A Lockheed U-2G, modified for carrier landings, on the USS Ranger (CV 61) in May 1964, to observe the French atomic bomb test site at Moruroa
Posted by Xeelee1123@reddit | WeirdWings | View on Reddit | 92 comments
Figarella@reddit
They famously used a mirage 3 equipped with an externally mounted rocket engine to climb to 62 / 65.000 ft and acquire radar lock on the U2, which stopped the U2's spying
Hyrikul@reddit
Not only that, but they also caught up with the U2 and made a close pass, the Mirage pilot was able to take a photo of the U2 spying over France.
Diamondcreepah@reddit
a B1 for carrier landings? now I've seen everything. what's next, a B52?
Itchy_Ad_451@reddit
« Observe » 🤭
-Snaccoon-@reddit
This seems like one of the sketchiest aircraft to do this in lol
DingleBerrieIcecream@reddit
Maybe, though with those glider wings, it likely has the lowest stall speed of any other carrier based aircraft. It looks like a bush plane landing.
ctr72ms@reddit
The wings actually made landing it terrible because if the ground effect. The landing practice was to get a few feet over the ground then stall it on purpose and let it drop. Even in operation it only had like a 15 mph safe operating speed window. Lower than that stalled and higher caused structural damage.
IlluminatedPickle@reddit
I wonder how much the pilot felt the transition from flying over the ocean to flying over the deck. That lift change from the ground effect must have had at least a bit of a kick.
Maverick-not-really@reddit
Inertia probably negated most of that for the short moment before it catched the cable
Dartonal@reddit
Maybe, but bicycle landing gear is still going to make any landing a bit sketchy
Slogstorm@reddit
It apparently had a very narrow speed range for safe landings.
SpruceGoose__@reddit
It has a very narrow speed range for everything, this is a normal day for a U-2
Appropriate-Count-64@reddit
Coffin Corner is more like Coffin living room in the U-2
Sprintzer@reddit
At least the traditional U-2 had very specific safe landing speeds (hence the chase cars), so I’m not sure. It may be a low speed but it’s not got much wiggle room
IlluminatedPickle@reddit
You basically have to stall it to land as well, it's a bastard to get it out of the air without crashing. Ground effect has a massive influence on the U-2 so the moment he transitioned from being over the water to over the aircraft carrier, he would've felt a huge increase in lift suddenly. Iirc, they get about 60cm from the ground before initiating the stall.
istealpixels@reddit
At max altitude isn’t it also basically flying at stall speed?
iceyconditions@reddit
It has like a 10mph window where it's between stalling and buffeting
Viharabiliben@reddit
Known as the coffin corner. Every airplane has one, on the U2 it’s higher and tighter.
CKinWoodstock@reddit
I read that in a turn at altitude it was possible to have one wingtip stalling while the other wingtip was buffeting at the same time
baconipple@reddit
Dawn_Namine@reddit
Sometimes I genuinely forget how large Carriers actually are, what a perfect and crazy comparison for their scale.
MrNovator@reddit
*USN Carriers
Super Hornet pilots who landed on the Charles de Gaulle said it's like trying to hit a stamp with a dart lol
Dawn_Namine@reddit
I had to look that carrier up as I wasn't familiar with it, and some of the images definitely support the statement.
cantab314@reddit
I think it's rather that the USA has some particularly large carriers.
It's also easy to forget that the USA also has a bunch of smaller ones, the America and Wasp classes, they're categorised as "amphibious assault ships" but they can carry F35 or Harrier fighters as well as helos. They're actually much closer in size and displacement to the Charles de Gaulle as well as to carriers operated by countries like India and Spain.
Dawn_Namine@reddit
Oh that's actually super cool, I didn't know that!
Another user also noted the US carriers typically being much larger, which makes sense to me as the US tends to like having an entire on-demand air force anywhere they go.
Thank you for the tidbit, by the way!
FrostyShoulder6361@reddit
Am I seeing it correctly that you can not land and take off airplanes at the same time on this one?
Groundbreaking_Pea_3@reddit
I did look into it more and in fact it cannot, though I believe it can transition between launch and landing quite quickly anyways.
also it was kind of a pain to find any concrete information on this thing there are not a lot of English sources
source http://www.ffaa.net/ships/aircraft-carrier/charles-de-gaulle/caracteristiques.htm
Groundbreaking_Pea_3@reddit
it can, that's the purpose of the angled deck, though interestingly the straight deck Queen Elizabeth also can take off and land planes at the same time because it uses STOVL planes whereas the USN and French use catapults (also I believe the wider deck of the QE allows this though I'm not sure).
WarthogOsl@reddit
I think the issue with the De Gaulle is the forward catapult starts off inside the landing area.
Groundbreaking_Pea_3@reddit
it does slightly but not severely enough to interfere with sorties afaik
WarthogOsl@reddit
It's well within the foul line...the dashed line used to indicate where aircraft and people are not allowed past when planes are recovering. Perhaps they could alternate it, but there's no way you could have an airplane set up to launch on the catapult while another was landing.
FrostyShoulder6361@reddit
Yeah, that is what it looks like to me
BlueApple666@reddit
Yes, you're correct.
But then no one does simultaneous launch and recovery in carrier operations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_United_States_Navy_carrier_air_operations#Cyclic_operations
(French Navy follows the same procedures as US Navy, all French Navy pilots are certified US Navy pilots as well).
Dawn_Namine@reddit
I'm personally unsure as I'm not very knowledgeable on carriers, I believe u/Groundbreaking_Pea_3 may be a better person to ask that question.
Groundbreaking_Pea_3@reddit
It’s a few things. USN carriers are designed for extremely long deployments, as anything they’d actually want to fight is at least an ocean away. The de Gaulle doesn’t need to operate on such a long leash, and thus it can be smaller and feature less crew, space, amenities, etc. It’s also just the fact that the USN just has (or in this case, had) so much goddamn money compared to anyone else, they can afford this bullshit. It’s definitely an interesting comparison, especially when you consider the conventionally powered QEC carriers of Britain are actually larger than the de Gaulle.
Dawn_Namine@reddit
That's a really fun, and really cool tidbit. I'm definitely gonna have to commit to an autistic-level deep dive into carriers when I'm off work lmao.
It makes sense too cause yea, the USN tends to like to take half of its air power anywhere they want to go, meanwhile other nations are so close together they don't typically need to.
Thanks for the info man!
Dartonal@reddit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_carrier#/media/File%3AWorld_Navy_Aircraft_carries_chart.svg
Keep in mind a few things, the Liaondong is a soviet carrier, and it's 16m shorter than the new Fujian class. The Kuznetzov should no longer count as it's currently inoperable, and most likely will never be returned to functioning service. HMTS Chakri Naruebet no longer has any planes, it used to have like 10 harriers, but they're no longer in service.
flyingviaBFR@reddit
Also reduces the size of ahore facilities needed and number of crew
Groundbreaking_Pea_3@reddit
Even still, that’s by comparison. They don’t stand up to the Nimitz or Ford, but the Elizabeth class and the de Gaulle are still absolutely massive. The Rafael isn’t a tiny plane, and the Gaulle operates them without trouble.
RollinThundaga@reddit
The De Gaulleis 20 feet shorter than an Essex class.
The F6F hellcat had a stall speed of 84 mph (73 kt), the Rafale's minimum landing speed is 115 kt
xrelaht@reddit
Nah: they can take off and land on a ridiculously short runway. Might not even need an arrestor cable or catapult.
qtpss@reddit
And if he misses the cable, oops.
AvariceLegion@reddit
Feel more like a oiled up full body flex on the French
Kookanoodles@reddit
I don't see how. If anything it's a testament to how seriously the French tests were taken that the US went to such lengths to observe them.
AvariceLegion@reddit
Yeah that's kinda what I meant
"We have the logistics, training and equipment to watch u do ur secret tests"
And the U2 pilot was probably the least irradiated person who observed the tests bc the french were at their limit
Kookanoodles@reddit
I don't think the French expected to go unnoticed Regardless, the US was quite keen on preventing France from getting their own nukes, but they did it anyway
Brilliant-Smile-8154@reddit
The Mirage III intercepted the U-2 at 65,000 feet several times.
Green__lightning@reddit
It's a U-2, those are sketchy to land at the best of times, and I have to wonder if it's actually easier when you can catch a cable instead of worrying about floating a mile down the runway.
Sprintzer@reddit
Spying on the French testing a nuke? Or just watching the show?
youtheotube2@reddit
The US was not thrilled about France developing nukes
lethak@reddit
The C!A did try to take a shot at De Gaulle's car. But De Gaulle also sent spies to "study" USN sub reactor design, so... hehe.
fastsailor@reddit
And yet seem fine with Israel having them.
kil0ran@reddit
But of both perhaps. France was in turmoil and De Gaulle was no fan of the US administration, hence them building an H-bomb themselves. You want to know what an ally is up to in case they might not be an ally in the future. Also this was after the atmospheric test ban treaty which France didn't sign so it was an opportunity to view an atmospheric test they couldn't do themselves
Plump_Apparatus@reddit
Only a couple years after this test France would withdraw from NATO military command followed by ejecting all NATO troops from France.
IlluminatedPickle@reddit
France: "The fuck is NATO? In this house, we have OTAN."
AmbassadorCurrent973@reddit
whaaat they really carriered nearly all planes they had lmao
notanybodyelse@reddit
Those nuclear tests were and are extremely unpopular in the Pacific nations, especially Aotearoa New Zealand where French agents bombed a Greenpeace ship. Nice way to treat your allies.
gentsuba@reddit
The "Operation Satanic" (yeah that was the name chosen by the french exterior ops) was a clusterfuck.
But the Test were happening to the other side of the Pacific Ocean,so while Greenpeace (and other protest groups) were genuine,Governments used them as a way to try to stop the french to obtain nukes.(that and the tacit support of independist group on French Overseas territories)
notanybodyelse@reddit
Uh, you don't think it was about nuclear testing in our back yard?
gentsuba@reddit
I don't understand what you mean by that
Do you mean the Pacific Ocean is your backyard? Cuz there's 6000km between Papeete and Sydney That's a very big Backyard
Otherwise the tests in the Australian Outback by the British between 1956 and 1963 clearly fit your definition of nuclear test in your Backyard. (Granted that the UK only did 7 athmospheric tests of much lower yields than the ~47/50 of the French atmospheric tests but the 550 sub-critical tests by the Brits produced more radioactive contamination than the 7 atmospheric tests).
Reading about the british tests shown me that the australian public perception of the nuclear test on their soil changed in the late 1970's. In December 1976 questions were asked to the then Minister of Defense Jim Killen in the Parliament about the ever so secret nuclear tests at Maralinga. With Avon Hudson disclosure of the way the brits handled tests and subsequent clean-up and journalists publishing a leaked secret document from an aus. government commision titled "Plutonium Buried Near Maralinga Airfield"
notanybodyelse@reddit
It's simple, yes the Pacific is our back yard. The French should have done their testing on their mainland. Ditto the USA.
fastsailor@reddit
And the Brits could have done theirs in Birmingham.
notanybodyelse@reddit
Agreed, although that's for the Australians to talk about.
Amirkerr@reddit
The firsts french nukes were detonated in Algeria so by the time France did it in the Pacific they already had the technology.
gentsuba@reddit
A-bombs and H-bombs aren't the same.
thehom3er@reddit
where's the chase car? seems like visibility for carrier landing is even more crutial than on land ^(/s)
Kayback2@reddit
I know you're joking but the carrier has spotters to assist with the landing that, well, land runways do not.
thehom3er@reddit
also the meat ball should help a lot
GreenSubstantial@reddit
Considering the pressure suite and nose up attitude on approach, I doubt the pilot could see the meatball at all.
IlluminatedPickle@reddit
They were probably radio calling the meatball.
J_Bear@reddit
Chase carrier
dim13@reddit
Chase boat?
Kalamel513@reddit
Probably the smoothest carrier landing I had seen.
Hyperious3@reddit
Bet the pilot flew F9F Panther's for the navy before getting selected for U-2 duty and transferring to the CIA
FTWkansas@reddit
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ventus1b@reddit
I was curious how they did the launch, but apparently it wasn't assisted in any way and just took off on its own power after only 320ft.
_some_guy_on_reddit_@reddit
The carrier being able to turn into the wind and then go full speed to create extra lift is a big help too
LeafsWinBeforeIDie@reddit
30kts on the nose is practically halfway there
Sprintzer@reddit
Not that surprising considering the gigantic wings and how they did whatever they could to reduce fuselage weight
lockerno177@reddit
look at its wings bro.
youtheotube2@reddit
So did they teach an Air Force pilot how to land on a carrier or teach a Navy pilot how to fly a U-2?
Z-Mtn-Man-3394@reddit
That was so smooth
watchface38@reddit
How tf are they managed the landing on a carrier? I mean, usually they need a second pilot in i muscle car to bring that bird down safe
Lawsoffire@reddit
And the U2 was supposed to be one of the toughest planes to land as-is. But on a carrier too. God damn.
eishethel@reddit
Weird aircraft.
Even weirder pilot... They caught a wire...with a U-2.
That be no mere man, that be some form of Entity.
ventus1b@reddit
Coolest entry in the log book ever.
Zcube73@reddit
April 1st already ?
righthandofdog@reddit
Saw a U2 landing at Key West a few years ago (friend's house is next door to the naval base). Looked more like a kite being slowly pulled out of the sky than a plane on final. Being so big, it seems even slower than it already is and just did NOT want to lose altitude.
ts737@reddit
Ship burble on a glider must feel like hell
an_older_meme@reddit
That's a man's landing right there. Wow.
Xeelee1123@reddit (OP)
Source: https://youtu.be/L8HMPMYL19E
Source: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/how-u-2-spy-planes-flew-us-navy-aircraft-carriers-196776
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_U-2
Source: https://theaviationgeekclub.com/the-unknown-story-of-the-u-2-aircraft-that-took-off-from-uss-ranger-carrier-and-spied-over-french-polynesian-nuclear-test-site-at-mururoa-atoll/