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The 140-Mph Chase Cars Of The U.S. Air Force
Fifty years ago, the United States Air Force discovered its top-secret Lockheed U-2 spy plane was nightmarishly tricky to fly. To keep aircraft from crashing, they began using high-speed chase/guide cars during take-offs and landings. Government-issue Camaro Z/28, anyone?
The process is pretty simple: The Air Force buys fast and relatively inexpensive Detroit muscle and puts a highly trained pilot in the driver's seat. Those pilots then act as ground-based wingmen for the U-2s in the air, talking them through runway operations.
The chase cars are nothing if not necessary — the U-2 is an incredibly dangerous aircraft. It was designed in the mid-1950s as a replacement for the government's existing surveillance fleet, which mostly consisted of converted bombers and fighters. It was intended to go farther, faster, and higher than any regular-use airplane before it, and to help fight the Cold War without actually drawing any blood. Because Francis Gary Powers was shot down in a U-2 fifty years ago this month, we decided to take a look at the plane's substantial car connection.
What the Hell is That Thing?
First, a little background. The U-2 was drawn up by Lockheed engineer Clarence "Kelly" Johnson, the man behind the company's legendary "Skunk Works" division and the designer responsible for the both the P-38 Lightning and the sinister-looking F-104 Starfighter. It was thought that if an aircraft could be made to fly high enough — say, 70,000 feet, or above roughly 95 percent of the Earth's atmosphere — that it would be beyond the reach of enemy fighters, missiles, and possibly even radar.
An early U-2 painted in NASA colors as part of the attempted cover-up of the Powers incident. Check out the Austin-Healey at far left (click to enlarge). Probably not a chase car, but who knows?
To reach that height, Johnson essentially created a jet-powered space glider. His design featured an obsessive focus on minimum weight, so much so that, in the beginning, landing gear weren't even included — the U-2 was originally intended to take off on a wheeled, ground-bound cart and land on a thin fuselage skid. The aircraft's skinny, long wings were so efficient that the first flight came by accident, the plane leaping into the air on its own during a high-speed taxi test in 1955. The flight experience was akin to that of early astronauts or pilots of the Air Force's awesome X-planes: You didn't so much fly the U-2 as turn the thing on and point it at God.
Naturally, there were downsides. Because the U-2 was so specialized, it was amazingly difficult to fly. Johnson's design placed all the fuel in the wings and aimed for light controls at altitude; the lower the U-2 flew, the heavier its unassisted controls got, to the point where pilots literally had to brute-force the plane around during take-off and landing. Balance was so critical that the plane's spy cameras used split film reels, one on each side of the aircraft and feeding into each other, so that weight distribution wouldn't change during flight. Crosswinds tossed it around like a rag doll. Because of the altitude and depressurization risk, pilots flew in helmeted space suits and were all but blind near the ground. In the U-2's half-century of service, fewer than 850 men and women have been certified to fly it.
Landings: Something Other Than Fun
Still, landings were the biggest problem. The replacement for Johnson's cart-and-skid ground system was a compact setup — two centrally located landing gear in the fuselage and one detachable "pogo" gear on each wing — that turned the U-2 into little more than a 30,000-pound bicycle. Because of the high-lift wings, pilots didn't so much land the plane as fly it really close to the ground (usually about two feet), stall it, and then fall out of the sky. On top of that, serious ground effect (the same thing that keeps half-planes like the Soviet Ekranoplan in the air) meant that the wings greatly resisted landing. Bringing a U-2 to earth required wrestling yourself from the sky, not slipping out gracefully.
And you didn't want to drop a wingtip — that's a 105-foot wingspan, if you're wondering — at speed, dig in, and crash. And you couldn't see. And you were usually at the tail end of a flight lasting ten hours or more. And and and. As this funny (and NSFW) video shows, there's a whole hell of a lot that can go wrong:
Fifty years ago, the United States Air Force discovered its top-secret Lockheed U-2 spy plane was nightmarishly tricky to fly. To keep aircraft from crashing, they began using high-speed chase/guide cars during take-offs and landings. Government-issue Camaro Z/28, anyone?
The process is pretty simple: The Air Force buys fast and relatively inexpensive Detroit muscle and puts a highly trained pilot in the driver's seat. Those pilots then act as ground-based wingmen for the U-2s in the air, talking them through runway operations.
The chase cars are nothing if not necessary — the U-2 is an incredibly dangerous aircraft. It was designed in the mid-1950s as a replacement for the government's existing surveillance fleet, which mostly consisted of converted bombers and fighters. It was intended to go farther, faster, and higher than any regular-use airplane before it, and to help fight the Cold War without actually drawing any blood. Because Francis Gary Powers was shot down in a U-2 fifty years ago this month, we decided to take a look at the plane's substantial car connection.
What the Hell is That Thing?
First, a little background. The U-2 was drawn up by Lockheed engineer Clarence "Kelly" Johnson, the man behind the company's legendary "Skunk Works" division and the designer responsible for the both the P-38 Lightning and the sinister-looking F-104 Starfighter. It was thought that if an aircraft could be made to fly high enough — say, 70,000 feet, or above roughly 95 percent of the Earth's atmosphere — that it would be beyond the reach of enemy fighters, missiles, and possibly even radar.
An early U-2 painted in NASA colors as part of the attempted cover-up of the Powers incident. Check out the Austin-Healey at far left (click to enlarge). Probably not a chase car, but who knows?
To reach that height, Johnson essentially created a jet-powered space glider. His design featured an obsessive focus on minimum weight, so much so that, in the beginning, landing gear weren't even included — the U-2 was originally intended to take off on a wheeled, ground-bound cart and land on a thin fuselage skid. The aircraft's skinny, long wings were so efficient that the first flight came by accident, the plane leaping into the air on its own during a high-speed taxi test in 1955. The flight experience was akin to that of early astronauts or pilots of the Air Force's awesome X-planes: You didn't so much fly the U-2 as turn the thing on and point it at God.
Naturally, there were downsides. Because the U-2 was so specialized, it was amazingly difficult to fly. Johnson's design placed all the fuel in the wings and aimed for light controls at altitude; the lower the U-2 flew, the heavier its unassisted controls got, to the point where pilots literally had to brute-force the plane around during take-off and landing. Balance was so critical that the plane's spy cameras used split film reels, one on each side of the aircraft and feeding into each other, so that weight distribution wouldn't change during flight. Crosswinds tossed it around like a rag doll. Because of the altitude and depressurization risk, pilots flew in helmeted space suits and were all but blind near the ground. In the U-2's half-century of service, fewer than 850 men and women have been certified to fly it.
Landings: Something Other Than Fun
Still, landings were the biggest problem. The replacement for Johnson's cart-and-skid ground system was a compact setup — two centrally located landing gear in the fuselage and one detachable "pogo" gear on each wing — that turned the U-2 into little more than a 30,000-pound bicycle. Because of the high-lift wings, pilots didn't so much land the plane as fly it really close to the ground (usually about two feet), stall it, and then fall out of the sky. On top of that, serious ground effect (the same thing that keeps half-planes like the Soviet Ekranoplan in the air) meant that the wings greatly resisted landing. Bringing a U-2 to earth required wrestling yourself from the sky, not slipping out gracefully.
And you didn't want to drop a wingtip — that's a 105-foot wingspan, if you're wondering — at speed, dig in, and crash. And you couldn't see. And you were usually at the tail end of a flight lasting ten hours or more. And and and. As this funny (and NSFW) video shows, there's a whole hell of a lot that can go wrong:
Full article and more about the history here: http://jalopnik.com/#!5537629/the-14...e-us-air-force
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