Diary of a Spy
Events that made the U-2 the world's most famous player in the game of espionage.
- By Paul Hoversten
- Air & Space magazine, May 2012
(Page 2 of 2)
“The reaction of the U-2 people is hardly surprising…they refer to the SR-71 as the ‘sled,’ and since the sled drivers seem to make a more romantic impression on the public, they are said to deliberately fly towards thunderstorms because they mistake them for camera flashbulbs,” Gann wrote. Ultimately, U-2 pilots had the last laugh: The Blackbird was retired in 1999, while the Dragon Lady continues to fly.
The U-2 also got a new name—TR-1—after going into production for the third time. The spyplane was essentially the same as the second variant, the U-2R, but was updated for tactical reconnaissance (hence the “TR”) so it could do high-altitude surveillance of Eastern Europe. The new Dragon Lady featured state-of-the-art cameras and sensors that could peer 300 miles from the aircraft, an advanced imaging radar, and a precision locator to detect enemy radar and surface-to-air-missile sites.
The first TR-1 flew in August 1981, and was first deployed overseas in February 1983.
IT WASN’T LONG BEFORE the U-2 was back in combat. After Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, the Air Force sent the Dragon Lady on photo-reconnaissance missions that imaged most of Iraq, including Baghdad. Included were locations of surface-to-air missile sites. Once the air war began in January 1991, a U-2 was the first aircraft to fly across the Iraqi border; it imaged fixed Scud missile sites at air fields and later recorded bomb damage from the initial F-117 attacks.
According to Air Force assessments, the U-2 provided more than half of all imagery intelligence and 90 percent of the Army’s targeting intelligence against Iraq. “So much for reconnaissance satellites,” writes Pocock. “They were often defeated by haze, smoke, or bad weather, and when they did take useful images, the product was simply not available to the right people at the right time.”
Later in the decade, the U-2 patrolled the conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo and monitored the no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq.
WITH THE NEW CENTURY came modernization. The biggest upgrade for the aircraft was a glass cockpit: three large screens replaced the dials and switches that had been in place since the first flight of the U-2R in 1967. The touch controls were positioned so a pilot wearing the bulky high-pressure suit gloves could easily use them.
After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the U-2 was called to assist in the invasion of Afghanistan by supplying allied ground forces with maps of the terrain. This time the Dragon Lady had company: the Global Hawk and Predator unmanned aerial vehicles. Early in the U-2’s career, some thought the airplane would be replaced by satellites; now the threat was the Global Hawk. But this past January, the Air Force announced that the U-2 would continue to fly surveillance missions because the Global Hawk’s costs kept escalating.
The U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003 marked the U-2’s biggest deployment yet, with at least 15 jets flown by 31 pilots on 169 missions. U-2 pilots were flying every three to four days on missions that averaged 10 to 11 hours.
Today, the U-2 is still flying over Afghanistan, and is expected to fly until around 2023. In the late 1990s, Lockheed Martin performed stress tests on some U-2s to determine the fatigue of the airframes. It turned out that the Dragon Lady has a long fatigue life—75,000 hours—mostly due to its lengthy loiter time at high altitudes, where turbulence is minimal. Even the highest-time U-2 airframes, according to Pocock, are only just approaching 30,000 hours.
Paul Hoversten is the executive editor at Air & Space/Smithsonian.
Comments (4)
I know the USN experimented with launching an U-2 from an carrier but I take exception to your statement: "In 1964, with foreign governments increadingly reluctant to allow basing and over flight rights, the CIA began flying the U-2 off and and onto aircraft carriers". As one who has landed on and taken off from carriers, I would like more documentation as to proof of this statement. The U-2 was a glider with engines....landing aboard an aircraft carrier would have been extremely difficult if not impossible. EDITORS' REPLY: See THIS VIDEO.
Posted by William E Smith on March 30,2012 | 06:56 PM
I was fortunate enough to know U-2 pilot Jim Barnes during his time with NASA. He was one of the pilots who carrier qualified in the aircraft and almost died in the process. His time flying it went back to the cold war days flying over both Cuba and the Soviet Union and he retired having worked on the military's "Star Wars" program, flying air samples from the Mt. St. Helens eruption and many other interesting projects. He would tell you he loved flying high performance aircraft, but remind you he said high performance not high speed. It was really an honor and great history lesson to talk about his work. He would go fly and a while after you heard and then saw his aircraft you had the cool experience of talking about which one he flew and what he was doing. There aren't many people who get to fly at "60 mike mike" (His words for the answer to being asked how high the clasified aircraft could go)and what he shared with me was some of the most interesting aviation stuff I'll ever hear. He died a few years ago, but he certainly won't be forgotten by those of us who knew him.
Posted by Paul Huston on April 4,2012 | 05:28 PM
I remember Ernie Gann visited our squadron when he was doing research for his book, "The Black Watch". He was a great cut-up. Took delight in this U-2 response to the Sled's claim to be faster than a 30-06 - "Yes it's faster. And if neither the Sled nor the 30-06 hits a tanker, they will both hit the ground at the same time!" By the way, every anecdote in Ernie's book is true.
Posted by Mike Danielle on April 27,2012 | 04:40 PM
Landing a U2 on a carrier was not as difficult as William E Smith imagines; the airspeed over the ramp was relatively low (75 knots say, for the U2R), and with the carrier doing say 30knots, the approach was leisurely. I am bound to add too, that the U2 force was ex Air Force!
Richard Cloke (ex RAF).
Posted by Richard Cloke on May 6,2012 | 03:12 PM