U‐2 Incident
U‐2 Incident (1960).On 1 May 1960, a U.S. spy plane—a U‐2—departed from Peshawar, Pakistan, on a reconnaissance mission over the Soviet Union. It never arrived at its destination—Bodo, Norway. On 6 May, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev announced that the aircraft had been shot down by a surface‐to‐air missile deep inside Soviet territory. Washington countered by saying that the aircraft was on a weather research mission when it strayed off course after the pilot's oxygen system failed. Khrushchev then revealed that the U‐2's film magazines had been recovered and that the pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was alive and in Soviet custody.
The incident created a sensation and threatened to scuttle the Soviet‐American summit conference scheduled to convene in Paris on 16 May. In a controversial move, President Dwight D. Eisenhower accepted responsibility for the flights rather than let the...
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