Posted on 08/02/2005 11:46:59 AM PDT by BenLurkin
PALMDALE - In a U-2 flight emergency, Louis Setter's first clue that something was wrong was a sound "something like a small bomb going off." That sound signaled a "flame-out." That would be somewhere above 50,000 feet when the J-57 engine flamed out. In its early days of the Cold War 1950s, the U-2 recorded hundreds of flame-outs - an engine quitting in an oxygen-deprived atmosphere.
The flame-out was something like a pilot light going out in your home heating system, but this was the engine quitting more than 10 miles high.
"It would take any tiny excuse to quit with no warning at all," Setter said.
The next clue things were not right happened when Setter's high-altitude pressure suit, already a snug fit, "would blow up so tight that you could hardly move."
This was happening all the while the jet with glider wings was plummeting from somewhere above 50,000 feet of classified altitude down to the 35,000-foot range.
"The canopy would frost over and the instruments - you only had a few instruments - the instruments would start to quit."
That was a day at the office inside the cockpit of the flame affectionately known as "The Dragon Lady," "The Article," "The Angel," the "Deuce" or its most renowned moniker, the U-2 spy plane.
It was a plane made and flown by living legends, whose mission and purpose was to deter the end of civilization by thermonuclear warfare.
Setter, a World War II fighter pilot, was the fourth Air Force pilot to fly the U-2 back in the mid-1950s when it became one of the most significant components of the Cold War arsenal.
It was simple. The Soviet Union was building H-bombs and missiles; the United States, led by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, had to know what the Russians were up to.
The response from legendary Lockheed master designer Clarence "Kelly" Johnson was also simple, but ingenious and elegant. Johnson took the airframe of his needle-nosed F-104 "Starfighter" and extended the wings to glider length.
In 1955, the plane, referred to enigmatically as "The Article" was ferried out to a dry lakebed at Groom Lake, Nev., which came to be known as "The Ranch." The masses recognize that near mythical, secret area generally as "Area 51."
Fifty years after the U-2 first vaulted across the Nevada skies on its way to a rendezvous with destiny over the Soviet Union, Cuba and other trouble spots, about 600 members of the U-2 family gathered Monday in a big Lockheed Martin "Skunk Works" hangar to observe the U-2's golden anniversary.
The multitude - including Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon and U-2 program manager George Zielsdorff - listened spellbound as U-2 pioneer Setter and his comrade, U-2 pilot Ray Goudey , regaled the faithful with hair-raising tales of early flight in "The Dragon Lady.''
They tested the plane at "The Ranch," where a few hardy pilots, engineers and crew labored in secret to deliver an airplane that could give Eisenhower the intelligence he needed to avoid World War III .
Zielsdorff introduced the pair to all the people, past and present, who worked to make the U-2 one of the world's most politically and historically significant aircraft. "I feel totally inadequate introducing these men,'' he said. "I feel like I'm reading a history of aviation."
Fifty years ago, Setter and Goudey worked with a select group of Lockheed contractors, Air Force and CIA men. They lived in tents on a five-mile stretch of dry lakebed near the Nevada nuclear test site where guards were instructed to arrest anyone they didn't recognize.
There were no buildings, Setter said. "The place was like a Boy Scout camp in the desert," he said. "There was no base, and no taxiway. You landed on the lakebed."
The mission - to give the White House a reliable "eye in the sky" before the advent of intelligence satellites - drove the task force. "We were one tight team," Setter said.
Goudey said the team dined at a primitive mess hall that was nevertheless "fabulous … with the meals served up family style and plenty of it."
"Kelly (Johnson) was the boss, and he was a great man," Setter said.
The Lockheed team finished a cutting-edge plane that could loft cameras high above the bomber fields and missile gantries of the Soviet Union. Johnson's crew built it in about six months, tested it and got it into flight and operational.
Setter speculated the Air Force never would have accepted such an exotic aircraft, particularly one with only a single engine. The boss of the Strategic Air Command, Gen. Curtis Lemay, favored dual-engine aircraft.
During the Cuban missile crisis, U-2 intelligence helped pull the world back from the brink of nuclear destruction.
In later years, after the 1960 downing of Francis Gary Powers over the Soviet Union, the Air Force eagerly accepted U-2 planes and now runs the Strategic Reconaissance Wing from its headquarters at Beale Air Force Base in central California. In its half-century of service, U-2 has operated from bases on every continent.
A retooled, redesigned, refitted version of the U-2 is flying missions daily, a half-century after Lockheed test pilot Tony LeVier first took off and landed "The Article" on the arid moonscape at Groom Lake on Aug. 1, 1955.
"The U-2 flew missions daily during the Cold War, and it's flying missions daily now," Zielsdorff said.
The missions are different now, former U-2 pilot and systems engineer Mark Mitchell observed. Instead of finding rogue missiles in out-of-reach countries, the updated U-2S develops "near real-time" battlefield intelligence, the sort for which combat commanders have "an insatiable appetite," Mitchell said. "You have never have too much intelligence."
Congressman McKeon echoed that theme. "I want to make sure that you Lockheed Martin people understand how important your work is to the war fighter."
During his visits with troops in Iraq, McKeon said it became clear information the U-2 provides is responsible for saving American lives. During the Iraq invasion, the U-2 provided nearly 90% of all battlefield imagery and 60% of the signals intelligence intake.
State Sen. George Runner, his wife, Assemblywoman Sharon Runner, R-Lancaster, and Lancaster Mayor Frank Roberts also showed up to say thanks.
Sharon Runner recalled that her father was an Air Force Plant 42 firefighter who took her out to watch the flightline as a little girl.
With $1.7 billion spent to overhaul the U-2, the plane is expected to serve at least until 2020. It's the only surveillance platform that can carry 5,000 pounds intelligence sensors that can deliver intelligence reports to multiple via satellite.
Setter, who still consults at Edwards Air Force Base, said he wanted to thank Lockheed workers "for saving my life" on a number of occasions.
He wanted to thank the people who made the pressure suit, too. Laced tight like a girdle, when inflated, the suit left a lattice of black and blue pinch marks that would still be there when he showered back home. "I don't think my wife knew what those marks were until today."
"STILL GOING STRONG -- When Lockheed test pilot Tony LeVier first took off and landed the U-2 on the arid moonscape at Groom Lake on Aug. 1, 1955, he initiated the use of an airplane that has had several lives in service to the national defense. In fact, the retooled, redesigned, refitted version of the Cold Warrior U-2 is still flying missions daily a half-century later. The plane is projected to be in service until at least 2020." Lockheed-Martin Aeronautics
The notion that the U-2 was derived from the F-104 is, um, controversial....
Heh-heh!
"That's the letter U and the numeral 2. The four man band
features Adam Clayton on bass, Larry Mullen on drums,
Dave Evans, nicknamed 'The Edge' on...This is bull(bleep)!
Nobody cares! These people are from England, and who gives
a (bleep)? It's a lot of wasted names that don't mean
diddly (bleep)!"
--Casey Kasem, in a famous outtake
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