On May 1, 1960, a lot of people were on Red Square. It was a holiday demonstration. Suddenly the fine spring mood of Mr. Khrushchev was spoiled by the message of a colonel of the KGB. The anti-aircraft defense subdivisions informed that unidentified aircraft had violated the USSR border. The height of the aircraft fly was inaccessible for Russian fighters. Mr. Khrushchev was upset. The day was spoiled.

American politicians and the military were satisfied. At last a spyplane excelling all modern analogies had been created. It had already flown over the territories of different countries for several years with great success. Up to now it had flown in perfect security anywhere. Neither fighter nor missile could reach this invulnerable aircraft. It was the time to use the spyplane over Russian territory.

Dwight D.Eisenhower was delighted with his new possibility to tease his political adversary Nikita S. Khruchshev. "Krushchev could bang two shoes on the table at the same time, but he couldn't prove anything." For the Russians the U-2 spyplane would only be a dot on the radar screen. It would be indiscernible to the eyes of fighter pilot. It was able to take photo of all secret objects without difficulties and returned to base.

On may 1st, 1960, Francis Gary Powers was the pilot of the U-2. The route was elaborated beforehand. It included all of secret factories and objects in the western part of the USSR. The reconnaissance flight promised much. For Powers it was everyday work. It the evening he had to have supper with his fiancée.

The aircraft U-2 had been followed by soviet MIGs at an inaccessible height. It looked as if "imperialist" provocation was to go unpunished. But Politics is a game you must win at any price. Therefore the KGB and the VAD (air defense) decided to use the most up-to-date "ground-to-air" missile. This meant removing the security, but Russians got their way. The first missile was launched. In five minutes the report had been received: "A soviet MIG has been shot down, the remained clearing off". The second missile went a little sideways and slowly disappeared slowly in clouds. In ten minutes a message had been received: "The target has been hit. The pilot has bailed out".

From then the fate of F.G Powers and the spyplane U-2 "Black Lady" parted. F.G. Powers was jailed as a political prisoner in "Matrosskaya Tishina". He was sentenced to solitary confinement for 10 years. I two years he had been changed for Russian spy Rudolf Abel who had been exposed by the CIA. Supper with his fiancée had been failed. The fiancée had since become a wife and mother.

The fate of the plane is also extremely interesting, although know to very few. The plane crashed near Sverdlovsk. Its remains were collected and sent for examination at factory N 16. Following a careful examination the plane was destroyed on the orders of the KGB. This ended the existence of the most scandalous known U-2 spy-plane. All that remain of it are the memories of F.G. Powers and a single engine part, saved from destruction by an engineer who worked at the factory. This part of the U-2 engine is the last fragment of history.

The success of the U-2 might have made the difference between the United States' survival or not. The Soviet Union was developing an intercontinental ballistic missile(ICBM). Tensions between us(US(get it? J )) and the Soviet Union were growing. The Soviet Union had ten times as many troops, eight times as many tanks, and four times as many airplanes as the US.

So, since our military sucked, we developed the U-2. It was designed to fly at least fifteen thousand feet higher than any airplane had ever flown, and had the best(highest-resolution cameras) in the world.

See, we were developing our own long-range bomber, the B-52, to counter the Soviet bomber Bison. But the B-52 would be almost useless because our intelligence didn't know where the _______ Soviet bases and key industrial areas were. There was a massive amount of snooping to be done. Thus, since the U-2 was used for intelligence purposes, the U-2 began not as an Air Force plane, but for the CIA. The U-2 was code named Rainbow, and it cost only $1 million per plane(believe me, when you have planes costing $300 million, it's nice to have one that costs 300 times lessJ ).

The U-2 began spying on July 4, 1956. For five years the U-2's cameras took photos of ICBM testing sites and air bases at over 70,000 feet above the most secretive society on earth. The U-2 first proved that there was no bomber gap between the United States and the Soviet Union, as was previously suspected. Finally, we ended snooping on May 1, 1960, when Francis Gary Powers was shot down, arrested, and sent to prison.