Soviets Downed Own Plane in 1960 U-2 Incident

The Soviet army newspaper Red Star disclosed for the first time Sunday that when the Soviets downed Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 spy plane 30 years ago, they also destroyed one of their own fighters that was pursuing the American plane.

The U-2 was downed on May 1, 1960, disrupting a summit meeting 19 days later in Paris between President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev and forcing the cancellation of another summit planned for later that year.

Red Star also disclosed for the first time that the Soviets had sent up a new fighter plane and ordered its pilot to ram the U-2 in a suicide mission. The new fighter almost reached the U-2’s altitude but failed to ram it.

Red Star said that Khrushchev was atop Lenin’s Mausoleum on Red Square watching the May Day parade when he learned that a new Soviet SAM-2 missile had brought down the U-2.

The commander of the Soviet air defense forces, Marshal Sergei Biryuzov, climbed the mausoleum “carrying happy news, that the plane had been hit by the first rocket,” the article said.

Soviets hurrying to the May Day parade in the Ural Mountain city of Sverdlovsk saw what appeared to be fireworks high in the air, said the article, signed by a Col. A. Dokuchayev.

The fiery debris was not fireworks but a Soviet MIG-19 that was hit by the same type of missile that exploded behind Power’s U-2 and damaged it, Red Star said in the most detailed version of the Soviet military action.

Powers’ mission began in Pakistan and was to have carried him over Sverdlovsk for a landing in Norway.