1960 U-2 incident
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On 1 May 1960, a United States U-2 spy plane, having taken off from Peshawar in Pakistan, was shot down by the Soviet Air Defence Forces in Sverdlovsk, Russia. It was conducting photographic aerial re
The wreckage of the American Lockheed U-2 Dragon Lady on display at the Central Armed Forces Museum in Moscow
Francis Gary Powers, pilot of the plane
U-2 "GRAND SLAM" flight plan on 1 May 1960, from CIA publication The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance; The U-2 And Oxcart Programs, 1954–1974, declassified 25 June 2013
The combat crew, distinguished for the destruction of the U-2 on May 1, 1960
Rudolf Abel
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William August Fisher, better known by the alias Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, was a Soviet intelligence officer. He adopted his alias to alert his Soviet KGB handlers when he was arrested in the USA on char
1960 U-2 incident
…imprisonment plus seven years of hard labour; he was released two years later, in February 1962, in a prisoner exchange for Soviet intelligence officer Rudolf Abel. In July 1958, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower requested permission from the Pakistani prime minister Feroze Khan Noon for the US to establish a…
Abel on a 1990 USSR commemorative stamp
Vladimir Semichastny, chairman of the KGB, talking to Soviet intelligence officers Rudolf Abel (second from left) and Konon Molody (second from right) in September 1964