'The aircraft spiralled downwards, tail first': The CIA spy shot down over Russia in 1960
Francis Gary Powers was on a CIA spying mission over Soviet Russia when his U-2 plane was hit by a surface-to-air missile. "I looked up, looked out, and just everything was orange, everywhere," Powers recalled. "I don't know whether it was the reflection in the canopy itself or just the whole sky. And I can remember saying to myself, 'By God, I've had it now.'"
In fact, Powers managed to parachute to safety, but his troubles were far from over. Having been arrested and interrogated by the KGB, he was put on trial in Moscow, where his family could only watch helplessly. "He said that he knew that we were present at his trial," his wife Barbara Powers told the BBC. "He didn't know beforehand. But he saw me wave. And he said he just couldn't bear to look towards the box where we were all sitting, because it upset him too much, and he knew it would upset us." On 19 August 1960, 65 years ago this week, Powers was sentenced to 10 years – three in a Russian prison and seven in a labour camp. His capture and trial would have a devastating impact on East-West relations at the height of the Cold War.
Powers was 30 at the time. A coal miner's son from Kentucky, US, he studied chemistry and biology before joining the US Air Force in 1950. In 1956, he was recruited by the CIA to pilot U-2 spy planes over enemy territory. These U-2s could fly at 70,000ft (21.3km), which was supposedly above the range of Soviet defences, and yet the cutting-edge camera on board could take detailed photographs of military installations far below. On 1 May 1960, Powers took off from Peshawar, Pakistan, with a brief to fly across the USSR and land in Norway. "The planned route would take us deeper into Russia than we had ever gone, while traversing important targets never before photographed," he wrote in his memoir, Operation Overflight.
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