Long before U2 ever became synonymous with a pop group the symbols achieved lasting fame as a casualty of the Cold War.
U2 was the name given to America’s super spy plane, a machine designed to fly at heights that reputedly made it impossible to shoot down; a reputation the Russians shattered in May 1960.
The pilot was Gary Powers and those of a certain age will recall black and white TV news clips of him being paraded by his captors and later sentenced to 10 years in prison. As it turned out he served less than two years when both sides agreed a spy swap – an exchange that took place in February 1962.
What a lot of people won’t know, however, is that the man the Russians wanted back so badly was a geordie – Soviet KGB Colonel Rudolf Abel who was born plain Willie Fisher at number 140 Clara Street, Benwell, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
Willie’s revolutionary parents had fled Russia in 1901 to settle in North East England and their fervour for a Tsar free country never diminished. In 1908 the family moved into a terraced house in Eskdale Terrace in Whitley Bay and Willie probably enrolled at the nearby John Street School.
He won a scholarship to the Whitley Bay and Monkseaton High School when it opened its doors in September 1914 and proved to be a very bright student, shining at science, maths, languages, art and music. All would prove invaluable in later life as one of Russia’s top spies.
On leaving school Willie started work as an apprentice draughtsman at Swan Hunter’s in Wallsend and went to night school at Rutherford College in Newcastle.
In 1921, four years after the Russian Revolution, the Fisher family upped sticks and went back to their homeland. Willie, the clever geordie lad who loved to paint watercolours and walk along the beach at Cullercoats, was about to start another remarkable journey.
Narrowly escaping Stalin’s purges, Willie was sent to spy in New York where he ran a network that included the notorious atom spies Julis Rosenberg (later executed) and Ted Hall.
In 1957 he was arrested and sentenced to 30 years in prison. But the USSR’s high regard for his talents was shown when they insisted on swapping him for Powers.
Willie died in 1971 and his absorbing story is told in The Kremlin’s Geordie Spy by Vin Arthey a former lecturer in arts and media at Teesside University. The book is published by Biteback at £9.99 and further information is available at www.bitebackpublishing.com
very interesting