U-2 Incident (1960): Francis Gary Powers Shot Down Over USSR

The U-2 incident was the shooting down of an American U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union on 1 May 1960 and the diplomatic crisis that followed. The pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was captured alive near Sverdlovsk, exposing four years of secret CIA overflights and the false cover story the US government had released. The affair wrecked a summit in Paris planned for that month and ended a brief thaw between Washington and Moscow.

Background: spying from 70,000 feet

In the mid-1950s the United States knew little about Soviet bombers, missiles and nuclear plants, and feared a “bomber gap” and later a “missile gap”. President Dwight D. Eisenhower proposed “Open Skies” mutual aerial inspection at the Geneva summit of 1955, but the Soviet Union rejected it.

The CIA, working with Lockheed’s secret “Skunk Works” under designer Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, developed the U-2, a single-seat jet with very long wings that could fly at around 70,000 feet (about 21 kilometres), far above Soviet fighters and, it was believed, beyond the reach of Soviet missiles. Its cameras could photograph strips of territory hundreds of kilometres long in great detail.

The first U-2 flight over the Soviet Union took place on 4 July 1956. The Soviets tracked the flights on radar and protested privately, but could not shoot the plane down and did not want to admit publicly that they could not stop it. The overflights, approved individually by Eisenhower, showed that the feared bomber and missile gaps did not exist in the Soviets’ favour.

The flights were nonetheless a source of constant anxiety in Washington. Eisenhower knew that if a plane were lost over Soviet territory the political damage could be severe, and he limited the number of missions. The CIA assured him that in the unlikely event of a shoot-down, neither the fragile aircraft nor its pilot would survive in a condition to embarrass the United States, an assumption that proved wrong.

The final flight

By 1960 Eisenhower was preparing for a four-power summit with Khrushchev, Britain’s Harold Macmillan and France’s Charles de Gaulle in Paris, and was wary of provocations. He nonetheless approved one more overflight before the summit, to gather intelligence on Soviet missile sites.

On 1 May 1960, the Soviet May Day holiday, Powers took off from Peshawar in Pakistan on a mission code-named Grand Slam. His route crossed the Soviet Union from south to north, passing the Tyuratam missile test range (Baikonur) and the industrial area of Sverdlovsk, and was to end at Bodø in Norway after photographing sites including Plesetsk.

Soviet air defences were alerted as soon as the plane entered their airspace. Near Sverdlovsk, now Yekaterinburg, a battery of S-75 Dvina surface-to-air missiles, known in NATO as the SA-2 Guideline, fired at the U-2. One missile exploded close enough behind the aircraft to cripple it. In the confusion other missiles were fired, and one struck a Soviet MiG-19 fighter sent to intercept, killing its pilot, Senior Lieutenant Sergei Safronov.

Powers was unable to use his ejection seat but climbed out of the falling aircraft and parachuted to the ground, where he was quickly detained by local farm workers and handed to the authorities. Large parts of the plane, including the camera and film, were recovered.

The cover story collapses

When the plane failed to arrive, the US government put out a prepared cover story. On 3 May NASA announced that a weather research aircraft flying from Adana in Turkey had gone missing after the pilot reported oxygen trouble, and suggested it might have strayed over the border.

Khrushchev laid a trap. On 5 May he told the Supreme Soviet that an American spy plane had been shot down, without saying that the pilot had survived. The US repeated its weather plane story, and the State Department denied any deliberate violation of Soviet airspace. On 7 May Khrushchev revealed that Powers was alive, had confessed and that the plane’s camera and film had been recovered, along with his pistol and a poison needle.

The administration was caught in a public lie. After initially suggesting that the flight had not been authorised in Washington, Eisenhower decided to take responsibility. On 11 May he acknowledged the overflights and defended them as a necessary response to Soviet secrecy and the danger of surprise attack.

Eisenhower’s decision to admit responsibility was unusual. Heads of government normally deny knowledge of espionage, allowing both sides to avoid open confrontation. He felt, however, that claiming the flights had been carried out without his knowledge would make him look as though he did not control his own government. Khrushchev had publicly allowed for the possibility that Eisenhower had not known; the president’s admission left the Soviet leader less room to manoeuvre in front of his own hard-liners.

Khrushchev also used the affair to warn countries hosting US bases. He publicly threatened Pakistan, Turkey and Norway, from whose territory the flights began or were meant to end, and the wreckage and Powers’ equipment were put on public display in Gorky Park in Moscow, where they drew large crowds.

The Paris summit fails

The summit opened in Paris on 16 May 1960. Khrushchev demanded that Eisenhower condemn the flights, apologise and punish those responsible. Eisenhower announced that the flights had been suspended and would not resume, but refused to apologise. Khrushchev also withdrew an invitation for Eisenhower to visit the Soviet Union. The summit broke up on 17 May without any agreement, ending hopes of progress on Berlin and nuclear testing during Eisenhower’s presidency.

Key people

• Francis Gary Powers (1929–1977), former US Air Force pilot employed by the CIA, who flew the mission.
• Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969), US President, who authorised the overflights.
• Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971), Soviet leader, who used the incident to embarrass the United States.
• Allen Dulles (1893–1969), Director of Central Intelligence, whose agency ran the U-2 programme.
• Sergei Safronov (1930–1960), Soviet pilot killed by one of the missiles fired at the U-2.

Trial and exchange

Powers was tried before the Military Collegium of the Soviet Supreme Court in Moscow from 17 to 19 August 1960. He pleaded guilty to espionage and was sentenced to ten years’ confinement, three in prison followed by seven in a labour camp. His parents attended the trial, which was widely reported in the West.

After about 21 months in Soviet custody, Powers was released on 10 February 1962 in an exchange on the Glienicke Bridge, between Potsdam and West Berlin, for Rudolf Abel (real name Vilyam Fisher), a Soviet intelligence officer convicted in the United States in 1957. An American student, Frederic Pryor, was released in Berlin the same day.

Myths and facts

• Myth: Powers was disgraced as a coward or traitor. Some Americans criticised him for not destroying the plane or taking his own life. A CIA board of inquiry and the Senate Armed Services Committee concluded in 1962 that he had acted in accordance with his instructions. In 2012 he was posthumously awarded the Silver Star.
• Myth: The U-2 was shot down by a direct hit. Accounts agree that the missile exploded near the aircraft rather than striking it directly, breaking it up from the blast.
• Myth: The U-2 was beyond the reach of Soviet missiles. American planners had believed the aircraft flew too high to be hit. By 1960 Soviet SA-2 missiles could reach its altitude, as Powers’ flight proved.
• Fact: The Soviets lost one of their own aircraft. Soviet authorities did not publicly acknowledge for decades that Safronov’s fighter had been brought down by its own side’s missile during the engagement.

Consequences

The incident ended the U-2 overflights of the Soviet Union. Reconnaissance satellites soon filled the gap: the first successful recovery of film from a CORONA satellite came in August 1960, only three months later. U-2 aircraft continued to fly elsewhere, and in October 1962 a U-2 discovered Soviet missiles in Cuba, setting off the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Politically, the collapse of the Paris summit closed the short period of détente that had followed Khrushchev’s 1959 visit to the United States and the Kitchen Debate. Tensions over Berlin rose again and led, in August 1961, to the construction of the Berlin Wall. Powers later worked as a test pilot and as a helicopter traffic reporter in Los Angeles, and died when his helicopter crashed on 1 August 1977.

Timeline

• 1956, 4 July: The first U-2 flight over the Soviet Union.
• 1960, 1 May: Powers is shot down near Sverdlovsk and captured.
• 1960, 3 May: NASA announces a missing weather research plane.
• 1960, 5 May: Khrushchev announces that a US spy plane was shot down.
• 1960, 7 May: Khrushchev reveals that the pilot is alive.
• 1960, 11 May: Eisenhower publicly accepts responsibility for the flights.
• 1960, 16–17 May: The Paris summit collapses.
• 1960, 17–19 August: Powers is tried in Moscow and sentenced to ten years.
• 1962, 10 February: Powers is exchanged for Rudolf Abel on the Glienicke Bridge.

Why it matters

The U-2 incident exposed one of the most important intelligence operations of the early Cold War and showed how a single aircraft could derail superpower diplomacy. It damaged American credibility, strengthened Khrushchev’s hard-line critics and ended the hopes raised in 1959 for an easing of tensions. It also hastened the shift to satellite reconnaissance, which became the main way both sides watched each other for the rest of the Cold War.