Deseret News archives: U.S. pilot Gary Powers sentenced to 10 years in Russian prison

A look back at local, national and world events through Deseret News archives.
In August 1960, a tribunal in Moscow convicted American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers of espionage. On Aug. 19, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
This Cold War saga had all the elements of a Hollywood movie — and there have been several — only it was real and perhaps messy for those involved.
According to historians, an emerging Cold War détente between the United States and the Soviet Union stalled when the Soviets charged Francis Gary Powers, a U.S. Air Force and CIA U-2 pilot, with espionage. The affair set into motion years of mistrust between the White House and the Kremlin.
Powers had been shot down over Sverdlovsk on May 1, 1960. He would be found guilty on Aug. 17 and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment followed by seven years of hard labor. He served one year, nine months and nine days before being traded for a Soviet spy, Rudolph Abel.
Washington initially responded to his capture with a cover story, claiming that a “weather plane” had crashed after its pilot had “difficulties with his oxygen equipment.” President Dwight D. Eisenhower did not know that the plane had landed nearly intact. The Soviets recovered its photographic equipment, as well as Powers, whom they interrogated before he made a “voluntary confession” and issued an apology.
A summit meeting involving the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France was to have begun later that month in Paris. But Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev stormed out of the meeting, accusing the Americans of being “unable to call a halt to their (cold) war effort.”
After being debriefed by the CIA and the Air Force, Powers appeared before a Senate Armed Services Select Committee in 1962. The panel found that Powers had followed orders, that he had not divulged any critical information to the Soviets and had conducted himself “as a fine young man under dangerous circumstances.”
Powers died in 1977 at age 47 when his Bell 206 JetRanger helicopter ran out of fuel and crashed at the Sepulveda Dam recreational area in Encino, California, several miles short of its intended landing site at Burbank Airport. He was working as a traffic reporter for a Los Angeles TV station at the time. Powers is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Here is a series of stories from Deseret News archives as the story faded and others who were around the incident weighed in:
“Sons of 1960 U-2 figures meet”
“U2 Spy plane wasn’t hit by a missile”
“Spy plane outlasts Cold War, but not defense cuts”
“This week in history: Russia leader Nikita Khrushchev reveals the U-2 Incident”
“CIA declassifies 1992 study on U-2 Cold War spy missions”
“Victim of Cold War found on remote isle”
“U.S. spy planes played big but quiet role in war”
“Russian spy claims swap in works for spies in U.S.”
“China gets increasingly aggressive about spying”
One offbeat footnote: Thank goodness the Larry Mullen Band changed its name to, well U2.
According to the popular story, when the Irish folk rock band formed in 1976, the group’s name evolved to Feedback, then The Hype.
Per reports, dissatisfied, the group curated a list of names, and they chose U2 because they hated it the least. Bono remarked that the name gave off “futuristic” images of “the spy plane” and “the U-boat.”