The Cold War and Project Aquatone's U-2 Spy Plane

  

Hello everyone, today’s article isn’t about physics, it’s about aviation. I’m going to tell you about one of the main protagonists of the Cold War, when the world was on the brink of a nuclear catastrophe: a host plane capable of flying higher than any other plane and evading Russian’s missile defense systems to obtain crucial information of the enemy territory.

I’m talking about the Lockheed U-2 “Dragon Lady”! But first, a bit of context!

-       “Reds have no atom bomb”: First Lightning

The first nuclear bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6^th and 9^th August 1945 by the USA.

They had been secretly developed them over the previous five years as the main objective of the Manhattan Project, whose scientific director was the well-known physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer.

On 2^nd September 1945 Japan surrendered unconditionally to the Allied Forces, thus bringing World War II to an end.

For 4 years, the destructive power of nuclear warheads was only possessed by the United States, until…

On 29^th August 1949 the USSR successfully tested their first nuclear bomb, the RDS-1, also known as “First Lightning”, in the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan.

A copy of the RDS-1 bomb at Moscow Polytechnic Museum 

However, RDS-1 was developed thanks to information on the design of Fat Man (the bomb dropped on Nagasaki) gathered by Russian spies in America.

 Newsday article of 23^rd September 1949 announcing the detonation of the first Soviet bomb.

Nonetheless “First Lightning” announced to the world the Soviet Union as a nuclear power capable of directly competing against the United States.

This caused panic in the West and started the arms race between the two powers.

-       An impossible plane: the Lockheed proposal

The United States Military became paranoid about being caught off-guard by the USSR and desired better aerial reconnaissance to determine Soviet capabilities.

In 1951 the U.S. Air Force established a commission at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to overcome difficulties in aerial reconnaissance.

The committee stated that aerial photographs of the Soviet Union would be necessary since the best (and latest) information on Soviet facilities were World War II Luftwaffe (the Nazi’s Air Force) photographs.

To avoid Soviet defense systems and fighters, the committee proposed an aircraft capable of flying at an altitude of about 21.000m, at the edge of space.

In 1954 the USAF gave contracts to aircraft companies Bell Aircraft, Fairchild, and Martin Aircraft to develop a new strategic reconnaissance plane.

Lockheed Corporation submitted an unrequested proposal.

Lockheed’s best engineer, Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, came up with a design, named CL-282, with high aspect-ratio wings and no landing gears to reduce weight and increase cruising altitude.

Lockheed engineer Kelly Johnson with a U-2

The plane, although not so fast, was designed to fly so high that it wouldn’t be detected by radars and intercepted by enemy aircrafts and missiles.

While initially ignored, the CL-282 was later approved by CIA director Allen Dulles and USA president Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The project was renamed Aquatone.

Lockheed was instructed to build 20 aircrafts that were renamed U-2, an acronym, meaning Utility-2, describing their role.

The aircrafts were equipped with a large-format camera with an impressive focal length that could resolve features as small as 0.75m from an altitude of almost 20km!

Thanks to that camera system, U-2s were able to shoot extremely detailed pictures of enemy sites.

The plane was a top-secret CIA-controlled project, so it couldn’t be tested near highly populated areas.

In 1955 the USAF and the CIA acquired an area of 160km² in Nevada, near a salt flat called Groom Lake.

The site is commonly known as Area-51.

U-2’s first flight took place on 4^th August 1955.

Kelly Johnson with U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers, who, after being shot down, was taken prisoner by the USSR and freed following an exchange with a Russian spy.

It is known as a very difficult plane to fly, because the large wings ‘surface area subjects it to a lot of lift which makes landings difficult.

The U-2 has only two landing gears in the fuselage, one at the rear and the other at the front.

To take-off, the aircraft has two small landing gears under the wigs that detach as soon as it’s off the ground.

Once it has landed, due to only having two central landing gears, the plane tilts on one side and one of the wings touches the ground.

A U-2 is assisted during landing by a car guiding the pilot by radio.

To prevent the wings from being damaged, there are titanium plates on their tips that are replaced after every flight.

-       The U-2 in service and its legacy

Since its entry into service in 1957, the U-2 became the cause of many international crisis during the Cold War.

In 1962 a U-2 on reconnaissance flight over Cuba discovered the deployment of Soviet ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads on Cuban territory.

This caused the infamous Cuban Missile Crisis that brought USA and USSR to the brink of a devastating conflict involving nuclear warheads.

 A Soviet launch site in Cuba photographed by a U-2

Over time, Soviet technology improved, and the U-2 became detectable by radar and thus vulnerable to their Surface-To-Air Missiles.

So, in 1966 the USAF replaced the U-2 with another state-of-the-art spy plane, the SR-71 Blackbird.

However, the U-2 was also used for peaceful purposes.

NASA has recently employed a modified version of a U-2, called ER-2 (with ER standing for Earth Resources) to scan mineral deposits needed for electronic components.

The fact that the Lockheed U-2 was developed out of paranoia made it one of the most incredible engineering feats in aviation history.

And despite everything, it really is a magnificent aircraft…

Today's Blogger

Hello, world! I'm Edoardo Cignitti, a passionate enthusiast of computer science, physics, and aviation. I have an insatiable curiosity about the world and love understanding why things happen, which is why I'm particularly drawn to physics, with a keen interest in nuclear and quantum physics. I also have a soft spot for sci-fi films and enjoy playing board games. I'm excited to share my interests with you here on Let's Blog!