About Francis Gary Powers
Francis Gary Powers (August 17, 1929 – August 1, 1977) was an American pilot who served as a United States Air Force officer and a CIA employee. Powers is best known for his involvement in the 1960 U-2 incident, when he was shot down while flying a secret CIA spying mission over the Soviet Union. Powers survived, but was captured and sentenced to 10 years in a Soviet prison for espionage. He served 21 months of his sentence before being released in a prisoner swap in 1962. After returning to the US, he worked at Lockheed as a test pilot for the U-2, and later as a helicopter pilot for Los Angeles news station KNBC. He died in 1977, when the KNBC helicopter he was flying crashed. == Early life and education == Powers was born August 17, 1929, in Jenkins, Kentucky, the son of Oliver, a coal miner, and his wife Ida. Powers was the only boy among the family's six children. Oliver, who often struggled to make ends meet, wanted his son to be a physician. When Powers was fourteen, he rode in a Piper Cub airplane at a state fair in West Virginia, sparking his fascination with aviation. During World War II, the Powers family briefly moved to Detroit, where Oliver had taken a job at a defense plant, before returning to Grundy, Virginia, where Powers finished high school.
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