The U-2 Incident

On May 1, 1960, the Soviet Union shot down an American U-2 spy plane deep inside its territory and captured the pilot, Francis Gary Powers, alive. The incident exposed a secret CIA program of high-altitude reconnaissance flights over the USSR and became a major Cold War embarrassment for the United States.

The U-2 flew higher than Soviet fighters could reach — until a surface-to-air missile brought one down. Believing the pilot dead and the plane destroyed, the U.S. government claimed it was a weather research aircraft that had strayed off course. Then the Soviets produced both the wreckage and the living pilot, catching Washington in a public lie.

The timing was disastrous. The shootdown came just before a planned summit in Paris between President Eisenhower and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Khrushchev demanded an apology, Eisenhower refused, and the summit collapsed — a sharp deepening of Cold War tensions.

Powers was tried in Moscow and later exchanged for a captured Soviet spy. The incident revealed how central — and how risky — aerial espionage had become, and it stands as a classic case of a secret operation blowing up in public view.