Francis Gary Powers

Francis Gary Powers was the pilot of an American spy plane shot down by the Soviet Union during a famous Cold War espionage mission, an event often referred to as "the U2 incident." The event happened on 1 May 1960, while Powers was flying a U-2 high-altitude photographic surveillance plane over Russian airspace. Powers bailed out and was captured by the Soviets. At first the U.S. government claimed Powers had been conducting weather research, but later admitted that the U-2 was a spy plane. Powers was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 10 years in a Russian prison. He was pardoned by the USSR in February of 1962 and sent back to America, in exchange for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel. Powers was later a test pilot for Lockheed and then flew a helicopter for television station KNBC in Los Angeles, where he died on the job in a 1977 a helicopter crash. He was awarded the Intelligence Medal in 1963 and a posthumous Distinguished Flying Cross in 2000. He told his own story in his 1970 autobiography Operation Overflight (written with Curt Gentry).