There is frost accumulating inside the windows of my cockpit. I reach a gloved hand up and scrape a clear opening in the ice. The long, graceful lines of the left wing extend almost 50 feet into the impossibly thin air surrounding us. Normally when I fly, I'm off the surface of the planet, but still deep within the ocean of air that cushions and protects us from the vast and icy universe beyond. But today, even the majority of that atmospheric ocean lies beneath me. I'm not so much flying in it as I am surfing just beneath its surface.
I look out along the long, dark wing of the U-2. If I leaned closer to the window -- no mean feat in a cumbersome space suit and helmet -- I could probably look down and identify some of the individual landmarks below. Certainly the U-2's cameras and sensors are powerful enough to discern even minute movements in equipment and personnel on terrain lying more than 14 miles beneath us.
But at the moment, my focus is not local, but global. At an altitude of well over 70,000 feet, my world is bigger than it's ever been. Ocean and mountains are contained in a single glance; the California coastline seems to rise in front of us as we make our way south, even as the land and sea drop away to either side. The curve of the Earth is only faintly discernable, even at this altitude. But it's there, a multi-hued, bending arc of horizon that belies the foolish notion that any place on Earth is flat.
Ringing the brown-and-blue hues of the planet's surface is a narrow band of white haze. That would be our atmosphere. And even though there's still a long distance between us and the formal boundary of Space, the U-2's wing seems to be skimming along the top of that precious atmospheric haze. Above the haze, there's a thin line of light blue, where enough water molecules still exist to create the illusion of color. Above that, the sky gets progressively darker, from midnight blue to black.
I look left, then right, and finally just sit quietly, in awe of the planet I call home. It's such a complex place -- at once a vast and powerful rock, spinning slowly through the cosmos, and a unique and delicate ecosystem sustained by an impossibly fragile cushion of air. An ecosystem, I remind myself, that I have left in order to purchase this view and out-of-planet experience.
I sit back and contemplate the surreal nature of the U-2 pilot's world. My breath echoes inside my helmet with the raspy, regulated rhythm of Darth Vader -- an appropriate analogy because, like Anakin, I cannot survive here without the machinery I'm attached to. And it's not just about portable oxygen. Above 63,000 feet -- a point known as "Armstrong's Line" -- the liquid in a human body boils. Hence the pressure suit. There is no margin here. And everything is an effort. Turning my head. Taking a sip of water. Reaching for a pencil. Even flying the plane is better done by autopilot, because at altitudes above 70,000 feet, a mere 10 knots can stand in between our stall speed and redline -- the infamous "coffin corner." And, as the name implies, straying either side of that narrow window tends to end the same way: badly.
We don't belong here.
Somewhere in the back recesses of my brain, I can't escape the feeling that we're surreptitious infiltrators -- rebels who've cunningly figured out a way to slip out of our world into the forbidden edges of another, where only creatures who don't need oxygen, air pressure or heat can survive. Isn't this what led Icarus to his doom?
That we are able to successfully operate aircraft in such a hostile environment is amazing. That we've been doing it for over 50 years is mind-boggling.
The U-2 was a product of the Lockheed "Skunk Works." It first flew in 1955 -- a single-point design that paired the basic fuselage of an F-104 with an 80-foot wing to produce a plane capable of sustained flight at extraordinarily high altitudes. But to achieve that goal with only a single, early-generation jet engine, every other "normal" aircraft requirement was jettisoned.
The U-2 is a tailwheel aircraft -- the last one remaining in the Air Force inventory -- but its two landing gear are set in a tandem configuration along the centerline of the fuselage. For taxi and takeoff, portable "pogo" wheels, which drop away after lift-off, are placed underneath the wings. But they're not available for landing. So bringing a U-2 back to Earth is, as pilot Maj. Cory Bartholomew puts it, "like landing a bicycle on a runway." A tailwheel bicycle, no less. Even with a good landing, one wing will eventually drop and contact the runway, shielded from damage by titanium wing skids. But good landings are an elusive commodity in the U-2.
"When I got [to the U-2] I had 2,000 tailwheel hours," says former U-2 pilot Bill Williams, "And my worst T-6 landing was a walk in the park compared to the U-2." Maj. John "Cabi" Cabigas, the instructor pilot who flew me in the U-2, heartily agreed. "Of all the inventory of the Air Force," he told me, "[the U-2] is the most difficult airplane to land."
In case I needed any reinforcement on that, Cabi suggested I follow through with him on our first landing, after our high flight. I dutifully put my gloved hands on the yoke and my booted feet on the rudder pedals and valiantly tried to keep up with Cabi as he wrestled the plane down final against gusty, 12- to 15-knot crosswinds. But within a few seconds, I jerked my hands and feet as far back from the controls as I could get them as I watched the controls go through more apoplectically rapid contortions and combinations of full-stop deflections in all axes than I've ever seen a pilot manage. No wonder the U-2 carries the moniker "Dragon Lady."
And while the tandem gear is part of the reason the U-2 is such a handful, it's not the only reason. Another factor is the long, high-aspect-ratio wing (104 feet, tip-to-tip, on the U-2S), which floats in ground effect and won't land unless it's fully stalled. The U-2 also lacks boosted controls -- one of many weight-saving trade-offs Lockheed made to meet the plane's challenging design goal. Other sacrifices included the lack of an ejection seat in the early models and a low G-force limit on the airframe.
How low is low? "We try to keep it below two Gs," says U-2 instructor pilot Lt. Col. Jon "Huggy" Huggins. I ask how many Gs the aircraft is actually stressed to take. "We try to keep it below two Gs," Huggy repeats, nodding for emphasis.
As for the lack of boosted controls ... while it makes landings more challenging, it's most noticeable in the higher-power, higher-speed flight realms of flight -- at least, until the U-2 gets up high. To demonstrate, Cabi had me try some simple 30-degree turns at various speeds and altitudes. (Although, just to make sure it's clear for the record ... my instructor pilot remained in command of the aircraft at all times, as per official military regulations.)
At 10,000 feet and 90 knots, the U-2 takes 60 pounds of force to roll the yoke over, and 150 pounds of force to push the rudder pedals to the floor. But still, the plane handles much like other solid, rudder-heavy airplanes I've flown, like the DC-3. At 130 knots, however, that starts to change. It's a real challenge to get enough rudder and aileron movement to get that 30-degree bank accomplished. And at 220 knots, the task is all but impossible. I put two hands on the yoke and turn, hard. No luck. I have my full body force leaning into the yoke before I get it to move.
But there's also a reason the U-2 is referred to as a "Lady" as well as a Dragon. Because at 62,000 feet (which the U-2 reaches in a mere 20 minutes) and cruise speed (about .71 Mach), the U-2 becomes the smoothest-handling sports car you'd ever want to fly. She's a delight of harmonized grace, with finger-touch controls. This is a plane that's very clear about where she wants to be. And she gets grouchy and cantankerous if you try to fly her anywhere else.
"You either wrestle with the dragon or dance with the lady," Cabi tells me. "And you're never quite sure which one she's going to be."
Operational U-2 pilots also do that wrestling and dancing for more than 10 hours at a stretch, all alone, over hostile territory, in a cumbersome space suit that makes even a task like scratching your nose a major production. Early U-2 pilots had it worse -- their partial pressure suits constricted to maintain a survivable pressure, often leaving pilots with terrible bruises and blisters after a long mission. Today's full-pressure suits are a vast improvement. But they're still awkward, and the pressurized cabin altitude in a U-2 is still 29,500 feet. As one U-2 pilot put it, "you're about as comfortable as you can be encased in rubber, sitting in a phone booth, on top of Mt. Everest."
So the $64,000 question is ... why do pilots who could be flying F-15s choose instead to take on all the discomforts and challenges of a cantankerous, 50-year-old airplane that's highly likely to humble them on a regular basis? The question is relevant, because every single U-2 pilot is a volunteer. You have to apply (including an essay on "Why I want to fly the U-2"), and the process includes an arduous, two-week interview/try-out at Beale AFB in Northern California -- the training and home base of all 33 remaining U-2S and TU-2S aircraft.
For some, it's the mission. "The best part for me," Williams said, "was having the President hold up photos and say 'here's the proof' of something, and know I took those photos." The datalink capabilities of the U-2s flying over Afghanistan and Iraq today are so good that detailed images of moving targets on the ground can arrive at an intelligence ground station within seconds. And if the need is acute, specialists can analyze the images and forward them on to commanders in the field within minutes. U-2 pilots can sometimes see ordnance landing on targets they've photographed while they're still flying overhead.
