The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance; The U-2 and OXCART Programs, 1954-1974

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79
Sec. et NOFORN
Chapter 2
Koon, call the commander of Kirtland AFB near Albuquerque.
General Koon told the base commander about the sealed orders and
explained that an unusual aircraft would make a deadstick landing at
Kirtland within the next half hour. The general then instructed the
base commander to have air police keep everyone away from the craft
and get it inside a hanger as quickly as possible.
After a half hour passed, the base commander called the
Pentagon to ask where the crippled aircraft was. As he was speaking,
the officer saw the U-2 touch down on the runway and remarked,
"It's not a plane, it's a glider!" Even more surprised were the air po­
lice who surrounded the craft when it came to a halt. As the pilot
climbed from the cockpit in his "space" suit, one air policeman re­
marked that the pilot looked like a man from Mars. The pilot, Jacob
Kratt, later reported to Cunningham that, from the beginning of the
first flameout until the landing at Albuquerque, the U-2 had covered
over 900 miles, including more than 300 by gliding.58
Aside from this extraordinary gliding ability, however, the U-2
was a very difficult aircraft to fly. Its very light weight, which enabled
it to achieve extreme altitude, also made it very fragile. The aircraft
-was also very sleek, and it sliced through the air with little drag. This
feature was dangerous, however, because the U-2 was not built to
withstand the G-forces of high speed. Pilots had to be extremely care­
ful to keep the craft in a slightly nose-up attitude when flying at
operational altitude. If the nose dropped only a degree or two into the
nose-down position, the plane would gain speed at a dramatic rate,
exceeding the placarded speed limit in less than a minute, at which
point the aircraft would begin to come apart. Pilots, therefore, had to
pay close attention to the aircraft's speed indicator because at 65,000
feet there was no physical sensation of speed, without objects close at
hand for the eye to use as a reference.59
THREE FATAL CRASHES IN 1956
The first fatality directly connected with flying the U-2 occurred on
15 May 1956, when test pilot Wilburn S. Rose, flying article 345A,
had trouble dropping his pogos, the outrigger wheels that keep the
,. Bissell interview (S); Cunningham interview (TS Codeword); Brig. Gen. Leo A. Geary,
interview by Gregory W. Pedlow, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 12 October 1988 (S).
'" James Cherbonneaux, Carmine Vito, and Hervey Stockman (former U-2 pilots), inter­
view by Donald E. Welzenbach, Washington, DC, May 1986 (S).
Secaet