Approved for Release: 2013/06/25
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Secret NOFORN
Chapter 5
251
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There was never another Agency U-2 mission from an aircraft carrier. Although the idea of using a floating airbase to avoid political sensitivity proved feasible, the cost did not. Aircraft carriers are enormously expensive to operate and require an entire flotilla of vessels to protect and service them. The movement of large numbers of big ships is difficult to conceal and cannot be hastily accomplished, while the deployment of a solitary U-2 to a remote airfield can take place overnight.
A New Version of the U-2
By the summer of 1966, the number of flyable Agency U-2s had dwindled to six—two at Detachment H in Taiwan and four at Detachment G in California—with three more at Lockheed undergoing repair. The Agency had originally ordered 20 U-2s in 1954-55 (the Air Force had purchased another 31 of these planes), and Kelly Johnson’s crew at the Skunk Works had managed to assemble four additional craft for the Agency from leftover spare parts and usable sections of crashed aircraft. This brought the total number of U-2s acquired by the Agency to 24, for an average cost of $812,500 each.
At this point, the DCI and the Secretary of Defense on 1 August 1966 decided to place an order with Lockheed for eight more aircraft to be used in the Agency and Air Force U-2 programs—a completely new version of the aircraft. Kelly Johnson had been working on ways to improve the performance of the U-2 since early 1965 because he was concerned that all the modifications and additions to the aircraft over the years had made it so heavy that it had lost almost half of its range and several thousand feet in cruising altitude.⁷¹ The new model, known as the U-2R, had a longer fuselage and a wider wingspan than the original U-2. The U-2R’s wings were 103 feet long with 1,000 square feet of lifting surface, in contrast to the U-2C’s 80-foot wings with only 600 square feet. The longer fuselage of the U-2R made it possible to provide two pressurized bays with an additional 2.2 cubic meters of equipment space and also achieve a better weight distribution. The net result of all these improvements was a much better performing aircraft. No longer did the U-2 pilot have to worry about keeping the aircraft’s speed at altitude within a 6-knot window in the stall/buffet corner of the flight envelope. The envelope was now extended to 20 knots, which greatly improved flyability.
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⁷¹ Johnson, “Log for Project X,” 2 February 1965, June to October 1965, 20 October 1965; Johnson, “U-2R Log,” January to August 1966.
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Secret
Approved for Release: 2013/06/25