July 8, 1960: U-2 pilot charged with espionage

On this day in 1960, U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers was charged with espionage by his Soviet captors.

The U-2 was a high-altitude aircraft designed for spying on the U.S.S.R. The first flight over Soviet airspace was on July 4, 1956. Technically, the flights were acts of war, but if Soviets called the Americans out, they’d simply point to their own inability to shoot the planes down.

They eventually developed a surface-to-air missile capable of reaching 70,000 feet, and on May 1, 1960, successfully hit a U-2 flown by Francis Gary Powers. The Eisenhower administration claimed the pilot of a weather plane had passed out, and autopilot had taken the plane over Soviet airspace.

One problem: Powers hadn’t committed suicide (he had a poisoned needle hidden inside a silver dollar), and the plane hadn’t self-destructed. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev called out the U.S. and withdrew from a summit in Paris to discuss the future of divided Germany.

Powers was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison and seven years of hard labor; he was released in exchange for Soviet spy Rudolf Abel in 1962.

For more, visit the U.S. Department of State.

Image: Powers in front of a U-2, from his official website, garypowers.org