The incident was the shooting down of a United States U-2 spy plane in May 1960.
The Soviets shot down an American spy plane over Russia and captured the pilot who parachuted safely. The plane was hit by a surface-to-air missile and crashed near Sverdlovsk.
The U.S. authorities disclaimed initially any knowledge of espionage flights over the Soviet Union but were forced later to acknowledge the mission's true purpose, when confronted with the captured pilot and some parts of the U-2 surveillance equipment.
This incident appeared during the presidency of Dwight. D. Eisenhower and the premiership of Nikita Khrushchev. The two leaders met at Camp David in 1959 to discuss the Cold War and some concessions the Soviet Union was prepared to make. The following plane incident caused a great embarrassment to the United States, it caused a deterioration in the relations between these two countries. A summit meeting in Geneva was scrapped, as were Eisenhower's plans to visit the Soviet Union.
