Francis Gary Powers (August 17, 1929 â August 1, 1977) was an American pilot whose Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Lockheed U-2 spy plane was shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission in Soviet Union airspace, causing the 1960 U-2 incident.
While conducting aerial reconnaissance on 1 May 1960, a Lockheed U-2 belonging to the United States was shot down by the Soviet Air Defense Forces inside the Russian SFSR of the Soviet Union. The single-seat reconnaissance aircraft, flown by American pilot Francis Gary Powers, had taken off from Peshawar, Pakistan, and crashed near Sverdlovsk (present-day Yekaterinburg) after being hit by an S-75 Dvina (SA-2 Guideline) surface-to-air missile. Powers parachuted to the ground safely and was subsequently captured by Soviet authorities.
Following his capture, Powers was convicted for espionage and subsequently sentenced to three years of imprisonment plus seven years of hard labor; he was released two years later, in February 1962, in a prisoner exchange for Soviet intelligence officer Rudolf Abel.
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