U-2 Spy Plane

That was wonderful! I probably would have paid to see that - thank you, Tim...

When they hit 70 Angels I got a chill...the jockey probably enjoyed having a newbie aboard, someone who could feel a fraction of what he feels/sees every flight...good stuff!

 

Makes you wish you could trade places with him.

 

The temporary wheel/strut assemblies are called pogos. Upon landing the pogos are replaced by ground crew before taxiing back to the hanger. Under certain conditions a crew member may sit on each of the wing tips to help keep the pogos in place while taxiing.

You can see a clip of some of the training May went through at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfP8Mm_1fXw
The clip also contains some different flight footage, but some duplication of the other clip, too. Some humorous spots, too.

May's pilot, probably because of the novice on board, was a bit restrained on his take-off climb. A better example of a more-typical takeoff climb angle can be seen at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94h5LbJ_MLc at the 0:42sec mark. Had that been a mission flight and not an air show, the pilot would have continued that climb angle almost all the way to mission altitude.

The thing that's always amazed me about the U-2 is that at altitude there's a very fine line between minimum and maximum speed, only a little over 10mph---too slow and the plane stalls; too fast and the wings are ripped off. The pilots who flew---and still fly---the U-2 were/are right on the edge all of the time. The higher the altitude, the smaller the margin between min/max.

Kelly Johnson, who designed the U-2 and my favorite, the SR-71 Blackbird, among other well-known planes, was indeed a genius. Ben Rich's book Skunk Works, about Lockheed's "sooper-seekrit" shop that Kelly Johnson ran, is a great book with behind-the-scenes info on the U-2, Kelly Johnson and the Skunk Works in general. A lot of fascinating technical info if you're so inclined, like that it takes two 454 Chevrolet big-block engines to start the SR-71's engines, though I think I got the latter tidbit from Brian Shul's excellent book Sled Driver, which is about flying the SR-71.

 

Sorry, I didn't mean to embed the videos in my previous post...only the links...not sure how I did that...

 

Ah, the Blackbird...

I was stationed in northern Thailand in late '74, doing damage control with the Thai Border Guard, blowing up equipment, etc...one night we alerted, were told to set up a perimeter at the local airstrip...an SR-71 came in for some reason - they had the damn tarps covering that thing before it even rolled to a stop!! Stayed there for a couple of hours, then the covers came off, it lit the candles, and that 'Bird was gone!

Never found out what happened - I thought about snapping some pictures, but 'they' probably would have had to shoot me...

 

That must be the ultimate dream for speed freaks. (me as well)

 

@Caliban...
At least you were one of the lucky few who saw the SR-71 while it was "working"...not many people did. Shame they're not flying anymore for their original purpose because nothing can touch them except a few sophisticated SAMs. NASA is still flying a bird, I think, or maybe it's NOAA, as a research vehicle.

I remember reading once of a guy on a commercial airliner idly looking out the window and seeing a tanker flying parallel a mile or so away. Few minutes later a Blackbird showed up, tucked underneath the tanker, took a few gulps of go juice, backed off, then rolled to the side, lit the burners, pulled the nose way up and was out of sight in just a few seconds...what a sight that would have been, and what a ride, too.

 

Few years ago, a local airshow had a U-2 on display - I was amazed at how simple the cockpit looked, opposed to other planes - of course, I realize that a lot of stuff was stripped, but still: almost like strapping a saddle on a rocket engine and saying "Giddy-Yup"!

 

@ Caliban,
Yep, a saddle on a rocket engine is pretty much it. Flight instrumentation isn't all that much more than one would have in a well-equipped, powered sailplane, which is pretty much what a U-2 is, with accent on the "power."

 

Beautiful aircraft . . . such capability in a design from the 60's, no less.

My son used to have a poster of a Blackbird with the caption "Catch me if you can"

 

One of the amusing things to me about the development of the Blackbird is that, because of the high temperatures involved, it was the first plane to extensively use titanium. So what's so funny about that, you ask? Well, the only decent supplier of titanium at the time was the USSR, so the CIA set up a front to import titanium to use to build a plane to spy on the USSR ...though of course that wasn't the plane's only use.

 

this is better livery

 

Interesting thread.

 

I used to have a matchbox sized blackbird plane that i used to play with all the time as a kid. It was heavy duty and let me tell you it hurt when you stepped on it in the middle of the night haha