Cold War Crisis: The U-2 Incident March 1, 2010

On May 1, 1960, an American U-2 reconnaissance plane was shot down over the Soviet Union by a surface-to-air missile. Francis Gary Powers—a civilian pilot from Pound, Virginia, flying for the Central Intelligence Agency—was unable to activate the self-destruct mechanism, and the plane crashed largely intact. Because the U-2 was specifically
designed for covert surveillance, Powers was tried and convicted as a spy and sentenced to ten years imprisonment. Upon his return to the U.S. in 1962, Powers was cold-shouldered by the CIA for having failed to destroy the plane or kill himself, but a Senate committee fully exonerated him. Powers, who died in 1977, was posthumously awarded the
POW Medal, the National Defense Medal, and the CIA Director’s Medal for “Extraordinary Fidelity and Essential Service” for his service and for never disclosing any classified information. This exhibition about Powers’s life and service was organized by The Cold War Museum, founded by Powers’s son Francis Gary Powers, Jr.

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