Francis Gary Powers, an experienced pilot for the Central Intelligence Agency, was flying a Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft on a high-altitude surveillance mission over the Soviet Union when he was intercepted and shot down on May 1, 1960. The U-2 was designed to fly at altitudes that were typically out of reach of enemy defenses, yet on this day, a Soviet surface-to-air missile successfully struck the aircraft over Sverdlovsk Oblast. Powers, who had been conducting reconnaissance to gather intelligence on Soviet military capabilities, parachuted to safety and was soon captured by Soviet forces. The U.S. government was initially hesitant to acknowledge that the spy mission had taken place, relying instead on claims that the aircraft was a lost weather plane.The incident escalated tensions in the already strained Cold War atmosphere. Just days before a critical summit was set to occur in Paris between leaders from the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France, the revelation of Powers' capture and the U-2 mission was a severe embarrassment for the U.S. administration. When asked about the mission, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower initially denied that any such spy plane existed; however, the Soviets produced evidence, including photographs and the pilot himself, which forced a change in the narrative. The fallout from this incident led to the collapse of the summit, a significant setback in East-West relations.The U-2 incident demonstrated the lengths to which nations would go for intelligence and highlighted the spies' vulnerability and the dangers inherent in espionage. Powers was later tried in the Soviet Union and exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel in 1962, marking a fraught chapter of Cold War espionage stories.