On the morning of May 1, 1960, the Soviet shot down a CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers, who had been on a secret mission to fly over Russia. After Powers was shot down the United States had to wait to see the fate of the pilot and the U-2 program. President Eisenhower extremely nervous due to the rapid growth of the Soviets technological achievements. The Soviet's had developed the technology to send a thermonuclear bomb across continents (ICBM). The United State's had created a secret military base in Pakistan where they could launch the U-2 planes to fly over Russia. On May 1st Francis Powers mission was to fly from Peshawar the secret air base over Russia and land in Bodø Norway, but he was shot down after he flew over the Chelyabinsk-65 plutonium production facility.
Powers was shot down by a SAM (surface to air missile) which was guided by Mikhail Voronov. He was able to eject from the plane before it was destroyed, but when he landed he was captured and so was his U-2 spy plane with all of it top secret cameras intacked. Powers was interigated by the KGB till he told them what he was doing flying over Russia. This led to him serving three year in jail and seven years of hard labor for espionage. He was released February 10th, 1962 where the US and Russia did a spy swap in Berlin, Germany. When Powers returned to the US he was criticized by the CIA for not hitting the self destruct button on his plane and for getting captured, since he had a silver dollar that had a lethal dose of saxitoxen
Powers later went on to fly experimental aircraft for Lockheed from 1963-1970. He was fired from Lockheed in 1970 because he co-wrote a book called Operation Overflight: A Memoir of the U-2 incident. They said it cast a negative piblicity on the CIA which Lockheed worked for. Powers later became a helicopter pilot for the KNBC where he was the "telecopter". He died in 1977 in that helicopter, it's fuel gauge was repaired without powers knowing. After running out of fuel powers tried to land but saw kids playing in the area he was going to crash so he directed the helicopter somewhere where it crashed. If not for powers last minute action to save the kids he might have landed safely.
