The Lockheed U-2, the product of a joint effort of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Air Force, was a most unusual and highly publicized spyplane. Although the early U-2s had a maximum range of some 3,000 miles, some areas of interest to the U.S. intelligence community still could not be reached by U-2s flying from safe land bases. In the late 1950s, Richard Bissell of the CIA proposed operating U-2s from aircraft carriers. He recalled that “Navy officials seemed interested when I approached them, but the Air Force refused to participate.”1
Still, in mid-1963 the CIA initiated Project Whale Tale to adapt U-2s for carrier operations. The glider configuration of the U-2 made it capable of taking off unassisted from a carrier with high wind over deck. Its slow approach speed made arrested landings relatively easy with the carrier’s arresting cables at their lowest setting for aircraft weight. The carrier could provide 30 knots of wind over deck, resulting in a U-2 closing speed of just 50 knots. The plane had plenty of power available for a waveoff during landing.
The first carrier flight tests occurred in August 1963. In the dead of night, a U-2 was loaded by crane onto the Kitty Hawk (CVA-63) at Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego. The next morning, 5 August, as the ship steamed off the California coast, Lockheed test pilot Robert “Bob” Schumacher took off carrying a full fuel load with a deck run of 321 feet. He then made a number of practice approaches before beginning to land. According to a CIA report: “Although the takeoff was very successful, the attempted landing was not. The aircraft bounced, hit hard on one wing tip, and then just barely managed to become airborne again before reaching the end of the deck.”2
Three U-2A aircraft were provided with strengthened landing gear, an arresting hook, and wing spoilers to cancel aerodynamic lift once the aircraft was over the flight deck. They were designated U-2G and painted with N- series civilian serials and Office of Naval Research markings. In preparation for further carrier operations, Schumacher and several CIA pilots were checked out in the Navy’s T-2A Buckeye jet trainer and made practice landings on the training carrier Lexington (AVT-16) in the Gulf of Mexico.
The first successful carrier landing of a U-2G took place on 2 March 1964- Schumacher made a series of touch-and- go landings aboard the carrier Ranger (CVA-61) steaming off the California coast. He then made the first landing of a U-2 aboard a ship, during which the hook engaged, but the rear of the U-2 tipped up and the nose struck the deck, breaking the pitot tube. After hasty repairs the U-2 was easily flown off. A few days later Schumacher and CIA pilots made several landings and takeoffs aboard the Ranger. Following these successful trials, five CIA pilots were considered carrier qualified.
The only known operational carrier U-2 mission—Operation Seeker— occurred in May 1964 when the Ranger launched a U-2G spyplane to monitor the French nuclear tests at Murora Atoll in French Polynesia. The U-2G photographs indicated that the French would be ready for full-scale production of nuclear weapons within a year.
For the next few years several CIA pilots were carrier-qualified. The U-2R variant, which entered service in 1967, was significantly larger than the earlier U-2, with increased range and payload. The aircraft was designed specifically for carrier operations; an arresting hook could be easily fitted, and the outer six feet of each wing folded to facilitate handling aboard ship.
Trials of a U-2R variant—with the fictitious registration N812X—aboard the carrier America (CVA-66) were conducted off the coast of Virginia on 21-23 November 1969. Senior Lockheed test pilot William C. “Bill” Park, a former Air Force fighter pilot, and four CIA pilots underwent an abbreviated carriertraining course and then flew the America trials.
The first landing attempt was aborted when it was discovered that the ground crew had left the locking pin in the tail hook assembly. Reporting on the subsequent America/U-2R trials, Park said,
The airplane demonstrated good waveoff characteristics and I felt at the time that landings could be made without a hook. We required very little special handling and even took the airplane down to the hangar deck. The outer 70 inches of the wings fold and by careful placement of the elevator we could get in [the hangar] with no problem.3
The CIA contends that there were no further U-2 missions from an aircraft carrier: “Aircraft carriers are enormously expensive to operate and require an entire flotilla of vessels to protect and service them. The movement of large numbers of big ships is difficult to conceal and cannot be hastily accomplished, while the deployment of a solitary U-2 to a remote airfield can take place overnight.”4 Thus ended carrier ops for the U-2 spyplane.
In a separate program, in 1973-74 two Lockheed U-2R aircraft were modified to the U-2/EP-X configuration for evaluation by the U.S. Navy for the ocean surveillance role.5 During the evaluation, the planes were fitted with a derivative of the AN/ALQ-110 Big Look surveillance system, a modified AN/APS-116 forward-looking radar for detecting surface ships and periscopes or snorkels of submerged submarines, and an infrared detection set. The radar, fitted in the aircraft’s Q-bay, had an antenna protruding below the fuselage in an inflatable radome.
The U-2/EP-X was to link its radar to surface ships under a program known as Outlaw Hawk. Other sensors, including satellite and land based, were to be linked to a command center ashore and, subsequently, fitted in the carrier Kitty Hawk. During the Outlaw Hawk exercise involving the Kitty Hawk, the carrier steamed from San Diego to Pearl Harbor with the U-2s flying from California. (The participation of U-2s in a subsequent Outlaw Hawk exercise in the Mediterranean was cancelled.) The U-2/EP-X concept died because of high costs and the promised effectiveness of satellites for ocean surveillance.6
Lockheed, ever hopeful of an enlarged U-2 program, also proposed the 315B design, a two-seat variant that would carry Condor antiship missiles under its wings.7 Another payload envisioned for U-2s in this period was a pair of drones that would be released to serve as decoys for missiles fired against the U-2.
No U-2 variant entered naval service. At the same time, Boeing proposed a much larger aircraft of this type (i.e., a powered glider with a 200-foot wingspan) for the ocean surveillance role; it was not built. Thus ended Navy interest in history’s most famous spyplane.
1. Richard M. Bissell Jr., Reflections of a Cold Warrior: From Yalta to the Bay of Pigs (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 120. The CIA and Air Force both operated U-2s from 1956 until 1974, when the remaining CIA aircraft were transferred to the Air Force.
2. Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach, The CIA and the U-2 Program, 1954-1974 (Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 1998), p. 248.
3. Park interview in Bob Lawson, “ET TU, U-2?” THE HOOK (Summer 1992), p. 10.
4. Pedlow and Welzenbach, The CIA and the U-2 Program, p. 251.
5. EP-X = Electronic Patrol-eXperimental.
6. RAdm Julian Lake, USN (Ret), interview with N. Polmar, Falls Church, VA, 30 December 1998, and subsequent discussions; RAdm Edward L. Feightner, USN (Ret), interview with N. Polmar, Arlington, VA, 10 February 1999.
7. The Condor missile—to have carried a conventional or nuclear (W73) warhead—was cancelled before becoming operational.