Taiwanese U2 Pilot tell his story

[Flying Pig]

http://www.hmhfp.info/SG_09E.html

I had no idea that back in the 50's the US trained Taiwanese pilots to fly the brand new and secret U2 in order to conduct surveillance flights over China.  This  is a story of a U2 pilot who had a flameout at 75,000ft.  A little long, but cool story.

Corrected because I wrote Chinese pilots.  They were Taiwanese pilots.

[bosshawk]

Rob: when we are face to face, I can fill you in on this whole deal.  I was working the U-2 program at the time.

[AirAux]

While a great story and not to take too much away from our fellow veteran, there are a few things to consider.  In the story he mentions approximately 20 crashes noting the A/C was inherently dangerous.  If one looks at the record he posts, most of those were unfortunate pilot errors and not due to the A/C.  I believe he landed with the gear up as he "pancaked" in.  Probably good since it was a short field, but probably an error on his part.  He also mentions that the U-2 was one of the most difficult A/C in the Air Force inventory to land.  Most assuredly not, as anyone with any pilot training would be able to handle this like a glider to most degrees.  I would think, although I don't know this for sure, that the Air Force did not go forward with this program and did not provide the Taiwanese Air Force with U2's, probably due to incidents like this.  Further, during this time frame we were providing the Taiwanese with F-100 single seaters.  The word was that if they had a problem the first thing they would was punch out, sacrifing the A/C.  One solution was disarming the ejection seat so the pilot stayed with the A/C.  Times were different then and personnel were easier to replace than A/C's.  I spent 1956-1960 in Taipei, Taiwan, with my Dad.  He was stationed with the 13th Air Force.  The Air Force also had a tendency in those days to hand out ribbons and awards to foreign personnel at the drop of a hat.  This was a big thing in situations like this where there was a possibilty of an oriental "losing face".   Please don't take this the wrong way, but as usual, there is more than one side to most stories.

[Flying Pig]

The only thing is that the AF still considers the U2 to be the most difficult plane to land.  Paul.....Id love to hear about it.

[vento]

AirAux, under normal circumstances, I'd agree with your comments. But I am afraid the U2 is a whole different story. Just think about it, the mission itself is very different and highly risky, the CIA would not hire just any pilot to fly the dragon lady.

As far as I know, only the USAF and the Taiwanese AF (ROCAF) flew the U-2 in actual missions. UK pilots got the training but never risked their lifes in actual missions. There were U.S. U2 shot down over the soviet airspace, and there were quite a few Taiwanese AF pilots with the U2 shot down over chinese airspace. For any mission to launch from Taiwan, it had to get the approval from both governments (and in the case of Taiwan from the old man himself). Taiwanese AF pilots can be seen as mercenaries working for the CIA, but they were not cowboys or just another ordinary pilot.

I wouldn't be harsh on those guys with phrases such as "loosing face". As you said there are always the other side of the story, but I wouldn't tarnish the reputation of U2 pilots (both USAF and ROCAF) before having hard evidences.

[Senior]

I believe the CIA hired the Taiwan pilots to have deniability if they
were shotdown.  The American pilots also were "civilian" pilots when
they were flying for the CIA.  It was all just a charade.  I believe the
inherent difficulty of  landing the plane is the problem with depth
perception once you have been at great altitude.  I had the opportunity to hear a speech by the chief test pilot for Lockheed
on the U2.  He had a lot of interesting pictures and inside detail about the Skunk Works and Kelly Johnson.

[tsrup]

  He also mentions that the U-2 was one of the most difficult A/C in the Air Force inventory to land.  Most assuredly not, as anyone with any pilot training would be able to handle this like a glider to most degrees. 

You're kidding right?

Thats like saying that anyone with a regular drivers license can drive a cement truck.

heres a wiki for you, the most interesting points are under a segment called "Design".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_U-2

[bosshawk]

I read the article that FlyingPig refers to and believe that there are some embellishments by the author.  The precise number of Chinat(Chinese Nationalist) pilots lost and the number of aircraft lost are probably still classified, but suffice it to say that there were plenty of both.  In fact, I seem to recall that the program, called Church Door, was cancelled due to the losses.  There were successful missions over China and North Korea: enough said.

I agree with FP that the AF considers the U-2 as a difficult aircraft to land.  I was on final once, in a 172, landing at Moffett Naval Air Station, and I was behind a NASA Dragon Lady.  He was going so slowly that I had to do S-turns in order to stay in sequence behind him.  They don't land very fast: the tower finally had me sidestep to the parallel runway to land.

[JoeTomasone]

Much detail can also be had in Ben Rich's book, "Skunk Works", in which he details a lot about the U2 and SR-71 from his days as both an engineer in and later as the head of that group.    Also some fascinating reading on the development of the F-117. 

[Dad2-4]

Interesting. I currently live about 30 minutes drive from the ROCAF Museum and Academy in Kangshan. A good friend of mine was an ROCAF officer and graduate of the Academy years back.
I wonder if there's a library or archives there that I'd be allowed to access. Maybe I can gain a little pull if I tell them I was in the AF and now in the AF Aux doing some research, and have my friend with me. I'll ask him.

[NIN]

Interesting. I currently live about 30 minutes drive from the ROCAF Museum and Academy in Kangshan.

Boy howdy, your commute to weekly meetings must be a real pain.

[AirAux]

I apologize for the error on the easy to land part.  Since it is a super sail plane, I thought it would be relatively easy to land, but not according to the sources.  It seems that the thing didn't want to land and wanted to keep on flying in most cases and had to be planted to get down.  This doesn't seem to be such a problem for a sail plane pilot, but most U-2 pilots have been jet jockies first and U-2 pilots second.  There is also the center line landing gear to deal with.  Further, the high altitude and durational requirements of the flights caused some problems for depth perception and also just being exhausted and the cumbersome high altitude suit didn't help any with the landings either.  Anyhow, They are extremely difficult to land by all accounts that I can find.