[DogByte6RER]

The Air Force's U-2 spy plane first took flight in August 1955 and has been in commission ever since.

[DogByte6RER]

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

[TheRhinelander]

My dad designed the hanger for the U2. He had no idea what plane he was doing it for at the time.

[gaijin]

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.

[Boogieman]

Looks like a modern one they’ve covered with radar-reflective coating, maybe?

[gaijin]

I think the a/c feature is the TR-1...?

[maine yankee]

ping

[rockinqsranch]

Ping to LucyT

[Western Phil]

U-2 flight to Cortez: http://www.hmhfp.info/SG_09E.html

[Darksheare]

U-2 landing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oOU_0Pi9W0

Longer landing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih57FiOeZXU

Darn roadhogs they are.

[razorback-bert]

My cousin is flying these.

[martin_fierro]

For me, the most surprising thing in this manual is the amount of New Yorker-ish cartoons involving a very flexible, anthrpomorphized U-2 plane. They're pretty great, and I love that in planning this very no-nonsense flight manual for a top-secret, wildly expensive plane, some government official made the decision that some little cartoons would really perk this thing up, and had a cartoonist hired, and possibly given security clearance.

(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.

[Terry L Smith]

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.

[Cicero]

I remember the day.

[hattend]

BTTT