A new design featuring increased fuel capacity, bigger airframe and underwing pods.Īfter the fall of the Soviet Union the 33 TR-1A were renamed to U-2S. Among other things they got a reinforced landing gear, arresting hook and lift dump spoilers (for US Navy carriers).ġ4 built. Three of these were made by modifying previous models. Some of the most important improvements with their new designations are displayed in the table below: U-2A 50 years of U-2 developmentĪs you would expect of an aircraft that has been in service for more than 50 years, there has been a wide variety of models and improvements of the Dragon Lady. However after an incident when a pilot almost swallowed his pill due to its resemblance to a piece of candy, it was removed. The reason was the danger of being shot down and captured flying over the USSR or Eastern Europe. When the Dragon Lady was new, it was possible to bring a suicide pill when going on a mission, capable of killing you within 15 seconds. The pilot can take both drink and food with him in small special containers when having long duration flights however many of the pilots choose not to, and can therefore lose as much as 6 pounds of body weight on a single mission. The crew (ie the pilot since the U-2 is a one-seat aircraft) wears a special pressurized suit, just like on the Blackbird, in case of a pressure fall in the cockpit. The rear landing gear is coupled to the rudder and so the pilot can provide some steering during taxiing. When the aircraft has come to a complete halt, the ground crew once again installs pogos under the wings and begin to taxi the U-2 to its hangar. When landing, the wings have a titanium skid at the very tip, protecting the wings from damage. Before taxiing the ground crew installs extra wheels called “pogos” under each wing who are then disconnected from the aircraft right after takeoff to reduce weight. The U-2’s landing gear is of a rather unusual configuration since it only features two wheels – one in the front and one in the back, making it look like a bicycle. The „unbalanced“ aircraftĪ U-2 at touchdown showing its „bicycle“ landing gear. Since these cars need to have high speeds it is actually not any special-built Air Force vehicles but normal Chevrolet Camaros and Ford Mustangs. Usually there is a chase car and a second U-2 pilot assisting the pilot of the descending U-2 with information such as angle of descent and declining aircraft height. It requires a lot of physical strength to steer it at the low altitudes of the runway, and due to its great glider capabilities, it floats over the runway, making the landing extremely hard. The aircraft is built to be easy to control at high altitudes, but at lower height the air has a higher density and so the U-2 gets very hard to control. Therefore the pilots called this range of 19km/h the “coffin corner”. This means that if going 19km over the ideal speed the engine would stall, breaking the super fragile aircraft to pieces, and going under the limit would make it drop in altitude to a level where enemy anti-aircraft defences were within firing range. The speed that it had to reach to be able to climb to this altitude (ie the ideal speed) was only 19km/h under its stall speed. The U-2 can fly for 12 hours without refueling, covering a distance of 10,300 kilometers with a cruise speed of 690 km/h and a max speed of 805. This might not sound much, but since the whole U-2 only weighs 18.1 tons (max weight) the engine is perfect for its mission. The later model, TU-2S, features the 84.5kN General Electric F118. But how can it be able to fly this high? The answer is its light air frame, large wing span and big engines. It has a service ceiling of 21,000m and has therefore been very effective when surveilling the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam and Cuba. This puts it on the list of very few aircraft that has flown with the USAF for more than 50 years. It had its introduction in 1957 and is actually still in use.
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