U-2 "Dragon Lady" Spy "Dragon Lady"

In the 1950s, the Americans had a great need for a reconnaissance aircraft to spy on the Soviets during the Cold War. They were trying to use old bombers and rebuilt RB-47s to complete the mission, but the Russians had greatly improved their anti-aircraft defense systems and interceptors, and so these low-altitude aircraft were at great risk of being shot down. There was a need for an aircraft that could fly at high altitude, but after the Second World War, the best allied aircraft with these characteristics was the British Electric Canberra, which could only fly at an altitude of 14,600 meters. What the Americans needed was a completely new design, built to fly reconnaissance missions from an altitude of over 18,300 meters to protect them from Soviet interceptors and missiles. The result was the Lockheed U-2 "Dragon Lady", designed by Clarence "Kelly" Johnson and his team.

The U-2 Dragon Lady entered service in 1957 and is actually still in service. This puts it on the list of very few aircraft that have flown with the USAF for more than 50 years. 

The U-2 has a service ceiling of 21,000 m and has therefore been very effective in surveillance of the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam and Cuba. But how can it fly so high? The answer is its lightweight fuselage, wide wingspan and large engines. The latest model, the TU-2S, has an 84.5kN General Electric F118. This may not sound like much, but since the entire U-2 weighs only 18.1 tons (maximum weight), this engine is perfect for this mission. The U-2 can fly for 12 hours without refueling, covering a distance of 10,300 kilometers at a cruising speed of 690 km/h and a maximum speed of 805 km/h. The speed required to reach this altitude (the ideal speed) was only 19 km/h below engine stall speed. This means that if it went 19 km above the ideal speed, the engine would stall, tearing the super-fragile aircraft to pieces and, once below the limit, causing it to drop to a level where it was within firing range of enemy anti-aircraft defenses. This is why the pilots dubbed this 19 km/h range the "coffin corner".

The landing of the big glider is a nightmare

The aircraft is designed to be easy to control at high altitudes, but lower down the density of the air is higher and so control of the U-2 becomes very difficult. It requires a lot of physical strength to steer at low altitudes of the runway, making it extremely difficult for the large glider to glide over the runway and land. There is usually a chase car and a second U-2 pilot who assists the pilot of the descending U-2 with information such as descent angle and descending aircraft height. Since the chase cars have to have high speeds, they are not actually any specially built Air Force vehicles, but regular Chevrolet Camaro and Ford Mustangs.

U-2 on landing.

"Unstable" airplane

The U-2's landing gear has a rather unusual configuration because it has only two wheels, one in front and one at the rear, making it look like a bicycle. Before taxiing, the ground crew places extra wheels called "pogos" under each wing, which are disconnected from the aircraft immediately after take-off to reduce weight. During landing, a titanium skid is placed at the very tip of the wings, protecting them from damage. When the aircraft comes to a complete stop, the ground crew once again places a pogo under the wings and tows the U-2 to its hangar. The rear landing gear is attached to the rudder so that the pilot can provide some steering during taxi/turn-in.

The crew (i.e. the pilot, since the U-2 is a single-seat aircraft) wears a special pressurized suit in case of a depressurization in the cockpit, just like on the SR-71 Blackbird. The pilot can take both drinks and food in small special containers with him/her on long-duration flights, but many pilots choose not to do so and can therefore lose up to 3 pounds of body weight in a single mission. When Dragon Lady was new, they used to take a suicide pill with them on a mission that could kill the pilot in 15 seconds. This was because of the danger of being shot down and captured while flying over the USSR or Eastern Europe. But after an incident where a pilot almost swallowed his pill because it looked like candy, the pill was removed.

50 years of U-2 development

With over 50 years in service, the Dragon Lady has had a wide variety of models and improvements, as you would expect from an aircraft that has been in service for over 50 years. 

U-2A (single-seat), U-2B (double-seat, 5 built), U-2E (added Aerial Refueling capability), U-2G (reinforced landing gear for carrier landings, 3 modified from older variants), U-2R (increased fuel capacity, added external fuel tanks, enlarged fuselage, 14 built), TR-1A (33 TR-1A, renamed U-2S when the USSR broke up. It had side-view radars, better avionics, ECM systems. Used for high-altitude tactical reconnaissance missions), ER-2 (two TR-1As were modified for NASA to become the ER-2. Used to survey Earth's resources), U-2S (modified variant of the TR-1A, with new engine and better sensors and GPS, 32 built). WU-2 (Atmospheric/Air Survey model).

What will be the fate of the Lockheed U-2 Dragon Lady?

Competitors; An RQ-4 Global Hawk along with a two-seat U-2

Double Seater U-2 (in the air), RQ-4 Global Hawk (on the ground).

As you can see, the Dragon Lady was a beast when it first came out and is still a great spy plane in service to the USAF, NASA and the CIA. It was a lifesaver for American intelligence gathering services during the Cold War and made it possible for the Americans to spy on the Russians far outside the range of their anti-aircraft defenses. But as with all great inventions, something greater will eventually emerge. The Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk is the biggest possible rival to the U-2. The Global Hawk is a UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) with a service ceiling of 18,000 meters and can stay aloft for 28 hours. However, some experts claim that the U-2 is more cost-effective than the RQ-4 and will not lose its throne to the RQ-+.

The U-2 Dragon Lady still carries out its mission effectively.