A chance to look through the eyes of a novice if, like me, you’ve never been to flight level 700.
An interesting feature of the U-2 is the very narrow band – typically 5 knots – between stall speed and critical Mach number at its service ceiling.
The wheel dollies on the wings fall away after take-off – any of the USAF folks (or others) know why she doesn’t just tip over on a wing after slowing to crawl?
Incredible. Bad news: Copule this with the prior post: How much longer will we be able to produce aerospace transport like this. much as the Russians are apporaching the demise of their shipbuilding industry?
Good news: AWESOME!
Other thought: And juts arrogant are we, small flesh and blood creatures, to think we can have control over the vastness of our planet and all the complexities it is? Silly humans we certainly are, when you get a view like that.
Actually, they do tend to get a tip down and spin off the runway; I’ve seen video of this. Awesome aircraft, Kelly Johnsons legacy lives on…
Lex,
Back in the olden days when I saw them landing in Thailand, a couple of 1960s vintage Ford station wagons (Air Force blue) would chase them down the runway and position themselves under each wing-tip to “catch” the plane. When the plane (and station wagons) stopped with the wings resting on the station wagon roofs, crews would hop out and reattach the dollies. Repeat as needed.
Today, they apparently use the Pontiac GTOs. Ain’t progress wonderful?
[He used gobsmacked -- right out of the old Lex-icon.]
We have one up here in Norcal that yousta be operated by NASA. This is the one that did traps and deck runs from CV-66. Truly an amazing A/C, and over fifty years old.
Think they’ll get 100 years from the design?
Looking like the B-52s will be in service til 2050….:)
Built Boeing Tuff
I love the sense of humor displayed by the (1) magazine (2) hands over visor (3) perp walk at the end. Thank you.
Expressive wording aside, this kinda explains it…”She hates me”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eamnTyfkUBY
Those were some pretty sporty landings! Thanks for that, Rob. AND the earworm… Now I’ll be thinking about the ex- all freakin’ day.
Talking about the 5kt band, the stability of the aircraft at that operational altitude and airspeed was/is so “tender” that the twin cameras that were the the standard mount each had the motors that wound the film that provided the resultant long, rectangular split imagery placed opposite each other; one pulling film towards the nose, the other to the tail, so that the torque of the motors both turning the same direction wouldn’t up-set the trim when the cameras were turned on. It was/is THAT delicately balanced.
Magnificent – Top Gear Both! Lucky BathPlug. Top Show – Top Gear.
That show rocks and May is a pilot himself – I think he has a Luscombe.
It’s this sort of thing that I can never explain to my friends, my kids, why I love flying so much. Even as low as we were with the P-3’s it was still a wonderful thing. To see the earth at night, flying in a darkened ship up the coastline…. and they PAID me to do it!
“Captain Slow” gets a lot of grief from the other two clowns who host Top Gear, but damn if he doesn’t get the choice assignments to make up for it. Last year he got to wind a 1,000+ hp Bugatti Veyron up to (and past) its theoretical design speed, and now this.
Jeremy Clarkson couldn’t get the assignment because he is of the belief that everything American is crap. That, plus they couldn’t find a U-2 pilot who would put up with him for the duration of the flight.
MB, just an example of the sardonic, self-deprecating humour in the TOP GEAR Team. They are side splitting hilarious – all of them – including ‘THE STIG’. English humour at its best, from whence Oz humour originates. OK cobber?
have to agree about Clarkson. he’s always putting in some snarky comment about America on Top Gear
PK, I prefer ’snarky’ in this sense (2nd para) “Snarky means critical in an annoying, sarcastic, grumpy, wisecracking, or cynical sort of way.” http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=383533
“Cop this lot, eh?” More like a couple of Ities from King’s Bloody Cross trying to force wine onto the menu instead of beer…”
I used to love those Aussie writers, especially John O’Grady (Nino Culotta). “They’re A Wierd Mob”, “Aussie Etiket or Doing Things the Aussie Way “, etc.
heh..
AW1t, you would enjoy Afferbeck Lauder’s “Let Stalk Strine” then (Emma Chisit?): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afferbeck_Lauder
What?!!! You don’t like them anymore? I love those books! I thought “Gone Fishing” was brilliant. “No Kava for Johnny” not so much but the Nino books were great and hard to find.
Oh, and to stay on blogtopic, when they discuss the relative merits of the super connies and their bendy wings, that was a good bit.
here is a video of the U2 carrier trials
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_3WeYXDKQ0
Wonderfully enjoyable… thanks, Lex, for finding this for us.
Agree, thanks for finding this Lex. Most enjoyable.
Never saw the U-2 at any of the bases I was at, but had the pleasure of spending many hours watching the Habu take-off and land. Very graceful plane [though it may have been due to the skills of the USAF pilots]
Ron, I can remember U-2 pilots attending our RC-135 briefings at Mildenhall but never any Habu pilots at either Kadena or Mildenhall. I was impressed that the U-2 drivers were interested in what we were gonna be doing while they cruised above us at 70,000.
RJ, Kadena is where I spent time watching the SR-71 from various vantage points around the flightline. Wish I had my Nikon D40 back then!
I guess to be fair, when working in concert with the Habu out of Kadena we had to launch hours ahead of them to be on station for their recon pass off the target nation. They could complete their mission in a couple of hours while we had other things to do and remained on station long after they went home. On return to Kadena on occasion we’d taxi past a Habu sitting outside the hangars, and I’d swear that bird was smirking at us. Try explaining to kids today about visionary engineers and what they did with slide rules!
Anyone notice that the pilot was wearing glasses? I thought you couldn’t be a military pilot and need them?
Might be CIA…..
That’s why they call them “cheaters”. Not an uncommon item in more than one carrier pilot helmet bag — taken out only for recoveries.
prolly CIA with the glasses…I had a buddy that flew them for the CIA and quit the day after Gary Powers was shot down by the commies…
My understanding was that you could not ‘enter’ the program if you wore glasses, but once you were ‘in’, your eyesight could be corrected.
Same as when I tried to fly helicopters at ‘Mother Rucker’ in ‘67 and was told that, had I cheated on the eye exam, I could have done it and worn glasses after acceptance. Too soon old, too late smart.
Cheers!
ChrisP
Here’s more Top Gear hijinks involving planes and airports.
Must go through a lot of tires.
ChrisP is right – at least as far as Army Aviation is concerned. You can’t get IN to the program wearing glasses but if they become necessary after you’re in, it’s no problem.
Incredible video, Lex. Thanks!
Stop whining about Clarkson taking the piss, it’s not like you don’t give us Limey’s a hard time amd who have we got left, we can’t even call the Germans ‘Huns’ anymore without the PC police banging us up for ‘inciting racial hatred’.
And if you think you get a hard time guess which country an English writer has just christened ‘Limey Mexico’.
SB, nothing personal, but it was whining that got us started off on our own a few years ago.
Even when stationary, with enough of a breeze the ailerons provide enough differential lift that you can actually pick a wing up off the ground and hold the aircraft level. Don’t need no stink’n pogos…
When I flew gliders we used to roll to a stop and sit there balanced for up to a minute, or until it became boring, which was usually much sooner, after you have done it several times. A little breeze is enough to make it quite easy. Since the wings had a lot of mass and the tips were only about 2 feet of the ground, when you let it down it was very gentle, and the tips had a little downward curl to form a resting point.
The bicycle arrangement (or in our case a center wheel and tailskid) is pretty sweet for crosswind landings and takeoffs too. No need to crab, just put the upwind wing down and you track just fine.
Dumb question… How do you steer a U-2 when taxiing? I assume differential breaking wouldn’t buy you much, but steerable gear seems like it would add a lot of weight.
When we were down in Panama in 1992-several of our maintenance guys got know some of the U-2 guys. At Howard, at least, they used to have a guy lay on top of the right wing to hold the wheel down while the airplane taxied back. A couple of our guys volunteered and got their pictures made “riding the wing”.
If you are in Osan each day about noon, you can watch them take off. They make a ton of noise when the depart.
While on my first Joint penance tour, the Dragonlady was a central part of my daily (some cases, hourly) life. So much so that (a) when the USAF proposed to kill it off like they had (successfully) the SR-71 prior to my arrival, I was assigned to be the Agency’s spokesman in fora concerning the U-2’s future, many of which were USAF-hosted. Talk about Daniel in the lion’s den, imagine my chagrin to be the only khaki in a sea of AF blue on more than one occasion whilst defending the a/c (and missions); and (b) I came this close ][ to getting a flight in the T-bird, but would have had to extend another 2 months to make it happen. Had to decline as I was leaving at the 21-month point to get to my command tour… Still, for all the time working with the plane, her sensors, the special missions flown and most importantly, those who flew and maintained her, the U-2 will forever hold a special spot in this Scribe’s heart…
- SJS
SJS/
Of course the reason the AF killed off the Blackbird is that it was coming out of their budgetary hide and during crunch time something had to go, while the U2 was a CIA/SRO budget deal (even those the AF flew), IIRC. That, and the fact it siphoned off some of our best pilots and isolated/stove-piped them such that it was hard to promote them in numbers to higher commands due to lack of the right punched staff school tickets, experience in larger commands, etc.
Worked at EUCOM with a U2 guy. Talk about LD/HD assets… About as small a club as the RF-8 guys got to be, towards the end.
From flight level 700 – think one then needs to try this, flight level “nuthing”
(Sitting in the front – well more like standing
)
Flying the Fe-2B
Wrong thread error
At altitude the Dragon lady burns less fuel than at idle on the ground, I’m told.
True, Tailspin. Think about it, the fuel is the same but the amount of O2 available to burn it has lessened dramatically. Thus, to maintain a proper fuel-air mixture with so much less air you simply insert less fuel.
I’d be interested to find what fuel consumption was on the SR-71 at altitude, it having to expend all sorts of power and hence fuel to remain at such a high speed. The U2, though, being basically a slightly-powered glider, had no need for gratuitous thrust to remain at her top speed and altitude.
The U2 and SR-71’s were very well suited to specific missions, and they did them better than anything anybody ever came up with. Gotta give the nod to the SR-71 though — there’s just something awfully sexy about being at the same altitude at mach 3+, and shock diamonds in the exhaust ain’t nothing either.
– Max
Used to have my office a couple blocks from Moffatt Field, you could see the big NASA wind tunnel out the window.
Back then, an U2 would launch mid-morning most days during the week, making a huge racket. They’d recover later in the afternoon, and you could watch a pickup truck or two running down the runway parallel with the aircraft to catch the wing tip so it wouldn’t drag.
Worked just fine the couple times I managed to catch a landing.
Saw these a lot at Alconbury. U-2 ops are fascinating. Spent some time with a group of people-one of them being a U-2 pilot- going to Duxford on the weekends and helping to strip paint and pull old wires from a P-51 as part of some volunteer work. The then 17RW wing king had a MiG-17 kill from Vietnam when then flying F-105s a 17 just kind of drifted in front of his gun when he was pulling off a target.
Great system and still versatile. You can retask these faster/better than a Global Hawk. The mission is still needed.