Just saw the film, Bridge of Spies, excellent film BTW, Tom Hanks might get Oscar no 3.
(Spoilers for a fifty five year old historical event).
In it when the U2 is shot down by USSR Air defences (SA-2 SAMS maybe?), Mr F.Gary Powers spends a period of time attempting to set off the destruct mechanism of his plane by engaging the arming switch. He is at that point in time dangling from his plane, attached by a single cable (which eventually snaps) and he is also thrown around like a rag doll often being bashed against the side of the fuselage,
Is that what happened? Is that, as depicted even possible, without death or serious injury. The one half ejection I read about, the pilot was unconscious.
Were they required to use the poison to commit suicide? Why were they issued an ejection seat and a parachute if capture was such a no no.
(Even the CIA would find it difficult to find volunteers if they said that no escape was possible), so I doubt this was true.
It’s been a long time so I don’t remember much but investigations showed he did nothing wrong. He wasn’t required to poison himself, he did what he was supposed to do if captured. I haven’t seen the movie but I would expect it would use dramatic license at the expense of historical accuracy.
You can read over the whole thing on that site, but basically Powers says that he reached for the destructor then changed his mind because the way the plane was tumbling around he had some doubts about being able to use the ejection seat. The transcript makes it seem like he was in a bit of a panic. He decided to open the canopy instead of trying the ejection seat. He ended up struggling for a bit then finally opened the canopy and flopped out, but was tethered by his oxygen hose that he forgot to disconnect. In the part I quoted above he said that he wanted to get back into the plane to activate the destructor but never made it back in.
That’s not too far off from what you describe from the movie.
I remember back in the day there was a lot of controversy because Powers did not use the poison. He was also harshly criticized for not setting off the destructor.
I don’t know what they show in the movie, but the actual poison he had was a pin hidden in a fake silver dollar. The pin contained a shellfish-derived poison (according to wikipedia).
The pilots of the U2 program were indeed issued with cyanide pills. Philip Taubman in: *Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA, and the Hidden Story of America’s Space Espionage *describes a hair-raising episode in which a pilot narrowly avoided killing himself by accident:
The pilot had the habit of storing a supply of sour drops (or some sort of candy) in a pocket of his G suit. During the long flight, he would reach for a drop and put it in his mouth. The crew had placed a suicide pill in another pocket of the G suit. One day, during a flight, said pilot reached for what he believed was a drop. He put the object into his mouth but found it tasted and felt unusual, so he put it back into the pocket.
" Why were they issued an ejection seat and a parachute if capture was such a no no."
Presumably because a pilot may find it convenient to part ways with their airplane even if he is not currently flying over enemy air space, for example if something goes pear shaped during a ferry flight, or in between the home base and the target.
I guess it’s all been documented that this actually happened, but I have no idea how it’s possible. These guys were going up in full pressure suits, complete with prebreathing procedures. The suits were sealed. How did they open them for any reason, let alone to pop in a piece of candy?
The altitude that Powers was at and the speed. Why did ejecting not killhim anyway, I know the Shuttle astronauts in early Missions did not expect to survive ejections. Other pilots, for instance over Cuba, were killed. Makes one wonder if he was flying at a lower altitude.
I don’t know why suicide pills would be necessary. If the pilot desired death over capture, he could simply stay with the airplane as it crashed into the ground.
One thing to keep in mind is that at high altitudes, the force exerted by the air on the airplane (or an ejecting pilot) is a lot smaller because the atmospheric pressure is so much lower. Near the service ceiling, the U-2 would have to fly very close to its stall speed (in terms of indicated airspeed) which wikipedia says is only 80-90 MPH.
Space shuttles are flying at many Mach, whether on launch or post-reentry. Ejections are not survivable at those speeds. TPTB at NASA decided that an ejectable whole-cockpit module was weight prohibitive for the small additional window of survivability it would give versus the whole mission duration.
SR-71s were going Mach 3 and IIRC nobody survived a full speed ejection (although some folks ejected at lower speeds and lived). B-58s went Mach 2 and needed individual ejection capsules.
More typical fighters go 400-900 knots, or Mach 0.8 to 1.8 ish. At the high end of that range, ejecting is probably deciding to commit suicide to avoid being killed. But you might get lucky.
Below about 300 knots ejection is relatively safe. Injuries happen from bad positioning versus the forces of the rocket firing. Or from malfunctions. But generally not from interaction with the air blast.
The U-2 cruised at between 80 and 120 knots. At crazy high altitude, but no faster versus the air than a light airplane. Certainly slower than WWII aircraft which only had manual bailout.
I know nothing of the specifics of Powers’ ejection / bailout. But it’s certainly plausible he ended up with a screwed up manual bailout & was getting abused by the airstream, but not fatally so.
The purpose of the pills, at least according to Powers, was in case of torture. At the time the plane was crashing, he didn’t know if he’d be tortured or not. As it happens, he wasn’t. If he had been, though, it would have been too late to die in the crash.
During the first four Shuttle missions Columbia was equipped with the SR-71’s ejection seats. In this mission crew photo you can see them wearing the brown SR-71 pressure suits. After the four ‘test’ flights the shuttle was deemed operational and the ejection systems were removed (there was only ever enough room for two of them) and the crew cabin became a ‘shirtsleeve’ environment. Of course until Challenger, which is tragically ironic as pressure suits & a parachute may have been all that crew needed to possibly survive. For a while they went back to the SR-71 suits after Challenger until NASA developed their own Shuttle flight suits.
I’ve read that John Young, commander of STS-1, always felt the Shuttle ejection systems were an ineffective kludge, that they were only included for PR purposes so that NASA could say that the new Shuttle had at least some kind of crew launch escape system because all previous manned missions always did. He felt that their effective use ‘window’ during launch was so small as to be nearly useless (though they could have been effective as a low speed, landing bail-out system).
I’m sure the suicide pills were for the pilots’ benefit, as said in case of torture. We in the West don’t have a strong ‘death before dishonor’ attitude towards POWs like other cultures do.
I don’t see how the suicide pin or pill would be useful if the pilot got to the point of being tortured. Surely they intended him to use it before or as he was being captured. I can’t imagine he’s being tortured and is able to obtain the fake half dollar (which they haven’t already taken), get the needle out and kill himself. That would require some pretty slack ass captors all the way from capture to applying the torture. It seems much more likely they intended him to use it at the point where he survived the crash, tried to evade capture, but realized he was going to be taken and eventually tortured.
If I may clarify something for the teeming millions.
“The U-2 cruised at between 80 and 120 knots” I know by that you mean KIAS (Knots Indicated Airspeed), but most people don’t know that KIAS and ground speed are not the same; KIAS is what the equivalent dynamic (“wind”) pressure at ground level would feel at a certain height.
After all, F =ma, and as the altitude increases density decreases and therefore m is smaller and so is F.
So even though the U-2’s shadow would be traversing the landscape at 475 knots, sticking a hand out the window, so to speak, with the plane cruising at maximum altitude (80 KIAS) would feel like doing the same out of a car going 92 Mph on the freeway.
On the other hand there’s no way to know what the KIAS was when Powers was clambering out of the cockpit on the way down. so, meh…
