U2 Spy Plane Incident (1960)

One of the biggest international crises of the Cold War period, sparked by the downing of an American spy plane over the territory of the Soviet Union. The illicit spy mission that the U2 plane was undertaking at the time of its destruction infuriated the Soviet Union, which accused the United States of gravely damaging the relationship between the two superpowers by resorting to aggressive measures. The entire episode was heavily publicized around the world, as the Soviet Union released footage of the trial of the captured U2 pilot. An embarrassment to the United States, the incident temporarily brought to light the large-scale spying operations that characterized so much of the Cold War period.

On May 1, 1960, CIA-employed pilot Francis Gary Powers took off from Pakistan in a superlight U2 spy plane. His mission required him to fly over 3,000 miles of USSR territory, in an attempt to photograph an entire range of Soviet secret factories and military installations. U2 spy planes had been used by the United States for more than four years with tremendous success: The groundbreaking technology of the U2s permitted them to fly high enough to be out of the reach of the Soviet air defenses. The intelligence acquired by these planes constituted the most valuable USSR-related information to date. Powers's flight, however, put an end to that stream of information.

Using an innovative ground-to-air missile, the Soviets were able to reach the U2 and shoot it down. The plane had been flying at an altitude 68,000 feet, some 1,200 miles inside USSR territory. Powers bailed out of the stricken plane and parachuted to safety, but he was subsequently captured with all of his equipment. He was brought to Moscow and interrogated by the KGB on the specifics of his mission.

In August 1960, Powers was publicly tried for espionage in a Soviet military court. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 years in solitary confinement but stayed imprisoned for only two of those years. In 1962, Powers was traded for a Soviet spy who had been apprehended by the Americans in the late 1950s while attempting to establish a spy network in New York. It was to be the first in a series of such exchanges between the two superpowers.

Although Powers came out of the incident relatively unharmed, the already tenuous relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union had been seriously affected. At the time of the U2 incident, the two countries had been engaged in a negotiation process aimed at relaxing the arms race. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower were planning to continue these negotiations at the upcoming summit in Paris, but the spy plane incident put an end to the conference before it began.