{"id":14869,"date":"2011-12-28T01:46:51","date_gmt":"2011-12-28T04:46:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=14869"},"modified":"2011-12-28T01:47:50","modified_gmt":"2011-12-28T04:47:50","slug":"gary-powers-to-receive-silver-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/12\/28\/gary-powers-to-receive-silver-star\/","title":{"rendered":"Gary Powers to Receive Silver Star"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CIA civilian Gary Powers, infamously shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960 in a U-2, will be posthumously <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/us\/2011\/12\/18\/air-force-to-award-silver-star-to-u-2-pilot-francis-gary-powers\/\">awarded a Silver Star<\/a> by the US Air Force.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Air Force determined that the U-2 pilot showed &#8220;steadfast loyalty&#8221; while under harsh interrogation in Soviet prisons&#8230; [citing] his &#8220;sustained courage&#8221; and gallantry despite &#8220;cajolery, trickery, insults and threats of death.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Issues of classification and political strain kept Powers from any <!--more-->official award during his lifetime.\u00a0 In fact, Powers, who flew in a combined CIA-Air Force effort, was only awarded a military POW medal and a CIA director&#8217;s medal in 2000.<\/p>\n<p>Without\u00a0detracting from Powers&#8217; ordeal in captivity, it brings up\u00a0an interesting\u00a0question:\u00a0 If the RQ-170 <em>Sentinel<\/em> currently held in Iran is ever released, will <em>it <\/em>get an award?\u00a0 They may have to figure out how much it talked first&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CIA civilian Gary Powers, infamously shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960 in a U-2, will be posthumously awarded a Silver Star by the US Air Force. The Air Force determined that the U-2 pilot showed &#8220;steadfast loyalty&#8221; while under harsh interrogation in Soviet prisons&#8230; [citing] his &#8220;sustained courage&#8221; and gallantry despite &#8220;cajolery, trickery, insults and threats of death.&#8221; [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[134,2658,5285,2656,1178,2,2661,2662,2660,2659,2657,53],"class_list":["post-14869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fighter-pilot","tag-air-force","tag-cia","tag-fighter-pilot","tag-gary-powers","tag-iran","tag-military","tag-rq-170","tag-sentinel","tag-silver-star","tag-soviet-union","tag-u-2","tag-uav"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14869\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}