The Defining Moment When the World Learned America Lied

In May of 1960, at the height of the Cold War when nuclear weapons were pointed, Soviet Russia shot down a manned American spy plane; this moment in history would go down as “The U-2 Incident.”  Tensions between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. had reached a pinnacle. Two weeks prior to the incident, the two had agreed to to meet at the East-West summit in an effort to dull them.

The flight took place after the U.S. had made a commitment to keep spy planes out of the U.S.S.R. airspace, making the flight an act of aggression. President Eisenhower knew any such act would spur the arms race that would later be referred to as “brinksmanship via the threat of massive retaliation” by the father of communist containment, John F. Dulles.

On May 5th 1960, four days after the incident, the US government sent out a press release informing the American people that a plane piloted by an American had gone missing north of Turkish airspace. They cited a problem with oxygen intake as the likely problem causing the pilot to pass out. Based off of Khrushchev’s vague information, the US had assumed the pilot dead and planned to cover up the act to the American people.

When the U.S.S.R. confronted the US about the transgression, they denied it out right. The Soviets brought forth plane wreckage, but the US still denied wrong doing. Finally the U.S.S.R. revealed that they had captured the American pilot of the plane, whom under suspected torture revealed he was American.

The US had no room to continue it’s denial of the incident and was forced to come clean. Their very public denials of the event were undone by new information gathered, and America was left deeply shamed and humiliated.