Francis Gary Powers served as a pilot in the U.S. Air Force and completed twenty-seven U-2 photographic reconnaissance missions for the CIA, including several overflights of the Soviet Union, until shot down by a Soviet surface-to-air missile on May 1, 1960. Upon his return to the United States in 1962, he flew the U-2 as an engineering test pilot for Lockheed Aircraft. Powers died in a helicopter crash in 1977.