Remembering the Dragon Lady: The U-2 Spy Plane: Memoirs of the Men Who Made the Legend

by Gerald McIlmoyle

  I set up my flameout landing pattern with left hand orbits over the landing approach for Runway 12. As I descended, the Tower advised me there was construction equipment off the left side of the approach to Runway 12. Since winds were light and variable, I requested and received permission to land on Runway 30 so construction would not be a factor. I arrived at high key over the end of Runway 30 at 1,700 feet above the runway. I started my turn for the left hand pattern and everything seemed ideal until on final. “Oh, shit! I'm going to be short,” I yelled aloud to myself. I checked my airspeed and saw it was seven to eight knots high. Whew! I bled off my airspeed to the desired amount and crossed the end of the runway with altitude to spare. I landed 1,500 to 2,000 feet down the runway with no mobile chase car to call off my final few feet of altitude to me, another first for me on this flight. I already had more of those then I needed.

  After stopping on the runway, I was suddenly surrounded by more full colonels than I had ever seen before. I turned off all the switches and inserted my seat ejection safety pins, opened the canopy, disconnected my oxygen supply, shrugged out of my parachute and prepared to exit the aircraft. Those terrific maintenance guys put up a ladder to the cockpit. I climbed out and took off my pressure suit helmet. Someone asked if I needed anything. I replied, “We usually are medically prescribed two beers after every high flight.” Sure enough, they sent someone to get me a beer.

  The Barksdale maintenance guys were unfamiliar with the peculiarities of the U-2. They wanted to put a huge rope around the nose wheel and tow the U-2 clear of the runway. I told them that was a definite “no, no.” We would have to unlock the tail wheel and push the aircraft. They did exactly that and parked my bird next to a hangar. Maintenance cordoned off the plane and stationed a guard next to it.

  A maintenance team arrived from Laughlin AFB. They found and repaired a ruptured fuel line. I flew the bird home the next day, but I didn't get credit for my celestial training leg and had to do it over. Fortunately, there was no flameout on the next flight.

  Orville Clancy

  Portland, Oregon

  Wife: Betty

  Orville submitted the following as a summary of a story written by Ray B. Sitton in the Aerospace Historian, June 1978.

  In the early morning hours of the late 1950s, a Republic of China Air Force (ROCAF) pilot was on his first night navigation training mission and experienced an engine flameout over southwest Colorado. He went through his emergency procedures and descended to the altitude for an engine restart. As he descended closer to the mountain peaks below, he continued several unsuccessful engine restarts. The pilot decided to descend through the cloud cover and hopefully make a successful emergency landing.

  As he broke through the cloud cover, he saw lights of the small Cortez, Colorado Airport, the only airfield for many miles. Without radio contact, he circled the field in preparation for an emergency landing. As he turned on final approach to the runway, he determined that he had sufficient hydraulic pressure to lower the landing gear. With the gear locked into the down position, he then realized he had lined up with the lights of Main Street, Cortez and not with the airfield. He raised the gear and turned toward the field. He tried to lower the gear but was unsuccessful this time. The U-2 continued to descend silently, unannounced and undetected, to a belly landing at the Cortez Airport.

  The ROCAF pilot disconnected all his cables, hoses and harnesses, a task usually performed with help from the PSD guys. He exited the aircraft and walked toward the lighted airport office in his pressure suit and helmet.

  To the shocked night manager and a friend who was visiting, the ROCAF pilot appeared like a space alien from the movies. In the excitement of the moment, the pilot had difficulty with his command of English. However, he remembered his instructions concerning security of his aircraft in the event of an unscheduled landing. So he yelled, “MAXIMUM SECURITY! MAXIMUM SECURITY!”

  The manager's friend knocked over his chair and ran for the back door. The manager shouted, “COME NO CLOSER! COME NO CLOSER!”

  After both the airport manager and the pilot regained their composure, they were able to arrange for security of the U-2. The pilot called for a USAF recovery crew at Laughlin AFB to retrieve him and his aircraft. The following day, the U-2 and the pilot departed Cortez inside a C-124 transport with many of the residents of Cortez on hand to witness the departure.

  Ward Graham

  (Deceased May 8, 2004)

  The following was submitted by Ward prior to his death.

  My Flameout Landing

  September 22, 1965 was a day that has remained etched in my memory. The deep blue sky was peppered with cumulus clouds. It was a vision of tranquility contrary to the imminent danger that I faced. My black, long-winged airplane silently approached the runway at Flagstaff Pulliam Field, Arizona. I circled once and headed in for a deadengine landing on Runway 21, almost 7,000 feet of asphalt. I glided my Black Dragon down from above 70,000 feet to this field on the high mesa of Arizona, 7,014 feet above sea level.

  The probabilities of a successful U-2 landing on such a short runway at such high elevation without power was slight. I thought at the time the odds were against me as I was considering I did not have flaps, speed brakes, drag chute nor communication from the Control Tower. I did not even have communication from another U-2 pilot in a Mobile Control chase vehicle about wind direction and speed.

  About 40 minutes prior to this landing, I had been on a celestial navigation leg westbound about six hours into a routine training mission. I had completed a series of sextant shots on the sun and was recording data on my map. I noticed the shadows changing on the chart. I looked up and discovered the airplane in a 60-degree left bank. The autopilot had disconnected. I reached for the controls to roll back to level flight, and I heard the sound no jet pilot wants to hear--the spooling down of the engine. The extreme bank angle had caused a flameout.

  My pressure suit inflated and my face piece fogged over. I began to shut down systems in the airplane to conserve battery power for an expected air start of the engine in the denser air below 40,000 feet. I made an emergency call but I received no response from Phoenix Center. I began to make large spirals around a town I saw on the ground. I descended through 40,000 feet, and initiated one of several air start attempts on the normal and the emergency fuel system. With a sinking feeling, I discovered that the engine was not going to start. I was down to 30,000 feet and noticed an airfield that was just south of the town I had been orbiting. I did not know what town this was nor the length of the runway, but leaving the “bird in hand” was not an option. Due to the celestial navigation leg and the confusion of the first few minutes following the flameout, I had become lost, something few pilots like to admit. I had no idea how far it might be to a longer runway.

  Praying hard to the Lord for deliverance, I continued to descend toward the town's runway. By this time the battery was dead and no communication with the ground was possible. I guessed at the altitude for high key and tried to get some action from the flaps and speed brakes. There was virtually no hydraulic pressure available to operate these systems. The U-2 has no backup hydraulic system. I knew that with the engine dead, the chance was very slim of a successful drag chute deployment.

  By what I can only attribute as help from the hand of God, I made a normal, no flap, flameout pattern. I touched down on the first 1,500 feet of a rather short runway at Pulliam Field, the civilian airport at Flagstaff, Arizona. There was no convenient taxiway on which to turn off so I stopped on the runway. After I landed, some firemen and mechanics came to the airplane. We were able to move it off the runway and prop the wings up on 55-gallon drums in one of the hangars on the field.

  I had an interesting two days in Flagstaff staying with the firemen at the local station and being interviewed by a reporter from Phoenix. Investigators found a valve had failed in the fuel control. The failure was such that the engine would continue running in the air, but once fuel flow was interrupted it c
ould not be restored. The real mystery to me was why the autopilot disconnected with no previous warning.

  Three days later I flew the airplane back to Davis Monthan AFB without further incident. As a result of this flight, I was selected as Strategic Air Command “Pilot of the Month” and received a Distinguished Flying Cross. More importantly, I have been able to credit God for saving my life.

  Patrick J. Halloran

  Colorado Springs, Colorado

  Loss of Oxygen at 63,000 feet

  After I finished my initial U-2 checkout in mid-1957 at Laughlin AFB, I proceeded through the advanced training in long-range navigation and photo run sorties. Missions of this type were normally six to eight hours’ duration and usually involved a number of visual runs on photo targets using pilotage navigation, followed by an extended celestial navigation leg on the return flight.

  On one such sortie I departed early in the morning from Laughlin AFB and I climbed to altitude in a northern direction towards Dyess AFB at Abilene, Texas. After reaching an initial cruise altitude of 62,000 to 63,000 feet, I began to concentrate on visual navigation to my first set of photo targets in the panhandle part of Texas. All was going well when I became aware of an increase in my rate of breathing to the point of obvious hyperventilation. This would sometimes occur during the period of pre-breathing preflight preparation while wearing the pressure suit. I think most pilots experienced a degree of claustrophobia and hyperventilation at one time or another in their early days in the pressure suit. For all who did have this experience, it was a very uncomfortable period of anxiety and difficult to control. Definitely it was a “mind over matter” situation. I had been bothered by this phenomenon a few times, but immediately recognized the indications when I encountered it this time in flight – a cold, clammy feeling on the skin.

  The recognition of hyperventilation gave me an immediate surge of adrenaline and an awareness that something was drastically wrong and required my undivided attention. I began a quick mental review of my situation and attempted to force myself to return to a normal breathing rate. This procedure normally worked on the ground, but I suddenly felt the breathing bladder of my pressure suit helmet collapse around my head. I knew that I was in serious trouble. I was at 29,000 feet cabin pressure and was OUT OF OXYGEN.

  Marking the one millionth foot of film shot over Cuba in 1963 are, standing left to right: Colonel DesPortes, Major Halloran, Jim Combs (Hycon Tech Rep), CM Sgt Max Burns, CM Sgt Willie Haynes; kneeling left to right: Airmen Jim Lobig, Jim Manis and Joseph “Rooster” Robinson.

  Laverton RAAF Station Australia 1965, celebrating 1000 hours in the U-2 for George Bull. Left to right: Ray Pierson, Line Chief Okie Barnes, Crew Chief unknown, Ed Purdue, Pat Halloran, George Bull.

  Beijing, China, 2004. Pat Halloran standing alongside the U-2 flown by Jack Chang, ROCAF. Chang was shot down by an SA-2 missile on January 10, 1965.

  I frantically checked the primary and secondary aircraft oxygen system gauges and valves but everything indicated “normal”. My mind was racing to find a fix or an alternative plan but nothing was making much sense. My hyperventilation, while attempting to breathe through the anti-suffocation valve in the helmet, was increasing to the point that I was becoming aware of serious hypoxia symptoms, the “old gun barrel” view of the world as my vision narrowed.

  I went through a mental process of looking for a means of immediately getting to a lower altitude. I knew that I couldn't “fly” the aircraft to a meaningful, lower altitude as it would take too long and I wouldn't retain consciousness. I discarded a plan for an autopilot descent. That would take too long and would probably result in a flameout if I wasn't capable of making throttle adjustments. I remember considering either stopcocking the engine and attempting an emergency descent or bailing out. There was no ejection seat then. I realized that both options would have immediately moved my physiological altitude from 29,000 feet to about 63,000 feet. Survival would be unlikely. I probably went through this review process in seconds. The time of useful consciousness at that altitude is short and I could tell I was running out of time.

  I was frantic and tried to think of an alternate plan. I reached for one of the cockpit mirrors to check my faceplate. My vision was seriously deteriorating and my physical actions were getting a bit spastic. I reached to adjust the mirror; my arm jerked and I hit the mirror with my hand so hard that it grabbed my attention. The mirror was now aimed at the lower right side of my body where the oxygen hose cluster on the pressure suit was located. Looking in the mirror I was startled to see in the shadows that my faceplate breathing hose was disconnected from the cluster and was dangling free.

  With all the concentration I could bring to bear, and with an awareness that this was going to be my last shot, I managed to twist around, and with both hands, reconnected the breathing hose. Relief was immediate as my helmet filled with oxygen pressure and my sight and breathing returned to normal. I had an overwhelming sense of relief that I could continue the long training mission without further difficulty. When I landed seven hours later and relayed the incident to the Lift Support and Safety folks, I was roundly criticized for not aborting the mission and returning immediately to the base. At that stage of our training, what did we know?

  The problem, as I learned later, was the procedure for connecting the individual hoses to the cluster. It was a simple “press to insert” and then twist to drop the “dog ears” into a retaining slot. My hose had not been twisted far enough to drop the “ears” into the locking slot. It remained in that intermediate, though still functional position, until my cockpit movements popped it loose. Subsequently, the little spring safety clip was added to the assembly. It could not be installed unless the hose was in the fully locked detent position.

  For some reason, I didn't think of activating the emergency oxygen bailout bottle because if I had thought of it, I'm sure I would have done it. However, it wouldn't have been any help because no oxygen would have gone to my helmet anyway. I've had a chilling thought of that incident if I had not been able to correct the problem. I was on autopilot, on a western heading with enough fuel to fly several thousand miles before the plane would have flamed out. I wonder what part of the Pacific Ocean that would have been! The Safety Office would have had one hell of a time trying to figure that one out.

  This one scared the hell out of me after the fact, but in those early days in 1957, I suspect that there were lots of incidents like that which didn't get publicized too much. It was part of the “development” of the system I guess, so when someone had a major problem, they just said, “OK, we'll fix that and let's press on.”

  Roger Herman

  (Deceased May 23, 2010)

  The following was submitted by Roger prior to his death.

  Wouldn't this burn you up?

  During the last years the 4080th SRW was located at Laughlin AFB, we were tasked with a project to map a number of areas in the upper Midwest. The project name eludes me but, as best I can remember it, it was in the area of Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota and maybe some of the fringe areas next to those states. Clear weather that would provide fine photographic reconnaissance was always a problem in these northern states. Consequently, whenever the weather forecast was favorable, any pilot scheduled for a long duration training sortie would be tasked to plan a NEPHO Run (photo recon) to take high-resolution photographs of as much of the not-yet-photographed area as possible.

  On this day I happened to catch such a mission. However, the weather was only forecast to be somewhat favorable early in the day. Therefore, I was scheduled for a takeoff several hours before daylight. I rolled out of bed at “O Dark Thirty”, (translation: very, very early). I departed home in the black starlit night en route to the quiet Laughlin flight line. I had my usual medical check from the Flight Surgeon and then my high protein breakfast of steak and eggs. I always looked forward to that because the cooks in the PSD always sent us off with a wonderful meal designed to last many hours. The PSD personnel helped
me into my pressure suit through pre-flight by the Mobile Control Pilot and PSD hookup and check of my life support equipment and system after I was in the U-2 cockpit. Engine start and takeoff were on schedule.

  The “as planned routine” ended almost immediately after takeoff when “you know what” hit the fan. I heard a “whoop” followed by a loud “whoosh” and a rush of very warm air. I reached down and placed the pressurization switch to Ram Air. That stopped the rush of warm air, but it also left me without cabin pressurization. That's because pressurization and cockpit heating come from a bleed valve that siphons compressed air from the sixteenth stage of the J-57 engine. My switching to Ram Air shut off that system entirely. Of course, it solved one problem but created another. Without pressurization, I couldn't go to altitude. Recommendation from Ground Support was that I return the pressurization switch to Normal. So, I did that, and it was a really BIG MISTAKE. The extremely hot air was still flooding the cockpit. The air conditioning system had swallowed its bleed air-mixing valve. This meant that no air-conditioned air could be mixed with engine bleed air. I immediately returned the switch to Ram Air but now that did not correct the problem. Within a couple of seconds, I knew the cabin pressurization and heating system was now stuck in full hot bleed air from the engine. Believe me, it was really hot! I couldn't remember the temperature of the bleed air as it comes off the compressor section of the engine, but I believe it was in the 200 degree range. The goal was to maintain absolute minimum power to reduce the bleed air as much as possible. There was no putting down the landing gear, opening the speed brakes and trying to burn off fuel to get to landing weight pronto. Even absolute minimum power produced unbearably hot air.