The U-2 spy plane incident was one of the major crises of the Cold War between the two rival superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union (modern-day Russia). It took place in early May 1960, when the Soviets shot down an American U-2 spy plane in their airspace and captured its pilot, Francis Gary Powers. The Soviets used the incident in a propaganda campaign against the Americans, who were embarrassed by what had happened. As a result, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower was forced to acknowledge to the Soviets that the United States had been conducting espionage flights.
The U-2 was a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft designed to fly at the edge of space and photograph military installations. Initially, Soviet fighter aircraft and missiles had difficulty reaching these planes. However, by the spring of 1960, the Soviets had developed a new, longer-range surface-to-air missile known as the “Zenith.” On May 1, this weapon was used against an aircraft piloted by Francis Gary Powers. He was flying through the upper atmosphere to photograph Soviet military facilities on a nine-hour mission that had begun in Pakistan and was expected to end in Norway. While flying over the Sverdlovsk region, now known as Yekaterinburg, Powers witnessed a Soviet missile explode near his aircraft. He was forced to descend slightly, whereupon another missile struck the plane directly. The aircraft began falling from the sky, but Powers managed to eject and parachute to the ground, where Soviet forces surrounded and arrested him.
By May 5, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announced that the Soviet military had shot down an American spy plane, but he initially provided no further details. Officials in the Eisenhower administration believed there was little evidence to prove that the aircraft had been on a spying mission, so they claimed it was merely a weather plane that had accidentally strayed off course. Khrushchev refuted these claims by displaying a photograph of the imprisoned pilot and presenting evidence recovered from the wreckage. This evidence conclusively contradicted the American account. The U-2 incident became a major diplomatic crisis at a particularly sensitive moment in U.S.–Soviet relations, as Eisenhower and Khrushchev were scheduled to meet with other world leaders in Paris.
In an attempt to ease tensions following the U-2 incident, and before the world leaders’ meeting in Paris began, the Eisenhower administration accepted full responsibility for the espionage flights and admitted that its explanation about a weather aircraft had been false. However, the president’s admission could not save the summit. The incident convinced Khrushchev that he could no longer cooperate with Eisenhower, and the Soviet leader withdrew from the meeting just hours after it began. The following month, Soviet negotiators also abandoned talks on nuclear disarmament. This created a new chill in relations between the United States and the Soviet Union and paved the way for further confrontations during the administration of Eisenhower’s successor, President John F. Kennedy.
While world leaders argued over the espionage flights, pilot Francis Gary Powers remained in a Soviet prison. In August 1960, he was tried for espionage, found guilty, and sentenced to ten years in prison. He served less than two years before being released in February 1962 in a prisoner exchange. Powers was handed over to the Americans in exchange for Soviet intelligence agent Rudolf Abel. This was the first spy exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union.
After returning to the United States, Powers left the Central Intelligence Agency and worked as a helicopter pilot for a television station in Los Angeles. In 1977, he died at the age of 47 in a helicopter crash and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
