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Francis Gary Powers U-2 -6 decades on

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Francis Gary Powers U-2 -6 decades on

Old 3rd May 2021, 04:04
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Originally Posted by clareprop
I've seen other bits at the Central Air Force museum in Moscow...next to a copy of the missile used. That was in 1999 so things might have changed since.

2014, still there, pile of wreckage in the middle of the room, flight suit, helmet, etc., in glass display cases around the walls.
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Old 3rd May 2021, 08:45
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Originally Posted by fltlt
2014, still there, pile of wreckage in the middle of the room, flight suit, helmet, etc., in glass display cases around the walls.
and still there in 2018. I can recommend a visit. Great museum and interesting to see the official Cuban on the events since the revolution.
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Old 3rd May 2021, 13:22
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A snap of parts of the "Dragon Lady" and her nemesis, in the Museum of the Revolution, Havana.
Attached Images
File Type: jpg
Havana 130.jpg (472.9 KB, 126 views)
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Old 3rd May 2021, 14:39
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Originally Posted by Mr N Nimrod
and still there in 2018. I can recommend a visit. Great museum and interesting to see the official Cuban on the events since the revolution.
If memory serves, the “officially tagged launcher” of the SA 2 that tagged Powers is/was outside in the display area.
Somewhere amongst many hard drives, I have photos of all that stuff, of course none are indexed/notated/dated, nor are the photos identified by anything but their digitally assigned ID.
One of those will/must get around to doing that one day things, although on the odd occasion I have attempted to locate a particular photo, I have found myself wandering along down memory lane for a pleasant trip.
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Old 4th May 2021, 18:37
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The thing that always struck me as super ironic is he died when his helicopter ran out of fuel doing news coverage.
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Old 5th May 2021, 10:14
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Originally Posted by FakePilot
The thing that always struck me as super ironic is he died when his helicopter ran out of fuel doing news coverage.
It was only in 2020 that his family received several posthumous awards: The Air Force awarded him the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Prisoner of War Medal, and the National Defense Service Medal, while the CIA, then headed by Director George J. Tenet, awarded him the Director’s Medal.
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Old 5th May 2021, 10:20
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Well deserved. Better late than never.
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Old 15th May 2021, 10:38
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Hopefully released in British cinemas on Monday 17th. May Film "The Courier" a.k.a. "Ironbark" staring Benedict Cumberbatch as Greville Wynne.
The true story tells of Soviet Spy Oleg Penkovsky passing intelligence to Greville Wynne which contributed the ending the Cuban Missile crisis. Wynne was caught and swapped with Soviet Spy Konon Molody with the assistance of East German Lawyer Prof.Dr.Wolfgang Vogel, It was Vogel who negotiate the swap of Gary Powers and Fred Pryor for Rudolf Abels.

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Old 16th May 2021, 09:40
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Konon Molody the Soviet spy swapped for Greville Wynne in April 1964 was better known as Gordon Lonsdale, and headed the "Portland Spy Ring"
The swap took place at 05.20am in the middle of Heerstrasse border crossing which is 5kms. to RAF Gatow on the Western side.
Wynne was then flown by an RAF Varsity to RAF Northolt.
Wynne eventually settled in Palma Mallorca with his second wife.
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Old 16th May 2021, 10:54
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Slight correction to my last reply.
Greville Wynne flight Gatow to Northolt was an RAF VALLETTA rather than a Varsity.
Would like to know if this was the a/c used by the C in C Germany which became 60 Squadron at Wildenrath in 1969. ?
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Old 16th May 2021, 16:30
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Originally Posted by Lance Shippey
Hopefully released in British cinemas on Monday 17th. May Film "The Courier" a.k.a. "Ironbark" staring Benedict Cumberbatch as Greville Wynne.
The true story tells of Soviet Spy Oleg Penkovsky passing intelligence to Greville Wynne which contributed the ending the Cuban Missile crisis. Wynne was caught and swapped with Soviet Spy Konon Molody with the assistance of East German Lawyer Prof.Dr.Wolfgang Vogel, It was Vogel who negotiate the swap of Gary Powers and Fred Pryor for Rudolf Abels.

Lance Shippey.
I have read his biography ‚The Man with Odessa‘,including various adventures such as equivalent of SERE / interrogation course conducted by. Flaming haired giant of an operative in a cellar and passing with flying colors to been told there be a cushioned jump on the docks he escaped from a freighter in the Black Sea only to break his legs or ankle. This was to authenticate his role as a disgruntled member of the ships crew.

cheers
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Old 26th Dec 2021, 10:01
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Fred Pryor sadly passed away on the 2nd. Sept 2019 aged 86. The film "Bridge of Spies" will be aired in U.K. today on "More 4" at 17.00 today (Boxing day). The film shows Fred Pryor being arrested after meeting a girlfriend in East Berlin. and his dissertation being taken by the police. The true story is that he had gone to return a library book, and attend a speech by Walter Ulbricht. He was arrested at his new red Volkswagen Karmann Ghia Sports car after the Police had found a copy of his dissertation in the back. I am not sure what happened to the Karmann Ghia. Mrs Vogel seems to think that it may have been confiscated.
Wolfgang Vogel had a Wartburg 311 coupe at the time, He delivered Pryor to Checkpoint Charlie in a borrowed Mercedes, in which he invited Frank Meehan to sit, as it was very cold , awaiting the release of Gary Powers at the Glienicke bridge.Vogel never owned a Volvo sports car as depicted in the film. Pryor was not happy that he had not been consulted by Spielberg, and that the reality had been changed considerably.
N.B. For those not from the British Empire. Boxing day is the day families would give their servants a boxed gift on Dec.26th. For those not having servants, it was time to reflect on the parents and family you had been born into.

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Old 2nd Jan 2022, 03:30
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Vogel became somewhat of a "Petrol Head" turning against East German manufactured automobiles for West German cars. Between 1964 and 1968 , VEB the manufacturer of the Trabant were tasked with a possible modern replacement for the Trabant 601. This would have been the Trabant P603 and looked similar to what the Volkswagen would look like, when later released in the West a couple of years later. The 9 prototypes of the Trabant P603 were fitted with different engines, including the regular 2 stroke 601 engine, a wankel rotary engine, and a 4 cylinder engine supplied by Skoda, The production would have cost 7.7 Billion Ost Marks.

The project was cancelled by SED minister for Industry and production / Economic Management and planning, Gunter Mittag. He claimed that there was no need for a replacement for the 601. The DDR needed money rather than a new car. There are serious suggestions that the plans were sold to VW, from which they developed the VW Golf 1. One of the most successful cars ever built in the World. The reason of the plans going to VW was the the SED needed the Western Cash. Gunter Mittag was diabetic , and in 1984 lost the lower part of a leg, In 1989 he lost the other leg. The amputations were one reason that the DDR imported several Range Rovers, as Mittag and Honecker were keen hunters, and the modified Range Rover was easy for Mittag to access. After the fall of the wall, In 1991 he was accused of using government funds for a private home.

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Old 2nd Jan 2022, 03:50
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"The Courier" Benedict Cumberbatch as Greville Wynne.

I have viewed the DVD, which was released in the U.K. in November last year. Although the performance of Cumberbatch was outstanding, I found the film a little disappointing and boring It failed to address the swap brokered by the Russians and Wolfgang Vogel, and the breakdown of his marriage. Wynne would remarry a Dutch lady, and move to the El Terreno suburb of Palma, Majorca. where in owned a flower importing business, and frequent the many bars in El Terreno.

As a young child, My parents had agreed to buy an English Tearoom in El Terreno from a PAN AM captain and a stewardess partner. This was in the early 1960's I would be interested to know who the PAN AM captain was. ??

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Old 2nd Jan 2022, 06:19
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It's a frequently repeated claim that East Germany invented another radical micro car concept and they did but the Volkswagen Golf was designed by Italians: https://www.italdesign.it/project/golf/
Günter Mittag, a former railway worker, was in fact the most senior economics "expert" but not with minister rank but as SED Politbüro member (even higher). He is said to have even imported his entire personal drinking water from the West for hard currency. Honecker and Mittag had custom made stretched hunting Range Rovers like these:
http://www.ait-trading.com/astro/mis...jagdwagen.html
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Old 2nd Jan 2022, 09:17
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Dear Less Hair,
Thanks for this, and the Link to to Italdesign project. Interesting.. The Trabant P603 was designed by Chefkonstructeur Werner Lang 1964 - 1968 in Zwickau. It was described by MDR zeitreise "Forerunner of Golf, is reminiscent of the first golf six years before the Golf was launched. (Turin motor show 1969. Also interestingly in another recent article 30 jahre Mauerfalls asks "Hat die DDR den VW Golf erfunden ? another article states. "It can be doubted that the Golf drawn by Italy's star designer Georgio Giugiaro is a pirated copy". My view now, thanks to your attachment is that Georgio Giugiaro is responsible for the final Golf 1. but I am not sure if the alleged sold plans of the Trabant P603 played a part in the final design.

Lance.
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Old 2nd Jan 2022, 12:59
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It's not like east Germany had any secret super advanced technology to engineer or even invent cars that nobody else had. It was quite the contrary. Much of their talent pool, namely BMW (EMW) and Audi (Horch) engineers moved to the West. I call the East German invented Golf an urban myth maybe created by some East German inferiority complex or similar. They had talented engineers but they could not make much use of them. Consumer cars were politically considered non-priority and even East German made trucks were limited to smaller sized engines. The biggest permitted being the W50/ L60.

Here is one of the final "excellent" cars made by east Germany, the Horch designed P3 military Jeep.
https://p3-freunde.de/gelaendewagen-p3/
However the Soviet Union claimed to be the exclusive supplier of serious military Jeeps. DDR had to abandon this market.
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Old 2nd Jan 2022, 14:51
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Less Hair.

Thanks for the attachment / Interesting.
Re. the Range Rovers : You may be interested in the story behind the DDR version of the Sandman (Sandmannchen) shown on DDR T.V. after Unification which was different to the Sandman shown on West German T.V. (ARD).

The Sandman was the original idea of Dr. Ilse Obrig and developed by Berliner rundfunk in the Soviet zone in the 1950's. She defected to the West. The Sandman was based on Ole Lukoje, a character of H.C. Anderson, who granted dreams to come true in the child had been good.. The programme was called Unser Sandmannchen (Our Sandman) in the East, and Das Sandmannchen in the West. In the East German version, the Sandman travelled to the USSR to see his brothers and sisters. He then travelled to Angola and drove around in a Western Land Rover. This was used to mitigate any jealousy against Honecker's fleet of them at his numerous hunting lodges.

Lance Shippey.
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Old 2nd Jan 2022, 18:31
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I'm just too young (!) to recall the incident but do clearly recall my father's explanation a few years later when Powers was exchanged and repatriated and I must have asked questions about the furore at the time.
Just to add a little 'colour' of those events as I was told them at the time at an age where I had no preconceptions of such matters this is what I was told by a very thoughtful, intelligent and worldly-wise father...
The explanation, which could only have been everyone's 'common knowlege' at the time derived from the newspapers and BBC radio was that the USAF had believed the aircraft invulnerable and so hadn't bothered to train Powers in anti-interrogation techniques on the basis that he wasn't ever going to be caught. I also seem to recall that it was thought 'inappropriate' that he had allowed himself to be caught alive as he had been issued with the means to prevent that but chose not to use it. I did think those explanations didn't quite fit together but that is what I was told at the time. I am certain too that there was a feeling that he ahd betrayed his country by blabbing secrets under interrogation through this and also had 'allowed' himself and his aircraft to fall into their hands rather less damaged than was in his power to prevent. Thus my recieved view of the incident was very much that Powers was thyought guilty of unprofessional behaviour that resulted in the enemy gaining a great deal of secret info unnecessarily - ie he screwed the pooch. Even at that tender age I recall thinking that failing to train anti-interrogation but providing the pilot with self-destruction options was a bit odd.

I'm pretty sure then that this was the tone of how events were reported at the time.
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Old 2nd Jan 2022, 19:47
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I only did one sortie over Russia on 543 in 1964 when we spent nearly two hours over the Kola Peninsula. The 'source' said that a nuclear sub - can't remember the name- was being readied and its departure date was given. We night stopped at Kinloss, and set off early the next morning and got the Valiant up to about FL530, and we were sending the results using morse to, I think, a USN P2 operating out of Bodø.
What surprised me was, even as a 20 year old, that there was absolutely no briefing whatsoever about what to do if intercepted, what if we were forced to land, escape and evasion, how to deal with interrogation etc etc. One of the crew's job was to get up on the Plotter's table every so often to look through the periscope to see if we were contrailing and if we were, to descend or try and climb!
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