Francis Gary Powers, an Air Force test pilot, was born on October 17, 1929, in Jenkins, Kentucky. In May of 1960, Powers was shot down over Russia while piloting the Lockheed U-2 Jet Spy Plane over the Ural Mountains. On August 19, 1960, Francis Gary Powers was sentenced to ten years "deprivation of liberty" by a three-man Russian military tribunal, on charges of spying against the Soviet Union. Colonel Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, a Russian Espionage Agent sentenced to 30 years in prison by the United States, was exchanged for U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers in 1962.
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