Video: '10th February 1962: Captured U-2 spy plane pilot Gary Powers freed in a prisoner exchange'

(Saturday, February 10, 1962, 8:52 a.m. Central European Time; during the 1960 U-2 incident, part of the Cold War) — The Soviet Union exchanged captured American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers in a well publicized spy swap for Soviet KGB Colonel Vilyam Fisher (aka Rudolf Abel), a Soviet colonel who was caught by the FBI and put in jail for espionage, today in Berlin, at the Glienicke Bridge between Wannsee and Potsdam.

Powers had been shot down over Russia on May 1, 1960 while flying a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Lockheed U-2 spy plane was shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission in Soviet Union airspace, causing the 1960 U-2 incident.

Abel had been arrested in New York on June 21, 1957.

Frederic L. Pryor, a 28-year-old American student who had been arrested in East Berlin on Aug. 25, 1961, was released as part of the deal as well.