On August 1, 2008, the Newseum today announced the acquisition of items related to the career of journalist and pilot Francis Gary Powers. The donation of the items comes on the anniversary of Powers's death in the KNBC news helicopter crash in Los Angeles, California, on August 1, 1977.
The collection, donated by son Francis Gary Powers, Jr., on behalf of the Powers family, includes remnants from the KNBC helicopter crash; Powers's business cards from his careers with both KGIL-AM and KNBC; several pieces of Powers's personal letterhead from KNBC; and promotional photos of Powers with the airplane he piloted as a traffic reporter for KGIL and with the KNBC "telecopter."
Powers began his journalism career in 1972 as an airborne traffic reporter for San Fernando Valley radio station KGIL-AM. He was then hired in 1976 by KNBC to pilot their new news helicopter. Powers, 47, was killed when, on a return flight from covering brush fires in Santa Barbara County, his helicopter ran out of fuel and crashed just a few miles short of Burbank Airport. George Spears, a cameraman for KNBC, also died in the crash.
Prior to his career in journalism, Powers worked for the CIA as an operative and pilot in the U2 spy plane program, carrying out espionage missions over hostile regions. On May 1, 1960, Powers' spy plane was brought down by a missile over the Sverdlovsk in the former Soviet Union, causing a diplomatic flap that canceled a U.S.-Soviet summit. He spent 21 months in a Soviet prison before his exchange for Rudolph Abel, a Soviet spy. Following his release, Powers worked as a test pilot for Lockheed for seven years and, in 1970, co-wrote "Operation Overflight: A Memoir of the U-2 Incident."