“My dad was shot down over the Soviet Union,” Gary says. “As a kid I thought it was normal, everybody’s dad goes through this.”
Within the thick of the Chilly Warfare an American spy airplane flew over Russian missile websites, taking photos for the CIA.
The US thought that at 70,000 ft their U-2 plane was past the attain of Soviet air defences. They have been unsuitable.
What resulted from the downing of the U-2 airplane and the seize of pilot Francis Gary Powers was a world incident that would have led to nuclear battle.
Sixty-five years later, with conflicts raging in Ukraine, Gaza and elsewhere, militaries all over the world nonetheless collect intelligence in a recreation of espionage cat-and-mouse. May one thing comparable occur once more?
Picture:
Francis Gary Powers pictured three hours after his return to the US. Pic: AP
What occurred on 1 Might, 1960?
Eager to know what missile capabilities the Soviets had, President Dwight D Eisenhower authorised a sequence of flights by U-2 spy planes over modern-day Russia.
“As the United States saw it, although they knew that the overflight of Soviet territory was against international law, they regarded their activity as taking a peek behind the Iron Curtain in order to get an idea of Soviet preparedness,” says Sean Rehling, a curator on the Imperial Warfare Museum in Duxford.
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A U-2c plane on the Imperial Warfare Museum in Duxford
Powers was flying close to Sverdlovsk when his U-2 plane was introduced down by a Soviet missile. He was capable of parachute to security, however was captured.
The Individuals, not realizing but that Powers was nonetheless alive, claimed {that a} climate analysis plane had strayed into Soviet territory. So when Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev introduced {that a} US pilot had been captured they have been caught in a lie.
Powers was placed on a public present trial and sentenced to jail, however was launched in 1962 in change for Soviet spy, Rudolf Abel.
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Francis Gary Powers speaks to senators in Washington DC in 1962. Pic: AP
Rehling says the U-2 incident ratcheted up tensions between the US and the USSR, and maybe emboldened Khrushchev to pursue a daring, dangerous diplomacy that led to the disaster level when Soviet missiles have been deployed to Cuba.
“We see the culmination of this when, almost two half years later in the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet Union appeared to be adopting a much more confrontational attitude to the United States.
“The world became step by step this gradually more dangerous place”
Picture:
Gary Powers, son of pilot Francis Gary Powers
‘I needed to search out out the reality’
Launched on a bridge in Berlin one chilly, foggy morning, Powers was taken again to the US the place he was questioned first by the CIA, after which by a Senate committee. He was cleared by each.
Studying about what occurred rising up, Gary pestered his dad for particulars of the incident.
“How high were you flying on 1 May?,” he would ask. “Gary, I can’t tell you that,” his father would reply.
Picture:
Francis Gary Powers in entrance of a U-2 spy airplane. Pic: AP
Powers died in 1977, aged 47. Regardless of being formally cleared of any wrongdoing, he is by no means fairly capable of shake the questions on what occurred.
His son by no means stopped questioning in regards to the U-2 incident. “I wanted to find out the truth of what he went through,” Gary says.
He based The Chilly Warfare Museum in Virginia in 1996 and frequently runs excursions about espionage historical past, which in fact consists of the U-2 incident involving his father.
Picture:
Gary Powers speaks to Sky’s Michael Drummond
Is the U-2 incident nonetheless related in 2025?
It might be greater than six many years since 1 Might, 1960, however the classes of the U-2 incident nonetheless resonate at this time.
NATO fighter jets are frequently scrambled to answer Russian spy planes approaching the alliance’s borders, whereas Western surveillance planes function over the Black Sea, gathering intelligence for Ukraine.
“Even though Power’s aircraft was shot down 65 years ago, the world in which we live is a legacy of the Cold War,” Rehling says.
“Today, even though nations might not necessarily know who a potential adversary or enemy may be, gathering intelligence is just as important as it was during the Cold War.”
Gary argues that the U-2 incident continues to be related, mirrored within the geopolitical jostling between NATO, the US, Russia and China.
“It’s a cat-and-mouse game, trying to find out what the other side is doing and not getting caught doing it.”
