AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 145 / 175

Plate 145 of 175 · Cold War · High-altitude reconnaissance aircraft

Lockheed U-2C

U-2C, painted as 56-6692, IWM Duxford’s Lockheed U-2C and the only U-2 in a British museum, delivered in October 1956 as the nineteenth U-2 built (Article 359), flown on overflights from Giebelstadt in West Germany and later in the CIA and Republic of China programme from Taoyuan, Taiwan, rebuilt after a ground fire in 1972 as the first two-seat U-2CT trainer, converted back to a single-seat U-2C at RAF Alconbury in 1991 and taken by road to Duxford, where it hangs in the American Air Museum: Lockheed’s high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, a single-seat jet glider of 80 ft span with one Pratt & Whitney J75 turbojet fed by D-shaped intakes beside the cockpit, a long, slender, straight wing with slipper pods beneath it, a small canopy, a dorsal hatch fairing behind it and a tall fin, shown standing nose-up on its bicycle undercarriage with twin tail wheels and the pogo outriggers a parked U-2 carries, rather than gear-up as it hangs at Duxford: overall matt blue-black, faded in patches, a red ‘66692’ on each side of the fin, a red and white warning triangle below each side of the canopy, red beacons on the spine and the belly and bare metal skids under the wing tips (no national insignia or ‘USAF’ titles, as on the aircraft today).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as 56-6692, IWM Duxford’s Lockheed U-2C and the only U-2 in a British museum, delivered in October 1956 as the nineteenth U-2 built (Article 359), flown on overflights from Giebelstadt in West Germany and later in the CIA and Republic of China programme from Taoyuan, Taiwan, rebuilt after a ground fire in 1972 as the first two-seat U-2CT trainer, converted back to a single-seat U-2C at RAF Alconbury in 1991 and taken by road to Duxford, where it hangs in the American Air Museum: Lockheed’s high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, a single-seat jet glider of 80 ft span with one Pratt & Whitney J75 turbojet fed by D-shaped intakes beside the cockpit, a long, slender, straight wing with slipper pods beneath it, a small canopy, a dorsal hatch fairing behind it and a tall fin, shown standing nose-up on its bicycle undercarriage with twin tail wheels and the pogo outriggers a parked U-2 carries, rather than gear-up as it hangs at Duxford: overall matt blue-black, faded in patches, a red ‘66692’ on each side of the fin, a red and white warning triangle below each side of the canopy, red beacons on the spine and the belly and bare metal skids under the wing tips (no national insignia or ‘USAF’ titles, as on the aircraft today). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (725 KB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (); engine, crew and dimensions are for the U-2C modelled here.

History

The U-2C

In 1954 the United States had almost no way to see inside the Soviet Union. Kelly Johnson of Lockheed’s Skunk Works offered the CIA a jet glider: an F-104-style fuselage with one engine, a long, slender, straight wing and as little weight as possible, so that it could cruise above 70,000 ft, out of reach of fighters and, it was hoped, of radar. The CIA ordered it under the cover name Aquatone, and Tony LeVier first flew it at Groom Lake in Nevada on 1 August 1955, eight months after the contract was signed.

Overflights of the Soviet Union began from West Germany on 4 July 1956, and U-2 photographs showed that the feared “bomber gap” and “missile gap” did not exist. On 1 May 1960 a surface-to-air missile brought down Francis Gary Powers near Sverdlovsk, wrecking a summit in Paris and ending the overflights. In October 1962 a U-2 photographed Soviet missile sites in Cuba, starting the Cuban Missile Crisis, and on 27 October Major Rudolf Anderson was shot down and killed over the island. The re-engined U-2C, with the more powerful J75, flew higher still, and U-2s flew for the CIA, the US Air Force, RAF pilots and Taiwan’s air force.

The bigger U-2R followed in 1967, and as the TR-1 it was based at RAF Alconbury from 1983 until the early 1990s. Re-engined with the General Electric F118 as the U-2S, it has outlasted the SR-71 that was meant to replace it, and it still flies from Beale Air Force Base in California, though the US Air Force has repeatedly planned to retire it. A U-2 is hard to fly: at its operating height the gap between its stalling speed and its maximum speed can be as little as ten knots, and pilots wear full pressure suits.

This airframe

U-2C 56-6692

56-6692The airframe modelled

56-6692 (Article 359) was the nineteenth U-2 built and was delivered in October 1956 as a U-2A. It flew from Giebelstadt in West Germany in 1956–57, and in the 1960s it served the CIA and Republic of China programme from Taoyuan, Taiwan, including a detachment to Charbatia in India for flights over Tibet. After a ground loop and fire in 1972 it was rebuilt as the first two-seat U-2CT trainer. In September 1991, at RAF Alconbury, it was converted back to a single-seat U-2C and taken by road to Duxford, where it hangs from the roof of the American Air Museum. The model stands it on its gear with the pogo outriggers fitted: overall matt blue-black, with a red ‘66692’ on the fin and no national insignia, as it is today.

See it at IWM Duxford

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the U-2C in one UK collection. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 175 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.