For those of you who haven't seen it, Air & Space magazine has a great set of articles on the U2 this month.

Here's one that amazed me:

http://www.airspacemag.com/military-avi ... c=y&page=1

Vick, my hat is off to you, sir. Beers are on me if I'm ever fortunate enough to make your acquaintance.

Mind boggling stuff:

"The G model was also a small airplane. That was the U-2C that was modified for carrier operations. They put a little different camber on the leading edge of the wing, and put lift spoilers on it, and a tailhook of course."

"When the littler airplane got up to altitude, the margin between the climb speed and the critical Mach number and stall became very, very minor, and we were looking at plus or minus two-and-a-half knots at one particular point in the climb between the climb schedule and critical Mach and stall speed so that’s very very small. When we got the bigger airplanes, we got up to plus or minus seven-and-a-half knots of margin."

"If you encountered buffet, the first thing you did was go faster. You’d assume it was stall buffet, and you wanted to go faster because if you guessed wrong and slowed down, then it would stall and quit flying altogether. It would flip over on its back, and that’s how we lost a lot of the airplanes. It stalled at altitude, it would head straight down, and the tail would snap off."

"I saw that the Q-bay hatch in the partially open position was blocking the landing gear. It wouldn’t let it go down. So that’s when the guys on the ground said I better get out. The Q-bay hatch was part of the structure and necessary to maintaining the structural integrity, so a belly landing would probably have been disastrous. But I said, well, we got a lot of fuel here, let’s see what we can do. So I got it down to 15,000, 12,000 feet, and put all the G on the airplane that was permissible and went as fast as I could, and got that Q-bay hatch to flutter. While it was fluttering and the airplane is shaking and bouncing around. But every time it would flutter a little bit open, the gear would go down a half an inch or so. Eventually, by continuing the maximum G and maximum speed, getting the bay hatch to flutter, the gear eventually cleared the hatch, and went down into the down and locked position."

"I have flown over 200 different types and models of airplanes and helicopters, and the U-2 was far and beyond the most difficult airplane to land I have ever tried."

http://www.airspacemag.com/military-avi ... Pilot.html

Sorry to keep flogging this thread, but I wouldn't have believed this if I didn't see the video.

Video of U2 carrier landing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_3WeYXDKQ0

flog away, cool stuff.

I have always been intrigued by the U2. I have a shipmate at my cargo airline that flew it. He is in his early forties so he missed the cold war flying but tells a lot of interesting stories about flying the ship but none about the missions.

Yeah, I love it when Air and Space shows up in the mailbox..... I too never knew that the U-2 did carrier ops, man what a log book entry that would make! Interesting article on the post flight inspections of the shuttle fleet also.

Yep, great set of articles for sure, i'm even in a few of those pics. The cancellation of the Global Hawk program has given the U-2 a new lease on life, it'll be around for quite a few more years.

The carrier history is pretty cool, we still have a U-2 tailhook hanging in the squadron bar.