August 19th 1960; The United States pilot, Francis Gary Powers, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison by a Soviet military court. Powers had pleaded guilty to spying for the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) after his plane was shot down on 1 May at an altitude of about 68,000 ft (20,760 m), south of Sverdlovsk, 850 miles (1,368 km) east of Moscow.
The charge sheet said the route taken by Powers "left no doubt that it was a deliberate intrusion into the air space of the Soviet Union with hostile purposes". Powers told the court the U-2 was designed and built for high-altitude flights. He had been told it could fly beyond the reach of anti-aircraft fire.