U-2 incident

The U-2 incident was the Soviet shootdown of an American reconnaissance aircraft over the USSR on May 1, 1960, and the diplomatic crisis that followed.

U-2 aircraft: The Lockheed-built, single-engine aircraft designed for high-altitude reconnaissance. Francis Gary Powers was flying this aircraft when Soviet missiles brought it down.
Cold War: The prolonged geopolitical rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies after World War II. The U-2 program arose from the rivalry’s demand for information about Soviet military capabilities.
1960 U-2 crisis: The international confrontation caused by the U-2 shootdown and competing American and Soviet accounts. The crisis escalated after Moscow revealed Powers had survived and presented evidence of espionage.
Aerial reconnaissance: The collection of information about places or activities from aircraft. The U-2 mission was one high-altitude method within this broader practice.
Francis Gary Powers: The American pilot captured after his U-2 was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960. His survival and capture disproved the claim that the aircraft was merely a weather plane.
Central Intelligence Agency: The United States agency responsible for gathering and analyzing foreign intelligence. The CIA organized U-2 overflights as a way to collect intelligence inside the Soviet Union.
Paris Summit of 1960: A May 1960 meeting of the United States, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and France that ended without substantive negotiations. Nikita Khrushchev demanded an apology over the flight, and the summit collapsed.
Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird: An American Mach 3 reconnaissance aircraft developed for strategic intelligence missions. It represents a later aircraft design emphasizing speed as well as altitude to evade interception.
S-75 Dvina: A Soviet surface-to-air missile system known to NATO as the SA-2 Guideline. A missile from this system struck Powers’s aircraft near Sverdlovsk.
Dwight D. Eisenhower: The 34th president of the United States, serving from 1953 to 1961. He approved the reconnaissance program and faced the political consequences of the shootdown.

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