2/19/2023 0 Comments U2 aircraft“Kelly” Johnson of Lockheed’s secret “Skunk Works” facility, chief designer of the U-2. (USAF) Related: Kelly Johnson: How one man changed aviation foreverĬonfident that the effort was possible, Lt. You can learn more about this incredible initiative in our full feature about it here or watch our YouTube video about it below.Ĭlarence L. Flatley and his crew proved the Lockheed cargo planes could be used to resupply carriers at sea, though the challenge of doing so proved too great for the Navy’s interests at the time. In October of that year, then Lieutenant James Flatley III would make history successfully landing and taking off from the deck of the USS Forrestal multiple times in an absolutely massive C-130 Hercules. Project White Taleġ963 was a red-letter year for the Navy’s flat tops and for famed aviation firm Lockheed. If finding an alternative to foreign airstrips seemed worthwhile before, it seemed essential after 1960. Further diplomatic and political fallout reverberated around the world, from Washington D.C. Powers’ U-2 had taken off from an airstrip in Pakistan’s capital city of Peshawar, and in the aftermath of the incident, relations between Pakistan and the U.S. being able to defeat Soviet defenses with altitude alone, saw Powers captured and placed in prison for two years, and in the moment, was a significant setback for American foreign policy. On May 1 of that year, a U-2 spy plane flown by CIA pilot Gary Powers was shot down by a Soviet SA-2 high-altitude surface-to-air missile. Then, in 1960, the need for an alternative to foreign airstrips became much more pressing. But the CIA knew this reliance on the goodwill of foreign partners was a strategic shortcoming, and they started looking for alternatives as early as 1957, just a few years after the U-2 first entered service for the intelligence agency. Instead, U-2s often operated from airstrips in foreign nations, with on-the-record flights departing from Cyprus, France, India, Pakistan, Thailand, South Korea and more. The U-2’s original fuel range of around 3,000 miles gave it the ability to cover a ton of ground, but not enough to operate from American-based airstrips when keeping tabs on far-flung opponents in places like the Soviet Union. In fact, the U-2 has flown off America’s carriers on more than one occasion. But like so many defense programs throughout the Cold War, seeming impossible was never really seen as a valid reason not to make something work. If it’s that hard to bring a U-2 spy plane to safe stop on the controlled surface of an Air Force landing strip, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that it might be impossible to put the capably-but-finicky Dragon Lady on the U.S. On a windy, rough air day, the Mobil can be extremely busy helping the pilot ride a 40,000 pound bicycle down the runway!” “These calls tell the pilot how far off the ground he/she is, whether or not they are line up with center line, if the wings are level, and if any control inputs are needed. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Alexis Siekert) Once the U-2 is about ten feet off the ground, the pilot in the chase car, referred to as the “Mobil Officer,” has to relay the exact position of the aircraft and its far-flung wingtips to the pilot who’s flying nearly blind inside. “That car has to be able to accelerate from zero to close to 100 mph in a turn to come into position behind the airplane on the runway,” LaValley explained. The Air Force uses all sorts of cars for the job, from Camaros to Audis, just as long as they can keep pace with a jet-powered spy plane as it comes in for a landing. In order to make it feasible to land safely, the pilot in the U-2 has to rely on another rated pilot chasing the aircraft down the runway in a sports car to provide direction as it closes with the ground. To make matters worse for the pilot when landing, the bottom section of the front canopy of the U-2 has been known to fog up on humid days, further limiting visibility.
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