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Francis Gary Powers

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:3,000.00 - 4,000.00 USD
Francis Gary Powers

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Auction Date:2018 Jan 10 @ 18:00 (UTC-5 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
TLS signed “Oliver Powers,” one page, 8.5 x 11, May 19, 1960. Letter to Nikita Khruschev from the father of downed pilot Francis Gary Powers, urging leniency for his son. In full: "I extend to you and Mrs. Khruschev my regards as one parent to another. Pilot Francis Powers is my only son. I am asking you to be lenient with him in your dealings with him. He has always been a fine young man, and we love him very much. As one father to another, I plead with you to let him come home as soon as you can find it in your heart to do so, so that he may be with us a while longer. Please give him this note from his mother enclosed in this letter…P.S. I would appreciate it very much if you would reply as soon as possible." In very good condition, with moderate soiling and intersecting folds. Provenance: The Francis Gary Powers Espionage Collection, Guernsey's 2017.

Following his distinguished service in the Air Force, Francis Gary Powers joined the CIA's U-2 program, conducting espionage missions using an aircraft equipped with a state-of-the-art camera designed to take high-resolution photos from the edge of the stratosphere over hostile countries. When his plane was shot down on May 1, 1960, Powers was unable to activate its self-destruct mechanism before he parachuted to the ground and into the hands of the KGB. He was interrogated extensively for months before providing a forced confession, and on August 17, 1960, he was convicted of espionage against the Soviet Union and sentenced to three years in prison and seven years of hard labor. One year and nine months later, President Kennedy authorized the first prisoner exchange between the two rivals, swapping Powers, along with American student Frederic Pryor, for Soviet KGB Colonel Vilyam Fisher (aka Rudolf Abel), the highest-ranking Soviet officer ever tried and convicted on espionage charges in the US, in a well-publicized spy swap at the Glienicke Bridge in Berlin, Germany. This emotional letter from the pilot's father appeals to Khrushchev as a person, rather than a politician, and exists as a truly remarkable piece of Cold War correspondence.