U2 Incident
| Description | CIA plane that was "shot down" over the Soviet Union in 1960. In reality a CIA plot to sabotage a potential peaceful resolution to the Cold War. |
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On 1 May 1960, a United States U-2 spy plane came down in the middle of the Soviet Union. 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.
Official narrative
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 pilot Francis Gary Powers, as it was hit by a surface-to-air missile. Powers parachuted to the ground and was captured.
Political background
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 met face-to-face at Camp David in Maryland in September 1959, and the seeming thaw in U.S.-Soviet relations had raised hopes globally for a peaceful resolution to the Cold War.
Fletcher Prouty
Colonel Fletcher Prouty states that the CIA preplanned for that U-2 to come down by arranging to starve it of hydrogen.[1]
