Skunk Works

Although Eisenhower decreed the end to Soviet overflights after the Powers tragedy, the blue-suiters very soon began flying U-2s along the Soviet border using new technologies like side-looking radar, which could peer two hundred miles or more inside Russia, and carrying special electronic packages that could capture all the different military-band and radar frequencies used by the Soviet defense forces, helping us to build effective jamming devices in the event of hostilities. In many ways this electronic intelligence collecting was even more valuable than the photo-taking operations of old.

Around the time that Eisenhower left office in 1960, Dick Bissell and the CIA were teamed with Lockheed’s Missiles and Space Company to put up the first spy-in-the-sky satellite. A satellite was locked into its orbit, but a U-2 could overfly any trouble spot on earth in a few hours. And we never stopped improving the airplane. We invented a novel interchangeable nose that could be unscrewed and unbolted in less than an hour and replaced for a particular mission—some noses carrying radar, some cameras, some air-sampling filters, some electronic devices recording radar and military traffic frequencies, some operating a special rotating camera that could follow the flight path of a Soviet-launched test missile. Other flights carried a heavy payload of electronic eavesdropping equipment. By monitoring their test missile firings we discovered the frequencies used by their missiles locking to a target. We used this information to counter with powerful jamming devices installed in our attack aircraft.

One unforeseen consequence of the Powers shoot-down was to make U-2 overseas bases a political hot potato for our host country allies allowing us to take off and land on their soil. The Russians were frothing at the mouth at the mention of the U-2, threatening dire reprisals—including air attacks—against any country hosting a U-2 base. As pressures built, both Japan and Turkey capitulated and asked us to fold our tents. To become more self-sufficient, we decided to develop an air-to-air refueling capacity for the U-2, extending its range to roam very far from home on spy missions. It would also allow us to do more low-level flying to avoid radar detection, which was very fuel inefficient. Refueling could extend the U-2’s range to seven thousand nautical miles and fourteen straight hours of flying time, which pushed a pilot’s fatigue beyond safety. The U-2s could receive nine hundred gallons of fuel from a KC-135 tanker in about five minutes. But most U-2 pilots agreed with our test pilot Bill Park, who flew the first extended-range mission and sighed, “Never again. My mind went numb ten minutes ahead of my ass.”

The Army wanted to use the U-2 for battlefield surveillance. As for the Navy, Kelly had polished off a bottle of White Horse up at Edwards Air Force Base with a couple of old pal Air Force generals, one of whom had bet him that the Navy would never buy a U-2 because the airplane could not take off from a carrier deck. “You don’t have the horses to get into the air,” one general challenged Kelly, who got sore and told the general he didn’t know what in hell he was talking about. Then the three of them staggered out of the officers club and paced out the length of a carrier deck on the main runway at Edwards. Later that day, they got a U-2 to take off. Kelly won his bet with ease. And so the Navy was interested in purchasing the U-2 for its own reconnaissance uses, including extended-range antisubmarine patrols.

Also through the CIA, we completed a deal with the Chinese nationalist government on Taiwan, selling them several U-2s for $6 million, along with the services of our ground crews and technicians. Kelly signed the contract for us, and Chiang Kai-shek signed for the Taiwanese, but the nationalist government had nothing to do with the operation except to provide pilots. The CIA was in charge and in control of the operation. They would be overflying Communist China from Formosa and were called Detachment H. This operation was one of the most tightly held secrets in the government. We began training six of their pilots. I remember briefing them on the U-2’s propulsion system at Burbank in the summer of 1959. On one of the training flights from the Ranch, a Taiwanese pilot flamed out over Cortez, Colorado, and was forced to glide into a small county airport around dusk. The airport manager took one look and almost fainted. The airplane was one that he had never seen before—long and sleek with enormous wings. Then the canopy opened and out stepped an alien in a space suit, with only almond-shaped eyes visible through his visor, who ran to him, shouting in very garbled English, “Quick. Get gun. Guard plane. Very, very secret.”