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204 SPACE, SPY SHIPS AND SCANDALS
close to where British submarines regularly conducted surveillance.
Only two of the five crewmen survived. This was the
first close reconnaissance mission the West had risked after the
loss of the U-2. Although less publicised than the Gary Powers
episode, this calamity reverberated more strongly for Britain,
since the plane had been launched from RAF Brize Norton in
Oxfordshire. American and Norwegian sigint stations had tracked
it, but disputed its course, plotting it thirty miles and twentythree
miles respectively from the Soviet coast. The crew had
received orders not to go closer than fifty miles. The Soviet
coastal limit was twelve miles, but at aircraft speeds the margin
for error was small. 7 The two crew members who survived,
having been rescued by a Russian trawler, confirmed to their
Soviet captors that they had left Brize Norton at 10 a.m. on 1
July, but told them little else. 8
Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was exceedingly bitter about
the Powers shootdown, because it contributed to the collapse
of the impending East-West summit in Paris. Macmillan had
worked hard to encourage this meeting, and reportedly
exclaimed that 'the Pentagon is blowing up the Summit
Conference'.9 Macmillan noted in his diary that the Americans
had committed 'a great folly'. He expressed personal disappointment
with Gary Powers, who 'did not poison himself (as
ordered) but has been taken prisoner (with his poison needle
in his pocket!)'. He lamented that the Soviets had captured the
aircraft, the cameras, the photographs and the pilot, a~ding:
'God knows what he will say when he is tortured!'10
Russia exploited the incident to the full, threatening countries
such as Britain and Japan, which hosted the reconnaissance
flights. On 30 May the Soviet Minister of Defence, Rodion
Malinovsky, warned that 'crushing blows by rocket forces will
be dealt to the bases from which they take off'. On 3 June these
threats were repeated by Nikita Khrushchev himself to a packed
press conference. In London, the Joint Intelligence Committee
concluded that these threats were a bluff. Nevertheless they
induced extreme caution on the part of Harold Macmillan.11