through the turn and arriving on nal at
250ft. From there the 10kt was bled down
so as to arrive over the ‘T’ on speed. Then
we heard the mobile broadcast, ‘10ft at
the ‘T’, 8, 6, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2,’ at which time the
yoke was hitting my chest and the stall
occurred right on the centerline. The yoke
stayed there, tangling my oxygen mask
hose, as it was in constant motion along
with the rudder pedals to keep ‘the Goat’
centered with wings level on the runway.
After retracting aps, stowing the
speed brakes and trimming for take-o ,
he gave me the controls and we were
o to the races. Try as I might, I couldn’t
remain on the centerline with mobile
giving continuous corrections by saying,
‘raise your left wing, raise your right wing,correct to centerline, back on the yoke!’
With 3,000ft remaining, ‘PF’ told me to
position the yoke for take-o and rewall
the throttle. As we shot into the air, I
was never so happy to leave the ground
although I felt like I had a tiger by the tail.
I overshot the closed pattern altitude by
300ft as ‘PF’ blurted out for the rst time —
but not the last — ‘ y the airplane!’ After
two hours, except for take-o s and tra c
patterns, my landings improved very little
with all ‘unsats’ grades except for my nal
two ‘marginal’ attempts. With my ight suit
soaked in sweat and my tail between my
legs, I’d never been so humiliated in my
3,600 hours of ying. Reviewing the video
of my landings made them look better
than they actually were but I was o ered aWe accomplished a few stalls in various
con gurations, most importantly the
landing con guration — gear down, aps
35, stall strips and speed brakes extended
— prior to heading for the overhead
pattern. On the way, ‘PF’ had me calculate
T-speed and we slowed to T+10kt where
he balanced the fuel by transferring from
the heavy to the light wing, a necessity
when landing on bicycle landing gear and
rarely considered by conventional aviators.
He lined up with the runway at three
miles at 1,500ft AGL and T+30kt. Half-way
down the runway he reduced power,
banked 20° towards downwind and rolled
out at 1,000ft and T+20kt. At 750ft a turn
to nal approach was initiated, passing
through exactly 500ft and T+10kt half-wayAbove: A view
from the chase
car as the U-2 is
in the stall at 2ft.
ANG/SSgt Colton
Elliott
Below:
Maintainers and
mobile swarm
around a U-2 after
landing, replacing
the detachable
‘pogos’.
Gert Kromhout‘SKUNK WORKS’ AT 75 // U-2 ‘DRAGON LADY’
90 July 2018 //^ http://www.combataircraft.net
84-93 U-2 part 1 C.indd 90 22/05/2018 16:17