Gary Powers and the U2 Spy Plane Incident
The CIA, spy planes and tension
between the world’s two super powers. When Francis Gary Powers was shot down
over the Soviet Union in 1960, a story unfolded which would become symbolic of
this period in Cold War history and even the focus of a Hollywood film.
The
U2 Spy Plane was a technological marvel of its time, able to fly at over 70,000
feet and take detailed pictures of the ground while doing so. From 1956,
missions were undertaken to obtain knowledge about the USSR, specifically its
military capabilities. Of course, if the existence of such missions were
discovered by the USSR the results would be potentially disastrous. However, on
the 1st May 1960, Francis Gary Powers’ plane was brought down by a
surface-to-air missile and Powers himself was captured by the soviets.
The Americans were monitoring the
flight and were aware of the plane’s descent and had already presumed the existence
of missiles in the area in which this took place. Although they did not know
for certain that the plane was destroyed or that Powers had died, this was the
presumption made since a U2 plane could not withstand a direct impact from a
missile.[1]
Therefore, it is believed that it must have been a narrow miss that brought the
plane down.[2] Eisenhower
was to meet the Russian leader, Nikita Khrushchev, at the Paris Summit to be
held on 16th May. Therefore, the Americans would fast need to create
a plausible explanation for the aircraft which landed on Soviet territory. Thus,
two days after the incident, NASA reported that a “weather research” aircraft
of theirs was lost near the area.[3]
Khrushchev of course knew the reality of the
situation, and was furious to discover that his country was being spied upon in
this way, and that the Americans had the audacity to lie about it. This was not
only because he now knew the United States had likely uncovered a great deal of
intelligence on his country but because, until 1960, he and Eisenhower had been
on a path to creating a more cordial relationship between the two countries.[4]
Therefore, while this damaged the public perception of the United States
government and gave the Soviet leader an opportunity to publicly denounce his
Cold War adversary, he had not wished for such an opportunity at this point.
Following Khrushchev’s public
condemnation of the United States ahead of the conference, Eisenhower had to
respond. However, he did not provide the apology Khrushchev wanted. Instead he
defended the “vital necessity” of surveillance activities such as this in
statements he made before the Paris Summit and refused to apologise in their tense
meeting. Consequently, Khrushchev left Paris stating that these events had “torpedoed”
the Summit and that he would no longer be able to work with the President.[5]
Although Eisenhower’s term ended
the following year, Kennedy was far more concerned than Eisenhower over the build-up
of Russian missiles than his predecessor. Moreover, he would have to confront
Khrushchev over the Berlin Crisis, the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cuban
Missile Crisis. Therefore, for Khrushchev, the U2 incident can be seen as a
turning point in the Cold War towards a more hostile relationship with the
United States.
Mark Gibson
[1] E.
Bruce Geelhoed, ‘Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Spy Plane, and the Summit: A
Quarter-Century Retrospective’, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 17,
No. 1 (1987), pp. 95-106 (p. 97).
[2] Ibid.
[3] David
Wise and Thomas Ross, The U-2 Affair
(New York: Random House, 1962), p. 75.
[4] James
A. Nathan, ‘A Fragile Dtetente: The U-2
Incident Re-examined’, Military Affairs, Vol. 39, No. 3 (1975),
pp. 97-104 (p. 97).
[5] Ibid
p. 97.
No comments:
Post a Comment