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May-Day - Eisenhower, Khrushchev and the U-s Affair
Francis Gary Powers, discharged from the USAF in '56 as a captain, joined CIA's U-2 program. U-2s flew at over 70,000', invulnerable to Soviet anti-aircraft weapons, taking high-resolution photos from the stratosphere of military & other sites. Soviet intelligence had been aware of them since '56, but lacked counter-measures 'til '60. Powers’ U-2, which departed from a military airbase in Peshawar, Pakistan & may have received support from the US Air Station at Badaber, was shot down over Sverdlovsk by an S-75 Dvina Surface to Air missile on 5/1/60. He was unable to activate a self-destruct mechanism & unwilling to commit suicide before parachuting. Eight S-75 missiles had been launched. The 1st had hit. One hit a MiG-19 intercepter unable to attain sufficient altitude. Pilot Sergey Safronov crashed in a forest rather than bail out & risk crashing into Degtyarsk. A unarmed Su-9 in transit was directed to ram. It failed because of speed differences. When the US government learned of the disappearance, it issued a cover statement claiming a weather pilot had crashed after oxygen difficulties. What CIA didn't realize was that the plane crashed almost intact. Powers was interrogated by the KGB for months before confessing & apologizing. The incident set back talks between Khrushchev & Eisenhower. On 8/17/60, he was convicted of espionage & sentenced to 3 years imprisonment & 7 years hard labor. He was held east of Moscow in Vladimirsky Central Prison--now containing a small museum with an exhibit on him--& allegedly got on with prisoners there. On 2/10/62, he was exchanged along with American student Frederic Pryor in a publicised spy swap for Soviet KGB Colonel Vilyam Fisher (aka Rudolf Abel), a Soviet colonel who was caught by the FBI & jailed for espionage, at Berlin's Glienicke Bridge.
Unknown Binding
First published May 1, 1986
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About the author
Michael R. Beschloss
37 books387 followersMichael Beschloss is the author of nine books on presidential history, including, most recently, the New York Times bestsellers Presidential Courage and The Conquerors, as well as two volumes on Lyndon Johnson’s White House tapes. He was also editor of the number-one global bestseller Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy. He is the NBC News Presidential Historian and a PBS NewsHour contributor and has received an Emmy and six honorary degrees.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
August 2, 2020
This was another book I'd been wanting to read for a long while. Frankly, I think I actually had the trade paperback version of it to begin with. Needless to say it fell apart. Fresh off from reading "Ike's Bluff" I dove right into this one with a kind of a joyous sense of reckless abandonment. Now I had actually started this book on and off over a period of 10 plus years but never could "get into it" or have the wherewithal to actually complete it.
I will begin by saying this. I think Michael Beschcloss is a hell of a writer and I have nothing but the highest respect for him. This book, however gave me a kind of whiplash once I got into it. I see this book as having kind of a "boomerang" effect on a reader. The author starts us off on the morning of the actual incursion into Soviet airspace, May first, 1960 (May Day to be exact) and gives us the various incidental movements from President Eisenhower himself down the pike to the pilot of the fateful U2 flight himself Francis Gary Powers. From there, the consequences and immediate ramifications of the "crash heard around the world" are minutely and painstakingly described.
It's after setting up the crisis and its (almost) minute-by-minute response that the author goes back to describe the beginnings of the espionage industry in American history (more than one chapter goes into at times tedious detail of the development/building of the actual U2 itself). The pretexts of both the Americans and the Soviets are exhaustively drawn upon as well - and just exactly where the two global superpowers were in the spring of 1960. Knowing what we now know about how detente was finally achieved, and seeing how the Cold War has been over now for close to two decades I find it somewhat laughable that President Eisenhower (for as much as I've grown to deeply admire him this past year with everything I've read on him) actually believed that he would be the man to achieve a rapprochement with the Soviets.
In concluding, even with some unneeded verbosity, I strongly recommend this not only for the fact that it's a page-turning read but to think on (as you read it) where we once were and where we (as the World's number one superpower) have come to.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 1986.
I will begin by saying this. I think Michael Beschcloss is a hell of a writer and I have nothing but the highest respect for him. This book, however gave me a kind of whiplash once I got into it. I see this book as having kind of a "boomerang" effect on a reader. The author starts us off on the morning of the actual incursion into Soviet airspace, May first, 1960 (May Day to be exact) and gives us the various incidental movements from President Eisenhower himself down the pike to the pilot of the fateful U2 flight himself Francis Gary Powers. From there, the consequences and immediate ramifications of the "crash heard around the world" are minutely and painstakingly described.
It's after setting up the crisis and its (almost) minute-by-minute response that the author goes back to describe the beginnings of the espionage industry in American history (more than one chapter goes into at times tedious detail of the development/building of the actual U2 itself). The pretexts of both the Americans and the Soviets are exhaustively drawn upon as well - and just exactly where the two global superpowers were in the spring of 1960. Knowing what we now know about how detente was finally achieved, and seeing how the Cold War has been over now for close to two decades I find it somewhat laughable that President Eisenhower (for as much as I've grown to deeply admire him this past year with everything I've read on him) actually believed that he would be the man to achieve a rapprochement with the Soviets.
In concluding, even with some unneeded verbosity, I strongly recommend this not only for the fact that it's a page-turning read but to think on (as you read it) where we once were and where we (as the World's number one superpower) have come to.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 1986.
January 9, 2023
I enjoyed this book as I would a novel by Pynchon or Calvino. It’s a great read that, for the most part, happens to be factual.
It had particular significance for me because I read newspaper/magazine coverage of the events of 1959/60 pretty much as they came off the presses. The printer’s ink even rubbed off on my hands (I hand a paper route and often read Cold War stories before the ink had a chance to dry).
It had particular significance for me because I read newspaper/magazine coverage of the events of 1959/60 pretty much as they came off the presses. The printer’s ink even rubbed off on my hands (I hand a paper route and often read Cold War stories before the ink had a chance to dry).
July 17, 2009
It's truly astonishing the impact an accident can have on history. On May 1, 1960, Francis Gary Powers was captured in the Soviet Union after his U-2 spy plane was shot down or crashed. (The precise cause has never been established.)
Michael Beschloss in Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev and the U-2 Affair explains that spy flights over Russia had begun in 1956 at the behest of Eisenhower who was worried about the possibility of surprise attack and Russian missile capability. The U-2s were a marvel, developed from design to flying prototype in a matter of months for the CIA by Kelly Johnson in the Skunk Works. The flights over Russia provided reassuring information to the president that enabled him to withstand pressure from hawks to spend huge amounts of money on defense. The U-2 photos made it clear the Russians did not constitute the threat alleged by the defense lobby.
Eisenhower did worry about the morality of the spy flights and the possibility of an embarrassing crash. But the CIA assured him no pilot would be able to survive being shot down; the plane had all sorts of self-destruct mechanisms built in and the pilots were provided with "suicide pins". No evidence of espionage would exist. CIA officials also assured Eisenhower that no Russian missile could ever reach the 70,000 foot altitude the U-2 routinely flew at. The President was also concerned that revelations of espionage might destroy his tentative steps toward detente and the nuclear test ban treaty he wanted.
The Russians knew all about the overflights, but were powerless to stop them. They did not have the capability and they did not want the rest of the world to know of their impotence in the face of this brazen invasion of their air space; so they remained mute.
Khrushchev had difficulties of his own. He wanted to reduce spending for the military so more could be spent on consumer goods. He had gone a long way toward relaxing the paranoid, inquisition mentality of his predecessors. He was prepared to exchange visits with the American president and had visited Eisenhower at Camp David just the spring before the fateful event. In 1957 he had barely survived a coup attempt so the Russian people and political opposition were told nothing of the spy missions.
The U.S. public was equally in the dark. The U-2 was portrayed as a device for determining weather conditions at high altitudes for the new passenger jets just coming into service. The president was careful to use only civilian pilots. Covert action was by this time Eisenhower's preferred method of foreign policy. It permitted more leeway in achieving his foreign policy aims without risk of alienating the huge support he had among Americans.
Eisenhower personally approved each U-2 flight. He permitted the fateful flight only reluctantly, however. Nothing untoward should spoil chances for the upcoming summit meeting planned for May 16th in Paris. The CIA was insistent. They needed certain information only the U-2 could provide and again assured the president that nothing would happen. Eisenhower's luck ran out and the crash changed everything. Speculation over why the plane went down ranges from a lucky antiaircraft missile near-miss, to flameout, to structural problems, to defection, to sabotage. After the crash, the CIA released a lot of disinformation. They wanted everyone to believe the plane had a flameout and was shot down at 30,000 feet. They did not want the American public to think the Russians could shoot down a plane at 70,000 feet which was higher than our manned bombers could fly, thus rendering our most potent threat worthless. The most likely explanation is a near-miss, blowing off the plane's stabilizer.
The original reaction of the U.S. was to lie. We publicly claimed the U-2 was nothing but a weather plane that had strayed off course. Khrushchev held a trump card: he knew what the president did not; that the pilot had been captured alive. Khrushchev was forced into the position of taking the hard line. He could not risk being labeled as soft on capitalism. At the summit conference he insisted on an apology from Eisenhower who refused, insisting on the right to fly over Russia whenever necessary to protect our national security. Khrushchev considered this a personal insult and stormed out of Paris. The situation deteriorated from there.
There's no question that the U-2 had considerable strategic value. The information obtained during the Suez crisis was invaluable as France and Britain refused to provide the U.S. with any information. The spy flights also enabled Eisenhower to hold the line on the military budget. As a result of the U-2 incident, however, he lost much faith in the CIA. Allen Dulles in particular was never trusted by the White House again. (The Bay of Pigs was to hammer the last nail in his coffin.) The people of the United States, who until this time, had naively trusted their government, would never again have such blind faith after Eisenhower was caught in several bald-faced lies. The seeds of unrest during Vietnam were sown on Mayday, 1960.
Michael Beschloss in Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev and the U-2 Affair explains that spy flights over Russia had begun in 1956 at the behest of Eisenhower who was worried about the possibility of surprise attack and Russian missile capability. The U-2s were a marvel, developed from design to flying prototype in a matter of months for the CIA by Kelly Johnson in the Skunk Works. The flights over Russia provided reassuring information to the president that enabled him to withstand pressure from hawks to spend huge amounts of money on defense. The U-2 photos made it clear the Russians did not constitute the threat alleged by the defense lobby.
Eisenhower did worry about the morality of the spy flights and the possibility of an embarrassing crash. But the CIA assured him no pilot would be able to survive being shot down; the plane had all sorts of self-destruct mechanisms built in and the pilots were provided with "suicide pins". No evidence of espionage would exist. CIA officials also assured Eisenhower that no Russian missile could ever reach the 70,000 foot altitude the U-2 routinely flew at. The President was also concerned that revelations of espionage might destroy his tentative steps toward detente and the nuclear test ban treaty he wanted.
The Russians knew all about the overflights, but were powerless to stop them. They did not have the capability and they did not want the rest of the world to know of their impotence in the face of this brazen invasion of their air space; so they remained mute.
Khrushchev had difficulties of his own. He wanted to reduce spending for the military so more could be spent on consumer goods. He had gone a long way toward relaxing the paranoid, inquisition mentality of his predecessors. He was prepared to exchange visits with the American president and had visited Eisenhower at Camp David just the spring before the fateful event. In 1957 he had barely survived a coup attempt so the Russian people and political opposition were told nothing of the spy missions.
The U.S. public was equally in the dark. The U-2 was portrayed as a device for determining weather conditions at high altitudes for the new passenger jets just coming into service. The president was careful to use only civilian pilots. Covert action was by this time Eisenhower's preferred method of foreign policy. It permitted more leeway in achieving his foreign policy aims without risk of alienating the huge support he had among Americans.
Eisenhower personally approved each U-2 flight. He permitted the fateful flight only reluctantly, however. Nothing untoward should spoil chances for the upcoming summit meeting planned for May 16th in Paris. The CIA was insistent. They needed certain information only the U-2 could provide and again assured the president that nothing would happen. Eisenhower's luck ran out and the crash changed everything. Speculation over why the plane went down ranges from a lucky antiaircraft missile near-miss, to flameout, to structural problems, to defection, to sabotage. After the crash, the CIA released a lot of disinformation. They wanted everyone to believe the plane had a flameout and was shot down at 30,000 feet. They did not want the American public to think the Russians could shoot down a plane at 70,000 feet which was higher than our manned bombers could fly, thus rendering our most potent threat worthless. The most likely explanation is a near-miss, blowing off the plane's stabilizer.
The original reaction of the U.S. was to lie. We publicly claimed the U-2 was nothing but a weather plane that had strayed off course. Khrushchev held a trump card: he knew what the president did not; that the pilot had been captured alive. Khrushchev was forced into the position of taking the hard line. He could not risk being labeled as soft on capitalism. At the summit conference he insisted on an apology from Eisenhower who refused, insisting on the right to fly over Russia whenever necessary to protect our national security. Khrushchev considered this a personal insult and stormed out of Paris. The situation deteriorated from there.
There's no question that the U-2 had considerable strategic value. The information obtained during the Suez crisis was invaluable as France and Britain refused to provide the U.S. with any information. The spy flights also enabled Eisenhower to hold the line on the military budget. As a result of the U-2 incident, however, he lost much faith in the CIA. Allen Dulles in particular was never trusted by the White House again. (The Bay of Pigs was to hammer the last nail in his coffin.) The people of the United States, who until this time, had naively trusted their government, would never again have such blind faith after Eisenhower was caught in several bald-faced lies. The seeds of unrest during Vietnam were sown on Mayday, 1960.
July 5, 2020
An insightful and well-researched work.
Beschloss covers the origins of the U-2 program, Eisenhower's reluctance to inform Congress, his own close supervision of the program, and the reasons for Eisenhower’s approval of a flight while the Geneva summit was taking place. A lot of the book also deals with US-Soviet relations during Eisenhower’s presidency.
He also looks at the halfhearted and contrived search for a legal justification for the U-2 overflights, and how the Americans counted on the Russians being too embarrassed to admit that the flights were penetrating their airspace. He notes how ironic the U-2 disaster was, given how quickly the US advanced to reconnaissance satellites that are much less politically sensitive. Beschloss also notes that during the crisis Eisenhower became the first American president to admit that he lied to the American public.
Some authors dealing with this episode suggest or argue that the crisis also destroyed a chance for détente. Beschloss doesn’t make this argument, and judges that both the US and Soviet governments were responsible here, with many other factors at play. Khrushchev did abandon the Paris summit, but it seems unlikely that some kind of heart-to-heart conversation between Eisenhower and Khrushchev would have prevented the East Germans from building the Berlin Wall, or prevented the Russians from sending their missile forces to Cuba or invading Czechoslovakia, for example. There is not some sort of inevitable productivity associated with negotiations, after all.
The book’s only problems are minor; at times Beschloss gives details about trivia that isn’t important (Ike’s underwear, for example) At one point Beschloss refers to the "National Security Agency in Baltimore” when he means Fort Meade. Joseph Murphy is called a "U-2 alumnus," even though he was a CIA security officer.
A well-written and accessible work.
Beschloss covers the origins of the U-2 program, Eisenhower's reluctance to inform Congress, his own close supervision of the program, and the reasons for Eisenhower’s approval of a flight while the Geneva summit was taking place. A lot of the book also deals with US-Soviet relations during Eisenhower’s presidency.
He also looks at the halfhearted and contrived search for a legal justification for the U-2 overflights, and how the Americans counted on the Russians being too embarrassed to admit that the flights were penetrating their airspace. He notes how ironic the U-2 disaster was, given how quickly the US advanced to reconnaissance satellites that are much less politically sensitive. Beschloss also notes that during the crisis Eisenhower became the first American president to admit that he lied to the American public.
Some authors dealing with this episode suggest or argue that the crisis also destroyed a chance for détente. Beschloss doesn’t make this argument, and judges that both the US and Soviet governments were responsible here, with many other factors at play. Khrushchev did abandon the Paris summit, but it seems unlikely that some kind of heart-to-heart conversation between Eisenhower and Khrushchev would have prevented the East Germans from building the Berlin Wall, or prevented the Russians from sending their missile forces to Cuba or invading Czechoslovakia, for example. There is not some sort of inevitable productivity associated with negotiations, after all.
The book’s only problems are minor; at times Beschloss gives details about trivia that isn’t important (Ike’s underwear, for example) At one point Beschloss refers to the "National Security Agency in Baltimore” when he means Fort Meade. Joseph Murphy is called a "U-2 alumnus," even though he was a CIA security officer.
A well-written and accessible work.
July 16, 2021
Summary: A detailed accounting of the shoot-down of a U-2 CIA reconnaissance flight over the USSR and the consequences that increased Cold War tensions between Eisenhower and Kruschchev and their respective countries.
After Sputnik, it was one of the first international events I remembered. A high altitude plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers was shot down during an overflight of the Soviet Union. Both Powers and enough of the plane survived to make clear that it was clear that it was a spy plane from the US. At first, the U.S. President Eisenhower believed that the plane was destroyed. That’s what he was told would happen. First they responded with silence, then a cover story of a NASA weather observation plane off course. Only when Kruschchev revealed that Powers had survived and they knew enough that it was clear he was doing aerial spying did Eisenhower finally take responsibility. Kruschchev thought he would take the cover Kruschchev offered, blaming it on subordinates and firing them. Eisenhower wasn’t that kind of guy, but the bungling had sown deep distrust in the lead-up to a four nation summit, meant to de-escalate continuing conflict over Berlin and Germany, both divided into East and West. The Summit ended up a disaster. Kruschchev was deeply offended and walked out early. An invitation for Eisenhower to visit the Soviet Union was rescinded, a deep disappointment after the warm personal relations they had developed on a visit the previous year at Camp David and the Eisenhower farm. What Eisenhower hoped would be a crowning achievement of his eight year presidency ended in disappointment. All because of a downed plane.
Or was it? That’s one of the questions Michael Beschloss raises and leaves with us. On the face of it, the overflight was a deep offense, a breach of trust, especially since it occurred on Mayday, the Soviet equivalent of the Fourth of July. Behind the scenes, though, militaristic elements in the Kremlin were already coming to think that Kruschchev was too soft on the Americans, and were fearful that he would give away too much in negotiations on Berlin. Kruschchev was walking a tightrope. He wanted to lower military expenditures and invest more in a flagging economy. Beschloss raises the question of whether the downed plane gave Kruschchev cover to take a hard line, which he may have had to do anyway. The overflight and the American admission of spying allowed him to do so from the moral high ground of the moment.
Then there were questions about Power’s story. Was he really shot down or did something else account for him being taken into custody? For one thing, he survived. The plane was relatively intact for being shot down at 70,000 feet. Pilots were supposed to hit a self-destruct switch before ejecting. Powers claimed he was unable to. The fact that Powers apologized at all, even though he refused to denounce the US made him suspect or weak in the eyes of some. Why hadn’t Powers been better prepared for the possibility of surviving a shoot-down?
The book explores a number of questions around the Eisenhower administration. Why did they release a series of cover stories before admitting they were lies? Did the CIA fail the president in the assurances they gave him concerning the impossibility of a U-2 pilot surviving a shoot-down? Why didn’t Eisenhower take advantage of Kruschchev’s early arrival at the Summit to seek out a private meeting to see if he could resolve the tensions between them? And why did Eisenhower authorize a flight so close to the Summit?
Beschloss explores the intelligence dilemma that led to the pressure to approve these flights. The fear of a “missile gap” was driving pressure to increase defense spending. The intelligence gained through these overflights enabled him to fend off these pressures and control spending. There was no “missile gap.” Just a lot of boasting. The intelligence also helped defense planners to plan for the unthinkable, knowing better what assets to target. The Soviet Union was able to acquire this information with ease in the U.S., an open society. There was no comparable way for the U.S. to gather this intelligence, and overflying satellites were a few years away. One has the sense in the end, as regrettable as the U-2 incident was, that most feel the intelligence reaped over the years justified the incursions into Soviet airspace and the concomitant risks.
Finally, this is an interesting study of how easy it is in tense international relationships for parties to misinterpret each other’s acts and not to understand how they are perceived by others. Eisenhower concluded that because Kruschchev didn’t bring up the overflights at Camp David, he had decided to tolerate them. Kruschchev had decided they had repeatedly denounced these flights and that it wouldn’t help his relationship with Eisenhower, who he thought did not know about them. Kruschchev didn’t expect Eisenhower to take responsibility for the spying.
Beschloss offers a well-researched account that helps us understand this period of the Cold War. He helps make sense of the climate President Kennedy inherited. He also offers the intriguing perspective that the U-2 affair was the first in a series of events leading to Kruschchev’s downfall. Beschloss exposes some of the internal dynamics that weren’t clear to most of us at the time. Beschloss combines a well-paced account with careful scholarship that help us understand some of the dynamics of an era that had us hiding under our school desks.
After Sputnik, it was one of the first international events I remembered. A high altitude plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers was shot down during an overflight of the Soviet Union. Both Powers and enough of the plane survived to make clear that it was clear that it was a spy plane from the US. At first, the U.S. President Eisenhower believed that the plane was destroyed. That’s what he was told would happen. First they responded with silence, then a cover story of a NASA weather observation plane off course. Only when Kruschchev revealed that Powers had survived and they knew enough that it was clear he was doing aerial spying did Eisenhower finally take responsibility. Kruschchev thought he would take the cover Kruschchev offered, blaming it on subordinates and firing them. Eisenhower wasn’t that kind of guy, but the bungling had sown deep distrust in the lead-up to a four nation summit, meant to de-escalate continuing conflict over Berlin and Germany, both divided into East and West. The Summit ended up a disaster. Kruschchev was deeply offended and walked out early. An invitation for Eisenhower to visit the Soviet Union was rescinded, a deep disappointment after the warm personal relations they had developed on a visit the previous year at Camp David and the Eisenhower farm. What Eisenhower hoped would be a crowning achievement of his eight year presidency ended in disappointment. All because of a downed plane.
Or was it? That’s one of the questions Michael Beschloss raises and leaves with us. On the face of it, the overflight was a deep offense, a breach of trust, especially since it occurred on Mayday, the Soviet equivalent of the Fourth of July. Behind the scenes, though, militaristic elements in the Kremlin were already coming to think that Kruschchev was too soft on the Americans, and were fearful that he would give away too much in negotiations on Berlin. Kruschchev was walking a tightrope. He wanted to lower military expenditures and invest more in a flagging economy. Beschloss raises the question of whether the downed plane gave Kruschchev cover to take a hard line, which he may have had to do anyway. The overflight and the American admission of spying allowed him to do so from the moral high ground of the moment.
Then there were questions about Power’s story. Was he really shot down or did something else account for him being taken into custody? For one thing, he survived. The plane was relatively intact for being shot down at 70,000 feet. Pilots were supposed to hit a self-destruct switch before ejecting. Powers claimed he was unable to. The fact that Powers apologized at all, even though he refused to denounce the US made him suspect or weak in the eyes of some. Why hadn’t Powers been better prepared for the possibility of surviving a shoot-down?
The book explores a number of questions around the Eisenhower administration. Why did they release a series of cover stories before admitting they were lies? Did the CIA fail the president in the assurances they gave him concerning the impossibility of a U-2 pilot surviving a shoot-down? Why didn’t Eisenhower take advantage of Kruschchev’s early arrival at the Summit to seek out a private meeting to see if he could resolve the tensions between them? And why did Eisenhower authorize a flight so close to the Summit?
Beschloss explores the intelligence dilemma that led to the pressure to approve these flights. The fear of a “missile gap” was driving pressure to increase defense spending. The intelligence gained through these overflights enabled him to fend off these pressures and control spending. There was no “missile gap.” Just a lot of boasting. The intelligence also helped defense planners to plan for the unthinkable, knowing better what assets to target. The Soviet Union was able to acquire this information with ease in the U.S., an open society. There was no comparable way for the U.S. to gather this intelligence, and overflying satellites were a few years away. One has the sense in the end, as regrettable as the U-2 incident was, that most feel the intelligence reaped over the years justified the incursions into Soviet airspace and the concomitant risks.
Finally, this is an interesting study of how easy it is in tense international relationships for parties to misinterpret each other’s acts and not to understand how they are perceived by others. Eisenhower concluded that because Kruschchev didn’t bring up the overflights at Camp David, he had decided to tolerate them. Kruschchev had decided they had repeatedly denounced these flights and that it wouldn’t help his relationship with Eisenhower, who he thought did not know about them. Kruschchev didn’t expect Eisenhower to take responsibility for the spying.
Beschloss offers a well-researched account that helps us understand this period of the Cold War. He helps make sense of the climate President Kennedy inherited. He also offers the intriguing perspective that the U-2 affair was the first in a series of events leading to Kruschchev’s downfall. Beschloss exposes some of the internal dynamics that weren’t clear to most of us at the time. Beschloss combines a well-paced account with careful scholarship that help us understand some of the dynamics of an era that had us hiding under our school desks.
April 30, 2013
Interesting book. Written well after the U-2 events of the 60s. I was 8 yr. old when Francis Gary Powers was "shot" down over Russia. I remember the news stories about it and it shaped the mood of our times. The failures of the Eisenhower regime secured the Kennedy win and hardened the two great powers against each other.
While I lived in the times, I have never read any books on the background to the affair. Beschloss writes, many years later, from an American perspective but his analysis seems very balanced to me. Neither of the two world leaders (DDE or NSK) are spared a critical analysis.
I found the analysis informative. I was not old enough to understand completely how the U-2 events led to the Kennedy Cuba fiasco and crisis. Eisenhower was either duped by his advisors, or genuinely flexing American might without concern for others and Beschloss explores both possibilities. Khrushchev was either just a boorish old prole, out of his element in statecraft or genuinely offended and politically endangered by the overflights. All of these, and the grey in-between, is explored very well by Beschloss. A good contribution. I think I would like to read some of the other earlier accounts of the events.
While I lived in the times, I have never read any books on the background to the affair. Beschloss writes, many years later, from an American perspective but his analysis seems very balanced to me. Neither of the two world leaders (DDE or NSK) are spared a critical analysis.
I found the analysis informative. I was not old enough to understand completely how the U-2 events led to the Kennedy Cuba fiasco and crisis. Eisenhower was either duped by his advisors, or genuinely flexing American might without concern for others and Beschloss explores both possibilities. Khrushchev was either just a boorish old prole, out of his element in statecraft or genuinely offended and politically endangered by the overflights. All of these, and the grey in-between, is explored very well by Beschloss. A good contribution. I think I would like to read some of the other earlier accounts of the events.
September 17, 2013
Someone had left a paperback up at grandmother's Michigan cottage about the U2 affair shortly after its occurrence and I'd read it as a little kid. So many years had passed, however, since the event of my reading and the event itself, years in which I'd adopted the study of espionage and black-operations as a kind of on-going hobby, that I thought it time to refresh memory and see what the current understanding of the incident might be. This book was a good overview both of the event in its geopolitical context and of the life of Francis Gary Powers, the CIA pilot captured by the Soviets.
June 10, 2011
An amazing, well researched book regarding the U-2 incident involving Gary Powers in 1960. A co-worker with a voracious book appetite read it and suggested I read his copy. I was afraid it was going to an academic, dry, work; but Beschloss makes it a page turner. While I disagree with some of Beschloss' conclusions, the research he does is top notch. Highly recommended for anyone who likes history.
January 13, 2011
This book is the most well documented and accurate of any that I have read about the U-2 incident involving the shoot down and capture of CIA pilot Gary Powers. As a former U-2 pilot, this was compulsory reading.
June 30, 2019
This is one of Michael Beschloss' earlier works, and it stands up. He employs his usual mix of immersive story-telling - almost making the reader like they are in the room - and cogent, unbiased analysis. In this book, now over thirty years old itself, he reviews a potential crisis that was averted in the spring of 1960 between the United States and the USSR. The primary focus is on President Dwight Eisenhower, Premier Nikita Khrushchev, U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers, and the overall context of that period during the Cold War. But Beschloss also delves into the CIA's flawed decision-making, the media's somewhat gullible (by today's standards) attitude of accepting at face value whatever Eisenhower and other top administration officials said, and the paranoia and deep suspicion of the Russians.
Beschloss immediately draws the reader into the story by following the events immediately before, during, and after the crash of the U-2 deep into Russian territory on May 1, 1960 (which happened to be the Russian Holiday of May Day - adding extra insult from the Russian point of view). Just as the cover-up by the Eisenhower Administration is beginning, he changes tact and goes back several years, reviewing the general world situation that appeared after WWII ended, and how both countries became locked in an arms race. This comes almost 70 pages into the book, so it is a bit of an adjustment as I found myself immersed in May 1960 and anticipating Eisenhower's responses to Khrushchrev's bellicosity, only to embark on a long review of U.S.-Soviet relations and espionage activities throughout the 1950s.
The CIA does not come off looking very good here, nor should it. Allen Dulles, the Director, probably should have been fired but Eisenhower did not like to use scapegoats and, in fairness, Eisenhower himself was the one who ultimately approved the flight. But Dulles, Richard Bissell, and others repeatedly assured him that there was basically no chance that, even if one of the U-2 planes were shot down, it would be so badly destroyed that the Soviets would not have enough evidence to definitively finger the United States as spying, and there was even less of a chance that the pilot (if he even survived the missile attack, which seemed quite doubtful) would survive the crash. So Eisenhower was basically operating under two highly important false assumptions. It is hard to fathom that, with an upcoming Summit in Paris scheduled just a few weeks away, he would have authorized that flight or any of the others had he known the true possible outcomes of a crash.
But Eisenhower and his advisers compounded the problem greatly by lying to the American public and the Soviets. Operating under the assumptions that the pilot, Powers, was dead and the plane so badly damaged as to be virtually unrecognizable, the administration - and later Eisenhower himself - issued false statements, invoking NASA and weather research. Only when Khrushchev produced photos of the plane, and then - surprise! - Powers himself, was Ike backed into a corner and had to admit the truth.
From there, Khrushchev overplayed his own hand, ruining the Paris Summit before it really got underway. He was facing a lot of internal pressure from others in the Kremlin, with his power not being as absolute as the Western world originally thought. Beschloss is careful to try to show the Soviet point of view here to - after all, in this particular instance, they were the aggrieved party. But he shows that there was far more to the situation than just this exposed espionage, and the USSR wasn't exactly the innocent party that Khrushchev claimed it was. Had he accepted Eisenhower's Open Skies proposal in 1955, which would have allowed both countries to monitor each other's nuclear and atomic weapons, the U-2 flights would have been rendered mainly unnecessary (although I still have to think that the zealots in the CIA and elsewhere - with some definite justification - would not have entirely trusted the Soviets and would still have pushed for covert operations).
When Beschloss wrote this book (1986), and even today, the exact cause of the crash is subject to dispute. Was the plane hit by a Russian missile? Did the engine flameout due to the high altitude (somewhere around 68,000 feet)? Was there another mechanical malfunction that caused the engine to die or the plane to lose just enough altitude to be a more certain target for the Soviets? Did Powers commit a crucial error or fall asleep? Was he attempting to defect? Beschloss reviews all of these possible scenarios, pretty definitively answering the last question in the negative, but leaving all of the others open to plausibility. Conventional wisdom is that there was a near-miss of a Soviet rocket that caused enough damage to the fragile aircraft to essentially cause it to crash. This seems fairly likely, but will probably never be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Grade: B+
Beschloss immediately draws the reader into the story by following the events immediately before, during, and after the crash of the U-2 deep into Russian territory on May 1, 1960 (which happened to be the Russian Holiday of May Day - adding extra insult from the Russian point of view). Just as the cover-up by the Eisenhower Administration is beginning, he changes tact and goes back several years, reviewing the general world situation that appeared after WWII ended, and how both countries became locked in an arms race. This comes almost 70 pages into the book, so it is a bit of an adjustment as I found myself immersed in May 1960 and anticipating Eisenhower's responses to Khrushchrev's bellicosity, only to embark on a long review of U.S.-Soviet relations and espionage activities throughout the 1950s.
The CIA does not come off looking very good here, nor should it. Allen Dulles, the Director, probably should have been fired but Eisenhower did not like to use scapegoats and, in fairness, Eisenhower himself was the one who ultimately approved the flight. But Dulles, Richard Bissell, and others repeatedly assured him that there was basically no chance that, even if one of the U-2 planes were shot down, it would be so badly destroyed that the Soviets would not have enough evidence to definitively finger the United States as spying, and there was even less of a chance that the pilot (if he even survived the missile attack, which seemed quite doubtful) would survive the crash. So Eisenhower was basically operating under two highly important false assumptions. It is hard to fathom that, with an upcoming Summit in Paris scheduled just a few weeks away, he would have authorized that flight or any of the others had he known the true possible outcomes of a crash.
But Eisenhower and his advisers compounded the problem greatly by lying to the American public and the Soviets. Operating under the assumptions that the pilot, Powers, was dead and the plane so badly damaged as to be virtually unrecognizable, the administration - and later Eisenhower himself - issued false statements, invoking NASA and weather research. Only when Khrushchev produced photos of the plane, and then - surprise! - Powers himself, was Ike backed into a corner and had to admit the truth.
From there, Khrushchev overplayed his own hand, ruining the Paris Summit before it really got underway. He was facing a lot of internal pressure from others in the Kremlin, with his power not being as absolute as the Western world originally thought. Beschloss is careful to try to show the Soviet point of view here to - after all, in this particular instance, they were the aggrieved party. But he shows that there was far more to the situation than just this exposed espionage, and the USSR wasn't exactly the innocent party that Khrushchev claimed it was. Had he accepted Eisenhower's Open Skies proposal in 1955, which would have allowed both countries to monitor each other's nuclear and atomic weapons, the U-2 flights would have been rendered mainly unnecessary (although I still have to think that the zealots in the CIA and elsewhere - with some definite justification - would not have entirely trusted the Soviets and would still have pushed for covert operations).
When Beschloss wrote this book (1986), and even today, the exact cause of the crash is subject to dispute. Was the plane hit by a Russian missile? Did the engine flameout due to the high altitude (somewhere around 68,000 feet)? Was there another mechanical malfunction that caused the engine to die or the plane to lose just enough altitude to be a more certain target for the Soviets? Did Powers commit a crucial error or fall asleep? Was he attempting to defect? Beschloss reviews all of these possible scenarios, pretty definitively answering the last question in the negative, but leaving all of the others open to plausibility. Conventional wisdom is that there was a near-miss of a Soviet rocket that caused enough damage to the fragile aircraft to essentially cause it to crash. This seems fairly likely, but will probably never be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Grade: B+
November 7, 2020
My guess is that the majority of people might only be vaguely familiar with the failed U-2 flight over Russia in 1960. I would further venture that more people are more familiar with the Irish Rock band than they are with the event that gave the band their moniker. This book is a good (great, actually) place to learn more about not only the tragic incident, but the many “before and afters” of the affair as well.
Author Michael Beschloss is slowly starting to become one of my favorites. This is his second book that he wrote. I’ve also read his first (about the relationship of Joseph Kennedy and FDR) as well as his third (between JFK and Khrushchev). His first book was only “pretty good”, but his third was outstanding, as was this one, his second. What I would recommend though, is for the curious reader to read THIS one before the third one. In many ways the stories are sequential. There is a lot of Khrushchev in this book, as it details his relationship with President Eisenhower. The third offering by Beschloss details Khrushchev’s somewhat tumultuous relationship with Ike’s successor, so it’s probably better to read these two accounts back to back as they happened (and as they were written).
The “U-2” portion of this book isn’t really told in quite as much detail as one might think. Yes, we read an awful lot about the mission, but the focus of this book is more geared towards the Eisenhower-Khrushchev relationship during the 1950s, and how the downed U-2 served as a catalyst that caused the relationship between the two world leaders to quickly go sour.
For those who might not be too familiar, the U-2 spy plane was a CIA project where planes could fly over “enemy” territory at extremely high altitudes and yet take incredibly detailed photographs of the terrain. The CIA assured President Eisenhower that if a U-2 plane was ever shot down, there was simply no way that the pilot could survive, so an elaborate cover story could be doctored without the offended country knowing our true intentions. Well, guess what? The CIA was wrong. In May of 1960, a plane was shot down over Russia and the pilot did, in fact, survive. Although it was never really said out loud, the bulk of the high brass in the U.S. felt that the pilot should have ended his life as opposed to being captured (an elaborate cyanide pill was issued to the U-2 pilots).
Once the Russians had a live prisoner, they could easily see past the U.S. ruse, and the tensions rapidly escalated. Again, the actual flight is only a small part of the story. What Beschloss does is give us elaborate backgrounds of not only the development of the ingenious spy plane, but also the details of the relationship between Eisenhower and Khrushchev in the post-war environment. We read a detailed account of the Russian leader’s visit to the U.S. shortly before the U-2 event happened. We then read about the proposed “next steps” – a summit in Paris and a reciprocated visit by Ike to Moscow. Shortly after the plane is downed, though, the plans abruptly change. The summit in Paris does occur, but it’s a fiasco. Khrushchev demands that Eisenhower apologize. Eisenhower refuses, so the world leaders throw temper tantrums. Why should Ike apologize? Countries spy on each other all the time. Right? The author seems to suggest that Khrushchev agrees with this assessment to an extent, but within the fragile leadership circles of Communist Russia, Khrushchev must save face. If he isn’t tough enough on the enemy, who’s to say how long his time at the top will actually be?
So, yes, there’s a LOT of politics in this book. A lot of speculation. A lot of Monday Morning Quarterbacking. And on and on. It’s all a fascinating read, though. I was rarely ever bored. It was great to read a lot of the pontificating on “what could have happened if….” The author does a masterful job of “jumping around” and focusing on the many different aspects of the story without the reader feeling confused, lost, or somewhat cheated. Example: after we read of the downed plane and the pilot (Francis Powers) being captured, we then shift gears and the author tells a tremendously detailed back story about the building of the plane, and then the detailed relationship of the two countries. For a while, I completely forgot about the imprisoned pilot, yet didn’t really care since wherever the author took me, I enjoyed the ride.
A couple minor gripes about the book. The last chapter that was titled something like “Who Killed Detente?” seemed unnecessary. It seemed like a “Cliffs Notes” of all the events that we had already read about in previous chapters, and it was a bit of a slog. (Although the Epilogue of the book was a welcome read as it basically told us “Where are they now?”) Another gripe (and this is true for all the books that I’ve read by this author) is that he’s far too stingy when it comes to illustrations. A book like this calls for a massive supplement of pictures and images, yet there are only a very small handful. And NONE of the pilot himself!! Fortunately, modern readers can do a Google search when their curiosity is aroused.
This was a great book, that also serves as a wonderful partner to the author’s follow-up work which essentially details the ongoing relationship Khrushchev and the American leaders. These two books are excellent resources if one wants to better understand the post-war relationship between the two superpowers when Nikita Khrushchev was in power in the USSR and was calling the shots.
Author Michael Beschloss is slowly starting to become one of my favorites. This is his second book that he wrote. I’ve also read his first (about the relationship of Joseph Kennedy and FDR) as well as his third (between JFK and Khrushchev). His first book was only “pretty good”, but his third was outstanding, as was this one, his second. What I would recommend though, is for the curious reader to read THIS one before the third one. In many ways the stories are sequential. There is a lot of Khrushchev in this book, as it details his relationship with President Eisenhower. The third offering by Beschloss details Khrushchev’s somewhat tumultuous relationship with Ike’s successor, so it’s probably better to read these two accounts back to back as they happened (and as they were written).
The “U-2” portion of this book isn’t really told in quite as much detail as one might think. Yes, we read an awful lot about the mission, but the focus of this book is more geared towards the Eisenhower-Khrushchev relationship during the 1950s, and how the downed U-2 served as a catalyst that caused the relationship between the two world leaders to quickly go sour.
For those who might not be too familiar, the U-2 spy plane was a CIA project where planes could fly over “enemy” territory at extremely high altitudes and yet take incredibly detailed photographs of the terrain. The CIA assured President Eisenhower that if a U-2 plane was ever shot down, there was simply no way that the pilot could survive, so an elaborate cover story could be doctored without the offended country knowing our true intentions. Well, guess what? The CIA was wrong. In May of 1960, a plane was shot down over Russia and the pilot did, in fact, survive. Although it was never really said out loud, the bulk of the high brass in the U.S. felt that the pilot should have ended his life as opposed to being captured (an elaborate cyanide pill was issued to the U-2 pilots).
Once the Russians had a live prisoner, they could easily see past the U.S. ruse, and the tensions rapidly escalated. Again, the actual flight is only a small part of the story. What Beschloss does is give us elaborate backgrounds of not only the development of the ingenious spy plane, but also the details of the relationship between Eisenhower and Khrushchev in the post-war environment. We read a detailed account of the Russian leader’s visit to the U.S. shortly before the U-2 event happened. We then read about the proposed “next steps” – a summit in Paris and a reciprocated visit by Ike to Moscow. Shortly after the plane is downed, though, the plans abruptly change. The summit in Paris does occur, but it’s a fiasco. Khrushchev demands that Eisenhower apologize. Eisenhower refuses, so the world leaders throw temper tantrums. Why should Ike apologize? Countries spy on each other all the time. Right? The author seems to suggest that Khrushchev agrees with this assessment to an extent, but within the fragile leadership circles of Communist Russia, Khrushchev must save face. If he isn’t tough enough on the enemy, who’s to say how long his time at the top will actually be?
So, yes, there’s a LOT of politics in this book. A lot of speculation. A lot of Monday Morning Quarterbacking. And on and on. It’s all a fascinating read, though. I was rarely ever bored. It was great to read a lot of the pontificating on “what could have happened if….” The author does a masterful job of “jumping around” and focusing on the many different aspects of the story without the reader feeling confused, lost, or somewhat cheated. Example: after we read of the downed plane and the pilot (Francis Powers) being captured, we then shift gears and the author tells a tremendously detailed back story about the building of the plane, and then the detailed relationship of the two countries. For a while, I completely forgot about the imprisoned pilot, yet didn’t really care since wherever the author took me, I enjoyed the ride.
A couple minor gripes about the book. The last chapter that was titled something like “Who Killed Detente?” seemed unnecessary. It seemed like a “Cliffs Notes” of all the events that we had already read about in previous chapters, and it was a bit of a slog. (Although the Epilogue of the book was a welcome read as it basically told us “Where are they now?”) Another gripe (and this is true for all the books that I’ve read by this author) is that he’s far too stingy when it comes to illustrations. A book like this calls for a massive supplement of pictures and images, yet there are only a very small handful. And NONE of the pilot himself!! Fortunately, modern readers can do a Google search when their curiosity is aroused.
This was a great book, that also serves as a wonderful partner to the author’s follow-up work which essentially details the ongoing relationship Khrushchev and the American leaders. These two books are excellent resources if one wants to better understand the post-war relationship between the two superpowers when Nikita Khrushchev was in power in the USSR and was calling the shots.
January 15, 2021
One of the better history books I've read. Beschloss does a masterful and comprehensive job of laying out the events leading up to, surrounding and following the downing of the U-2 over the Soviet Union. More than the others intimately involved with the operation, I learned a great deal about President Eisenhower, as well as Premier Khrushchev.
January 15, 2024
Michael R. Beschloss's 1986 Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev and the U-2 Affair is a wide-ranging and engagingly written account of events leading up to the May Day 1960 shootdown of Francis Gary Powers that not only ended a four-year program of illegal yet exceedingly useful reconnaissance overflights but also scuttled an international summit at which both major participants most likely truly wanted to make progress on nuclear disarmament.
The book begins on the cusp of the incident. The Prologue starts with the President's "tranquil Saturday" of "no premonition of disaster" (1986 Harper & Row hardcover, page 1), discussing his dressing and breakfast habits (pages 1-3), along with the film screening at Camp David that evening (pages 10-11), while interweaving his approval and behind-the-scenes flight-by-flight oversight of the U-2 missions from their beginning in July 1956 (pages 5-6; 8-10) and his hopes that the Paris Summit might bring "a limited nuclear test ban treaty," which "would be the first major accord of the Cold War" and, as he put it to the British Prime Minister, "would be 'a ray of light in a world that is bound to be weary of the tensions brought about by mutual suspicion, distrust and arms races'" (page 7).
Dwight Eisenhower "could not know," however, that his hopes "largely rested on the fate of a young former Air Force lieutenant whose name he had never heard, tossing and turning on his cot in a noisy, steaming hangar in West Pakistan" (page 11). Chapter 1 therefore introduces us to Frank Powers and his preparations for a deep-penetration mission (pages 13-17), then steps back to describe his upbringing, military service, recruitment into this secret CIA program, and marriage (pages 17-22). We learn of the fateful "dull 'thump'" over Sverdlovsk (page 26) and live through the fall and capture and initial interrogation (pages 26-28; 30; 31-32). And as the chapter accelerates to a close, we cut back and forth between Soviet and American authorities planning and counter-planning their next moves (page 23-24; 28-34)...with the U.S. side about to be caught out embarrassingly.
Throughout Beschloss alternates among the various individual participants of both sides, moving in easy-seeming novelistic style back and forth between moments of personal detail and careful explanations of technical and geopolitical matters. And speaking of this stylistic and organization deftness, by the way, although the work indeed is a very serious piece of history by a professional historian, the references are done in such a way as to satisfy both those who want to check sources here and there and also those who just want to read the damned story. Rather than using endnotes--which I myself would have enjoyed just fine--the author eschews such potential distractors to less academic-minded readers, instead using a Notes section (page 423-75) divided by chapters, each page headed by an italicized "Notes to pages ix-6" or somesuch, with sources then brought in by verbal reference to the particular passages rather than by numbers.
Really, the more I think about it, the less I will say about the details of the book. By now, after all, over 60 years after the incident and almost 40 years from the first publication of this text, the general contours of the U-2 program and the events leading up to and following the downing of Powers are fairly well known, at least to those with interest in the Cold War. The book does, however, present a wealth of information from both sides and from many participants, some drawn from official documents and memoirs and whatnot, and some drawn from the author's own then-recent interviews; it gives us both the big picture and the small details, and shows the way the leaders of the two most powerful nations on Earth worked in secret behind their less-complicated-seeming public personas.
Michael Beschloss's Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev and the U-2 Affair is a very approachable yet richly informative treatment of arrogance and mistrust and misunderstanding on both sides of the Iron Curtain, a tale of contradictions, told with careful context and explanation and hypothesizing, that will be a solid 5-star read for anyone interested in the Cold War, aviation, or espionage.
The book begins on the cusp of the incident. The Prologue starts with the President's "tranquil Saturday" of "no premonition of disaster" (1986 Harper & Row hardcover, page 1), discussing his dressing and breakfast habits (pages 1-3), along with the film screening at Camp David that evening (pages 10-11), while interweaving his approval and behind-the-scenes flight-by-flight oversight of the U-2 missions from their beginning in July 1956 (pages 5-6; 8-10) and his hopes that the Paris Summit might bring "a limited nuclear test ban treaty," which "would be the first major accord of the Cold War" and, as he put it to the British Prime Minister, "would be 'a ray of light in a world that is bound to be weary of the tensions brought about by mutual suspicion, distrust and arms races'" (page 7).
Dwight Eisenhower "could not know," however, that his hopes "largely rested on the fate of a young former Air Force lieutenant whose name he had never heard, tossing and turning on his cot in a noisy, steaming hangar in West Pakistan" (page 11). Chapter 1 therefore introduces us to Frank Powers and his preparations for a deep-penetration mission (pages 13-17), then steps back to describe his upbringing, military service, recruitment into this secret CIA program, and marriage (pages 17-22). We learn of the fateful "dull 'thump'" over Sverdlovsk (page 26) and live through the fall and capture and initial interrogation (pages 26-28; 30; 31-32). And as the chapter accelerates to a close, we cut back and forth between Soviet and American authorities planning and counter-planning their next moves (page 23-24; 28-34)...with the U.S. side about to be caught out embarrassingly.
Throughout Beschloss alternates among the various individual participants of both sides, moving in easy-seeming novelistic style back and forth between moments of personal detail and careful explanations of technical and geopolitical matters. And speaking of this stylistic and organization deftness, by the way, although the work indeed is a very serious piece of history by a professional historian, the references are done in such a way as to satisfy both those who want to check sources here and there and also those who just want to read the damned story. Rather than using endnotes--which I myself would have enjoyed just fine--the author eschews such potential distractors to less academic-minded readers, instead using a Notes section (page 423-75) divided by chapters, each page headed by an italicized "Notes to pages ix-6" or somesuch, with sources then brought in by verbal reference to the particular passages rather than by numbers.
Really, the more I think about it, the less I will say about the details of the book. By now, after all, over 60 years after the incident and almost 40 years from the first publication of this text, the general contours of the U-2 program and the events leading up to and following the downing of Powers are fairly well known, at least to those with interest in the Cold War. The book does, however, present a wealth of information from both sides and from many participants, some drawn from official documents and memoirs and whatnot, and some drawn from the author's own then-recent interviews; it gives us both the big picture and the small details, and shows the way the leaders of the two most powerful nations on Earth worked in secret behind their less-complicated-seeming public personas.
Michael Beschloss's Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev and the U-2 Affair is a very approachable yet richly informative treatment of arrogance and mistrust and misunderstanding on both sides of the Iron Curtain, a tale of contradictions, told with careful context and explanation and hypothesizing, that will be a solid 5-star read for anyone interested in the Cold War, aviation, or espionage.
August 8, 2022
I found this of interest, because I remember the entire incident very well. Remember this was at the height of the cold war. School kids were still being trained how to get under their desks in the event of a nuclear attack.
The incident occurred on May Day 1960, a big holiday for Russia. The Russians downed a CIA spy plane flown deep into Russian territory by Francis Gary Powers just 2 weeks before a summit between Nikita Khrushchev and Dwight Eisenhower.
This spy plane forced the President to decide whether to admit Khrushchev—and the world—in order to save the summit or to claim that the CIA could take such a significant step without his approval. Catch 22.
The flights had gone on way before this date and Eisenhower was very uncomfortable with them, seeing them as “an act of war.” Our government’s efforts to cover u the real purpose of the flights – cover and ruse effort was weather forecasting, was exposed when Khrushchev revealed that the pilot – Powers – had survived and was in custody as well as the plane. To say that there were tense meetings in the Oval Office, the Kremlin, Camp David, CIA headquarters, the Élysée Palace, and Number Ten Downing Street, is an understatement. This was a very high stakes drama of the first order and reveals the activities/involvement of such people Richard Nixon, Allen Dulles, and Charles de Gaulle. It was fascinating reading. Eisenhower was more than angry that this occurred.
This is book can be described as the definitive book on the U-2 Incident, I believe.
It seems – in retrospect, this was the time when American innocence died. I was living in Canada at the time and I can remember feeling pretty uncomfortable at the revelation and especially under Dwight Eisenhower. I think one of the biggest things for me was that “Ike” actually lied to the nation in the cover up effort, by claiming that it was a lost and off course weather plane, when he knew otherwise.
Khrushchev was a wily old guy and played it for all it was worth. He kept drawing Eisenhower out a bit at a time never showing his cards until at the last moment. He made the world and Eisenhower wait for 8 very long days before he revealed that he had the pilot and the plane. The question remains: did someone in the CIA deliberately put Powers over Soviet territory at that time to torpedo the summit? Did Khrushchev play it up for all he could, for internal political consumption rat her than back channel the information he had on the pilot and the aircraft?
I found it an intriguing read. Especially since I do remember it well and it kind of got all wrapped up in the Sputnik launch a year or so before. It was clear that we had a serious problem with Russia that was only going to get better. All of this ultimately embolden the Soviets to try to make a military base of operations in Cuba a scant two years later.
The incident occurred on May Day 1960, a big holiday for Russia. The Russians downed a CIA spy plane flown deep into Russian territory by Francis Gary Powers just 2 weeks before a summit between Nikita Khrushchev and Dwight Eisenhower.
This spy plane forced the President to decide whether to admit Khrushchev—and the world—in order to save the summit or to claim that the CIA could take such a significant step without his approval. Catch 22.
The flights had gone on way before this date and Eisenhower was very uncomfortable with them, seeing them as “an act of war.” Our government’s efforts to cover u the real purpose of the flights – cover and ruse effort was weather forecasting, was exposed when Khrushchev revealed that the pilot – Powers – had survived and was in custody as well as the plane. To say that there were tense meetings in the Oval Office, the Kremlin, Camp David, CIA headquarters, the Élysée Palace, and Number Ten Downing Street, is an understatement. This was a very high stakes drama of the first order and reveals the activities/involvement of such people Richard Nixon, Allen Dulles, and Charles de Gaulle. It was fascinating reading. Eisenhower was more than angry that this occurred.
This is book can be described as the definitive book on the U-2 Incident, I believe.
It seems – in retrospect, this was the time when American innocence died. I was living in Canada at the time and I can remember feeling pretty uncomfortable at the revelation and especially under Dwight Eisenhower. I think one of the biggest things for me was that “Ike” actually lied to the nation in the cover up effort, by claiming that it was a lost and off course weather plane, when he knew otherwise.
Khrushchev was a wily old guy and played it for all it was worth. He kept drawing Eisenhower out a bit at a time never showing his cards until at the last moment. He made the world and Eisenhower wait for 8 very long days before he revealed that he had the pilot and the plane. The question remains: did someone in the CIA deliberately put Powers over Soviet territory at that time to torpedo the summit? Did Khrushchev play it up for all he could, for internal political consumption rat her than back channel the information he had on the pilot and the aircraft?
I found it an intriguing read. Especially since I do remember it well and it kind of got all wrapped up in the Sputnik launch a year or so before. It was clear that we had a serious problem with Russia that was only going to get better. All of this ultimately embolden the Soviets to try to make a military base of operations in Cuba a scant two years later.
July 10, 2025
I remember I wanted to read this when it first came out. I pretty much forgot all about it till I found it at a library sale. I’m glad I finally got to read it. This was a well researched and well written book about the U-2 spy plane flown by Gary Powers that was shot down over the Soviet Union. Just about every angle of this story you can think of was covered in this volume.
While reading it I couldn’t help but keep asking myself “why?” With the world as it was at the time, why would you risk another miss. Why would you take w chance to upsetting Khrushchev when you were trying to reach a more peaceful coexistence between Russia and the USA. I have a lot of respect for Eisenhower as a man, as a soldier and as a president and just don’t get what he was thinking. Micheal Beschloss does a pretty fair job of trying to answer that question and many more.
It did seem to take me a few chapters to get truly hooked on this book. And the wrap up at the end, while thorough, also was a bit slower. But the rest of this book was very interesting. I would definitely recommend it.
While reading it I couldn’t help but keep asking myself “why?” With the world as it was at the time, why would you risk another miss. Why would you take w chance to upsetting Khrushchev when you were trying to reach a more peaceful coexistence between Russia and the USA. I have a lot of respect for Eisenhower as a man, as a soldier and as a president and just don’t get what he was thinking. Micheal Beschloss does a pretty fair job of trying to answer that question and many more.
It did seem to take me a few chapters to get truly hooked on this book. And the wrap up at the end, while thorough, also was a bit slower. But the rest of this book was very interesting. I would definitely recommend it.
March 3, 2021
One of Beschloss's early books, and written before some classified documents were released. Nonetheless, important insights/corrections to our views of both Eisenhower and especially Khrushchev. What I learned in particular was that the Soviet long knew about the flights, but were waiting to shoot down a plane before making a splash of it internationally. Within the US, it was always know how risky such flights were. Eisenhower comes across as the man in charge after all, and Khrushchev is seen as a man who really wanted to end the Cold War, in spite of his bluster and crudeness much of the time (and in spite of the later Cuban Missile crisis). Allen Dulles is seen as the main villain in the U-2 affair, along with some Soviet hawks who wanted Khrushchev to be even more aggressive vis a vis Ike.
June 10, 2020
The book is an excellent, well-researched history of US-Soviet relations around the time the Soviets managed to down a U-2. I bought it to read about the U-2, but the incident itself is more of an aside to the real purpose of the book, which is to describe how a promising relationship between Khrushchev and Eisenhower went sideways. I would have been happy to get more information on the "incident" itself, but found myself wanting to read more and more about how the relationship between the two countries and their leaders (which are two completely separate things) developed - and then fell apart.
June 15, 2020
Really more of an overview of Eisenhower era spycraft and US/Soviet relations than a strict retelling of the U-2 incident. I'd estimate that material directly related to F.G. Powers and the downing of the plane comprises only about 20% of the narrative. While thoroughly researched for the time it was written (mid-1980s) one must wonder what additional information has come to light since the collapse of the USSR as the book has apparently never been updated. That being said, the book is engaging and briskly paced, and the author does an excellent job of integrating memoirs, interviews, and press accounts into a coherent whole. Solidly recommended.
June 4, 2021
A flight that altered history
I was 9 when the U-2 was shot down. My father, a WWII Air Corps flier, thought Gary Powers was a coward for not killing himself. Years-passage and released material paint a more sympathetic and nuanced picture of the pilot, the mission and the times that we lived in then.
This story under Michael Beschloss’s skilled hand, is fascinating, riveting and cautionary. National adversaries tend to perpetuate stereotypes with little understanding of what causes such National idiosyncrasies, and precious little appreciation for our shared humanity.
This is a very good read.
I was 9 when the U-2 was shot down. My father, a WWII Air Corps flier, thought Gary Powers was a coward for not killing himself. Years-passage and released material paint a more sympathetic and nuanced picture of the pilot, the mission and the times that we lived in then.
This story under Michael Beschloss’s skilled hand, is fascinating, riveting and cautionary. National adversaries tend to perpetuate stereotypes with little understanding of what causes such National idiosyncrasies, and precious little appreciation for our shared humanity.
This is a very good read.
April 3, 2020
I heard of this book when it was released in 1986 and got it as soon as I could. I was so glad, because it is a terrific history of the 1960 U-2 incident and its great impact on superpower relations and on US public opinion and awareness of espionage their government was conducting in their name. A terrific piece of scholarship by Michael Beschloss, with much that (and I'm sure other readers) didn't know about his affair. A most readable book that I can recommend without reservation. It's still on my bookshelf to pull down and read now and then.
February 24, 2019
An excellent book and well documented. Only fault is that Beschloss had a tendency to ramble. bgins with the immediate days before and after the fateful U-2 flight. Then the books backtracks to the beginnings of the program, and then the after affects as it influenced the Paris summit and relations between the superpowers. The pre-flight history an excellent insight into early espionage efforts and the beginnings of the CIA.
September 23, 2020
Although this book outlined the downing of a U-2 plane over Russia in 1960, the bulk of the story was about the administration of Dwight Eisenhower. I was surprised to learn that Eisenhower struggled much more during his presidency than I had realized - mostly due to over reliance on his advisors. And that the U-2 matter and it’s lack of resolution lead directly to the Cuban missile crisis only a few years later.
November 2, 2020
Aviation History
I found this book quite enjoyable and and very enlightening into the events that led up to the downing of the U2 and it history. What I didn't find enjoyable was all the side trips into the personal history of every person evolved. I fill a great many pages could have been eliminated. Like the old Dragnet series " just the facts mam ". After reading, I am convinced that Powers was screwed over by his country to protect them from embarrassment.
I found this book quite enjoyable and and very enlightening into the events that led up to the downing of the U2 and it history. What I didn't find enjoyable was all the side trips into the personal history of every person evolved. I fill a great many pages could have been eliminated. Like the old Dragnet series " just the facts mam ". After reading, I am convinced that Powers was screwed over by his country to protect them from embarrassment.
July 21, 2021
Good insight into history
Well-researched and interesting period of time that I knew little about. Being born in 1953, I was not fascinated by history as I was when I hit my 20's. Mr. Beschloss whose reporting on MSNBC has always been informative and I found easy to understand. This book is an important look into history and the details give you a front row seat into the period of time.
Well-researched and interesting period of time that I knew little about. Being born in 1953, I was not fascinated by history as I was when I hit my 20's. Mr. Beschloss whose reporting on MSNBC has always been informative and I found easy to understand. This book is an important look into history and the details give you a front row seat into the period of time.
May 6, 2023
A fascinating book about the U-2 program, Frank Powers’ crash and the resulting east-west crisis. Our family knew several U-2 pilots and this book was an intriguing read. The interaction between Eisenhower and the Kremlin/Khrushchev made me fully aware of just how dangerous a time that was. I highly recommend this book to any Cold War history buffs or plain old US history buffs. A tremendous look behind the scenes.
June 8, 2021
This is an amazing telling of the U-2 incident. Some reviewers have complained about the details provided as new people are introduced— I found this very helpful to know just who the characters are. I remember reading about this when it happened in newspapers ( yes—we read newspapers back then) but this book provides much background in the backdrop of the Cold War.
September 20, 2021
Good historical read
Would not call this a riveting “page turner” but full of very interesting detail. This book seems as much like an Eisenhower/Khrushchev story than a specific one about the U-2. What a chapter from an amazing era of American history….seems like Eisenhower and Khrushchev couldn’t be more different as leaders and people!
Would not call this a riveting “page turner” but full of very interesting detail. This book seems as much like an Eisenhower/Khrushchev story than a specific one about the U-2. What a chapter from an amazing era of American history….seems like Eisenhower and Khrushchev couldn’t be more different as leaders and people!
September 21, 2021
U2 need to know about U2
This was my first Michael Beschloss book. I was a teenager when the incident occurred and it was interesting to read the full story of what was alays vague in the news. I was happy to find out what happened to Francis Gary Powers and that he found some redemption in his life and his passing!
This was my first Michael Beschloss book. I was a teenager when the incident occurred and it was interesting to read the full story of what was alays vague in the news. I was happy to find out what happened to Francis Gary Powers and that he found some redemption in his life and his passing!
October 31, 2020
I learned much
Anyone with a love of history, international relations or the world of intelligence should read this. I'm proud to say that I was an image interpreter for U.S. Army intelligence so this book was especially interesting to me.
Anyone with a love of history, international relations or the world of intelligence should read this. I'm proud to say that I was an image interpreter for U.S. Army intelligence so this book was especially interesting to me.
December 20, 2024
In spite of the title and photo on the book, this book is more of detailed account that covers the entirety of Eisenhower's relationship with the USSR, including the downing of the U2 flight. Interesting histories of the various US-USSR summits, as well as Gary Power's time as a prisoner.
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