U-2: The American Spyplane

The Space Race was a spaceflight supremacy competition between USA and USSR during the Cold War. Post WWII tensions between the two countries especially heightened when the Soviets successfully launched Sputnik, the first ever satellite to orbit the Earth. Immediately, the fear that America had now fallen behind in the Space Race began to consume the entire country and its population, including federal officials. Feeling threatened of their international status as a leader, America decided to send spy planes over to the USSR. Unfortunately, we all came to learn that it was perhaps the worst decision that the United States made during the Space Race.

On May 1, 1960, the American spy plane, U-2, and its pilot, Gary Powers, was shot down when it entered Soviet airspace. Although it was a spy plane, this particular flight was not intended for spying on the Soviets. Gary Powers had simply taken off from a base in Pakistan to get to another base in Norway and a mere 2,900 miles of his planned flight path was to transgress over Soviet airspace. The United States believed that taking this trajectory was practical because U-2 was an unprecedented high-altitude plane that flew at 70,000 feet. So naturally, officials believed that it would fly high enough to go undetected by the Soviet ground radars. Sadly, this was not true at all.

(Francis) Gary Powers

Luckily, the instant his plane was shot down, the emergency parachute safely landed Powers onto Soviet ground. Unluckily, he was now held in the country for interrogation. With the plane and the pilot both intact, USSR now had concrete proof that United States had actually been spying on them. But in response to this open accusation, American officials lied and responded that Powers was knocked unconscious because of oxygen depletion inside the aircraft and had unintentionally drifted over to  Soviet airspace. The new Soviet leader, Khrushchev, demanded a sincere apology but he did not get anything close to one. President Eisenhower himself was committed to the spy-plane program and took great interest in it on a personal level as well.

Gary Powers was tried and convicted of spying. He was sentenced to three years in prison and hard labor but by another fate of luck, he was saved in 1962. The tables now turned and America discovered a Soviet spy, Rudolph Abel, in the country. They agreed to exchange these prisoners and return them to their respective homes. This incident made it impossible for Eisenhower and Khrushchev to peacefully cooperate again. Instead, Khrushchev patiently waited for John F. Kennedy to be inaugurated as the new president elected in November of 1960.

Sources:

https://history.state.gov/milestones/1953-1960/u2-incident