U-2 Incident Causes Stress to Mount

America needed to be sure that they were safe from communist Soviet Union and to ensure this, Eisenhower felt it was mandatory to know the Soviet's every move. In Eisenhower's attempt to keep tabs on Soviet's actions, he proposed "open skies" at the Geneva Conference. Open skies would allow Americans to fly over the Soviet Union without getting shot down and vise-versa. It seemed like a good idea because who owns the sky, right? But Khruschev didn't agree with Eisenhower's solution and he ensured Eisenhower that if an American plane was to fly over the Soviet Union it would indeed get shot down. The U.S still didn't know what was going on in the Soviet Union so in order to find out, Eisenhower approved CIA, secret, high altitude flights over Russian territory. The U-2 planes were used for the missions and they were designed to take detailed pictures and to fly high out of reach of antiaircraft fire.
Though the CIA intended that these flights remain a secret, the Soviet Union soon finds out about America's spying. Eisenhower immediately wanted to discontinue the flights in order to allow for negotiations with Khruschev. Though he was convinced the U-2's flights were no longer safe, he was persuaded by John Foster Dulles to have one last flight. On May first, pilot Francis Gary Powers flew a U-2 plane over the Russian's territory for the last time. Powers was shot down by Igor Mentyukov after four hours of observing the Russians. United States denied the shooting and stated that Power's plane had disappeared while making weather observations but Khruschev came out with the truth. He announced that Francis Gary Powers was shot down by a soviet rocket and declared that Powers was captured and that he confessed to America's spying (which America later found out was a lie.) Eisenhower took full responsibility after the incident and Khruschev was so upset that he stormed out of the summit. Now the 1960's started with as much tension as ever.