Powers Sentenced: U-2 Spy Pilot Gets 10 Years

Francis Gary Powers stood in a Moscow courtroom on August 19, 1960, and heard a Soviet military tribunal sentence him to ten years in prison for espionage. The American U-2 pilot, shot down over Soviet territory on May 1 while photographing military installations from 70,000 feet, had already caused the collapse of a superpower summit and one of the most embarrassing diplomatic episodes of the Cold War. The CIA had been flying U-2 reconnaissance missions over the Soviet Union since 1956, photographing missile sites, airfields, and nuclear facilities from an altitude that was believed to be beyond the reach of Soviet air defenses. The Soviets tracked every flight but lacked the technology to shoot the aircraft down. That changed on May 1, 1960, when a salvo of SA-2 surface-to-air missiles struck Powers' plane near Sverdlovsk, deep inside Soviet territory. Powers ejected and parachuted to the ground, where he was captured by local civilians and handed over to the KGB. The Eisenhower administration's initial response was catastrophic. Assuming Powers was dead and his aircraft destroyed, NASA issued a cover story claiming a weather research plane had gone missing over Turkey. Nikita Khrushchev sprang his trap with theatrical relish, first announcing that a spy plane had been shot down, then, after Washington doubled down on the cover story, revealing that the pilot was alive and had confessed. The Soviet premier displayed the wreckage and Powers' espionage equipment before the world's press. Eisenhower was forced to admit the truth, and a planned summit in Paris between the American president and Khrushchev collapsed before it began. Powers' trial in Moscow was broadcast on Soviet television. He expressed regret for his mission and cooperated with Soviet authorities, a decision that drew criticism from some Americans who believed he should have used the suicide pin provided by the CIA. He served less than two years of his sentence before being exchanged on February 10, 1962, on the Glienicke Bridge in Berlin for convicted Soviet spy Rudolf Abel. Powers worked as a helicopter traffic reporter in Los Angeles until his death in a helicopter crash in 1977.