I had a long trip in September, left North Carolina on 8 September for Cocoa Beach Florida. Attended an Air Force reunion for the 310th Bomb Wing that was based at Salina, Kansas. The Bomber was the Boeing B-47E six jet bomber. I was exiled there for a little over five years. This was for the Pilots and Navigator-Bombardiers. I was most likely the youngest Pilot there. Had a side trip to Cape Kenedy. After that reunion I went back up I-95 to Jacksonville, Florida and got on I-10 and headed west. My next destination was Palmdale California this was a reunion put on by Lockheed for those that were in the U-2, Air Force 4080 Strat Recon Wing. In the late part of 1966 it was renamed the 100th Strat Recon Wing. I flew the U-2 from spring of 1965 till June 1967. Here again I was the youngest Pilot there. I was 28 when entering the program. My route was I-10 all the way to California. Stopped off at Tucson and went on base at Davis-Monthan AFB. It had been changed so much since 1967 I could not find anything I knew from then. Took some photographs of the U-2 that was on display at the front gate. Visited the Pima Aircraft Museum for a couple of hours and got on the road again to California. 
The reunion at Palmdale was rather good. Had a visit to the Lockheed Plant 42 where they were doing rebuilds on several U-2S a much improved and larger than the version I flew was the U-2A and U-2C. Next day we had a trip to Edwards AFB that is where testing is done on new equipment.
Wen I left Palmdale about 50 miles east got on I-40 and headed east, at Flagstaff, Arizona got off the interstate and headed north to Monument Valley.
Saw a lot of scenery around there, could almost see John Wayne doing his thing. Went on over to four corners.
Headed east on US-64 it was real late in the day, near sunset with rain showers about. Took a picture of Shiprock in North Western New Mexico. Light was from high clouds that the sun was illuminating. Went East to Chama, NM to spend the night and the next day to see the Narrow Gauge Steam Railroad. It goes from Chama cross a pass into Colorado. 
It was misting rain and the rails were wet. The grade up to the pass is rather steep so the engine had to work real hard and it had to use quite a bit of sand to keep from spinning the drivers. I didn't ride the train, just drove ahead of it to where it crosses the highway in several places to take photographs. The engine was really barking fast and loud on the steep grade. From time to time the drivers would loose traction and the engineer had to reduce the throttle to stop the drivers spinning and I can imagine he gave them a shot or two of sand on the rails.
Left there and went back south to Interstate 40 east at Amarillo, TX on back to the Old North State. Got home on 24 September near midnight. One tired fellow and I think the vehicle was glad to get back home too. The trip was a little over 6,300 miles.
Great to hear that you're still truckin' on Jerry. One of my dad's friends, also a former B-52 Pilot, keeps me up to date on his air force reunions. He had a great one in DC last years for WW2 bomber pilots.
Dtp
Great post, thanks for sharing.
Whooooo Doggie, like Jeb Clampett used to say. That was one heck of a perambulation.
Sounds like you had a good time, though. I would have given anything when I was a school kid to have been able to make a circuit like that instead of riding a tractor from one end of the field to the other then back again and then another round, then another..................
I'm kind of a train nut. That "Chama" as you call it is one of the best narrow gauge rides in the world. It's a long one though if you go all the way.
U2 Spy Plane: Still Going Strong: Still Terrifying to Fly
The 'Lockheed U2-70000' flight video is awesome.
I've had the pleasure of meeting Jerry in person a couple of times. If you ever have the chance to meet him - do it! Very nice & interesting person.
Nice trip Jerry, I was just saying to myself yesterday, I wonder what Jerry is doing? I figured you weren't home being bored because you hadn't called me in a while 🙂
I had a nice road trip myself, left Providence, RI on the the 24th and drove mostly I-80 all the way out to Oregon arriving on the 30th, of course I was in something a little bigger than the Jetta, but they burned the same fuel type 😉
Fly to Kansas City on Friday to pick the vehicle up and go road tripping again...
SHG
:good: :good:
Jerry is one of my good friends, we 1st met through the POB site a few years back, we have since visited each other over a dozen times I think, I have been to his place in NC, he to mine in OR, good times! We had lunch 2-3 months ago and I am hoping to do it again in November...
SHG
Dang Shelby, that could have been me your were describing.
You were just here a couple months ago and gave the tour of that traveling road show.
I've never had the pleasure to meet Jerry.
Travel on brother and be safe out there.
E
Contrast this pressure suit that I wore in the U-2 in 1967. The outer garment is on the hanger that will be put on over the pressure gear. The outer garment was to keep all the strings of the pressure suit from getting tangled up with the other items in the cockpit.
Contrast the cockpit of my U-2 version with the cockpit of the bird of today. This was taken with a fish eye lens. You can see the cockpit is considerable smaller and the instrument panel is not like the current ones. Our instrument panel consisted of old round dials for everything. Our navigation was with VOR and ADF, no DME. believe it or not we had a built in Sextant, so we could do celestial navigation. It was a mighty busy time at night with a three body fix and in Grid. Yes, I said Grid. So pilots know a little surveying and do not know the knowledge they really have. Of course the new planes do not have the Sextant but have INS and GPS. My five years in the B-47 prepared me for the U-2. The B-47 had bicycle landing gear configuration. We did Celestial because that was before INS and GPS. The B-47 did have DME surveyors call it EDM. Our primary means of navigation was map reading, the rubber device in the instrument panel was a viewer that we could control by a hand controller, it would allow you to look all around the horizon and could tilt the viewer to vertical so we could see exactly where the aircraft was over the ground. We were moving at 420 Knots, so the earth was moving rather fast but we managed. The new birds do not have the optical viewer so they don't get to see straight below themselves. Us old fellows don't see how the new fellows operate without the optical viewer. The new guys think the optical viewer was primitive.
This photo was of a launch in Vietnam in late 1965. Notice the crew chief is holding the wing up. The ground handling wheels (we called them pogos) have been removed and the crew chief is holding the wings level. All the fuel is in the wings and if one wing goes low the fuel will run outboard and cause an imbalance. The pilot has run the engine up and has dropped his head as a signal that full power is now applied and the crew chief has taken a couple of steps and lets the wing fly out of his hands. Before the wing has time to drop the aircraft is fast enough to have aileron control to keep the wing off the ground. The wing has a carbon steel strip on the down part of the wing tip to scrape along the ground on landing when the speed is no longer able to keep the wings level. The new birds have the same thing added to their wing tips. So they will drag a wing when the aircraft is not fast enough to keep wings level.
With Surveying flat on it's butt around here. There is plenty of time to travel, only problem is my Butt isn't up to traveling that it once was. Don't know how much longer I can take to the road for a long distance. I'll sure be doing it as long as possible though. The B-47, U-2 and Trans World Airlines all contributed to my long distance Butt. The Jetta will do 600 miles easy on a tank of diesel, so that is about how I plan my trips. Drive till I need fuel and that is pretty much a long day. With the three GPS units running and the Satellite radio on Willie's Road House, a day goes by rather fast. Don't do much night stuff unless I get in a hurry.
Put that big rig on I95 and stop by the Old North State.
thanks for sharing Jerry and for your service.
I've read that flying the U2 was incredibly difficult. You must be a very good pilot.
That is just flat out cool. Thanks for sharing that. Now I'm going to be back to staring off into space wondering how long it'll be before I can afford to pull the trigger on buying a Super Cub. (deep sigh) It's an Alaska thing and a childhood dream of mine.
A PA-18, now there is a nice plane. Would love to have one myself but the price is way to much for something to play with. My play toy is a 1946 Piper J-3, I got it in 1969 and tore it down for a rebuild in 1974, in the logs it had been rebuilt twice in the past. One of the rebuilds must have been when the fuselage was replaced by a L-4 fuselage. So I brought it back to life looking like a L-4. About 18 months ago or so I built up a Continental C-90-12 for the plane. It sure is nice, plenty of power and can pull my sailplane. I put all new stuff in the engine, I think the case was about the only thing that is not new. On cylinder assembly cost more than the complete airplane when I got it in 1969.
My sailplane is a 1-23-H built in the last week of April 1964. I flew it some when I went to a flight instructor glider school at the factory in Elmira, New York the first week of May 1964. I found it for sale near Omaha, Nebraska in the fall of 2005. I had also flown it some when I was based in Kansas City flying for TWA. It was based in St. Joseph at the time. So we get along rather good now that she is mine. Not much in the way of performance by standards of today but I enjoy flying the old gal anyhow.
Holy Cow, I can feel for you driving the tractor up and back, up and back. I was a farm boy from rural North Carolina. You were lucky driving a tractor, my life was spent behind a mule plowing Tobacco, Cotton and Corn. Now that was something, following a mule all day long day after day, it was fantastic when we had all the crops laid back. I had the cow to milk every day, my time was early morning a younger brother got the afternoon milking. I graduated high school the last Thursday in May 1954, went to see the Air Force recruiter on Friday morning, he told me to be back at 6AM on Monday for the trip to the induction center at Raleigh. I had to plow tobacco all day on Saturday. I haven't been behind a mule since that day, I haven't hand picked cotton or hand harvested corn either. Luckily I scored high enough on the entrance exam that I was able to take the exams for Pilot Training, had to be 19 and half to do that. So I had a year and half enlisted and on a radar site in French Morocco. I took the final exams in Germany in September of 1956, it took that long to get all the paperwork done. Finally got into pilot training in August 1957 under the Aviation Cadet course. Graduated November 1958. That avenue for an enlisted fellow to become a pilot and commissioned no longer exists. They ended that in 1962 if I remember right. Airplanes were my wish from the first time I saw one and still is today. I spent 13 years on active duty and seven years in an Air National Guard unit at Lincoln, Nebraska. So I had my twenty good years for retirement, started drawing that at age 60. I flew for Transworld Airlines for 24 years. I'm now 78 and still enjoy flying and have no desire to follow a mule again. I married a Surveyors daughter and found that surveying was navigation and I had plenty experience doing that. My father in law died in 1983, so I got busy and studied real hard and got accepted to take the survey exams, finished the SIT and six months later took the final exam for Professional Land Surveyor, that was fall of 1985. Loooong story takes about as long to tell as to live it.
If you think a tractor is bad try a mule for a while.
Shawn
I wouldn't call the U-2 a difficult plane to fly. I has an awfully bad name for accidents. It depended on previous experience more than anything else. I had over five years in the B-47. They both had the bicycle landing gear config. The B-47 had outrigger gear that kept the wings from dragging the ground. The U-2 had little outrigger wheels for ground handling. On take off safety pins were pulled from them and as the aircraft got a little speed on takeoff the wings would rise and the ground handling gear would fall away. The original size aircraft we would hand launch, meaning the crew chief would hold the wings level and the ground handling gear would be removed. He kept the wings level and the pilot just flew it out of his hands, he would take a couple of steps and let the wing tip slide out of his hands. Sport gliders have been using this method of takeoff for years and years. On landing it was approaching in the low nineties for airspeed and rudder control was a must to make a good landing the B-47 was much faster on approach but rudder control was extremely important to keep it aligned with the runway. The high speed fighter pilots seemed to have a bit of trouble with the rudder control because it wasn't used much in the fast stuff. Along with flying the B-47, I had glider flying experience and all kinds of light airplane experience. At max altitude it was and autopilot plane. We were in coffin corner all the time. That is where the separation of Stall Speed and Mach Buffet speed are real close. All of the time at max altitude the separation was about 3 knots above stall speed and 3 knots below Mach Buffet. Like I said it was an Autopilot plane at max altitude, we had navigation and systems to operate, the autopilot was engaged about 50,000 feet or so and stayed engage till letting down below 60,000 or so. We did celestial navigation and the sextant was a 2 minute averager kind, so for at least 2 minutes the airplane was left to it's own devices. The night celestial had three bodies to observe and usually had about five minutes between observations to record the previous observation and get the sextant turned to the next body and so on. Then after the observations it was to do the math and plot the celestial triangle and by estimate pick the center of the triangle and make a correction and start getting ready for the next observation. The autopilot was a fantastic piece of equipment. We engaged it on the correct mach indication and put the autopilot in Mach hold for speed, as fuel was burned off the aircraft wold slowly climb holding the correct Mach number, it was Mach .74. If a pilot had to hand fly the machine at max altitude and do anything except pay 100 percent of his attention to flying the aircraft within five or ten minutes he would be out of control. I would give him maybe fifteen minutes or so if he payed complete attention to flying the aircraft. A pilot just can't fly an aircraft to such close tolerances very long. Most aircraft were lost from Max Altitude and landings, probably about the same amount for either. Two were shot down one was Powers and the other was during the Cuban Crisis. The Chinese lost several due to missiles on China overflights. They also lost at least three in training accidents while I was in the program. Difficult to fly? Maybe, I was lucky that I had only two scares during my two and half years flying the machine. One scare was during a Cuban overflight when I was locked on by a missile site and in the firing mode, luckily I think they just wanted to scare me, they accomplished their wish. The other time was in Vietnam, I came up on a turning point and turned the heading bug to the new heading and engaged the heading hold on the autopilot. It started a turn and the aircraft started buffeting, I leveled the wings manually and the buffeting stopped, so it was most likely stall buffet. I released the yoke and the autopilot again started the turn and again buffet began, I leveled the wings again and disconnected the autopilot. Flew for about thirty seconds or so and engaged the autopilot again, and manually turned the autopilot control to the new heading with no problems. So from that point on in my flights I always started the turn manually controlling the autopilot to the new heading. Then engaging heading hold on the autopilot. Never had that problem again but I never trusted the autopilot to start a turn to a new heading on it's own. I wrote the autopilot up for maintenance to check, nobody else ever had a complaint about that autopilot. This is much too long to say yes and no at the same time, it was difficult to fly, maybe but I enjoyed flying the plane and was not afraid to fly any of our missions. Strange things about pilots is they always think it will happen to the other guy, then one day they are the other guy. My day hasn't come yet.
Wow! What a career! I worked for many years with a Marine who went from high school dropout to Lieutenant during his 20 years. That path is probably not open any more either, and that's a shame. Degrees are not substitutes for ability.
