Posted on 11/26/2003 10:23:17 PM PST by BenLurkin
They are among the most recognizable aircraft in the world: U-2, SR-71 Blackbird, B-2 stealth bomber and F-117 stealth fighter.
But in the beginning, few outside the cloistered world of their development knew of their existence.
There were rumors of strange black shapes in the skies over Area 51 in Nevada's desert. But not even the families of those who designed, built and flew these top-secret machines knew what was really taking shape.
Now, many of the tales of those "black world" airplanes can be told. Six pilots from those programs shared their stories recently at the Society of Experimental Test Pilots' symposium in Los Angeles.
"I don't remember anything at all," U-2 test pilot Kenneth Weir joked. "You just go out there and forget everything you know about the program."
One thing Weir distinctly remembered about flying the high-altitude reconnaissance plane was landing it. "The landing characteristics of the U-2 were as difficult as any plane I've ever flown," Weir said. "That's the most difficult plane to land that ever was."
Because the pilots had no good way of determining the optimum angle to approach the runway, the aircraft had a tendency to "porpoise" - pitch up and down - on landing. "If you made good landing out of 50 … you were really proud of that," Weir said.
The U-2 was followed by the high-altitude and high-speed Blackbirds: the A-12 and its descendents, the YF-12 and SR-71.
In its time, the A-12 was the only plane capable of Mach 3 speeds.
Jim Eastham remembered seeing the A-12 at Lockheed's Skunk Works. "This is something come right out of science fiction," he said he remembered thinking.
Eastham went on to pilot the first flight of the YF-12, a version intended to be an interceptor.
"It was a piece of cake," Eastham said.
However, he qualified his statement by reminding the audience that he had previously flown the B-58 Hustler, a supersonic bomber.
"After the B-58, everything was easy," Eastham said.
Bob Gilliland piloted the first flight of the SR-71 after personally asking designer Clarence "Kelly" Johnson to be placed on the program. "We used to have an emergency on every flight, and often multiple emergencies," he said.
On its maiden flight, with several items not working, Gilliland questioned raising the landing gear once airborne. Thinking "I have great confidence in the escape system," he said he finally decided to raise the gear.
Ken Dyson was a pilot on two related programs that were the epitome of black world endeavors: HAVE BLUE and TACIT BLUE, precursors to the F-117 and B-2.
When HAVE BLUE began in 1976, the goal was to build and demonstrate an airplane "with an unbelievable small cross-section" that would not be easy to spot using radar, he said.
The design was very similar to what the F-117 looks like today, with a faceted surface and highly swept wings.However, "we did not take pictures," so few photographs of the aircraft exist today, he said.
The first demonstrator aircraft crashed during an airworthiness test in 1978; Dyson was flying the chase plane.
When the landing gear would not come down, the pilot ejected and the airplane crashed.
The pilot survived; as for the wreckage, "it was taken care of," Dyson said.
Dyson flew the second aircraft in the program, which proved to be so successful at eluding radar that only the chase plane could be spotted during test flights. On what was to be the aircraft's last flight, Dyson was forced to eject when the hydraulic systems failed.
By that time, the program had proven the stealthy technologies that would be put to use in the F-117, which had already begun.
"They invented the cure; it was up to us to come up with the disease," said Tom Morgenfeld, test pilot for the F-117. "The thing we had to do is transform this technology into a viable airplane."
Like other black programs, working in the top-secret environment had advantages and disadvantages.
"You'd like to come home and say 'Honey, guess what we did today,' " Morgenfeld said. However, keeping it secret also meant "you can get on with the work."
While work progressed on the F-117, stealth technology development continued in secret with TACIT BLUE.
"The first time I saw it, I had to do a double-take," Dyson said of the aircraft often referred to as "Whale." About the size of an F-5 fighter, the aircraft had a bulbous body and straight wings. The engines were inside, with an air inlet on top.
Dyson said he remembers thinking, "It looks like a whale; it will probably fly like a whale. It did."
The aircraft made 135 flights during the three-year program.
Stealth technology progressed even further with the B-2. Richard Crouch was co-pilot on the bomber's first flight, from the production facility at Palmdale's Air Force Plant 42 to Edwards Air Force Base.
The flying-wing design of the bomber created problems in developing the flight control system. In simulations, the pilot could not make a successful landing.
The designers consulted Max Stanley, who flew an earlier flying wing, the YP-49. Stanley told them that the simulators were programmed wrong for the landing characteristics of a flying wing.
"In the end, Max was right," Crouch said. "It's very hard not to have a good landing in the airplane."
Since working out some early bugs, the B-2 has emerged as a successful and potent part of the Air Force arsenal.
"It's been a good airplane," Crouch said.
While the program originally called for 132 aircraft, only 21 were built.
Or perhaps a remotely piloted aircraft, perhaps?
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