Steven Spielberg's 2015 film Bridge of Spies is about the Cold War prisoner exchange between the Soviet Union and the United States of America. The deal allowed American spy plane pilot Gary Powers to return home - but when he did, he faced a chorus of criticism.
Gary Powers had been in the air for four hours when his problems began.
His spy mission from a US air base in Pakistan took him over central Russia, where, at an altitude of more than 20.000 meters, he believed he was beyond the range of fighter jets or missiles.
The XNUMX-year-old CIA pilot, a veteran of the Korean War, expected to fly across the entire Soviet Union to another base in Norway without incident.
But when he found himself over the Russian city of Sverdlovsk, the unthinkable happened.
His U2 spy plane was hit by a barrage of Soviet missiles.
"I looked up, I looked outside and everything was just orange, everywhere," Powers recalled.
"I don't know if it was just a reflection in the dome of the craft or the whole sky."
"And I remember saying to myself, 'Oh my God, you're screwed.'"
- Paul Whelan - the dreary life of an American "spy" in a Russian labor camp
- Fitzroy McClain: Adventurer, diplomat, soldier and honorary citizen of Korčula
- The most successful Russian spy escaped the British because they did not trust his wife
The shock waves rocked the plane and the controls stopped responding.
The explosion tore off the wing and Powers began to plummet toward the ground, spinning uncontrollably.
What happened next is a story Powers told his son, Gary Jr., who was still a boy at the time.
"He was thinking about ejecting -- that's the first thing pilots learn -- to get out of an airplane that's damaged or crippled," Powers' son said.
“But he realized that if he ejected, he would cut off his own legs as he flew out. The cockpit of the U2 plane is very small, very tight, very compact. To eject, you have to be in the perfect position to eject from the structure of the aircraft."
Panicked, the pilot manically tried to get himself in the right position to eject carelessly.
But after some thought, Powers realized there was another alternative escape route - he could simply open the dome and crawl out.
That way he had a better chance of staying alive.
But when he unclipped the turret, "he was immediately sucked halfway out of the plane," his son says.
Powers told a Senate committee hearing in 1962 that from his position halfway out of the plane — which was spinning tail-down toward the ground — he could not reach the self-destruct mechanism on the plane's control panel.
He was still strapped to the cockpit with an oxygen mask, but struggled with it until it came loose, launching him into free fall until his parachute opened moments later.
The jolt of the parachute brought Powers to consciousness.
He still had maps with him, which he destroyed, and a poisoned suicide needle hidden in a silver dollar.
Worried that the dollar would simply be stolen if captured, he decided to open it and store the lethal needle in the pocket of his flight suit, where it could pass undetected.
As he approached the ground, he noticed a car following his descent, and when he landed, he was immediately arrested by the Russian secret service and taken to the KGB headquarters.
What followed was a huge international incident, during which the Americans initially tried to deny that Powers was flying a spy mission.
The US concocted a front by claiming that Powers was studying weather patterns for NASA and had simply wandered off course.
That fabricated story went so far as to send the U.S. media pictures of the U2 plane with fake NASA logos and serial numbers painted on it.
But the hoax was exposed when the Soviets revealed that they had not only captured Powers, but were also in possession of the wreckage of his plane - from which they had extracted information about his planned route across the USSR.
The incident undermined a major peace summit between the two Cold War superpowers and resulted in the withdrawal of an invitation to US President Dwight Eisenhower to visit Moscow.
Powers was on trial for espionage.
In a radio report from the late XNUMXs, BBC correspondent Ian MacDougall described one of the pilot's appearances in a Moscow court.
"There stood a man with a military haircut, insecure, simple, rather kind, surrounded by the entire apparatus of Soviet law, aware that, as he himself admitted, he had caused a lot of trouble.
"An extremely naïve person, though charming, a scared man against the wall, a young man who wanted to have his own gas station and instead became the reason why his president can't visit Russia."
The journalist later described how Russia's attitude towards Powers changed during the trial itself.
"Before the trial, there was a very different view that he was not only a spy flown in by the Soviet Union, but a traitor to his country because he had given away so much information.
"By the time the trial was over, that perception had changed a lot, and the people who gathered outside his courtroom to watch often said that he was clearly just a puppet, that he should be freed and that he wasn't a bad guy at all."
Perhaps it was the pilot's conciliatory attitude that led to this compassionate attitude.
But that same contrite attitude did not go down well in the US, where his latest plea during the Moscow trial left him with very few friends.
"You have heard all the evidence in this case and now you must decide my sentence," Powers said in court.
"I have committed a serious crime and I am aware that I must be punished for it."
The judges agreed with that.
Powers was sentenced to 10 years in prison - including seven years of hard labor.
He was sent 150 kilometers east of Moscow to Vladimir Central Prison, where he would likely spend three years before being transferred to a labor camp.
But in 1962, his exchange was arranged by a lawyer played by Tom Hanks in Spielberg's film.
Powers was exchanged for Soviet intelligence officer William Fischer - also known as Rudolph Abel - who was serving a thirty-year prison sentence for espionage against the US in a Georgia prison.
The exchange took place on the famous Glinike Bridge in Berlin - to which the film's title refers Most špijuna.
But was he welcomed in the US? Not really.
"When my father returned home, he was shocked by the editorials that were written in the dailies while he was in prison. Those editorials in the American and British press practically said he had defected," says Gary Powers Jr.
"He landed the plane intact, rolled over and told the Soviets everything he knew or disobeyed orders and committed suicide - all of which were half-truths, untruths or some outright lies and innuendos."
Why didn't Powers commit suicide?
Why didn't he destroy the craft before he jumped?
Why did he so dutifully follow the instructions of his Russian lawyers?
The debate surrounding these issues in the American media presented Powers in a decidedly unfavorable light.
- "States and empires come and go, but espionage remains"
- Three days a spy, four days a mother - what it looks like to share a job in the secret service
- What are the Serbian security services doing?
But although he did indeed charge the poisoned needle, he was not ordered to take his own life.
The needle was available for pilots to use voluntarily if they chose to do so - perhaps in the face of excruciating torture.
And like other U2 pilots, Powers was told by the CIA that it was not necessary for him to withhold information about his mission if it fell into the hands of the Soviets.
"You could say he blew it. You can say that he was not very brave, you can say that he obviously obediently followed the suggestions of his Russian lawyers," says Ian MacDougall.
"Because of all that, he remained a convincing and authentic person, caught between two fires of forces that are much bigger than him."
A Senate committee hearing in 1962 provided an opportunity for Powers to rehabilitate himself in the public eye.
He was completely cleared of all charges and even received $50.000 in unpaid wages for the period he spent in captivity in Russia.
In an unusual move, the CIA released its own report on Powers' conduct, saying he had behaved honorably throughout - and fully complied with the instructions he had been given.
But Powers never fully managed to free himself from the atmosphere of non-acceptance that surrounded him.
He was fired as a test pilot for the Lockheed factory in 1970, perhaps because of the CIA's portrayal of him in an unfavorable light in a book about his misadventures, published the same year.
He accepted a job as a pilot for a television station and was killed in 1977 - his helicopter crashed while returning to base after reporting on wildfires in Santa Barbara County.
He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, where his tombstone reads: "Francis Gary Powers, Captain, US Air Force, Korea, August 17, 1929 - August 1, 1977."
Then there are two awards, awarded posthumously: the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Prisoner of War Medal.
Watch a video about Fitzroy McClain, Churchill's envoy to Yugoslavia
Follow us on Facebook,Twitter i Viber. If you have a topic proposal for us, contact us at bbcnasrpskom@bbc.co.uk
Bonus video:
