NODULE X7 OSWALD IN MINSK AND THE U2 DUMP: JANUARY ...

Eisenhower agreed to additional flights, but only at the rate of one a month. Francis
Gary Powers recalled: "After a long pause, two flights were scheduled for the same
month, April 1960."
THE SOVIETS ALMOST SHOOT DOWN A U-2
On April 9, 1960, the Russians tracked the U-2 by radar and made several attempts to
down it with SAMs. They were getting closer. Why?
Had the Soviet made any technological advances in radar that allowed them to defeat
the primitive electronic warfare devices that made the U-2 impossible to shoot down? Or
had they made advances in rocketry? The Soviets already had rockets that could reach
the cruising altitude of the U-2; 68,000 feet. Were the SAMs too inaccurate even with
this new hypothetical factor? For whatever reason, the U-2 returned to its base intact.
FRANCIS GARY POWERS
President Eisenhower authorized Richard Bissell to fly any day before May 1, 1960.
Every day for the next two weeks the USSR was under a cloud cover and the mission
had to be postponed. The U-2 needed near-perfect weather to get its photographs. On
May 1, 1960, the weather cleared. That morning, CIA Plans contract employee Francis
Gary Powers took off from an airfield in Adana, Turkey and headed for Bodo, Norway,
his flight route taking him directly over the Soviet Union. While flying over Sverdlovsk, a
Soviet SAM exploded several hundred feet away from the aircraft, knocking it out of the
sky.
THE DESTRUCT BUTTON
The U-2 aircraft was equipped with a self-destruction device. Francis Gary Powers
bailed out without pressing the plane's destruct button and survived.
I reached for the destruct switches, opening the safety covers, had my
hand over them, and then changed my mind, deciding I had better see if I
could get into position to use the ejection seat first. Under normal
circumstances, there is only a small amount of clearance in ejecting.
Thrown forward as I was, if I used the ejection seat the metal canopy
overheard would cut off both my legs. I tried to pull my legs back, I
couldn't...The ejection seat wasn't the only way to leave the plane. I could