10th February 1962: Captured U-2 spy plane pilot Gary Powers freed in a prisoner exchange

The CIA completed the first test flight of the U-2 high altitude reconnaissance aircraft in 1955. The plane was able to fly at 70,000 feet (21,300 m), which its developers believed would place it beyond the reach of Soviet technology and enable it to conduct aerial reconnaissance of the USSR thanks to advanced cameras and optics.

Following successful tests, pilot training began in earnest. Francis Gary Powers had enlisted in the United States Air Force in October 1950, and joined the CIA as a pilot in the U-2 program six years later. At the end of April 1960 he departed Peshawar Air Station on a U-2 reconnaissance mission that would take him across the Soviet Union to Bodø military airfield in Norway. However, approximately halfway into his mission his plane was hit by a surface-to-air missile in the Ural Region and he was forced to bail out.

After parachuting safely on to Soviet soil, Powers was captured by the KGB, and eventually convicted of espionage. He was sentenced to 10 years’ confinement but a year later, amidst concerns that he might reveal any remaining secrets to the Soviet authorities, the U.S. government agreed to exchange Powers and imprisoned student Frederic Pryor in return for Soviet Colonel Rudolf Abel.

Abel had been convicted by a New York court on three counts of conspiracy as a Soviet spy in 1957. The exchange of prisoners took place on 10 February 1962 at the Glienicke Bridge in Berlin, but Powers received a frosty reception on his return the United States due to his failure to activate the aircraft’s self-destruct system that allowed the Soviets to study the wreckage.

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