Lockheed U-2C  56-6693  C/n / msn: 360



The original consensus about the cause of the U-2 incident was that the spy plane had been shot down by one of a salvo 
of 14 Soviet SA-2 missiles. 
This story was originated by Oleg Penkovsky, a GRU agent who spied for MI6.

On 1 May 1960, a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down by the Soviet Air Defence Forces while performing photographic 
aerial reconnaissance deep into Soviet territory. 
The single-seat aircraft, flown by pilot Francis Gary Powers, was hit by an S-75 Dvina (SA-2 Guideline) surface-to-air 
missile and crashed near Sverdlovsk (today's Yekaterinburg). 
Powers parachuted safely and was captured. 

On 28 April 1960, a U.S. Lockheed U-2C spy plane, Article 358, was ferried from Incirlik Air Base in Turkey to the 
US base at Peshawar airport by pilot Glen Dunaway. 
Fuel for the aircraft had been ferried to Peshawar the previous day in a US Air Force C-124 transport. 
A US Air Force C-130 followed, carrying the ground crew, mission pilot Francis Powers, and the back up pilot, 
Bob Ericson. On the morning of 29 April, the crew in Badaber was informed that the mission had been delayed one day. 
As a result, Bob Ericson flew Article 358 back to Incirlik and John Shinn ferried another U-2C, Article 360, from 
Incirlik to Peshawar. 
On 30 April, the mission was delayed one day further because of bad weather over the Soviet Union.

The weather improved and on 1 May, 15 days before the scheduled opening of the east–west summit conference in Paris, 
Captain Powers, flying Article 360, 56–6693 left the base in Peshawar on a mission with the operations code word 
GRAND SLAM[7] to overfly the Soviet Union, photographing targets including the ICBM sites at the Baikonur Cosmodrome 
and Plesetsk Cosmodrome, then land at Bodø in Norway. 
At the time, the USSR had six ICBM launch pads, two at Baikonur and four at Plesetsk.[8] Mayak, then named 
Chelyabinsk-65, an important industrial center of plutonium processing, was another of the targets that Powers was 
to photograph. 
A close study of Powers's account of the flight shows that one of the last targets he overflew, before being shot down, 
was the Chelyabinsk-65 plutonium production facility.

The U-2 flight was expected, and all units of the Soviet Air Defence Forces in the Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Siberia, 
Ural, and later in the USSR European Region and Extreme North, were placed on red alert. 
Soon after the plane was detected, Lieutenant General of the Air Force Yevgeniy Savitskiy ordered the air-unit 
commanders "to attack the violator by all alert flights located in the area of foreign plane's course, and to ram 
if necessary".

Because of the U-2's extreme operating altitude, Soviet attempts to intercept the plane using fighter aircraft failed. 
The U-2's course was out of range of several of the nearest SAM sites, and one SAM site even failed to engage the 
aircraft since it was not on duty that day. 
The U-2 was eventually brought down near Kosulino, Ural Region, by the first of three SA-2 Guideline (S-75 Dvina) 
surface-to-air missiles[12] fired by a battery commanded by Mikhail Voronov. 
The SA-2 site had been previously identified by the CIA, using photos taken during Vice President Richard Nixon's 
visit to Sverdlovsk the previous summer.

Powers bailed out but neglected to disconnect his oxygen hose first and struggled with it until it broke, enabling 
him to separate from the aircraft. 
After parachuting safely down onto Russian soil, Powers was quickly captured.[ 
Powers carried with him a modified silver dollar which contained a lethal, shellfish-derived saxitoxin-tipped needle, 
but he did not use it.

The SAM command center was unaware that the plane was destroyed for more than 30 minutes. 
One of the Soviet MiG-19 fighters pursuing Powers was also destroyed in the missile salvo, and the pilot, Sergei Safronov,
 was killed. 
The MiGs' IFF transponders were not yet switched to the new May codes because of the 1 May holiday.

The original consensus about the cause of the U-2 incident was that the spy plane had been shot down by one of a salvo
 of 14 Soviet SA-2 missiles. 
This story was originated by Oleg Penkovsky, a GRU agent who spied for MI6. 
In 2010, CIA documents were released indicating that "top US officials never believed Powers's account of his fateful
 flight because it appeared to be directly contradicted by a report from the National Security Agency" which alleged
 that the U-2 had descended from 65,000 to 34,000 feet (19,812 to 10,363 m) before changing course and disappearing
 from radar. 
One contemporary reading of the NSA's story is that they mistakenly tracked the descent of a MiG-19 piloted by 
Sr. Lt. Sergei Safronov.

Powers died in 1977 in an flying accident. 
He had been flying a TV reporting helicopter covering brush fires in Santa Barbara County. 
As he returned, his Bell 206 Jet Ranger helicopter, registered N4TV, ran out of fuel and crashed in the Sepulveda 
Dam Recreation Area several miles short of Burbank Airport. 
The National Transportation Safety Board report attributed the probable cause of the crash to pilot error as poor fuel management. 

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