It was May Day 1960, and the Soviet Union was celebrating. Somewhere above 70,000 feet over the Ural Mountains, a lone American pilot in a glider-winged jet was photographing its secrets. Francis Gary Powers had taken off from Peshawar in Pakistan on the most ambitious U-2 mission yet: a flight right across the Soviet Union, to land in Norway.

He never made it. Near Sverdlovsk, a Soviet S-75 surface-to-air missile, known to NATO as the SA-2 Guideline, exploded close enough to wreck his aircraft. Powers bailed out, was captured, and became the central figure in one of the most embarrassing episodes of the Cold War, and later in one of its most famous spy swaps.

The Flight Nobody Had Tried

By 1960 U-2s had been flying over the Soviet Union since 1956. It cruised above 70,000 feet, beyond the reach of Soviet fighters and, the Americans believed, of Soviet missiles too. The mission on 1 May was meant to be the boldest yet, covering targets including ICBM launch sites at Baikonur and Plesetsk and the plutonium plant at Chelyabinsk-65.

The Soviets were waiting. Air defence forces tracked the U-2 and threw everything they had at it. An unarmed, brand-new Su-9 was even directed to ram it, but the speed difference was too great. Then the missile batteries around Sverdlovsk opened fire.

Missiles Over Sverdlovsk

Near Kosulino, in the Urals, the first of the missiles fired at the U-2 struck the aircraft. Accounts differ on exactly how many were launched in total. In the confusion, another missile destroyed a Soviet MiG-19 sent up to intercept the intruder. Its pilot, Sergei Safronov, ejected but died of his injuries.

In the cockpit of the stricken U-2, Powers found himself in a violent spin. He had a self-destruct charge to destroy the camera and film, but according to his own account he delayed arming it until he was sure he could get out. Before he could reach it, g-forces threw him from the aircraft, and he came down by parachute to be captured.

He also carried a CIA-issued poison needle, hidden in a hollowed-out silver dollar. He chose not to use it.

A Cover Story Collapses

Washington assumed Powers was dead and the aircraft destroyed. It announced that a NASA weather research aircraft had gone missing. Then Moscow produced the pilot, pieces of the U-2 and photographs from its camera. The cover story fell apart in days.

The timing could not have been worse. President Eisenhower and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev were due at a summit in Paris about two weeks later. The "Spirit of Camp David" that had followed their 1959 meeting evaporated, and the summit collapsed. Pakistan formally apologised to Moscow for its role.

In August 1960 Powers was tried in Moscow and convicted of espionage. The sentence was three years in prison followed by seven years of hard labour.

The Bridge of Spies

He served less than two years. On 10 February 1962, Powers was exchanged for the Soviet KGB colonel Rudolf Abel on the Glienicke Bridge between Potsdam and West Berlin, while American student Frederic Pryor was released at Checkpoint Charlie. The story later became the Steven Spielberg film Bridge of Spies.

Home was not a hero's welcome at first. Powers was criticised for failing to destroy the aircraft and for not using the poison pin. He was debriefed at length by the CIA, Lockheed and the Air Force. He went on to work for Lockheed as a U-2 test pilot, and later as a helicopter pilot for the Los Angeles TV station KNBC.

Recognition, Decades Late

Powers died on 1 August 1977 when the KNBC news helicopter he was flying crashed. Recognition came slowly and mostly after his death: the CIA's Intelligence Star in 1965, then in 2000 the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Prisoner of War Medal and the CIA Director's Award. In 2012 the Air Force presented his grandchildren with the Silver Star, recognising his loyalty through nearly two years of interrogation and imprisonment.

The wreckage of his U-2 is still on display in Moscow's Central Armed Forces Museum: twisted metal from the day the Cold War's most confident spy plane met a missile it was not supposed to meet.

Sources: Wikipedia (1960 U-2 incident; Francis Gary Powers), including quotations from Powers’s memoir Operation Overflight; British Pathé newsreels; Commons image records.