U-2 Incident | Summary, Significance, Timeline, & Facts - Britannica

U-2 Incident, (1960), confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union that began with the shooting down of a U.S. U-2 reconnaissance plane over the Soviet Union and that caused the collapse of a summit conference in Paris between the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France.

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On May 5, 1960, the Soviet premier Nikita S. Khrushchev told the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. that an American spy plane had been shot down on May 1 over Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg), referring to the flight as an “aggressive act” by the United States.

On May 7 he revealed that the pilot of the plane, Francis Gary Powers, had parachuted to safety, was alive and well in Moscow, and had testified that he had taken off from Peshawar, in Pakistan, with the mission of flying across the Soviet Union over the Aral Sea and via Sverdlovsk, Kirov, Arkhangelsk, and Murmansk to Bodø military airfield in Norway, collecting intelligence information en route. Powers admitted working for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

Cold War Events keyboard_arrow_left Iron Curtain speech March 5, 1946 Truman Doctrine March 12, 1947 Marshall Plan April 1948 - December 1951 Berlin blockade June 24, 1948 - May 12, 1949 Warsaw Pact May 14, 1955 - July 1, 1991 U-2 Incident May 5, 1960 - May 17, 1960 Bay of Pigs invasion April 17, 1961 Berlin crisis of 1961 August 1961 Cuban missile crisis October 22, 1962 - November 20, 1962 Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty August 5, 1963 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks 1969 - 1979 Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions October 1973 - February 9, 1989 Korean Air Lines flight 007 September 1, 1983 Reykjavík summit of 1986 October 11, 1986 - October 12, 1986 collapse of the Soviet Union August 18, 1991 - December 31, 1991 keyboard_arrow_right

On May 7 the United States stated that there had been no authorization for any such flight as Khrushchev had described, although a U-2 probably had flown over Soviet territory. The Soviet Union refused to accept that the U.S. government had had no knowledge of the flights and on May 13 sent protest notes to Turkey, Pakistan, and Norway, which in turn protested to the United States, seeking assurances that no U.S. aircraft would be allowed to use their territories for unauthorized purposes. On May 16 in Paris Khrushchev declared that the Soviet Union could not take part in the summit talks unless the U.S. government immediately stopped flights over Soviet territory, apologized for those already made, and punished the persons responsible. The response of Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower, promising to suspend all such flights during the remainder of his presidency, did not satisfy the Soviet Union, and the conference was adjourned on May 17.

Quick Facts Date: May 5, 1960 - May 17, 1960 (Show more) Participants: Soviet Union United States (Show more) Context: Cold War (Show more) Key People: Allen W. Dulles Dwight D. Eisenhower Nikita Khrushchev Francis Gary Powers (Show more) On the Web: Warfare History Network - The U-2 Spy PlaneÂ’s Cold War Missions (Feb. 20, 2026) (Show more) See all related content

Francis Gary Powers was tried (August 17–19) and sentenced to 10 years’ confinement, but he was exchanged for the Soviet spy Rudolf Abel on February 10, 1962.