The U-2 maintenance team found a faulty fuel control valve in the engine. Once it was replaced, the engine ran great and Ken flew the airplane back to Osan.
It only seems fair that I have my own horror story to relate. It was, after all, my turn.
I was scheduled for the evening monitor mission with the normal 7:00 p.m. departure time. I was expected to land around 4:00 a.m. My figure-8 track was just south of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating North and South Korea. I had flown this night mission a couple of times already and still had trouble with my body clock. I tried but couldn’t force myself to sleep during the day prior to flight. I even tried pills given to me by the Flight Surgeon, but nothing seemed to work. I was able to get around two hours of sleep prior to flight. I felt OK when I started but that would change.
Dave was acting as mobile and he did his usual thorough job of preflight. We discussed the weather. It was fine for launch but a cold front was moving in with a forecast of rain showers and even a few thunderstorms possible. Take off and departure were normal. All was going smoothly as I eased the airplane into its flight track.
It was a moonless night with a thickening cloud layer rolling in below me. One of the most wondrous experiences of flying the U-2 happens during night flights, especially moonless ones. The feeling I had was of being suspended in a star-filled room. The higher you go, the brighter the stars get. So being above 70,000 feet on a pitch black night was magical. There were stars everywhere: up, down, and on either side. It was a view that never disappointed, and one I will never forget. It was on nights such as these that I felt I had reached those stars that I viewed from our roof behind the hardware store so many years ago. I was finally doing what I had dreamed about.
I settled into orbit and did my best to stay awake. I wasn’t sure, but I think I may have dozed off with my eyes open. I shook my head and looked around to make sure everything was where it was supposed to be, and it was. The sudden realization that I may have fallen asleep really got my heart pumping and now I was truly awake. Then I felt something, a slight, small shudder. I quickly checked the airspeed and saw that it had dropped dangerously close to stall speed. Just then, the speed started to rise, right up through normal target speed and kept on going. Then another shudder, this one more pronounced. The speed then started down again. The autopilot was very subtly pitching the airplane up and down trying to control the speed but it wasn’t working.
With each cycle, the speed came closer to the stall speed. It would then overcorrect and push the Mach buffet on the other end. The U-2 autopilot was made for use above 50,000 feet. Below 50,000, it was useless. Conversely, trying to fly the airplane without using the autopilot above 50,000 feet was nearly impossible. In order to hand fly the airplane, you had to use the instruments: the attitude director indicator (ADI), the vertical velocity indicator, and the airspeed indicator all were used to keep the target speed in the safe range. The problem was, subtle changes had to be made on the ADI. This gauge was about four inches across and making the minutest change in pitch would result in large excursions in vertical velocity. I couldn’t allow the autopilot to either stall or Mach-buffet the airplane so I disconnected it and started hand flying the airplane.
The concentration required to keep the speed in the target range was all consuming. I thought I had leveled the airplane. It looked level on the ADI, but checking the vertical velocity, I was descending at 1000 feet per minute and my speed was building. To counteract this, I made a minute pitch change on the ADI, but that caused me to start climbing at 1000 feet per minute and the speed was dropping toward stall speed. While I was doing this vertical yo-yo, I also had to navigate in order to remain on my figure-8 track. The smallest excursion to my track would put me into North Korea. I was starting to hyperventilate. I recognized this and took steps to slow down my breathing. Since I was now working so hard, I was sweating profusely.
I realized that this roller coaster ride could result in a stall or Mach buffet, either of which would tear the tail off the airplane. If I didn’t stay on my assigned track, I might be bailing out over a very hostile country. Even if I stayed on track but had to bail out, the wind below 50,000 feet might carry my chute to the north. These thoughts rushed through my head as I struggled to control the airplane. All the missions we flew were vital to our security so I tried to stay on station as long as possible, but it wasn’t meant to be. I headed back to Osan. The two-hour battle with the airplane had left me exhausted.
The weather at Osan was cloudy with imbedded rain showers. The wind was gusting but at least it wasn’t a crosswind. One of the drawbacks of the airplane was lack of weather radar. This is not a problem if you’re flying over a thunderstorm during the day. Coming in to land at night with thunderstorms around the airport was a problem. My strategy for getting through the storms was called avoidance. I would turn the airplane away from a lightning flash, which I did several times on my descent.By turning away from the flashes, I didn’t enter a thunderstorm and I didn’t get hit by lightning. It must have been my lucky night. I summoned what remained of my strength for the approach and landing. It was a windy, rainy, rough ride but I landed safely. I turned the airplane over to maintenance, went back to my Q, and slept for 14 hours.
I now had my own war story to pass along to any new guy willing to listen. The rest of my tour passed by quickly. My two months were up and I went home to Beale.
Chapter 11
When I got home, we took some vacation time. I rented one of those giant motor homes and we drove all the way down the Pacific Coast Highway to San Diego. We stopped along the way camping at several beaches. The kids really loved the San Diego Zoo and Sea World. By the end of the tenth day, although we had a good time, we were all ready to get out of this motor home and back to our real home.
One of the perks of being in the U-2 squadron (in addition to the orange flight suits) was the lack of additional duties. Every type of flying squadron in the Air Force had additional duties the pilots had to perform. While at Craig as a T-38 instructor, for example, I was also the Runway Supervisory Unit (RSU) scheduler. Other IPs were safety officers, flight schedulers, ground training coordinators etc. In the U-2 outfit, my job was to fly the U-2. I was fortunate to also be able to fly the T-38. All the additional duties were handled by non-flying officers and enlisted personnel. When I returned from Osan the only thing I had to do was fly and that made my life very enjoyable.
After finishing a T-38 chase ride on the SR-71, I was sitting in our squadron talking with our Operations Officer, Lt Col Drake, when an announcement was made on the PA asking all available pilots to come to the briefing room. No reason for the meeting was mentioned. I heard a similar announcement the prior year and that turned out to be a Gary Powers visit. There were about 12 of us in the room that day from both the U-2 and the SR-71 squadrons.
Two guys in suits and earpieces entered the room and quickly looked around. When they were assured that it was safe, they summoned in the guest speaker. He was a small man, 5’5”or so. He too wore a suit and had shoulder-length blond hair. He started speaking in English but with a thick Russian accent. He didn’t mention his name until the end but we all knew who he was because we were so familiar with his story. Standing before us was Viktor Bochenko; the man who had stolen a Russian MIG-25 Foxbat two years earlier.