When I got to know him better, he confirmed what I had long suspected, that “Collins” was just as native to him as “Palmer” to me. I learned his real name, but, the pseudonym having become habit, never used it.
With one exception, aliases presented no problem, since, being a generally friendly lot, pilots aren’t given to much use of last names. The exception was a pilot whose surname began with Mac, which, of course, was also his nickname. The agency, however, had given him the cover name of Murphy. Fortunately no one ever asked Murphy why he was called Mac.
More troublesome were the phony addresses we had been instructed to use on hotel registers. I suspect more than a few men have encountered the same dilemma, although under different circumstances. Trying to make up an address on the spot, the mind suddenly blanks. We learned, after a few curious looks from desk clerks, to manufacture our cover addresses in advance.
As covert agents, we probably left a great deal to be desired. Although we all had Top Secret clearances, and our time in the Air Force had made us security-conscious, we considered ourselves pilots, not spies, and at times the cloak-and-dagger precautions tickled our funny bones.
Orders directed us to report to Omaha, Nebraska. Inasmuch as this was the headquarters of the Strategic Air Command, to which we were all assigned, it was nothing out of the ordinary. Arriving in Omaha, however, we were given a number to call. To no one’s surprise, Collins answered. Greeting us at the airport, he asked us to resume our covers, whereupon he gave us tickets for the next flight to St. Louis.
We managed, though with some effort, to suppress our laughter. St. Louis had been one of the stops en route to Omaha.
From St. Louis we caught a flight to Albuquerque, which we now learned was our actual destination, checking into the Lovelace Clinic for a week-long physical examination.
It was incredibly thorough. I had been unaware that many of the tests given us even existed, and commented on this to one of the doctors. They hadn’t existed before, he laughed; many had been especially designed just for us. Many of the tests which we pioneered were later made a part of the astronauts’ physicals. All of the Mercury personnel went through Lovelace Clinic.
Occasionally, if we asked, we were told the purpose of a set of tests. For example, a number were designed to determine any tendency toward claustrophobia. I couldn’t understand, at the time, why these were so important.
Other tests defied guessing, until we discovered that they had nothing to do with our physical. For some time doctors had been aware that pilots as a group apparently age more slowly than other people. Lovelace was working on a government grant to determine why. We just happened to be handy guinea pigs.
At Lovelace we had our first washout. One pilot, though perfectly capable of flying for the Air Force, did not meet the rigid specifications required for this particular project.
He was the only washout in our group. As far as we knew, no one was eliminated because of a security check. To be more accurate, we were not even sure such an investigation had been made.
When a serviceman or potential government employee is given a background check for security clearance, the FBI usually questions former employers, neighbors, associates. Often some word of the investigation gets back to the individual. If the agency conducted a separate security check on us, we were unaware of it; this meant either that we were accepted on the basis of our Air Force clearances or that the investigation was more discreet than usual. Considering the extreme sensitivity of the project, I strongly suspect the latter to be the case. It is also possible the investigation occurred before we were ever approached.
As we later learned, our initial selection was less random than it first appeared.
Only reserve officers had been interviewed, no regular officers. This was because there were apt to be fewer questions asked when a reserve officer resigned.
Also, the choice of a number of pilots from the same unit was not accidental. Our wing was being dissolved, its personnel assigned elsewhere. In such a transition, with everyone moving, there was less chance the disappearance of a few pilots would evoke comment.
In April, on instruction from Collins, I submitted my letter of resignation to the Secretary of the Air Force.
Under ordinary circumstances several months would have been required for the request to be approved. It was back in less than one. On the thirteenth of May, 1956, I became a civilian again.
Within a few days I signed my contract with the Central Intelligence Agency. The document was brief and covered my terms of employment—eighteen months from the date of signing, fifteen hundred dollars per month while in the United States, twenty-five hundred per month overseas, with five hundred taken out each month and held in escrow, to be paid upon satisfactory completion of contract. This last provision, it was explained to us, had been added to make the tax bite easier.
There was also a security clause, containing the regular national security agreement that everyone in the service and most government employees must sign, prohibiting the revelation of any information adversely affecting national security, the penalty for so doing being a ten-thousand-dollar fine and/or ten years in jail.
There was only one copy of the contract, which the agency kept. Nor was I given a copy of any of the several other documents I signed. One, already cosigned by the Secretary of the Air Force, Donald A. Quarles, promised that upon completion of my contract I would be permitted to return to the Air Force at a rank corresponding to that of my contemporaries and with no time lost toward retirement. This was especially important to me, because already I had nearly six years in, and, on finishing the assignment, planned to return to the Air Force.
Following the signing of the contracts, we flew to a secret base on the West Coast to begin training.
Three
Watertown Strip was one of those “you can’t get there from here” places. Located in a desolate portion of southern Nevada desert, it was almost completely isolated: there were no towns in the vicinity, not even a ghost town, only miles of flat, uninhabited land. The only convenient way to reach it was by air, as we had, flying in from Lockheed’s Burbank, California, terminal.
As a place to live, it left much to be desired. As a secret training base for a revolutionary new plane, it was an excellent site, its remoteness effectively masking its activity, such as the U-2 crash the week before we arrived, the first fatality on that aircraft.
Pilots are always quick to deny they are a superstitious lot. Be that as it may, I’m certain each of us was hoping and praying the same thing—that this was in no way a portent of things to come.
It was silver. But the altitude at which it would fly was so high as to render it invisible from the air and ground below.
Its wings, as the photographs had indicated, were its most startling feature. Except that the photograph hadn’t prepared us for the actuality. In proportion to the length of the fuselage, which was some forty feet, they stretched out to more than eighty. Like the wings of a giant bird, they drooped slightly when on the ground; in turbulent air they flapped noticeably.
This was the U-2, basically a powered glider, jet engine inside a glider frame, only it was capable of things no glider or jet had ever accomplished before: it could reach, and maintain for hours at a time, altitudes never before touched.
But at a cost.
To achieve this height, carry a pilot, as well as a variety of electronic and photographic gear, plus enough fuel to keep it aloft for periods in excess of nine hours, it had to be extremely light. In aerodynamics there are certain balances. To achieve lightness, something else must be sacrificed. With the U-2 it was strength.