The 1958 C-130 shootdown incident was the shooting down of an American Lockheed C-130A-II-LM reconnaissance aircraft which entered Soviet airspace during a mission in the region of Armenian SSR.

On September 2, 1958, a Lockheed C-130A-II-LM (s/n 56-0528), from the 7406th Support Squadron, departed Incirlik Airbase in Turkey on a reconnaissance mission along the Turkish-Soviet border.

[1] The six flight crew were confirmed dead when their remains were repatriated to the United States, but the 11 intelligence-gathering personnel on board have never been acknowledged by Soviet / Russian authorities.

[2][3][4][5] In 1993, after the fall of the Soviet Union, a US excavation team working in newly-independent Armenia found hundreds of skeletal fragments; two remains were identified.

[4][better source needed] When NSA cryptologists William Hamilton Martin and Bernon F. Mitchell defected to the Soviet Union in 1960, they listed the C-130 flight as one of their reasons.