Member-only story
This isn’t the kind of piece I write very often, but then, it isn’t often a legend is retired. Even though it happened over 3 decades ago, I think it deserves mention.
Some may have forgotten.
Francis Gary Powers, U.S. U2 reconnaissance (read spy) pilot, was shot down on May 1, 1960 at an altitude of 70,000 feet over the then USSR by a SAM (surface-to-air missile) over the Ural Mountains.
Before a missile took him out, Soviet jets had scrambled but could not access the altitude at which Powers was flying.
Powers left a USAF base in Peshawar, Pakistan, which I visited when I lived in Afghanistan during the late 1960s.
Here’s a bit more information:
Powers parachuted to safety and was captured by the KGB.
This event caused the USA not a little embarrassment. The Soviets cancelled a previous scheduled conference with the U. S., England and France. Dwight Eisenhower and Nikita Khrushchev were the respective leaders of their countries at that time.
