Spy pilots recount chilling chapters in American history

Robert Macy

Thursday, Oct. 7, 1999 | 10:05 a.m.

Aging Cold War warriors are meeting here this week, recounting years of flying sophisticated spy planes over the world's hot spots, charting the movements of America's adversaries.

The bi-annual convention of Roadrunners International wraps up tonight.

The warriors are pilots and crew members of U-2 and A-12 spy planes that carried out missions dating back to 1955. The U-2s are still flying those missions today, only over new terrain. The A-12s, capable of speeds in excess of 2,000 MPH at altitudes exceeding 80,000 feet, have been relegated to air museums across America.

Pilots who gathered here swapped stories about their roles in some of the Cold War's hottest moments.

Tony Bevacqua recalled flying a U-2 over Cuba in 1962, helping track the shipment of Soviet missiles that led to the game of nuclear chicken between the Soviet Union and the United States.

John Shinn remembered May Day 1960 when he suited up as a backup for U-2 pilot Gary Powers, only to watch Powers take off on a spy flight over Russia that would stoke the fires of the Cold War.

Frank Murray recounted hunting for the captured U.S. spy ship Pueblo in a North Korean harbor, then mapping the entire country in a couple of minutes, making three passes at 2,100 MPH in an A-12.

The pilots served in the Air Force, then switched to the Central Intelligence Agency, then back to the Air Force in careers spanning 30 years or more.

The Cold War is ingrained in their lives, and they hope the lessons learned are not forgotten by a complacent America.

"We need more reconnaissance now than ever before," said Bevacqua, 67, of Yuba City, Calif., citing growing threats from rogue nations. He should know. He was one of a handful of pilots who flew U-2s over Cuba in the fall of 1962 to provide President Kennedy with concrete evidence the Russians were placing offensive missiles there. The revelation led to a superpower showdown that pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war before the Soviets removed the missiles.

"I'm concerned we don't have the equipment that will take us to critical flash points," added Hank Meierdierck, 78, a resident of Henderson, Nev., and president of the 325-member Roadrunner group.

Meierdierck, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, was one of a group of officers who descended on a remote patch of Nevada desert dubbed "The Ranch" in 1955.

Later known as Groom Lake and Area 51, the site 75 miles northwest of Las Vegas was so secretive that the U.S. government refused to acknowledge its existence until a couple of years ago. It is here that America's most exotic aircraft - the U-2, A-12, SR-71, F-117A stealth fighter and B-2 stealth bomber - were tested over a 35-year span.

The top secret base remains tightly guarded and no one who knows will say what is happening there today.

"We don't know; we don't ask," Meierdierck said when questioned about rumors of a new generation stealth aircraft code-named Aurora.

Meierdierck spent 22 years in the Air Force, then eight in the CIA training a cadre of pilots who flew the U-2 over the Soviet Union in the mid-1950s.

One of them, Powers, would fly a mission on May Day 1960 that would put relations between President Eisenhower and Soviet President Nikita Khrushchev in a deep freeze.

Shinn, 69, of Lakewood, Colo., was Powers' backup pilot. Powers was suited up and waiting for the green light from Eisenhower, who had to approve the spy mission over the Soviet Union.

Because of the length and importance of the mission, he could wait only so long in the cockpit of the U-2 before he would be pulled and Shinn, a fresh pilot, ordered to take his place. As the deadline approached the presidential order came and Powers took off.

A short time later a Soviet missile exploded near the tail of Powers' U-2, knocking the plane out of the sky. Powers parachuted and was taken prisoner. An irate Khrushchev scrapped plans for a summit with the U.S. and relations between the two countries went from tenuous to frigid.

Retired Air Force Col. Hugh Slater, 78, of Henderson, Nev., recalled the four years he was base commander at Groom Lake from 1964 to 1968 when the A-12 spy plane was being developed. The A-12 was the predecessor of the SR-71 Blackbird. CIA civilian pilots would fly the A-12 and U-2 over countries such as Russia, China, North Korea and North Vietnam. Air Force pilots would fly the U-2 and SR-71 over friendly territory.

Murray, 69, of Flagstaff, Ariz., was flying the A-12 when North Korean gunboats seized the Pueblo, a U.S. Navy electronics vessel. The Pueblo was forced into a Korean harbor, its crew seized.

"We used the A-12 to find the Pueblo," Slater recalled.

"While we were at it we photographed the whole country in three passes," recalled Murray, the pilot of the flight.