U-2 60 YEARS

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If I have this right the above address will start a tribute to 60 years of the U-2.

It is kinda long but covers a lot of stuff. I went to the 60 year Reunion back in September 2015 at Beal AFB.

The current version started production in late 1967 and has been modified so many times it doesn't look the same as when it was originally built.

The Version I flew was the Original airplane with 80 feet of wing span. I left the program in June 1967. The Air Force got the current version starting in 1968. I and another pilot spent 3 days at Lockheed Skunk Works when the new version was in mock up stage. We were dressed in the full pressure suit and sat in the cockpit to check the location of the instruments and controls to make sure we could see all we needed to see and reach everything we needed to reach in flight.

Comparing the version I flew to the latest version is like operating a Model T compared to top of the line Ford of today. We had a real good Autopilot for it's time, our navigation was mostly visual, the airplane had VOR with no DME or TACAN, a radio compass. Believe it or not we had a Sextant and did celestial observations for long navigation legs. Most of our navigation was map reading and Dead Reckoning. At altitude the winds were usually out of the east about 10 knots or so. So winds were not much of a concern to us at altitude. We had a viewfinder device that we could look all around under the plane and used it to put the plane over the course on our maps. Our maps were WAC charts scale 1:500,000. The cameras had one control switch and when turned on the operated themselves, our function was to put the airplane on the course drawn on or maps. Most missions were six to eight hours in length. I flew four Cuban overflights and 35 combat sorties in Vietnam. I had three trips to Vietnam and flew out of Bien Hoa Air Base north east of Siagon. Had three trips there for a total of a little over 7 months in country.