On 1 May 1960, a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down by the Soviet Air Defence Forces while performing photographic aerial reconnaissance deep into Soviet territory.
The single-seat aircraft, flown by pilot Francis Gary Powers, was hit by an S-75 Dvina (SA-2 Guideline) surface-to-air missile and crashed near Sverdlovsk (today's Yekaterinburg). Powers parachuted safely and was captured.
Initially, the US authorities acknowledged the incident as the loss of a civilian weather research aircraft operated by NASA, but were forced to admit the mission's true purpose when a few days later the Soviet government produced the captured pilot and parts of the U-2's surveillance equipment, including photographs of Soviet military bases taken during the mission.
The incident occurred during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower and the premiership of Nikita Khrushchev, around two weeks before the scheduled opening of an east–west summit in Paris. It caused great embarrassment to the United States and prompted a marked deterioration in its relations with the Soviet Union, already strained by the ongoing Cold War
Powers was convicted of espionage and sentenced to three years of imprisonment plus seven years of hard labor but was released two years later on 10 February 1962 during a prisoner exchange for Soviet officer Rudolf Abel.
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