From: Chris Barker <cmib@xxxxxxxxxxx>
... I'll bet that the average Blackbird pilot was bored
f**tless as we say in England...
I expect the SR-71 kept pilots relatively busy, although not as much
as fighter jocks. I think it carried only a couple hours of fuel, so
at least a couple times during a mission you had to lower gear, drop
down to 30,000 feet or so, and try not to overrun a tanker!
The King of boring was the U-2. It carried plenty of fuel to keep it
up for eight hours or more. The ones I worked on were little more
than flying radio antennas -- all the listening was
performed/controlled on the ground. The pilots referred to their
missions as "orbits." Although they weren't supposed to do anything
but fly^H^H^Hwatch their autopilot, I regularly saw pilots get in
with paperback novels in their pockets.
It was hard keeping U-2 pilots, because the airlines recruited them
heavily, unlike fighter jocks, who the airlines didn't appreciate for
some reason. (Excess testosterone, adrenaline, and 747's don't mix!
:-)
Although satellites have largely done away with manned spy aircraft,
the U-2 is enjoying a new life (and a new name, the TR-1) as an
environmental sampling station. NASA has a bunch of them, painted
white and blue. They use the same gear they used while flying in the
cloud of Chinese atom bomb blasts to sniff radioisotopes, except now
they're sniffing for ozone, volatile hydrocarbons, flourocarbons, etc.
: Jan Steinman <mailto:jans@xxxxxxxxxxx>
: 19280 Rydman Court, West Linn, OR 97068-1331 USA
: +1.503.635.3229
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