1960 U-2 incident

Rare card · No. 56226

On 1 May 1960, a United States U-2 spy plane, having taken off from Peshawar in Pakistan, was shot down by the Soviet Air Defence Forces in Sverdlovsk, Russia. It was conducting photographic aerial reconnaissance inside Soviet territory while being flown by American Central Intelligence Agency pilot Francis Gary Powers, as it was hit by a surface-to-air missile. Powers parachuted to the ground and was captured. Initially, American authorities claimed the incident involved the loss of a civilian weather research aircraft operated by NASA, but were forced to admit the mission's true purpose a few days later after the Soviet government produced the captured pilot and parts of the U-2's surveillance equipment, including photographs of Soviet military bases. The incident occurred during the tenures of American president Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, around two weeks before the scheduled opening of an east–west summit in Paris, France. Khrushchev and Eisenhower had...

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