Each piece of structure was a little thinner than a pilot would have liked. Where there was usually extra support, such as joints and junctures, in the U-2 there was none. It was not a plane for heavy or drastic maneuvers.
In short, it had not been built to last. The intention was to go in, get the job done, get out. Even the eighteen months called for in our contracts seemed a highly optimistic measure of the plane’s probable life span. It was even rumored that the original concept of Operation Overflight had been a one-shot, single flight over the Soviet Union for each plane: the plane to take off without wheels, make the flight, return to its base, and belly-land.
Since both Lockheed and agency personnel were extremely tigh-tlipped when it came to matters of planning, this remained an unconfirmed rumor among the pilots.
We badly underrated the U-2 and its maker, “Kelly” Johnson.
One place where Johnson had eliminated weight was the ejection seat. There was none. To bail out, a pilot had to climb out.
Another economy was the landing gear. Rather than the tricycle type, with a gear under the nose and another under each wing, the U-2 had one under the nose and one under the tail, a bicycle arrangement. To support the wings while on the ground, a “pogo,” or extension with a small wheel on the end, was set in a socket underneath each wing. These kept the wings level while taxiing, but dropped off on takeoff.
Or were supposed to. On the fatal flight the week before our arrival, one of the pogos had failed to release. Coming back over the field, the pilot had flown in low, attempting to shake it off. Heavy with fuel, he had miscalculated, stalled, and crashed at the end of the runway.
Except for a rare accident of this sort, it was obvious just from looking at the arrangement that takeoff should present no special problems, but landing—without the pogos—would be tricky. Like riding a bicycle; only, with the ground roll finished, the plane would tilt over onto the heavy wing, the wing tip acting as part of the landing gear.
As for what it would be like in the air, it was a safe guess it would be extremely difficult to handle.
My hands itched to get onto the controls.
But that had to wait until we learned something very basic. How to breathe.
It now became apparent why we had been given some of the tests at Lovelace Clinic.
One of the risks of high-altitude flight is danger of sudden loss of pressurization in the cockpit. For safeguard, a special partial-pressure suit had been designed. Airtight, of rubberized fabric with almost no give or elasticity, it fit snugly around the body, so snugly that the slightest movement—bending a knee or arm, turning the head—would rub the skin, leaving bruises. Wearing long johns helped, but not much; even when worn inside out, the seams pressed into the skin.
A hermetic seal at the neck fastened the helmet into place. Once on, it felt exactly like a too-tight tie over a badly shrunk collar. On long flights, counting preparatory time, we would have to remain in the suit for up to twelve hours. Anyone with the slightest touch of claustrophia would have gone mad.
Nor were these the only discomforts.
Since there was no way to unfasten the suit without losing oxygen, we had to learn to curb our appetite.
Early in the program some of the pilots would occasionally loosen the face plate to take liquids. In April, 1957, Lockheed test pilot Robert L. Sieker was killed in a U-2 crash near Edwards AFB, California. It was later determined that Sieker had done this, lost pressurization, and was unable to resecure the face plate. After this the pilots kept their face plates fastened when flying.
We also, rather late in life, had to learn new bathroom habits. This wasn’t quite as bad as might be imagined. Not drinking coffee or other fluids prior to a flight lessened the need. Too, because there was no ventilation in the suit, no way for the skin to breathe, perspiration was constant, with much moisture eliminated this way, rather than through the kidneys. But this also meant there was no way for perspiration to evaporate. Following a flight, you wrung the water out of the long johns; during the flight, you had to live with it.
Before each flight we put on the suit and helmet and began what was called prebreathing. This was a denitrogenization process during which we were given pure oxygen, under slight pressure, to avoid getting the bends.
In normal breathing it takes a little effort to inhale, while exhaling is automatic. Under pressurization this is reversed. Inhaling is automatic, while exhaling is an effort. It was literally necessary to learn to breathe all over again.
As if the process weren’t tiring enough, the long use of pure oxygen often had as side effects painful head and ear aches. After two hours of prebreathing before each flight, plus actual flight time, a pilot was so exhausted that he wasn’t allowed to fly again for two days.
Each aircraft has its pecularities, most of which can be simulated in a trainer. Because the U-2 was so new, however, some phases of the testing still in progress, many of these had to be first experienced in actual flight. And, as a unique aircraft, designed for the specific purpose of high-altitude flights, the U-2 had some decidedly unusual characteristics.
Ascent was rapid and spectacular. The U-2 required very little runway for takeoff; a thousand feet would suffice. Within moments after the pogos dropped, you could begin climbing—at better than a forty-five-degree angle. (On the first couple of flights, you were sure you were going to continue right over on your back.) Within minutes, in the time most planes took to reach a few thousand feet, the U-2 had disappeared from sight.
Once in flight, other peculiarities manifested themselves. One was that at maximum altitude the fastest the plane could go was very close to the slowest it could go. This narrow range was known as the “coffin corner”; a slight miscalculation either way, and you were in trouble. If you went too slow, the plane would stall; if you went too fast, it would go into “Mach buffet” and could become unmanageable. To keep the plane at the exact speed required a great deal of attention and personal control. Although it was equipped with an autopilot, you couldn’t place too much reliance on it because of what could happen if it malfunctioned.
There was also—especially before the technical bugs were worked out—the problem of flameouts, which occurred with some regularity. During a flameout the jet engine loses its fire, and the pilot must bring the plane down to a lower altitude to restart it.
Navigation was also a challenge. Since we couldn’t depend on the Russians to provide radio fixes, we had to learn to navigate completely on our own, without radio aids of any kind.
Landing the U-2 was even more difficult than we had guessed. There was an either/or situation. A regular airplane can land while still flying. The U-2 had to be through flying to stay on the ground, as a result of which it was necessary to stall it before touching down. If you stalled it a little high, it would drop down. If you hit the ground before it stalled, it would bounce back up in the air. You had to gauge it exactly.
Once touched down, however, one problem remained. Because of the bicycle landing gear and the long wings, the plane had a strong tendency to ground-loop. Should you start turning, however slightly, the plane would try to keep turning.
These were only a few of the special problems of flying the U-2.
The pleasures were far greater.
Whatever initial worries we had about the plane soon vanished. It was not an easy plane to fly, but it was not dangerous. Once its idiosyncrasies were mastered, so long as you stayed alert, the plane behaved beautifully, so much so that you looked forward to each new flight.