Operation Overflight: A Memoir of the U-2 Incident

Francis Gary Powers served as a pilot in the U.S. Air Force and completed twenty-seven U-2 photographic reconnaissance missions for the CIA, including several overflights of the Soviet Union, until shot down by a Soviet surface-to-air missile on May 1, 1960. Upon his return to the United States in 1962, he flew the U-2 as an engineering test pilot for Lockheed Aircraft. Powers died in a helicopter crash in 1977. Curt Gentry was born in Lamar, Colorado on June 13, 1931. During the Korean War, he served in the Air Force. He graduated from San Francisco State College. He wrote several books including Frame-Up: The Incredible Case of Tom Mooney and Warren Billings, The Madams of San Francisco: An Irreverent History of the City by the Golden Gate, and J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets. He and Vincent Bugliosi wrote Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders, which won an Edgar Award for best fact crime book in 1975. He also wrote a novel entitled The Last Days of the Late, Great State of California. He died on July 10, 2014 at the age of 83.