U-2

Browsing: U-2

This week in history

By Oriana Pawlyk on August 21, 2013 Air Force, History

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…

Remembering the U-2’s long history

By Jill Laster on February 14, 2012 Air Force, UAV

[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…

Browsing: U-2