The Air Force's U-2 spy plane first took flight in August 1955 and has been in commission ever since.
Posted on 01/08/2013 3:17:20 PM PST by DogByte6RER
The Air Force's U-2 spy plane first took flight in August 1955 and has been in commission ever since.
For direct reference to the U-2 Flight Manual ...
Utility Flight Hb 1 Mar 1959
http://www.scribd.com/doc/119476487/Utility-Flight-Hb-1-Mar-1959
My dad designed the hanger for the U2. He had no idea what plane he was doing it for at the time.
Heard a rumor once from a well-placed source that Powers in fact was NOT shot-down; the plane had a BOMB aboard —some human asset the bad guys had aquired, and that person had access to the plane.
Looks like a modern one they’ve covered with radar-reflective coating, maybe?
I think the a/c feature is the TR-1...?
TR-1 = U-2R.
Updated, upgraded, but still the curmudgeonly jet powered sailplane the original model was.
ping
Ping to LucyT
U-2 flight to Cortez: http://www.hmhfp.info/SG_09E.html
U-2 landing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oOU_0Pi9W0
Longer landing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih57FiOeZXU
Darn roadhogs they are.
My cousin is flying these.
I knew a U2 pilot who is now deceased.
They were based in Del Rio, Texas. He said they would go into Mexico where a Mexican general would treat them to great meals.
One thing he mentioned which I noticed on this article was how tricky they were to land. He said they had so much lift that any breeze would throw it around.
"world headquarters for U2s was DM.....then to Beale when the SR71 program shut down...from an old pogo chaser
No rocket from the old USSR.
No bomb.
The rotten bad luck of a custom built/tuned engine having a compressor failure at the worst possible time.
(I tell this story over & over) Some years back I ordered a bunch of souvenirs from the L-M Skunk Works Gift Shoppe down in Palmdale, CA. Makers of the baddest-assed, highest-tech, stealthiest planes on the planet.
When they arrived the box was sealed with gaily-colored tape with smiley faces on it.
It was the darndest thing, doncha know!
For my 3 years stationed at U-Tapao Royal Thai naval Air Field, for a plane that was to be so secret, precisely at 7a.m., every morning that engine would roar, and off it would go on its mission du jour. You could set your watch by that! For all of us who lived ‘off-base’, if you heard that, and on ‘day shift’, you had better be on your way towards the gate, or on the road to your duty station.
Would I, as a private citizen, wish to acquire and fly one, today? It’s a cool aircraft. It is not meant to be terribly fast, as it a powered sailplane. But, also, as a powered sailplane, the plus/minus operational speed was very narrow, too. Since the ‘removed equipment, dials, and gadgetry’ would affect the balance, even if compartment-formed dead weights were in place, because it is a powered sailplane. The engine, originally, was an engine from a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, which has a misnomer as ‘a piloted missile with landing gear’. So, you have a V-12, to do straight line flying! As I recall, optimal airspeed, before the airframe fragility became a factor, was in the 400 mph range. What fun is that? A powered sailpane, (a Chevette of sorts), with a supersonic jet fighter engine installed, (a V-12 of sorts), with a narrow speed before heel-breaks-loose fragility in the 400 mph range, ( a speed governor on that V-12 engine).
I think I would err on safety’s side, and pass.
I am sure you are right about their headquarters but I am also sure what Colonel Cartwright said. He said they flew out of Del Rio, Texas.
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