Do they still land U-2s on flattops?

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Member for

14 years 7 months

Posts: 3,094

Old video but still nice to see. Which made me wonder if they still do this?

Original post

Member for

15 years 5 months

Posts: 6,983

i always thought the wheels was far and away too narrow for anything like this,
i also thought U-2 was about as stable as a leaf at landing speed

Member for

14 years 7 months

Posts: 3,094

I looks like the impact on landing is much less than wit the real navy aircraft. Probably the low landing speed was a great help with that. The same with take off speed, the carrier with the nose in the wind with 25 knots plus wind speed.

Member for

24 years 2 months

Posts: 5,396

No, operating a U-2 from a carrier was a stunt that was only done once.

USAF also tried to aerial refuel a U-2 behind a KC-135 with disastrous results.

Member for

18 years 5 months

Posts: 2,318

There were operational U-2 missions from a carrier. Operation Fish Hawk was recently declassified.

Detachment G conducted Operation FISH HAWK in May 1964
by sending two pilots, an NPIC photointerpreter. and a U-2G
equipped with the Itek 1128 camera to make the first operational U-2
flights from an aircraft carrier. On 19 May the U-2 rook off from the
USS Ranger and overflew the French atomic test area. As soon as the
aircraft returned to the Ranger, the film was developed in the carrier's
photo lab, and the NPIC photointerpreter then read out the film to see
if the photography met the requiremems for resolution and quality. A
second U-2 flight carried out a similar mission on 22 May. The photography
provided all the detail needed to identify the preparations for
the nuclear test that occurred later that year.

http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB434/docs/U2%20-%20Chapter%205.pdf

Member for

12 years 3 months

Posts: 5,905

Thank you for the Link TEEJ.
Today they are rumored to fly Avengers off the deck