U2

[Basil]

U2 - Not the band

 

[Billm]

Top Gear will never get much higher!
That was great!
BillM

 

[elrey]

Thanks for the ride. Splendid!

 

[Deleted member 8987]

I had a good friend, career USAAC and USAF occifer...told me stories about those birds. The fun part is the chase cars...they have to pick up the wing gear when it falls out on wing loading.....and when the craft stops, falls to one wingtip, insert that one, pull the wing down, insert the other.
Apparently, in service, if there was an issue, they came down on other USAF strips........and it was one helluva job rounding up personal cameras afterwards.

 

[Basil]

For several years I worked with a guy who had been a U2 pilot. Oh the stories he could tell!

 

[aeronca65t]

I've seen that before, but it well worth a repeat.

I'm guessing you guys know that James May is a pilot (so he has an especially keen appreciation for that plane).

I guess they flew those things for over 50 years....remarkable.

 

[Deleted member 8987]

Not U2, but SR-71...story I read a while back.....some joint control tower, some of the light planes were playing "one-upmanship", like Cessna 152 at 8, Cessna 172 at 10, King Air at 18, things like that....until someone broke in "71 to FL80", where upon one of the "light" planes said "if you think you can do it, go for it!" and the response was "71 DESCENDING from FL100 to FL80".

 

[DART]

I have seen a good pilot balance one in a 10mph headwind after landing, waiting for the wing wheels to be put in. Somewhere in TX, as I recall.

 

[Basil]

When I worked on the NORAD Sage system, we could always tell when the Blackbird was in our region. Its velocity vector was several times longer than anything else in the sky and reported altitude was XX (past the HF limits). The would take three states to turn at those speeds.

 

[AngliaGT]

I remember reading about "Special Service" Mustangs
used as chase cars.

- Doug

 

[Roger]

And there I was, thinking you meant one of these!

 

[70herald]

I remember reading about "Special Service" Mustangs
used as chase cars.

- Doug

You can actually see two mustangs trailing it during takeoff in at the beginning.

 

[PC]

They're not Mustangs, they're Pontiacs (clear view at 1:12 in May's vid).

here' a "home movie" view

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Last year on Speed Channel's "Battle of the Supercars" they filmed a Ferrari vs. Porsche segment at Beale AFB. Tanner rode shotgun with the 9th Operations Group commander driving the Porsche GT3RS on a U2 chase run. (The Col. liked it.)

 

[DrEntropy]

PC, that was a LMAO!!! U2 doin' a "crash-n-dash"!!!


Used to watch 'em launch outta Utapao (0600).

Sometime around 1973.