Reviewing history in the military, the Air Force and triumphs and misadventures in airpower. On Aug. 19, 1960, downed American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers was sentenced to 10 years — three years imprisonment, seven years of hard labor — in Vladimir Central Prison outside of Moscow, for espionage against the Soviet Union. While conducting his U-2 mission to systematically photograph military installations, Powers was shot down over Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg, Russia) a few months earlier by a newly developed SA-2 Surface to Air missile. According to his biography, Powers was captured, sentenced, and held prisoner until his exchange on…
Browsing: U-2
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pxCqUcYT_c[/youtube] Call me nerdy, but all this budget news about the U-2 is making me think about the plane’s storied past – specifically the 1960 incident in which an American pilot operating a CIA U-2 was shot down while conducting a recon mission over the Soviet Union. The incident strained an already tense relationship between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, happening just two weeks before a planned East-West summit in Paris. Powers was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison during what is largely considered in the West to be a show trial. However, he ended up serving…