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U2 aircraft4/14/2023 ![]() He was found guilty and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, followed by seven years confinement in a labour camp. After weeks of interrogation by the Soviet military and the KGB, Powers was put on trial, charged with espionage against the Soviet Union. The US government also had to decide what to do about Powers. Powers’ plane was shot down a fortnight before the start of a four-nation summit in Paris the U-2 incident torpedoed this conference, which was abandoned on the second day. Soviet officials display the wreckage of Powers’ crashed U2 Washington had been caught lying and Khrushchev made the most of it, demanding an apology from US president Dwight Eisenhower (he refused to give one). The capture of Powers, the U-2 wreckage and its surveillance images triggered a propaganda crisis for the US. Once developed this film revealed covert photographs of Soviet military and nuclear installations. The Russians even salvaged film from cameras onboard the U-2. Its American pilot, he said, was alive and in custody. Khrushchev announced that the USSR had possession of a US spy plane, explaining that it had been shot down over Soviet territory. The cover story for the loss of Powers’ plane – that it was on a “weather run” The Soviets play their handĭays after this fictitious cover story was presented to the world, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev sprang his trap. Believing Powers to be dead, the US also claimed the loss may have been due to a faulty oxygen supply causing the pilot to ‘black out’ and fly dramatically off-course. To support this charade, another U-2 was painted with NASA livery and shown to the media, to suggest they regularly undertook meteorological research. Washington informed the press an American plane was missing in eastern Europe – but described it as a “weather plane”. When Powers failed to arrive at his designated landing site, American commanders assumed he was dead and his plane had crashed or been shot down. Powers ejected from his crippled plane and parachuted into Russia, where he was immediately arrested, detained and questioned by the KGB. While flying over the Ural Mountains, Powers’ U-2 was struck by a surface-to-air missile and forced to crash-land. Soviet air defences became aware of this mission and scrambled jets – but the U-2’s altitude prevented it from being located. Another U-2, piloted by Francis Gary Powers, was launched on May 1st with orders to photograph Soviet installations, including ICBM silos and a plutonium factory. In April, a U-2 launched from Pakistan played cat-and-mouse with Soviet MiG jets before landing in Iran. These operations were conducted by the CIA, largely because the presence of an American military plane over Soviet territory could be construed as an act of war. ![]() In 1960 the US conducted U-2 runs over Soviet bases, test sites and missile silos in central Asia. To minimise the dangers of discovery, these U-2s were armed with a self-destruct mechanism and their pilots supplied with suicide devices. Pilots had to wear high-altitude gear that bore some similarity to spacesuits.Īmerican U-2s began secret flights over Soviet territory in mid-1956. The aircraft had to be flown at close to maximum speed to prevent stalling it was very sensitive to crosswinds and troublesome to land. Flying the U-2 was notoriously difficult, however. Its underbelly contained an array of cameras so powerful they could capture a newspaper headline from miles in the sky. The U-2 was designed primarily for reconnaissance. This high ceiling allowed it to overfly enemy territory, largely undetected by ‘spotters’ and radar. CIA pilot Francis Gary Powersįirst constructed in the mid-1950s, the U-2 was a jet aircraft capable of flying at 21,000 metres, twice the altitude of modern passenger jets. One innovation, developed and built by the United States company Lockheed, was the U-2 spy plane. Cold War tensions fuelled a constant demand for up-to-date intelligence about the ‘enemy’.
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