Powers Sentenced: U-2 Spy Pilot Gets 10 Years
A Soviet court sentenced U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers to ten years imprisonment on August 19, 1960, for espionage after his reconnaissance aircraft was shot down over Sverdlovsk on May 1. The CIA had told President Eisenhower that the pilot would not survive a shootdown, so when the Soviets produced Powers alive, Eisenhower's cover story of a "weather research aircraft" collapsed embarrassingly. Premier Nikita Khrushchev cancelled the Paris Summit with Eisenhower, withdrawing his invitation for the president to visit the Soviet Union. Powers served 21 months before being exchanged for Soviet spy Rudolf Abel on the Glienicke Bridge in Berlin, the same bridge that would feature in Cold War prisoner swaps for decades.
August 19, 1960
66 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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