would have
destroyed its cameras, and was saved by his parachute, which
deployed automatically. Later that day the Soviet leader, Nikita
Khrushchev, was delighted to discover that not only was the
U-2 largely intact, but its pilot had been captured alive. President
Eisenhower was unaware of this, and blundered by offering the
public a preposterous cover story about a weather research
mission - which was soon revealed to be a sham. 4
The U-2 overflight programme, which had included six British
RAP pilots, was intimately connected to sigint. Not only did
the aircraft collect sigint as well as imagery, but most of the
targets they were probing had been initially found by sigint.
Moreover, Soviet efforts to shoot them down revealed a wealth
of detail about Russian air defences, which were closely monitored.
Sigint showed that Moscow's command and control
system was poor, radar coverage was patchy and fighter reaction
times were slow. With each U-2 flight dozens of fighters
scrambled to try to shoot the aircraft down, often revealing
hitherto unknown units and fighter bases. All this had encouraged
confidence about the invulnerability of the high-flying U-
2. Indeed, NSA staff who listened in to Soviet radars and fighter
controllers during the Gary Powers flight argued that he had