American pilot Francis Gary Powers became famous for being captured by which country in 1960?

On 1 May 1960, a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down by the USSR Soviet Air Defence Forces while performing photographic aerial reconnaissance deep inside Soviet territory. The single-seat aircraft, flown by pilot Francis Gary Powers (August 17, 1929 – August 1, 1977), was hit by an S-75 Dvina (SA-2 Guideline) surface-to-air missile and crashed near Sverdlovsk (present-day Yekaterinburg). Powers parachuted safely and was captured.

Initially, the US authorities acknowledged the incident as the loss of a civilian weather research aircraft operated by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), but were forced to admit the mission's true purpose when a few days later the Soviet government produced the captured pilot and parts of the U-2's surveillance equipment, including photographs of Soviet military bases taken during the mission.

Powers was convicted of espionage and sentenced to three years of imprisonment plus seven years of hard labour, but was released two years later in February 1962 in a prisoner exchange for Soviet intelligence officer Rudolf Abel.