By Michael Drummond, foreign news reporter
“My dad was shot down over the Soviet Union,” Gary says. “As a kid I thought it was normal, everybody’s dad goes through this.”
In the thick of the Cold War, an American spy plane flew over Russian missile sites, taking pictures for the CIA.
The US thought that at 70,000 feet, their U-2 aircraft was beyond the reach of Soviet air defences. They were wrong.
What resulted from the downing of the U-2 plane and the capture of pilot Francis Gary Powers was an international incident that could have led to nuclear war.
Sixty-five years later, with conflicts raging in Ukraine, Gaza and elsewhere, militaries around the world still gather intelligence in a game of espionage cat-and-mouse. Could something similar happen again?
Read the full piece here.