Lockheed U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers leaves Peshawar, Pakistan, to fly over the USSR and land in Bodø, Norway. The goal: to photograph ICBM launch sites around Sverdlovsk and Plesetsk. The Soviets launch 14 SA-2 guided missiles at it. One of the Soviet MiGs sent in pursuit is shot down by SA-2 missiles. Eventually, the U-2 is also hit and makes an emergency landing. Gary Powers survives unharmed, is captured, and convicted of espionage. Twenty-two months later, he is handed over to the Americans in Berlin along with the student Frederic Pryor in exchange for KGB agent Colonel Vilyam Fisher (aka Rudolf Abel). The SA-2 rocket was designed by Chelomei’s team, Korloyov’s arch-rival. Gary Power’s U-2 mission over the Soviet Union was the last of 24 overflight missions over the USSR in four years. With the CORONA spy satellite program, the amount of intelligence received in a single mission in August 1960 exceeded the sum of all U-2 missions combined. Furthermore, the A-12/SR-71 Blackbird (April 1962) would outperform the U-2 somewhat. But the U-2 had not exhausted its mission: 104 more would be built, the latest, updated models, built in the 1980s. Most will still be in service at the beginning of the 21st century.
