Category . LOCKHEED’S BLACK WORLD SKUNK WORKS

During the early spring of 1979, tensions between Saudi Arabia and the People’s Republic of Yemen were strained to the point where the US intelligence community’ believed that the Republic was on the brink of invading its northern neighbour. As a result, on the morning of Monday 12 March, Majs Rich Graham and Don Emmons deployed 972 from Beale to Det4 inorder to furnish deci­sion makers with the necessary intelligence information.

After two early morning ground aborts due to cloud cover over the ‘collection area’, the mission finally got underway. Buzz Carpenter and his RSO, John Murphy got airborne and headed for their ARCP off Lands’ End. Unfortunately, Buzz suffered a violent attack of diarrhoea while on the tanker boom, but despite his discomfort, he elected to continue the mission. Having completed the full fuel off-load they accelerated due south; since France had denied them the right to overfly, it was necessary to skirt the Iberian peninsula, entering the Mediterranean Sea through the Straits of Gibraltar. They then complet­ed a second refuelling before returning to high Mach flight and overflying the Suez Canal, before a third tanker rendezvous over the Red Sea. The planned double-loop coverage of the collection area was interrupted by the ANS, which tried to initiate a pre-programmed turn pripr to reaching the correct destination point (DP).

Recognising the error, the crew flew the aeroplane manu­ally while trying to work out what had caused the AUTONAV ‘glitch’. As a result of the miscue, they over­shot the turn point, but completed the rest of the route and made their way back to the tankers for another Red Sea top-up. A fifth air refuelling was completed east of Gibraltar and an hour-and-a-half later they recovered ‘972 back to Mildenhall after a full ten-hour mission.

This mission had generated considerable interest within the 9th SRW as well as at SAC Headquarters and in Washington. As a result, Buzz and John were greeted by a large number of their colleagues as they stepped off the gantry (including Col Dave Young, the 9th SRW vice commander), who presented Buzz-with a brown SR-71 tie tack to commemorate the in-flight incident when, to mis­quote a well known phrase, ‘the world fell out of Buzz’s bottom’.

When the ‘take’ was processed, it was of exceptional quality and the incident which had delayed their turn had yielded the most important information. That unexpected success made additional flights to the area unnecessary.

Consequently, Rich Graham and Don Emmons returned 972 to Beale on 28 March. Deployments to Suffolk continued throughout the early eighties, the main ‘collec­tion areas’ being the Barents and Baltic, in support of US Navy intelligence requirements. On 9 July 1983, British aviation enthusiasts ‘manning’ the many off-base vantage points of Mildenhall noted the arrival of aircraft ‘962, an aircraft that had ‘pulled’ TDY at the base on previous occasions. In fact Majs Maun’ Rosenberg and ‘ED’ McKim had just completed a seven hour operational flight from Beale to Mildenhall via the Barents/Baltic areas in the Palmdale flight test aircraft ‘955. The false serial number had been applied to ensure unwelcome attention was not drawn to the unique operational test deployment then undenvay.

In its detachable nose section, ‘955 was equipped with Loral’s Advanced Synthetic Radar System (ASARS-1), a system that provided a quantum leap in radar resolution. With maritime data collected during the inbound flight, Majs ‘BC’ Thomas and John Morgan conducted a 2.6 hr ASARS operational test sortie of land-based targets in East Germany nine days later. On 21 July, Maury and ED took their turn on a four hour mission. The final ASARS operational proving flight was conducted by BC and John on 30 July, when they flew ‘962, ie ‘955, on a 7.3 hr flight back to Beale, again via the Baltic and Barents Seas. The series of tests were extremely success­ful and following further tests back at Palmdale, two production radar sets for the operational fleet were fund­ed and deployed.

All Agency pilots recruited into Project Aquatone came straight from the Air Force, on a ‘suspended contract’, in which their ‘grey suit’ time counted towards their time served in the military. Two of the initial cadre of six pilots, Marty Knutson and Carmen Vito, were both F-84 ‘jocks’, assigned to the 31st Strategic Fighter Wing, locat-

ed at Turner AFB, Georgia. Having passed various inter­views, conducted by mysterious civilians at insalubrious hotels, they next spent a week undergoing one of the most rigorous medicals ever devised, at the Lovelace Clinic, Alburquerque, New Mexico. In all, about 25 pilots, in three intakes, would be recruited into the Agency programme.

Early U-2 training flights w’ere punctuated by a number of flameouts, a situation that continued until Pratt & Whitney engineers perfected high altitude opera­tion of the J57. Such events required the pilot to seek out denser air at 35,000 feet, in order to effect a relight. On a few occasions, when pilots were unable to get a relight, it became necessary to divert. But despite a number of such occurrences, Aquatone remained in the black.

A unique facet of U-2 piloting, was flight in that part of the envelope known as ‘coffin comer’. Having climbed rapidly to 60,000 feet the aircraft would then follow a cruise-climb schedule; as fuel was burned off and the aircraft became lighter, it could climb higher – as high as

Top left NACA/NASA association with the U-2 can be traced back to the beginning of the programme. Initially a CIA paper exercise, designed to cover the aircraft’s true mission, NASA received two U-2Cs (56-6681 and 56-6682 redesignated NASA 708 and 709 respectively), on the 3rd and 4th June 1971, to form its High Altitude Missions Branch (HAMB), based at Moffett Field, California. (Paul Crickmore)

Top right When U-2C 56-6681 was retired in June 1987, its NASA designation, 708, was transferred to an ex-Air Force TR – I (80-1069), which served alongside the purpose-built ER-2 prototype NASA 706 and the remaining U-2C, NASA 709.

(Paul Crickmore)

Above NASA U-2C 709 was retired in April 1989 and at the time of writing, following delivery of the second ER-2, NASA 709, the fleet consists of two ER-2s (now redesignated U-2ERs) and the ex-Air Force TR-1 (U-2R). (Lockheed Martin)

75,0
feet in some flight conditions. However, in the rarefied air above 60,000 feet, the never exceed speed curve virtually meets the aircraft stall speed curve. This crucial difference could be as little as lOkts. At high altitude with the engine at full power and in a banked turn, it was possible for the high wing to reach Mach bullet w hilst the inside wing approached stall buffet – exceed Mach buffet by more than four knots and it was possible that the fragile U-2 would disintegrate!

During the Geneva Summit, on 21 July 1955,

President Eisenhower had proposed that an ‘Open Skies’ plan should be considered between the United States, the Soviet Union and other participating countries, wherein a limited number of annual reconnaissance overflights w ould be made in order to verify claims of declared force strengths. Surprised by the proposal, the Soviet delega­tion reacted favourably and agreed to confer with their Party Secretary, Nikita Khrushchev. He however refused to either sign-up to, or reject the proposal. Such prevari­cation ensured that ‘Open Skies’ failed one month later, when a vote was taken in the United Nations.

By June 1956, it was judged that initial flight test and

Above left Unique to U-2 operations is the ‘howdah’, which was designed to protect crew members from the sun’s heat.

(Lockheed Martin)

Below U-2R. 80-1082 equipped with short nose but super-pods is seen complete with tail-art at Beale AFB in November 1986.

(Paul Crickmore)

Above Slow sink rate, due to the high aspect ratio wing, has always caused problems when landing U-2s; as a result, every landing – including touch-and-goes, are accompanied by two ‘mobile’ U-2 pilots, one in radio contact, in a fast car. As the U – 2 crosses the threshold it is chased and height-to-go is called-off. (Paul Crickmore)

Right Airborne in just over 1,000ft of runway, the U-2’s climb rate has always been impressive; with lighter, earlier models reaching 50,000ft in just 10 minutes. (Paul Crickmore)

training objectives of the U-2 programme had been completed; accordingly six operational pilots, together with ten U-2s, were deemed ready for operational deploy­ment. The death of Eisenhower’s ‘Open Skies’ proposal led the President to sanction, for an initial ten-day peri­od, a program that would have a profound impact within the intelligence fraternity and on international power poli­tics – Operation Overflight. In anticipation of these events, two U-2s had been air-freighted to RAF

I. akenheath, England on 30 April 1956, where the first of three Agency detachments was formed, under the entirely fictional designation of 1st Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, Provisional (WRSP-1). Known within the

‘inner circle’ as ‘Detachment A’ and consisting of Agency, Air Force and contracted civilians, no operational sorties were flown from the UK and the unit redeployed to W iesbaden, Germany on 15 June. This new location was situated close to Camp King, the Agency’s main West German intelligence gathering facility, within which intel reports from defectors were collected and then used as a basis for U-2 overflight requests.

The first operational U-2 sortie was flown just four days after Det A’s arrival at W iesbaden. Piloted by Carl Overstreet, the platform overflew Warsaw, Berlin and Potsdam, before recovering back into W iesbaden without incident. Image quality provided by the Type В camera surpassed anything previously seen, and the stage was set for ‘Overflight’ to begin operations against the Soviet Union. This was achieved by Ucrvey Stockman, flying Article 347 on US Independence Day, 4 July 1956.

He flew over East Berlin then across northern Poland via Poznan, onward to Minsk and Leningrad, before exiting via the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, landing again without incident back at Wiesbaden after a flight lasting eight hours 45 minutes.

The very next day Article 347 was again airborne, this time with Carmen Vito at the controls on an overflight which included the Soviet capital, Moscow. Again, image quality was exceptional, but on this occasion Soviet fighters tried, unsuccessfully, to intercept the flight.

Yet another mission was successfully completed the following Monday, by which time the Soviet ‘diplomatic cage’ was well and truly rattled. On 10 July the Soviet Ambassador in Washington delivered a formal, public – protest against the flights. Eisenhower was very concerned at the level of provocation that these flights inevitably caused and insisted that henceforth, ten-day blanket clearances were rescinded, and instead replaced by a policy of one clearance, one flight.

The imagery secured by these first sorties was developed and duplicated at Wiesbaden, before one set was despatched by special courier aircraft to Washington (the other set was retained at Wiesbaden in case the first was lost or damaged in transit). Once in Washington, they ended up in a run-down neighbourhood where Art Lundahl, of the Agency’s Photographic Intelligence Division, had set up a secret process and interpretation centre, on the upper floors of an auto repair shop, aptly codenamed ‘Auto Mat’.

The vast amount of quality imagery collected by ‘Overflight’ soon put the Agency at odds with gloomy Air Force predictions about the strength of the Soviet bomber fleet, which forced a downward reappraisal of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). One disturbing aspect revealed by the flights however was the ease with which Soviet radar was. able to track them with early warning and height finding radars. This in turn led the Skunk Works to undertake a series of evaluations using various techniques to reduce the U-2’s Radar Cross Section (RCS). Utilising Article 341 up at Area 51, Project Dirty Bird first saw the aircraft’s planform framed by wires of different dipole lengths running from tail to wing.

Another used Radar Absorbent Material (RAM), in the

Top right U-2R, serial ‘1074 of the 99th SRS turns base-leg at Beale during a training sortie – highly expensive mission equip­ment is removed for such flights. (Paul Crickmore)

Right 1082 taxies to a halt on completion of a low altitude training sortie. Note the externally mounted rear-view mirror, located on the left side of the cockpit canopy. (Paul Crickmore)

Below On 2 August 1988, General Rogers, then Commander-in­Chief of Strategic Air Command, experienced at first hand a high altitude familiarization flight in a TR-1B. (Paul Crickmore)

form of a metallic grid, known as a Salisbury Screen. Attached to 341’s lower surfaces, this was then covered in ‘Echosorb’ – a microwave-absorbent coating based on black rubber foam; but neither technique proved effective.

It was during a Dirty Bird test flight on 4 April 1957, that Article 341, the U-2 prototype, was lost. Having suffered a flame out at about 72,000 feet. Bob Sieker’s pressure suit inflated, unfortunately the clasp securing the bottom of his face plate failed. With 70 lbs of internal pressure exhausting through the front of the helmet, it would have been almost impossible for Bob to resecure the clasp and within ten seconds he lost consciousness. Article 341 descended in a flat spin, and upon reaching denser air, it appears that Bob revived and attempted a bail out. The aircraft’s wreckage remained more or less in one piece and was eventually found about ninety miles from Area 51. Bob’s body was recovered about fifty feet away, suggesting he may have managed to clear the aircraft just before impact. Kelly Johnson redesigned the face plate clasp and re-evaluated the decision not to equip U-2s with an ejector seat – had this aircraft been so equipped, it is probable that Bob would have survived.

In August 1956, the second cadre of Agency pilots had completed their training up at Area 51 and were shipped to Incirlik AB, Turkey, where they formed ‘Detachment B’, which consisted of seven pilots and five aircraft.

A third U-2 operating location – Det C, was established at Atsugi airfield near Tokyo in 1957 and in February that same year, the last Agency pilots graduated and were dispersed to the three Dets. By now Det A had again moved, this time to Giebelstadt, just south of Wurzburg and shortly afterwards it was merged with Det B. As the 1950s drew to a close, Agency U-2s had successfully completed about thirty overflights of the Soviet Union and considerably more peripheral and training missions.

From its inception, Lockheed, the Agency and DoD otficials all believed that the U-2’s overflight life would last about two years. But as year three drew to a close, there still appeared to be a gap between the U-2’s ability

to overfly denied territory and the Soviet’s to build a weapons system capable of successfully intercepting the intruder. Certainly the program’s accomplishments were approaching legendary status; in addition to revealing the truth about the Soviet bomber fleet, it had, while operating out of Lahore and Peshaw ar, Pakistan, discovered the location of a new 1CBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile), test site at Tyuratam, which turned out to be the primary test facility for the new R-7 ICBM (later known by NATO as the SS-6 Sapwood).

The potential threat represented by the Soviet’s SA-2

Below A high accident rate during flight training led to two U – 2As being converted into U-2CT configuration. These were both retired and replaced by three TR-1 Bs. (Paul Crickmore)

Bottom With the instructor pilot (IP) seated in the raised rear cockpit, a student brings 1065 over the Beale threshold. Ten feet ‘off the deck’ and 200 feet in the overrun, with a I Okt head­wind, the throttle is brought to idle and the aircraft ‘driven down’ to just one or two feet, where it is held until it stalls. (Paul Crickmore)

Above Not long after their arrival at Beale, the white training birds were painted black. Later their designation was changed fromTR-IBs to U-2RTs. When re-engined with the FI 18,they became U-2 STs; and finally today they are designated TU-2Ss.

(Paul Crickmore)

Right Designed to fit on an aircraft carrier’s elevator, the outer 6 feet of a U-2R’s wing folds inboard. (Paul Crickmore)

Guideline, surface to air missile (SAM) system, touting a kill pattern of about 400 feet, was certainly appreciated by U-2 mission planners, who gave known sites a berth of up to 30 miles. Further precautions saw the introduction of a rudimentary Electronic Countermeasure (ECM) suite. Designated System 9, this simple range gate pull-off (RGPO) device, was located in a small aft-facing compartment at the root of the vertical fin. Switched on by the pilot upon entering denied territory, it had the capability of breaking lock if illuminated by an airborne intercept radar. Additional comfort came from the first major U-2 upgrade which had just been initiated; five aircraft were reworked into U-2C models, powered by an uprated Pratt & Whitney J75 engine, which enabled the aircraft to climb an additional 5,000 feet.

On the diplomatic stage a visit by Khrushchev to the United States prompted a reciprocal invitation for Eisenhower to visit the Soviet Union during 1960.

In the meantime, it was agreed a summit would be held in Paris, to which both the British and French would be invited. A thaw in the frosty relationship between the two super powers seemed in prospect. However, all this was about to change.

Tension between the United States and much of the Arab world continued, and after a series of incidents, President Reagan’s patience came to a violent end. On 15 April 1986, operation Eldorado Canyon, a coordinated strike on targets in Libya, by air elements of the US Navy and

Above and below Just as Senior Crown closed down, Lockheed photographer Eric Schulzinger shot for posterity a masterful series of photographs of the Habu. Here 17968 has had a Dolby X logo applied to its tail. (Eric Schulzinger)

eighteen USAF F-llls from RAF Lakenheath, was mounted. Lt Cols Jerry Glasser and Ron Tabor took off from Mildenhall as scheduled at 0500 hrs in SR-71 ‘980 (callsign Tromp 30). Their mission was to secure photo­graphic imagery for post-strike bomb damage assessment (BDA). To achieve thus it would be necessary to overfly targets hit earlier, but this time in broad daylight and with the sophisticated Libyan defence network on full alert. Such was the importance of the mission that SR – 71 A 960 (Tromp 31) flown by Majs Brian Shul and Walt Watson, launched at 0615 hrs as an airborne spare, should Tromp 30 abort with platform or sensor problems. In the event all aircraft systems – the two chine-mounted Technical Objective Cameras (TEOCs) for spot coverage and the nose-mounted, Optical Bar Cameras (OBC) for horizon-to-horizon coverage, worked as advertised aboard the primary aircraft and ‘960 was not called upon to penetrate hostile airspace. Despite SAM launches against ‘980, the SR-71 proved yet again that it could operate W’ith impunity in such high threat environments, and at 0935 hrs Tromp 30 landed safely back at ‘the Hall’. The missions ‘take’ was processed in the Mobile Processing Centre (MPC), located within one of Mildenhall’s disused hangars. It was then transported by a KC-135 (Trout 99) to Andrews AFB, Maryland, where national-level officials were eagerly awaiting post-strike briefings.

Two further missions over Libya were conducted on both 16 and 17 April, with minor route changes and different call signs. This intense period of reconnaissance activity scored many new ‘firsts’ for Del 4: first occasion that both aircraft were airborne simultaneously; first time KC-lOs had been used to refuel SR-71s in the European theatre; first time that photos taken by the SR-71s were released to the press (although the source was never offi­cially admitted and the image quality was purposely, severely degraded to hide true capability). All in all, the missions were a great accomplishment by the Det’s

support personnel under the command of ex SR-71 RSO, Lt Col Barn – MacKean.

One of the most ambitious sorties planned for the U-2 was a nine hour flight covering 3,800 miles (2,900 of which would be over denied territory). Launched from Peshawar, Pakistan, the flight would recover into Bodo, Norway. The mission’s objective was to locate a new missile base near Plcstsk that the photo interpreters at Auto Mat had been searching for in vain since 1958.

In addition, the route offered an opportunity of gaining additional material from Tvuratam and the military industrial complex around Sverdlovrk.

Above The U-2R still retains the early high altitude air sampling capability; here the unit is being bolted into 69-10338’s Q-bay.

(Paul Crickmore)

Right Nose-art, or in this case, tail-art, has been a feature of US combat aircraft since WWII. This particular example, applied in chalk, adorned the tail of aTR-l B. (Paul Crickmore)

The plan was reluctantly approved by President Eisenhower, who insisted that it should be flown before 25 April. However, due to bad weather across much of the intended route, Eisenhower agreed to extend the deadline to 1 May. On Wednesday 27 April, improving met conditions prompted a detachment from Det В consisting of two pilots and support personnel to deploy via C-130 from Incirlik, to Peshawar. Scheduled attempts to launch on 28, 29 and 30 April were made. However,

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all were aborted well before take-off, due to adverse weather in the collection areas. Finally, at 06:26 local time, on May 1 1960, Francis Gary Powers got airborne in Article 360 and headed for the border. To help draw attention away from the deep penetration mission, a diversionary, peripheral flight left from Incirlik. After three hours and 27 minutes of flight, Powers was stunned to feel and hear what seemed to be a dull explosion, below and behind his aircraft. Almost immediatelv
afterwards the sky turned bright orange and seconds later 360’s right wing dropped. Turning the control yoke left, Powers managed to correct the roll, but then the nose pitched downward – due to damage sustained by the horizontal tail. As the U-2 pitched violently forward, both wings were ripped from the fuselage. Powers face plate frosted over, his partial pressure suite inflated and «hat was left of the aircraft entered an inverted flat spin. Centrifugal forces pinned the pilot to the instrument

Above The 17th Reconnaissance Wing and its flying component, the 95th Reconnaissance Squadron, were activated at RAF Alconbury on I October 1982 and became operational five months later. (Paul Crickmore)

Right Steve Nichols lines-up ‘KONA 17’ an ASARS configured aircraft, prior to departure from Alconbury. (Paul Crickmore)

panel which prevented the use of the ejector seat. Glancing at the unwinding altimeter. Powers noted he was descending through 34,000 ft. Reaching up he pushed the canopy open, unlatched his seat harness and was thrown forward. Now only half out of the cockpit, he realised he’d failed to disconnect his oxygen hose. He then attempted to re-enter the cockpit. When this failed, he began pulling on the hose in an effort to break it. Finally his efforts were rewarded and he was clear; almost immediately his chute was successfully deployed by a barometric sensor – set to activate at 15,000ft. Powers was captured after landing in a field and four days later the political impact of the shoot down reverberated across the front pages of newspapers all around the world.

Operation Overflight, the United States’ most clandestine reconnaissance operation, had literally been blown apart at the seams. An immediate cessation of U-2 overflights followed, backed up later by the retraction of all U-2 operations around the world.

On 10 February 1%2 Frank Powers and the notorious master spy, Rudolf Abel silently passed one another on the Glienicker Bridge in Germany, in a pre-arranged exchange of prisoners. But with 90% of all photographic data on Soviet military developments originating from U – 2 imager)’, the question remained: how, or with what, would it be replaced?

The ‘Senior Crown’ programme was living on borrowed time without an electro-optical backplate for the camera system and a data-link system which would permit camera imagery and radar data from ASARS-1 to be down-linked in near real time. Eventually, funds were appropriated for the development of Senior King, a secure data link via satellite, but its development would prove too late to save the SR-71.

By the late eighties the list of those articulating an anti SR-71 posture was as long and varied as it was powerful. By 1988 it looked as though the efforts of the antagonists would be successful. But all was not quite lost: Admiral Lee Baggott, Commander in Chief, Atlantic (CINCLANT) required SR-71 coverage of the Kola peninsula as there were no other means of obtaining the quality of coverage required. He took the battle to retain the SR-71 in Europe right to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and obtained funding for Det 4 for a further year. Meanwhile, the SR-71 PEM and his action officer were able to secure a commitment from a staffer on the Senate Appropriations Committee for S46 million to keep Kadena and Palmdale open for another year. By now however, it was only a question of time before these valiant rearguard actions faced the inevitable. What was to be the final flight of an SR-71 took place on 6 March 1990, when Ed Yeilding and JT Vida flew ‘972 on a Wcst-to-East coast record-breaking flight across the United States, before landing at the Smithsonian National Aerospace Museum, Washington DC, where the aircraft was handed over for permanent display. Thereafter, SR – 71As (‘962, ‘967 and ‘968), were placed in storage at Site 2 Palmdale. Two SR-71As (‘971 and ‘980), together with the sole surviving SR-71 В (‘956) were loaned to NASA, the remaining 13 aircraft (including the hybrid trainer designated SR-71C which consisted of the forward fuse­lage from a static specimen mated to the wing and rear. section of YF-12A, 60-6934), were donated to museums throughout the US. Despite more than forty members of Congress, and many other well placed officials and senior officers voicing their concern over the decision.

During the course of the Gulf War, two requests were made to reactivate the Senior Crown programme, both however were turned down by the same SECDEF who had presided over the aircraft’s shutdown – Dick Cheney. That Desert Storm was an overwhelming success for coalition forces is beyond despute; however there were lessons to be learned from the 41-day campaign, not least of which was the lack of timely reconnaissance material available to General Schwarzkopfs field commanders.

It wasn’t until March/April 1994 that events in the international arena once more took a turn. Relations

Right, top, middle and bottom SR-71A 17968 is caught on anoth­er sortie. The aircraft first flew on 3 August 1966, with Bill Weaver in the front and George Andre in the back; it was retired on 12 February 1990. having accumulated 2,279 flight hours. (Eric Schulzinger)

between North Korea and the United States, at best always strained, reached a new low over the north’s refusal to allow inspection of their nuclear sites. At this point Senator Robert Byrd took centre stage. Together with several members of the Armed Services, and various members of Congress, he contended that back in 1990 the Pentagon had consistently lied about the supposed readi­ness of a replacement for the SR-71. The motivation behind such commitments was not the usual politicking, but one of genuine concern for the maintenance of a plat­form capable of broad area synoptic coverage.

The campaigning and lobbying paid off as noted in the ‘Department of Defence Appropriations Bill 1995’, report 103-321, dated July 20, wherein provision was made for a modest, ‘three plane SR-71 aircraft contingency recon­naissance capability’, at a cost of SI00 million, for fiscal year 1995 (FY95). Of the three SR-71As placed in deep storage at Site 2, Palmdale, only ‘967 was called to arms. The other A model to be recommissioned was ‘971 which had been loaned to NASA, re-numbered 832 and regular­ly ground tested but never flown by its civilian caretakers. Pilot trainer SR-71B, together with the brand new flight simulator, would be shared between the Air Force and NASA, and in a further move to keep operating costs to a minimum the new detachment, designated det 2, would,
like NASA, operate its aircraft from Edwards AFB, California.

Aircraft reactivation began on 5 January 1995 and seven days later, at 11:26 hrs, NASA crew Steve Ishmael and Marta Bohn-Meyer got airborne from Edwards in ‘971 on a 26 minute ferry flight which terminated at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, Plant 10 Building 602, Palmdale. Over the next three months ASARS and other sensors previously in storage at Luke AFB, Arizona were installed. At 10:18 hrs on 26 April, NASA crew Ed Schneider and Marta completed a 34 minutes FCF on ‘971. A month later Ed and Marta’s husband Bob Meyer conducted 971’s second and final FCF which lasted 2.5 hours. It took seven further FCFs to wring out all the glitches in ‘967, the final one successfully completed on 12 January 1996.

Three Air Force crews were selected to flv the aircraft, pilots Gil Luloff, Tom McQeary and Don Watkins together with RSOs Blair Bozek, Mike Finan and Jim Greenwood, the plan being that two crew’s would always be Mission Ready qualified and the third crew. Mission Capable. Whilst crew proficiency training got underway in the simulator and the ‘B’ model, R&D funds were used to develop and install the long overdue data-link, the antenna for which is housed in a small radome, just

Left On program shut down, Eric, with the help of friends in the 9th SRW, captured this memorable image of eleven SR-71 s.

(Eric Schulzinger)

Below Of the two SR-71 As loaned to NASA after USAF oper­ations were initially terminated on 22 November 1989, 17971, renumbered NASA 832, was called back to arms and 17967 was pulled from Air Force Site 2, deep storage, Palmdale. (Paul

Crickmore)

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forward of the front undercarriage wheel well. A digital cassette recorder system (DCRsi) provided recording and playback of both FLINT and ASARS data. Near-real – . time data could be provided if the aircraft was within 300n ml line-of-sight range of a receiving station; if not, the entire recorded collection could be downloaded in ten minutes once within station range.

As qualified Air Force crews began to acquaint them­selves with their operational aircraft, the long-running battle between the various factions supporting or oppos­ing the resurrected programme came to a head. Exploiting a complex technical loophole in the legislation concerning the deployment of funds which had been assigned by the Senate Appropriations Committee in the FY1996 Defence Appropriations Bill, but not authorised in two other pieces of supporting legislation, it was decided that tech­nically it was illegal to operate the SR-71. Consequently at 23:00 (Z) on 16 April 1996 a signal was despatched from the Pentagon, suspending SR-71 operations with immediate effect. The war between various Senate Committees then escalated, when supporters of the SR-71 program serving on the Senate Appropriations Committee threatened to eliminate section 8080 of the Appropriations Act and defeat the Intelligence Authorization Act for FY97. This would effectively ensure that all intelligence
activities for FY97 would grind to a halt – one can imag­ine the sheer panic this action would have produced in AF, DIA CIA and NSA circles!

Perhaps not surprisingly the tactic worked. Of the S253 billion Defence Budget for 1997, S30 million was allocat­ed for SR-71 Operations & Maintenance and a further S9 million for procurement. This spend was ratified and signed off by President Clinton and the three flight crews once again worked their way up to full proficiency and the ASARS-1 data link worked extremely well. The next major sensor enhancement update involved the develop­ment of an electro-optical backplate for the TEOCs by Recon Optical, located in Barrington, Illinois. This would have replaced film and instead enabled high quality, close-look imagery, to be transmitted, also via the data link, in real time, directly to theatre commanders. Unfortunately, political prevarication continued and in October 1997, President Clinton line vetoed the release of further SR-71 funds. On 30 September 1999, the end of the military fiscal year, remaining monies ran out and Senior Crown succumbed. Kelly’s prophesy that the SR – 71 would prove invulnerable to shoot-downs until at least 2001, failed to take cognisance of the weaponry mustered against the program by various politicians and (self) inter­est groups within the ranks of his fellow countrymen.

With the Agency U-2 operation up and running, the Air Force began recruiting pilots for its program largely from the same source; namely, the two recently deactivated SAC F-84 wings at Turner AFB, Georgia. Having under­taken ground crew and pilot training at Area 51, Col Jack Nole, commander of the 4028 Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron (SRS), led the first of two three-ship U-2 formations down to their new home at Laughlin AFB, Texas on 11 June 1957. Part of the 4080 SRW, their
sister squadron, the 4025th SRS, were equipped with Martin RB-57Ds. Seventeen days later disaster struck. Shortly before 9am on Friday 28 June, Lt Ford Lowcock crashed his U-2 near Del Rio, a few miles from Laughlin, and was killed, just three days after his first U-2 flight. Then, three hours later, Lt Leo Smith crashed his U-2 about thirty miles north of Abilene, Texas. He too was killed. Accident investigations determined that fuel imbalance in the wing tanks was probably a contributory factor in both incidents.

During September, the 4028th received five more U-2s which were assigned to the Air Force project HASP (High Altitude Sampling Program), sponsored by the Defence Atomic Support Agency (DASA). The objective was to determine the role played by the stratosphere in the worldwide distribution of fusion products resulting from nuclear explosions. In all the program lasted five years and involved some 45,000 flying hours – almost all in U-2s. Eventually DASA published its results, making its findings available to the UN. The result was a ban on all ‘air burst’ testing of nuclear weapons.

During July and August 1962, John McCone, Director of the ‘Agency’ (he replaced Allen Dulles after the CIA – sponsored ‘Bay of Pigs’ affair), received a number of increasingly disturbing accounts concerning a Soviet military build-up on the island of Cuba. On 22 August he went directly to President Kennedy stating that it was his belief that Cuba were receiving intermediate range

Be/ow left During the‘bad old days’ of the Cold War, Alconbury based aircraft would usually take up station over Germany, reaching 60,000ft about 30 miles south of Amsterdam, where­upon they would turn off their mode ‘Charlie’ height read-out.

(Paul Crickmore) .

Be/ow The 95RS used ROOK as its call sign for all training sorties. Here Maj Blaire Bachus, flying ‘093, Rook 32, climbs away after another touch and go. (Paul Crickmore)

ballistic missiles. The President demanded corroborative evidence of such aggression before taking further action. Consequently, CIA U-2 overflights of the island were stepped up, with flights on the 28th August, 5, 17, 26 and 29 September and the 5 and 7 October. However, only evidence of SAM construction sites and increased fighter activity including the delivery of MiG-2 Is was detected. It was an alert photo-interpreter in the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), who noticed that the layout of some of these SA-2 sites on Cuba matched those deployed to protect offensive ballistic missile sites in the Soviet Union. When the Committee on Overhead Reconnaissance (COMOR) reconvened on 4 October, further coverage of western Cuba was requested. Despite the risks, again it was decided to use the U-2. However, as a potential military conflict seemed to be brewing on the island, the Air Force, with support from the Secretary of Defence, Robert McNamara, insisted that it should fly all future U-2 sorties over Cuba. A view which, after some squabbling, was upheld, and on Wednesday 10 October the President sanctioned a resumption on U-2 flights over western Cuba.

It had been agreed that Agency U-2Cs would be used by the Air Force, as these were equipped with both System 9 and System 12 ECM units – the latter was a Radar Homing and Warning Receiver (RHAW), which warned the pilot if he was being tracked by SAM radars.

Majors Anderson and Heyser were chosen to conduct the flights as they had both checked out in the ‘C’ model, so they were packed off to Edwards North Base to join up with their mounts. Early on the morning of 14 October, Steve Heyser took off from Edwards and headed towards Isla de Pinos and then north toward the Cuban mainland. The most critical portion of the mission was the run from San Cristobal, which lasted approximately five minutes, after which Heyser set course for McCoy AFB, Florida – from where it had been agreed, future sorties over the island would be based. Upon landing, the

film was rushed to the National Photographic Interpretation Centre (NP1C), at Washington via a wait­ing Air Force jet. At about 5.30 on the afternoon of the 15th, Arthur Lundahl, the head of NPIC, passed the news to CIA headquarters – now located in Langley, Virginia – that Heysev’s film had captured the required evidence. Khrushchev was in the process of deploying SS-4 MRBM’s (NATO codename Scandal), right in America’s back yard. Shortly before 9am on Tuesday the 16th, McGeorge Bundy, Kennedy’s assistant for National Security Affairs, showed his president the photos. For the next thirteen days, Kennedy and a circle of his closest advisors became embroiled in a crisis that took the world to the brink of a nuclear holocaust.

Early on the morning of 15 October, Randy Anderson had launched from Edwards and conducted a sortie simi­lar to that of Heyser, but it was appreciated that two U-2Cs would not be nearly enough resource for the job in hand. With its U-2s participating in the HASP and therefore stationed all around the globe, the 4028th SRS faced the challenge of gathering together enough aircraft to provide national command authorities with the vast amount of timely imagery upon which crucial decisions would be based. However, with extraordinary effort, the Air Force managed to muster ten aircraft and eleven pilots. At 4am on Tuesday 16th, three U-2 As were launched in blinding rain from Laughlin to conduct further overflights – like the preceding U-2Cs, they also recovered into McCoy.

As analysis of U-2 imagery continued, NPIC were able to confirm two MRBM sites near San Cristobal, each equipped with a regiment of eight SS-4s on launches with eight more ready for a second salvo, and that both sites were operational. Another regiment of SS-4s was discovered near Sagua La Grande; they were expected to become operational within a week. Finally the interpreters were convinced that they had also found two sites, near Guanajav, that were intended for the 2,200 mile-range

Top and above The original plans for the 17RW involved basing 12 aircraft at Alconbury and six at Weathersfield, two TR-ls were then to orbit over Central Europe 24 hours a day. In the event, Alconbury never operated more than eleven aircraft before the Cold War melted away. (Paul Crickmore Collection)

Right Returning from the Gulf War, these six U-2Rs were dispatched to Plant 2 at Palmdale, where Lockheed Martin provides support. (Lockheed Martin)

SS-5s (Skean), which, they predicted, would be operational in six to eight weeks – these missiles touted a range capability that threatened US ICBM bases in the north of the country. On top of all this, 4028th surveillance also discovered crates containing Ilyushin 11-28 bombers at San Julian airfield and thirty nine MiG-2 Is at Santa Clara.

In the cabinet room at 9.45 on Friday 19th October, Kennedy met with his joint Chiefs of Staff. The ever bullish Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen Curtis Le May, was in no doubt what should be done, … “ take out the missiles, I think you’ve got to take out their air with it, and their radar, communication, the whole works. It just doesn’t make any sense to do anything but that.”

Luckily for humanity, the result of a long-running meeting at the State Department on Saturday formed the basis of a more rational policy, which was accepted by Kennedy on Monday; namely, that the island would be blockaded and the United States would pledge to Khrushchev the withdrawal of US Jupiter IRBMs in Turkey, in exchange for a quid pro quo withdrawal of Soviet missiles in Cuba.

That same day, following further meetings with the JCS and briefings to Senior Democrat and Republican

leaders of Congress, Kennedy delivered a televised address to tens of millions of anxious viewers across the United States, the speech was then re-broadcast and distributed in many languages around the world.

Now the crisis was in the public domain, low-level photo recce sorties by Air Force RF-101 Voodoos and US Navy RF-8 Crusaders were also authorised. On Wednesday 24th October, the first signs that sense was beginning to prevail emerged when Soviet freighters, en route to Cuba, were seen to heave to in mid Atlantic.

Three day’s later, Randy Anderson got airborne from McCoy in Article 343 for another overflight. Flying along the northern coast of Cuba, despite carrying the System 12 SAM radar warning receiver, he was taken by surprise by a salvo of SA-2s fired from Banes naval base, at the eastern end of the island. One missile exploded above and behind the aircraft.

Shrapnel penetrated the cockpit and Anderson’s pressure suit. It is believed he was killed when the cockpit depressurised and his suit failed to inflate.

Less than a day after the loss of Major Anderson, Khrushchev announced on Moscow Radio that the Cuban missiles would be withdrawn, thus bringing to an end the most serious east/west standoff of the twentieth century.

Having moved from Laughlin to Davies-Monthan AFB, Arizona on 12 July 1963, the 4028th SRS compli­ment of reconnaissance gathering platforms increased substantially when an international agreement was reached to discontinue all above ground nuclear weapons testing and all HASP aircraft were re-configured accordingly.

31 December 1963 saw the beginning of another U-2 chapter when President Johnson granted his approval for its deployment to South Vietnam, under the SAC code name Dragon Lady. And so on 14 February 1964, four aircraft touched down at Bien Hoa, near Saigon, thus creating the detachment known as OL-20. Their mission was to provide covert surveillance of North Vietnam’s border areas, particularly Vietcong infiltration routes and develop a contingency list of targets inside ‘the North’ should the war escalate – how prophetic such planning would prove to be…

During the air war over Vietnam, the most lethal threat facing US air elements was radar directed surface to air missiles (SAMs) and anti-aircraft artillery (AAA). It was extremely disruptive, often result­ing in attack aircraft missing their targets in order to evade SAMs or dodge AAA. Latterly, during the 1973 Yom Kippur war, the Israeli Air Force lost 109 aircraft in just eighteen days, virtually all falling victim to radar guided SAM or AAA batteries. With the Soviet Union having developed a highly sophisticated, integrated defence network, US planners estimated that if the Israeli loss ratio were extrapolated into a NATO/War Pact scenario, NATO Air Forces would be decimated in just over two weeks. Clearly, what was needed was a funda­mental rethink on how to redress this imbalance.

In 1974, Ken Perko in the Tactical Technology Office (TTO) at the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), requested submissions from Northrop,

McDonnell Douglas, General Dynamics, Fairchild and Grumman, addressing two considerations:-

1. What were the signature thresholds that an aircraft would need to achieve to become essentially undetectable at an operationally useful range?

2. Did those companies possess the capabilities to design and produce an aircraft with those necessary low signatures?

Fairchild and Grumman declined the invitation to partici­pate, while General Dynamics emphasised the continued need for electronic counter measures. Submissions from McDonnell Douglas and Northrop however demonstrated a grasp of the problem, and consequently, they were awarded contracts worth approximately SI00,000 each during the closing months of 1974 to conduct further studies.

On 17 January 1975, ‘Kelly’ Johnson’s protege, Ben Rich, became president of the Skunk Works. It was while Ben was still Kelly’s Deputy that the former became aware of the low observability study. Lockheed hadn’t
been one of the five original companies approached by the DARPA team, simply because it hadn’t produced a fighter for nearly ten years (the F-104 starfighter). Ben however, obtained a letter from the CIA, granting the Skunk Works permission to discuss with DARPA the low observable characteristics of the A-12 and D-21 drone. After much negotiating, Lockheed were allowed into the competition without a Government contract – a move that ultimately paid a handsome dividend.

In early 1975, the initial Skunk Works Project Team consisted of Ed Martin (Project Manager), Dick Scherrcr and Denys Overholser. Ovcrholser had joined the Skunk Works from Boeing in 1964 and recalls, “When Dick Scherrer asked me, ‘How do we shape something to make it invisible to radar?’ I said, ‘Well, it’s simple, you just make it out of flat surfaces, and you tilt those flat surfaces over, sweeping the edges away from the radar view angle, and that way you basically cause the energy to reflect aw’ay from the radar, thus limiting the magni­tude of the return.’” Such radical thinking had its origins in a discussion Overholser had had with his then boss,

Bill Schroedcr some years earlier, concerning the mathe-

Top left This early model of Have Blue already depicts several of the type’s characteristics: highly facetted, intakes above the wing, inboard cantered tails and highly swept leading edge.

(Lockheed Martin)

Left Covered in foil, this wooden model is undergoing RCS tests in Lockheed’s anechoic chamber at Rye Canyon.

(Lockheed Martin)

Above Phase I of the XST programme culminated in RCS eval­uations between the two contending designs at the Air Force’s Radar Target Scatter (RATSCAT), test range, located at White Sands, New Mexico. (Lockheed Martin)

matics and physics of optical scattering. The two had concluded that detectable signatures could be minimised utilising a shape composed of the smallest number of properly orientated flat panels. In addition, Schroeder believed that it was possible to develop and resolve a mathematical equation capable of calculating the reflection from a triangular flat panel; this in turn he hypothesised could be applied in a calculation relating to RCS. As a result, Overholser hired his ex-boss out of retirement and as Schroeder’s mathematical computations became avail­able, Overholser and his team of two engineers were able to use these to write the computer programme that could evaluate the RCS of prospective design submissions nominated by Dick Scherrer and his group of preliminary design engineers. Denys and his team worked night and day and in just five weeks produced an RCS prediction programme known as ‘Echo Г. As tests proceeded, it was determined that the edge contributions calculated by Echo 1 weren’t exactly correct, due to a phenomenon known as diffraction. However, shortly after developing Echo 1, Denys became aware of a publication entitled Method of Edge Waves in the Physical Theory of Diffraction, published in an unclassified technical paper in the Soviet Union in 1962 by Pyotr Ufimtsev, Chief Scientist at the Moscow Institute of Radio Engineering. The paper had been translated by Air Force Systems Command’s Foreign Technology Division in 1971, and Denys was able to incorporate elements of its theory into a refined version of the Echo 1 programme. The resultant model was a facetted delta wing design which drew a healthy share of scepticism from within the Skunk Works, some in aerodynamics referring to the shape as “The Hopeless Diamond”. However, with S25,000 procured from the Lockheed board, two, one-third scale, wooden models of the Hopeless Diamond were built, one was used by the aerodynamists, the other to measure RCS values in Lockheed’s anechoic chamber. The first series of tests, conducted in June 1975, demonstrated that its RCS ‘spikes’ matched precisely those predicted by Echo 1. The model was then moved outdoors to a radar test range near Palmdale, in the Mojave Desert. Yet again, test results conformed well with Echo 1 predictions, creating greater levels of confidence in both the computer programme and the facetted design concept.

Lockheed submitted two proposals to DARPA, one included the predicted and measured signature data for the Hopeless Diamond, the other provided the predicted data for an air vehicle of flyable configuration. This came about in response to DARPA issuing proposals to the three competitors for what was to become known as the Experimental Survivable Testbed (XST) programme, which was informally requested in the late summer of 1975.

By the middle of 1963 only 21 out of the original 55 U-2’s remained, most having been lost over the years to various accidents. Mindful of the U-2’s performance degradation, brought about by heavier payloads and the inability of engine improvements to compensate, Kelly Johnson embarked upon an investigation into ways of re-establishing the aircraft’s performance. These began on 2 February 1965 and were referred to variously as the VU-2C or U-2N; in-house however, they were known as the CL-351. The emerging aircraft was one third larger than its predecessors and eventually became the U-2R.

On 19 September 1966, the Air Force approved the construction of eight aircraft, placing a further order for four additional U-2Rs, four months later.

Final assembly took place in Building 309/310 at Burbank, after which Article 051 (the prototype) was trucked to Edwards North Base, for its first flight, an event that took place on 28 August 1967 – at the controls was Lockheed Test Pilot, Bill Park.

By February 1968, the second U-2R was dispatched to North Base, where it was received by a CIA unit desig­nated Det G. By December 1968, all twelve aircraft had been delivered and equally split between the ‘Agency’ and the Air Force. In keeping with other Air Force projects, the ‘Senior’ codename given to the U-2R programme was Senior Year.

Throughout the 1970s, U-2Rs were put to work moni­toring the Middle East and Cuba. In Southeast Asia,

Above and below Following extensive flight testing the P&W J75 engine has at last been replaced on the U-2 fleet by the General Electric FI I8-GE-I0I. All aircraft have accordingly been redesignated U-2S. The new engine is 1.300 lbs lighter and 16 per cent more fuel efficient, enabling the aircraft to gain another 3,500 ft in altitude and increase its range by l,220n miles (or alternatively increase its boiler time). (Lockheed Martin)

OL-20 moved in July 1970 from Bien Hoa to U-Tapao, Thailand. Here a Melpur Commit sensor and datalink from the Sperry company was integrated into a U-2R, giving rise to the Senior Book, Siglnt programme. These missions were flown mainly at night in racetrack orbits high above the Gulf of Tonkin, from where the U-2 eavesdropped on Vietnamese national and air defence communications, transmitting the data, in real time, to a ground station at Nakhon, Phanom, on the Thai border. These flights provided simultaneous communication relay facilities to other US aircraft in the region. By January 1973, operations increased to round-the-clock and OL-20 was redesignated the 99th SRS. Siglnt coverage contin­ued to improve and expand, giving rise to Senior Spear – this entailed antennas being moved from the fuselage into specially adapted pods faired into the wing. Then came Senior Stretch, where siglnt data collected by the U-2 was relayed from the ground station up to satellites and onward to the National Security Agency (NSA), Maryland. As the war in Vietnam drew to a close, followed by the inevitable cuts in defence spending, U-2s of the 100 SRW were, in July 1976, consolidated into the 1 SRW, at Beale AFB, California.

In August 1976, U-2R 68-10336 deployed to RAF Mildenhall, sporting two super pods. The pods housed spiral antennas for Elint collection, in a programme code­named Senior Ruby. As the decade drew to a close, the growing disparity between the size of Soviet and NATO conventional forces in Europe worried many western political and military leaders. It was thought that little could be done on a conventional battlefield to halt a Blitzkrieg type of attack carried out by the Warsaw Pact. The only counter to this would be a NATO pre-emptive strike, directed at such forces as they massed for attack. But this would require accurate all weather surveillance, extending well beyond the East-West border, which could then be made available to field commanders in near-real time. The hi-tech answer was to co-locate a system called Precision Location Strike System (PLSS), which identi­
fied air defence radar and communications sites by homing in on their emissions, with a long-range, high resolution radar, being developed by Hughes, known as ASARS-2 – Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar System (ASARS-1 was deployed on the SR-71). All of this digi­tised information could then be downloaded as required. With its additional capacity, high-altitude capability and proven long loiter time, the U-2R was the natural plat­form choice in which to site all of these ‘black boxes’. Furthermore, in a move designed to shake off the ‘spy – plane’ tag once and for all, it was agreed that the aircraft would be renamed the TR-1, for Tactical Reconnaissance. But as Kelly Johnson’s successor, Ben Rich, later remarked, “The press simply called it the TR-1 spvplane instead!”.

Twenty-five TR-ls were ordered in the FY 1979 budget, at a cost of about S550 million, including sensors and ground support equipment. In addition, a further ten aircraft were ordered ‘in the black’, these would retain their U-2R designation and supplement those surviving from the earlier build.

The first Air Force TR-1, 80-1066, was publicly rolled out at site 7, Palmdale, on 15 July 1981 and was flown for the first time by Lockheed Test Pilot Ken Weir on 1 August. In-flight development of ASARS-2 had been conducted utilising U-2R, 68-10336 and early test results were remarkable.

Precision Location Strike System operation required three TR-ls to operate as a team. Loitering at high alti­tude with Elint sensors which were data-linked to a ground station they enabled threat emitters to be

Below The U-2R/S together with the RC-135 (depicted is an RC-I35U, Combat Sent aircraft, used for technical ELINT collection, complete with bogus serial numbers applied to the nose and tail) are without doubt the most sophisticated air breathing intelligence gathering platforms in the western world. (Paul Cnckmore Collection)

pinpointed immediately by triangulation. This method side-stepped the problems of emitters shutting down before the direction-finding process, conducted by Wild W’easel aircraft, could be completed. A similar system, known as the Advanced Location and Strike System (ALSS), had been installed together with datalinks on all seven remaining Air Force U-2Cs, back in 1972; however, it was plagued with problems and cancelled. The sophis­tication of PLSS brought with it similar difficulties and after a series of delays, it too was cancelled, in the late 1980s.

Northrop’s XST entry was similar in appearance to that of Lockheed’s; its design had been developed from a computer programme called GENSCAT. This also had its origins in mathematical equations associated with the physics of optics. McDonnell Douglas had been the first to determine what the RCS thresholds for the competi­tion were likely to be, however they were unable to design an aircraft that could achieve anything like those

goals. With RCS results from both Lockheed and Northrop verging on the revolutionary, DARPA deter­mined that the program should be developed into a two-phase, full-scale, flight test demonstration. Phase 1 would culminate in a ground RCS evaluation of large scale models, following which one contractor would be selected to proceed with phase two: the construction and flight testing of two demonstration vehicles. The estimat­ed cost for the XST programme was 536,000,000 and this would be split between the successful contractor, the Air Force and DARPA. On 1 November 1975, Lockheed and Northrop were each awarded contracts of SI.5 million to conduct phase one of the XST programme.

In early April 1976, Lockheed received word that they had officially’ won that phase of the competition. However the outstanding results also achieved by the Northrop team caused DARPA to urge them to remain together. Shortly thereafter Northrop successfully submitted studies for a Battlefield Surveillance Aircraft, Experimental (BSAX) which became Tacit Blue – the highly successful flight demonstration programme that provided vital data for the subsequent B-2 bomber program.

Phase two of the XST programme was code-named Have Blue, and was initiated on 26 April 1976, when the Skunk Works were authorised to proceed with the design, construction and flight testing of two technology demon­strator aircraft.

Have Blue had three objectives:

1. Validate, in flight, the four low observability- signatures identified earlier in the programme, (radar, infrared, acoustic and visual).

2. Demonstrate acceptable performance and flying qualities.

3. Demonstrate modelling capabilities that accurately predict low observable characteristics of an aircraft in flight.

.Manufacturing was placed under the direction of Bob Murphy and the entire Engineering, Fabrication and Assembly of Have Blue was carried out in legendary Building 82 (birthplace of the F-104, U-2 and A-12).

Above left Lockheed chief test pilot, Bill Park (in flight suit), was first to fly the Have Blue prototype HB1001. (Lockheed Martin)

Above Maj Norman ‘Ken’ Dyson was recruited into the Have Blue program whilst serving as Director of the F-IS Joint Test Force. (Lockheed Martin) below НВІ00І received this ingenious three colour-three tone camouflage pattern to hide the facetting from uncleared ‘onlookers’. (Lockheed Martin)

Just three assembly tools were used on the project; wing, forward fuselage and aft fuselage. The sub assem­blies were all made on a tooling plate left over from where the main frames for the C-5 Galaxy had been machined. On the morning of Wednesday 16 November the prototype Have Blue (HB1001) was flown by C-5 from Burbank to Area 51, where it was reassembled and readied for a final series of pre-flight tests. On 1 December 1977, Bill Park completed HBlOOl’s maiden flight.

The first five sorties in aircraft number one were completed by Bill, who was chased on each occasion by Air Force Test Pilot Ken Dyson in a T-38. On 17 January 1978, Ken completed his first flight in the Have Blue prototype. All was proceeding well and on 4 May 1978, Bill had conducted 24 flights on HB1001 and Ken, twelve. However, whilst returning to Area 51 that day,

Bill was involved in a landing incident which damaged one of the aircraft’s main undercarriage legs. Retracting the gear and going-around for another landing attempt Bill discovered that the damaged leg would only half extend. Despite several attempts to free the jam by pounding the other main wheel on the runway, it stead­fastly refused to budge. As fuel depleted, the decision was made to climb the aircraft to 10,000ft and for Bill to eject. However, on the climb, the aircraft ran out of gas and Bill was forced to eject, during the course of which he hit his head and was knocked out. Still unconscious when he hit the ground, he sustained back and leg injuries that forced an early retirement from test flying.

It would take a further six months to prepare HB1002 for its maiden flight; an event which took place early on the morning of the 20 July 1978. Ken Dyson recalls, “We

flew three flights to check the aeroplane out, then on 9 August 1978, we began to take the first airborne RCS measurements. І Пси against a ground based facility and on these first series of tests, they wanted to check-out the cross-section of the aeroplane nose-on, that’s with a look angle of zero. To achieve this, I climbed to a predeter­mined altitude and maintained a heading that would take me right over the radar test site. When I reached the test point, I configured the aeroplane in a decent, making sure my speed, angle of attack and rate of decent was exactly correct. I had to keep control movements to a minimum in order to provide accurate test data, so 1 switched in the autopilot. Well, as soon as I did that, the nose went right and the wing rolled slightly left. I later learned that Ben Rich, who was watching the test in the radar control room went crazy, asking, ‘What does that goddamn Air Force pilot think he is doing! Is he deliberately side-slip­ping the aeroplane to screw-up our test results?’ I decided to switch-off the autopilot and fly manually, something we’d planned not to do, because the test engineers didn’t think the necessary tight parameters could he achieved manually. Well it seemed to work pretty good, and after that, 1 flew all the tests manually – we never did resolve the problem with the autopilot. Virtually every flight in aeroplane two was associated with RCS measurements and if we weren’t measuring radar returns, we would be flying the aeroplane against operational systems to see if they could see us. To my knowledge, none did.”

On 29 June 1979, Dyson air aborted HB1002 shortly after take off, following a fluctuating hydraulic pressure reading. He continues, “On 10 July, we flew again and the aeroplane was OK. The next day I got airborne and had the chase aeroplane look me over, everything was OK, so I flew outbound to get to a point to run against an F-15 Eagle, to see how it performed against us. I was

Above HBI002 was the RCS test vehicle and was flown throughout its life by Ken Dyson. Its external appearance differed from the prototype: gone is the instrumented nose – boom and the drag ‘chute receptacle. (Lockheed Martin)

Below HBI002 accumulated 52 test sorties before being lost on 20 July 1978. (Lockheed Martin)

just short of the designated turn point, when 1 noticed the same hydraulic system begin to oscillate, again in the downward direction. 1 thought well, that’s the end of this flight and turned back. I started to tell test control about my problem, when I got a fire light. After pulling the pow’er back, and telling them of my troubles, I shut the engine down. All this was in short order. I had the aeroplane pointed towards home plate and configured at the right speed for single engine operation (it was not a

Above Despite initial skepticism over the ‘Hopeless Diamond’ concept, Dick Cantrell and his team of aerodynamicists worked tirelessly to ensure that the F-l 17 retained the smallest RCS and remained aerodynamically viable. (Lockheed Martin)

Below As president of the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, Ben Rich was the driver behind the stealth concept; he passed away on 5 January 1995. (Lockheed Martin)

good performer on a single engine, not much thrust, and a lot of drag). I was coming home somewhere between 20 and 25,000 ft. Shortly after that, the remaining hydraulic system began to oscillate in a downward direction and I knew that was not good for our unstable machine. Just about the time the remaining hydraulic system went to zero, the plane pitched violently down, something like 7 negative ‘g’s, it then pitched up, the pitch rates were just eye watering, something only an unstable machine could do. I was somewhere around 225 knots and above 20,000ft and the aeroplane was tossing me up and down and actually got near vertical nose down and near vertical nose up. I began to try and reach for the ejection seat ring that was between my legs. I got my hand on it and pulled. The canopy blew off, the seat went out and I found myself floating under a ’chute at about 20,000 ft.” As Ken slowly descended by ’chute, the pilot of the F – 15 with whom he had planned to conduct further tests began orbiting above. Col Norm Suits, the Director of the F-l 5 Joint Test Force, saw the stricken Have Blue aircraft impact the ground and shortly afterwards, spotted two unauthorised cross country vehicles heading towards the crash site. Although the vehicle’s occupants were probably intent on performing their public duty and offering help and assistance to any survivors, the highly classified nature of the program and the materials used in its design couldn’t be compromised. Acting on his own

Left Unstable in all three axes – pitch, roll and yaw – it is essen­tial that this fly-by-wire platform receives accurate air data at all times. Therefore this unique four probe system was devel­oped. (Paul Crickmore)

Below Although ice encrustation was not an issue on the Have Blue research vehicles, much time, thought and effort was devoted to the problem on the F-117, before this simple wiper blade was developed. (Paul Crickmore)

Left The F-l 17 is at its most stealthy head-on, 25 degrees look – down and 25 degrees look-up. Note suck-in doors located above the intakes to supplement air flow at low engine oper­ating speeds. (Lockheed Martin)

initiative, Norm began a series of extremely low passes at the vehicles to deter their drivers from closing in on the wreckage. Just how low these passes were, can only be judged from the fact that he succeeded in his objective!

Ken continues, “I had noted my take off time, and while hanging in my ’chute I noted that ten minutes had elapsed from take-off. I watched the unstable machine flip flop slowly it seemed, as it descended vertically below me and I saw it hit the ground and erupt into a ball of fire, it still had a lot of gas on board. It took me quite a while to make my parachute descent down to the desert floor, after landing (that was my first and only jump to date), I again noted the time, I had been in the parachute for ten minutes”.

The cause of the crash was determined to be an engine exhaust clamp, which had become loose, allowing hot exhaust gases to enter the right engine compartment.

This had triggered the fire warning light, and as the temperature built up, first the left and then the right hydraulic lines failed, which in turn caused a complete loss of control.

Fortunately the program was within two or three sorties of its planned completion, which officially ended in December 1979. Having achieved all its test objectives, the Have Blue programme can be categorised as a stun­ning success.

With ad hoc deployments to RAF Mildenhall of both the U-2R and SR-71 having been made during the late 1970s, Det 4 of the 9th SRW was established at the base in April 1979 with a single U-2R. Its mission was purely Siglnt, however, as the year came to an end, 68-10338 was replaced by 68-10339. This latter aircraft was equipped with both Senior Ruby and Senior Spear, there­by combining both Elinr and Siglnt on a single airframe. Det 4 continued to fly the Siglnt mission, codenamed Creak Spectre until February 1982, after which the role was taken on by TR-lAs of the newly activated 17th Reconnaissance Wing, at RAF Alconbury. In March 1985, the 17th RW received three more TR-lAs together with the ASARS-2 capability. A major milestone was achieved by Lt Col John Sander on 9 July 1985, when he flew the first operational ASARS-2 sortie, marking a new begin­ning in battlefield reconnaissance. The wing was eventually assigned twelve TR-lAs before being deactivat­ed in June 1991.