Thursday, November 06, 2014

Beale Air Force Base U2s

Would love to visit this place.

4 comments:

Alan said...

Just read a book detailing how difficult to fly that thing is--as told by the former head of Lockheed's Skunk Works, pilots are within a <1% envelope of irrecoverable stall for 95% of 8 hour plus missions.

Maxichamp said...

@Alan: What's the name of the book? I need a good read.

This would explain why so many ROC U2s crashed in China.

Alan said...

Skunk Works by Ben Rich, the ex-Skunk Work head.

Tells the stories of many interesting planes, but mostly the U2 and SR-71 with incredible political, engineering and personal detail. Fantastic read.

Alan said...

And yes, that's what he attributed those crashes to-less well-trained foreign pilots and even longer missions.