Sky Spy, Memoirs of a U-2 Pilot

by Jim Carter

  The weather at Osan was cloudy with imbedded rain showers. The wind was gusting but at least it wasn’t a crosswind. One of the drawbacks of the airplane was lack of weather radar. This is not a problem if you’re flying over a thunderstorm during the day. Coming in to land at night with thunderstorms around the airport was a problem. My strategy for getting through the storms was called avoidance. I would turn the airplane away from a lightning flash, which I did several times on my descent.By turning away from the flashes, I didn’t enter a thunderstorm and I didn’t get hit by lightning. It must have been my lucky night. I summoned what remained of my strength for the approach and landing. It was a windy, rainy, rough ride but I landed safely. I turned the airplane over to maintenance, went back to my Q, and slept for 14 hours.

  I now had my own war story to pass along to any new guy willing to listen. The rest of my tour passed by quickly. My two months were up and I went home to Beale.

  Chapter 11

  When I got home, we took some vacation time. I rented one of those giant motor homes and we drove all the way down the Pacific Coast Highway to San Diego. We stopped along the way camping at several beaches. The kids really loved the San Diego Zoo and Sea World. By the end of the tenth day, although we had a good time, we were all ready to get out of this motor home and back to our real home.

  One of the perks of being in the U-2 squadron (in addition to the orange flight suits) was the lack of additional duties. Every type of flying squadron in the Air Force had additional duties the pilots had to perform. While at Craig as a T-38 instructor, for example, I was also the Runway Supervisory Unit (RSU) scheduler. Other IPs were safety officers, flight schedulers, ground training coordinators etc. In the U-2 outfit, my job was to fly the U-2. I was fortunate to also be able to fly the T-38. All the additional duties were handled by non-flying officers and enlisted personnel. When I returned from Osan the only thing I had to do was fly and that made my life very enjoyable.

  After finishing a T-38 chase ride on the SR-71, I was sitting in our squadron talking with our Operations Officer, Lt Col Drake, when an announcement was made on the PA asking all available pilots to come to the briefing room. No reason for the meeting was mentioned. I heard a similar announcement the prior year and that turned out to be a Gary Powers visit. There were about 12 of us in the room that day from both the U-2 and the SR-71 squadrons.

  Two guys in suits and earpieces entered the room and quickly looked around. When they were assured that it was safe, they summoned in the guest speaker. He was a small man, 5’5”or so. He too wore a suit and had shoulder-length blond hair. He started speaking in English but with a thick Russian accent. He didn’t mention his name until the end but we all knew who he was because we were so familiar with his story. Standing before us was Viktor Bochenko; the man who had stolen a Russian MIG-25 Foxbat two years earlier.

  Bochenko was a pilot with the Soviet Air Defense Forces based in Chuguyevka, Primorsky Krai. This was located northeast of Vladivostok in western USSR. He not only told us how he stole the jet but why he did it.

  Like many in Russia at the time, Bochenko hated his communist overlords. Instead of being the worker’s paradise it was purported to be, the USSR was a paradise for the party leadership only. Doctors, engineers, pilots and other skilled professionals were treated like unskilled laborers. Low wages, poor housing, and few amenities were the normal way of life for the vast majority of the population. Galling to him, more than anything else, was the lack of freedom. He and his family lived in an apartment house on base. The building was prefabricated somewhere else and shipped to his base in two pieces. They slapped the two pieces together on a muddy plain. The two pieces of the prefab building didn’t quite fit together leaving many gaps at the joints. The construction crew filled in these gaps with mud and newspapers.

  He dreamed of escape for a long time but the state’s control of information prevented him from acting. Pilots were not allowed to have maps. The government didn’t want them to know their exact location fearing just what Bochenko had in mind.

  Soviet planes flew using an entirely different philosophy than their American counterparts. Radar ground controllers were in charge of Russian fighters. Once cleared for takeoff, pilots were told when to turn, climb, descend, accelerate, and decelerate. In formation flying, the lead aircraft followed the ground controller’s instructions and the wingmen stayed in position, following lead.

  Bochenko wanted out but he had to know exactly where he was and where he should go. There were no maps on base but there was a library in a nearby town. He found the maps he needed in that small library. He learned the exact location of his air base and also where he had to go to safely escape.

  He started planning immediately. He decided he was going to Japan and he had to ensure that no one followed him. Japan was the only real option he had. It was the nearest non-communist country but he had to make it across the Sea of Japan to get there.

  Several factors had to line up for this to work. It had to be done when the weather was good. He needed to navigate visually and be able to see the airport when he got there. He reasoned that he had to be the last plane in a formation flight: #3 in a 3 ship, or #4 in a 4 ship. He needed to have enough fuel to make his destination plus a little extra for insurance. The closest airport with a runway that would accommodate his aircraft was Japan’s Hakodate Airport.

  At the time of his defection, the MIG-25 was the most advanced Soviet fighter and he knew if he brought such a prize to the West, he could use his defection to bargain for his asylum.

  September 6, 1976, was the day all his requirements were met. The weather was good enough to see the point of land in Russia he would use as his departure point. Once he hit that point, all he had to do was hold his heading across the Sea of Japan and wait for land to come into view. He was scheduled to be #3 in a 3-ship formation. He coaxed his support crew into giving him some extra fuel. Now all he had to do was wait for the right time to execute his escape maneuver. The right time turned out to be an echelon turn. An echelon turn has number two and number three behind the lead. Bochenko could see lead and number two but they couldn’t see him. As lead and two went into a left turn Bochenko rolled right, dropped his altitude down to the deck, and lit his afterburners. In short order he was down at 100 feet going in excess of Mach 1.5. He hit his spot on the coast, took up his heading, and waited for land to appear.

  He felt confident that no one was following him. He throttled back because his fuel was disappearing rapidly due to use of the afterburners. His defection would be meaningless if he had to ditch at sea. He saw Japan in the distance but he stayed low until he was within a few miles of Hokodate airport. He lined up on initial at 2,000 feet but he was doing 400 knots. He had to slow down if he wanted to land. He didn’t have enough fuel left to go around and try for a second approach. He slowed as best he could; configured the airplane with gear and flaps and started his final turn. He was still high and fast but he had to make this approach work. He slammed the aircraft down on the runway and stomped on the brakes. The twin drag chutes automatically deployed, but he was still too fast. He ran off the end of the runway and his airplane settled into the mud, but it was undamaged.

  This was the first time western experts were able to get a close look at the MIG-25 and it revealed many secrets and surprises. One of the surprises was how crudely manufactured the aircraft was. All U.S. aircraft wings, for example, were flush riveted, giving the wing a continuous, smooth surface. The MIG’s wings had rivets sticking up all across them. The U.S. was making Maseratis; the Russians were building flying tanks.

  The Japanese initially only allowed the U.S. to do a cursory examination of the MIG. This included ground testing the radar and the engines. Later, the Japanese relented and invited the Americans to examine the plane extensively; and it was dismantled for this purpose. When the Americans had finished their analysis of the airplane, the Japanese loaded it into 30 crates and placed them aboard a Russian cargo ship. Th
e crates arrived back in Russia in November 1976.

  As for Bochenko, President Ford granted him asylum and a trust fund was set up for him, giving him a very comfortable living in his later years. U.S. intelligence personnel interrogated him for five months and employed him as a consultant for several years thereafter. In 1980, the U.S. Congress enacted S2961, authorizing citizenship for Bochenko. President Carter signed it into law in October 1980.

  Bochenko married a music teacher from North Dakota and had two children but later divorced. He never divorced his Russian wife he left behind but he did visit Moscow in 1995 on a business trip. It is not known if he saw his wife and son.

  Chapter 12

  There were fifteen pilots in our U-2 squadron. We all rotated to two or three overseas locations so the chances of meeting all the pilots while I was at Beale between rotations were remote. As pilots returned to Beale from overseas, I made a point of getting to know the ones new to me. One such returnee was Terry Reitman. I had heard accounts of U-2 bailouts from other squadron pilots. Terry had ejected and lived to tell about it. Once I got to know Terry, he filled in the details of his brush with death.

  He launched from Alconbury Air Base, UK, in May 1975. Terry’s mission was photo recon of the East and West German border. He was well above 70,000 feet when, without warning, the aircraft’s control column pitched violently forward. Terry disconnected the autopilot and tried to pull the column back, but it wouldn’t budge. The airplane pitched forward and started spinning out of control. Terry was able to transmit a “Mayday” message prior to ejection.

  The ejection system had a high mode and a low mode. If you ejected at high altitude, like Terry did, the pilot and the seat (as one unit) were separated from the airplane. A drogue chute deployed stabilizing the pilot and his seat as they fell. A built-in altimeter in the seat assembly sent out a signal at 15,000 feet, activating a “butt snapper” separating the pilot from the seat. Once clear of the seat, the pilot’s main chute deployed. Terry was hanging from the chute descending and hoping that the prevailing winds would keep him in the west. The East Germans were on full alert having seen his plane on their radar prior to the ejection. Capturing a U-2 pilot in East German airspace would be a huge propaganda victory for the communists. The East Germans launched everything they had including fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters. Meanwhile, the USAF Search and Rescue team had been alerted along with the West Germans. Everyone was looking for Terry. The crippled aircraft had broken apart due to the high “G” forces but all the parts fell in West Germany. Terry landed in the West, in a heavily wooded area about 100 miles northeast of Bonn. He was uninjured.

  What makes Terry’s ejection story unusual is what happened to Jon Lister about a month before Terry’s incident. Captain Jon Lister and Captain Jim Barron were ferrying two aircraft from U-Tapao, Thailand back to their home base (then Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona). Their first stop was Guam, about an eight-hour flight. The aircraft departed about five minutes apart and both were climbing above 65,000 feet. A KC-135 tanker was escorting the two ferries. The tanker was carrying the two relief pilots who would take over in Guam for Lister and Barron. Also aboard the tanker were maintenance personnel, spare parts and supplies.

  An hour and thirty minutes into the flight, the control column in Lister’s airplane slammed forward causing the plane to porpoise (go up and down). Lister disengaged the autopilot, pulled back on the throttle, and tried to pull the control column back. It wouldn’t budge. The airplane pitched over and started spinning out of control. Lister was able to make one radio transmission, “out of control, upside down, and spinning,” he said. The last thing he remembered was reaching for the eject handle. As he left the airplane, something hit him in the forehead, cracking the face shield of his helmet and knocking him unconscious.

  Lister fell more than 50,000 feet at a speed of over 600 miles per hour. For reasons unknown, the drogue chute, which was supposed to slow and stabilize him down to 15,000, did not deploy. He was in a free-fall more than three minutes before his main chute opened at 15,000 feet. He came down, still unconscious, in the Gulf of Siam. He was fortunate to be wearing a self-inflating life preserver. Without it, he probably would have drowned that night before regaining consciousness. When he did come to, he climbed into his raft. After Lister ejected, immediate search and rescue was initiated. A fisherman about 30 miles east of Pattani, a village north of the Malaysian border, picked him up. He was drifting in the Gulf for eight hours before being rescued.

  That afternoon, a rescue helicopter arrived and took him back to his old base at Nakhon Phanom. From there he took a C-130 to U-Tapao where his support crew gave him a hero’s welcome. Once back in the states, Lister was transferred, against his wishes, out of the U-2 squadron; even though the problem was in the airplane, not the pilot. He stayed in the Air Force until the end. He died of cancer in May 1987 and was buried on Memorial Day at his alma mater, West Point.

  Chapter 13

  One of the several U-2 pilots who had attended my solo party in 1977 was Dave Harrison. Dave did me the honor of dropping the U-2 pin into the yard of beer. Dave was an USAF Academy graduate and a very experienced pilot. He had been to every overseas location more than once. Dave was married to a beautiful woman and had two great kids. He deployed to Akrotiri Royal Air Base in Cyprus in November 1977. On December 7, 1977, Dave took off, fully fueled, for a photo recon mission over the Sinai. He attempted a tight turn after takeoff but it turned out to be too tight. As the airplane rolled into the turn, Dave realized he had too much bank so he tried to roll out. Due to the steep bank angle, his ailerons had stalled. The airplane would not respond to his inputs and roll out; the bank angle only increased. Dave stayed with the airplane hoping he could save it but he was doomed. The airplane crashed into a radar shack on the side of the runway killing Dave along with the senior meteorological officer and four locally employed assistants.

  Dave was on my mind when I received my assignment to Cyprus in December 1978, one year after his accident. I read the accident report but found it hard to believe that this highly intelligent and experienced pilot could get himself into an unrecoverable position. The aileron stall he experienced was something I had never heard about before his accident. Other U-2 pilots were all unfamiliar with it, too. But we all learned from it and sharp turns after takeoff stopped after Dave’s accident.

  I was touring the runway facilities at Akrotiri soon after my arrival. The crash site was still plainly visible. The site was littered with baseball-sized rocks. I poked around in these rocks and saw something. I had found a piece of Dave’s airplane about three inches square. I still have that piece and keep it as a reminder to fly within the limits, both my own and those of the airplane. There’s an old aviation saying that I have lived by in my aviation career: “There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots; but there are no old, bold pilots.”

  I had been looking forward to this Cyprus rotation since I joined the squadron. Everything about this place was beautiful — the weather, the food, and the flying. Cyprus is a beautiful green gem set in the blue Mediterranean. It is officially known as the Republic of Cyprus and is the third largest and third most populous island in the Mediterranean. Earliest human activity on the island can be traced to the 10th millennium B.C.. Greek culture dominated the island after its conquest by Alexander the Great in 333 B.C. The island was placed under British administration in 1878, and eventually gained its independence in 1960. The British, however, retained control of two areas of the island, Akrotiri and Dhekelia. These two areas were known as sovereign base areas.

  In 1974, violence between Greek and Turkish Cypriots prompted a Turkish invasion, resulting in a partition of the island. The Turks took over the north and the Greeks, the south. RAF Akrotiri is located on the southernmost tip of the island, just south of the city of Limassol.

  The U-2 presence on the base was well known but unacknowledged by all. We did not wear our uniforms on base, strictly civilian clothes for us
. Since we were westerners without a British accent, people knew immediately what we were doing there. We had one airplane, three pilots, and an operations officer. When the airplane wasn’t flying it remained in a hangar out of the public view.

  Our mission was photo reconnaissance. We rarely had a cancellation because of the great weather. Our job seemed simple. All the nations involved in the Middle East conflict, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria had agreed to allow U-2 overflights in order to verify that no one nation was cheating on the peace agreement. Our flights would verify, for example, that Egypt wasn’t moving tanks across the Sinai, or that Israel wasn’t placing artillery pieces into the Golan Heights. Satellites also kept an eye on things but satellite schedules could become known. Our missions were top secret and randomly scheduled. No one ever knew when we were coming.

  Our typical track took us south out of Akrotiri, all the way across the Sinai, then northeast along the Jordan-Israel border. We then crossed over Syria, Lebanon, and back around to Cyprus. The flight took about two hours, but it was seldom boring. It seemed that every time I flew this mission, a different group tried to shoot me down. One time the Egyptian Air Force scrambled interceptors after me; they didn’t get close. Then it was the Israelis turn. They scrambled U.S. made F-15s after me. They didn’t reach me either, but they got closer than the Egyptians. My highest pucker factor occurred thanks to the Syrians. The Syrians didn’t launch aircraft to intercept me but they did track me with SAM missiles. They never did fire a missile but they did have my full attention. Keep in mind, all these countries knew who we were and why we were there and all had agreed to let us overfly them.