USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -The U-2 incident was a confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union that began with the shooting down of a U.S. U-2 reconnaissance plane over the Soviet Union in 1960 and that caused the collapse of a summit conference in Paris between the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France.

Detailed explanation-2: -At the height of the cold war, as critics of the Eisenhower administration complained about the growing “missile gap, ” the United States secretly gathered data on Soviet missile capabilities through photographs obtained from U-2 reconnaissance plane overflights of the Soviet Union.

Detailed explanation-3: -Soviets Shoot Down U.S. Aircraft As Powers flew over Sverdlovsk (present-day Yekaterinburg, Russia), a Soviet surface-to-air missile exploded near his plane, causing it to drop to a lower altitude. A second missile scored a direct hit, and Powers and his aircraft began to plummet from the sky.

Detailed explanation-4: -On May 1, 1960, a U-2 flight piloted by Francis Gary Powers disappeared while on a flight over Russia.