Cold War - The U2 Incident Essay - 901 Words

Cold War - The U2 Incident After WWII, tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union began to increase. This period of time is referred to as the Cold War which â€Å"begins in 1945 with the Yalta conference and ends in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.† The United States and the Soviet Union both greatly distrusted the other and feared the nuclear power that they both had during this time. One incident that illustrates this distrust is commonly referred to as the U-2 incident of May 1, 19960, in which an American U-2 spy plane was shot down in Soviet controlled airspace and captured by the Soviets. This single incident is said to have been a â€Å"disastrous setback to the reduction of international tension.†Ã¢â‚¬ ¦show more content†¦Approaching Sverdlovsk, site of an air base, Powers activated his cameras. As he flew over the airfield, the plane suddenly bucked violently then went into a spin. Thrown sideways, Powers could not reach his eject or destruct butt ons so he bailed out. He was soon captured but did not swallow the poison capsule with which he had been provided for use in the event of his being tortured – which he was not. Powers was imprisoned by the Soviets for a year and a half until he was exchanged for an important Soviet spy, Rudolph Abel, and returned to his country. The United States response began as a total cover-up and progressed through many versions of the facts. After the plane was shot down, the United States’ first announcement was that an â€Å"unarmed weather research plane based at Adana, Turkey, and piloted by a civilian American† was missing. First the government stated that the pilot was a civilian employee of the Lockheed corporation flying a U-2 plane chartered by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. On May 7 the State Department announced that the plane was an unarmed civilian U-2 collecting intelligence and blamed the Soviet Union’s â€Å"excessive secrecy† for our need to spy on them. In a news conference statement by President Eisenhower on May 11, he lists four points: (1) intelligence-gathering activities are needed; (2) intelligenceShow MoreRelatedSurveillance Technology And The Cold War1061 Words   |  5 Pages Zach Bemben Literature of War Mrs. Rozema 11/6/17 Surveillance Technology and the Cold War Introduction and Thesis Hook: â€Å"In 1945, one major war ended and another began.†(Ushistory.org) Thesis: In the Cold War through the creation and improvement of surveillance technology such as satellite surveillance, nuclear submarines, and surveillance aircraft to give superior intelligence while being totally undetected or invulnerable from the enemy. 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