TechStuff Classics: The U2 Spy Plane

about the U two spy plane. You know. Recently Ben Boland joined me for an episode about the super secret space plane and what it might be up to, uh, and that reminded me of this classic episode of tex Stuff about the U two spy plane. Also, I was thinking about the U two spy plane because I still have uh my Negative Land episode on the brain. If you missed that episode, should definitely check it out. It's really awesome. Nold did an amazing job producing that episode.

And of course Negative Land is the performance group that got into a little bit of legal trouble when they had a sort of spoof on a YouTube song Come Out, but you can hear all about that in the episode about Negative Land. Oh and I also was thinking about YouTube, because even though it happened months ago, it still kind of makes me chuckle that Apple essentially forced a new YouTube album onto everyone who owns an iPhone, whether they wanted it or not. Obviously that didn't pan out exactly

the way they had planned. The best intentions did not lead to the best outcomes in that case, but pretty amusing at any rate. YouTube has been on my mind. So it's time to talk about the actual spy plane, not the band, not the Negative Land piece. But it's an interesting story. I hope you enjoyed this classic episode of tech Stuff as Chris Polette and I look back about where that spy plane came from and how it played such an important role in surveillance over the years.

We were going to talk today about an interesting thing that I saw the other day, which is um Well. In a way, it's sort of a drone because it starts with a the r Q for Global Hawk, a drone aircraft that is um Well. It's status is sort of in question right now, as at the time we're recording this, there negotiating the budget for uh, the United you know, the defense budget for the United States of America UM, and UH that's one of the items that

was considered to be struck. Now, of course, UM, over the past few years, unmanned aerial vehicles have been UH coming up a lot in the news. They've been instrumental in several of the military engagements around the world with the United States, I mean, US has has employed unman aerial vehicles in lots of cases. The proposal was that there would be three d forty two million dollars budgeted UM to UH to work on the Global Hawk and UM.

As it turns out, it's been proposed that they dropped the item entirely in favor of a much more uh, much more less cutting edge technology in a way. And the reason one of the reasons to talk about cutting this whole Global Hawk thing is because, uh, it's expensive. Yeah, the estimated cost of a single Global Hawk is a hundred and seventy six million dollars. That's expensive. So they had they had enough. They had just they didn't even quite have enough money in the budget for two of them.

So you can get one and seven eighths of a Global Hawk for the budget they had proposed. So the the alternative right now for a and the purpose of the Global Hawk, we should say, is it's reconnaissance air craft. Yes, it doesn't attack people, it is it is their for surveillance purposes, specifically spying. So you know, there are a lot of unmanned aerial vehicles that have been developed over the last several years. Many of them are designed to get a real time uh feel of what's going on

in certain environments. And they they're designed to do things like fly through areas that could be combat zones, but they're not necessarily designed to spy to be able to fly through undetected. It's more about getting as quick and accurate a picture of the situation as it exists right now, rather than let's go find out what those pesky so and so is over there are doing. So are pesky so and so technology tends to be much more sneaky,

and it's designed to be very fast. Usually it's designed to fly very very high so that can try to avoid things like radar as well as missiles you know, attempts to take it down. UH. And it's designed to try and gather as much information as quickly as possible. UH. And since the nineteen fifties. That technology has been one particular type of aircraft in the United States. Even though we've tried to replace it on multiple occasions, we're still using it today and the it's what we will be

using instead of the Global Hawk, the Lockheed U two. Yes, I believe it or not. Um they're saying that the the U two is actually a better piece of technology and in some ways than the the newer unmanned aerial vehicle. And like I said, the replacement for the U two has has was built and was retired already, which was the SR seventy one Blackbird. But we'll get into that. It's a gorgeous design, right. So they have the Blackbird, which was designed to be the replacement for the YouTube.

It actually lived out it's useful life in the US Air Force and then was retired because well, it's really expensive to maintain as well. In fact, well, and I'll talk about why it was expensive to maintain, because that's kind of an interesting story. But to to understand the You two, we have to go back quite a bit.

And we're not going to use the way back machine because I found out that stuff you should know used it about a week and a half ago, and apparently they left it somewhere, like they actually hoofed it back from seven And I have no idea what they were doing back then. But yeah, so I have no idea. We have to track it down. So we're just gonna have to talk about today, all right then, But um so, then you would probably go back in time if we were using the machine to uh about Well, August nine

is the first day it ever flew. Yes, August one, nineteen fifty five, it's first flight of the YouTube. Now, the whole purpose for developing the YouTube stems out of the Cold War between the United States and the then USSR Soviet Union. Um So, the whole reason for it was that we needed to have weaving the United States because from the US the United States needed to have some sort of vehicle to get an idea of what was going on and a potential uh um wartime enemy.

And the Cold War was was called the Cold War because it wasn't like there actual physical outbreaks of violence between the two countries, but there was a true rivalry of global proportions going on between the two, and so we there were needs each each country felt the need to find out as much about what was going on in the other country as possible, and so they were developing their own ways of spying on each other. Of course,

this also figured into this space race. Um. We've talked about the thing what beaped but sput Nick that they sent up from the Soviet Union um shortly after that period, but it was around the same time they were looking for ways to spy on each other. Of course, satellite technology entered into it. But the YouTube predates ate because I mean it was already flying by by that point. Yeah.

So this is during the Eisenhower administration in the United States history and uh, and so there were several the government, the United States government actually invited several different companies to submit proposals for a spy plane. That's pretty typical, right, And the company that went out was Lockeed and there was a fellow by the name of Clarence Kelly Johnson who was put in charge of the development of this

spy plane. Johnson also was instrumental in creating the the facility that was the testing grounds for this particular airplane, and that facility has gone on to gain incredible notoriety, yes, partially because it was very innovative and partially because it just has a very cool name and it was very, very very secret about everything, and that cool name, at least that's the popular name for it, is Area fifty one.

So if you always wondered what Area fifty one was about, and you've heard about things like UFOs and aliens, what it really was about was a testing ground for secret aircraft, and the YouTube was very much a secret aircraft. The United States did not really talk about what the You two was for until they were forced to. And we'll

get into that story too, because that's pretty dramatic. But but before we get into that, let's talk more about what the You two actually was and uh oh, and in case you're just wondering, Area fifty one, also popularly known as Groom Lake because it's a dry lake bed, was where it was built up on. And uh I think in the future we're going to have to do a podcast all about Area fifty one because it was

such a cool place. It's not really not really a thing anymore, but it was definitely a neat idea and some really cool technology was developed there. Anyway, getting back to the YouTube, Yeah, it's got a Now this this sucker can fly at at altitudes of more than seventy thousand feet. Yes, Um, that's pretty high up. Yeah, that's when you think about commercial jet liners are tend to be between thirty and thirty five thousand feet, sometimes a little higher. Uh, you know, it's more than twice as

high up. And uh it was built. It was built with a really really long wings almost like a glider, and very light air frame. Yeah. Well I'm sorry, go ahead. The wingspan of the U two is about a hundred and five feet or you know, thirty two meters or so, the length of sixty three ft or about nineteen point two meters, and height uh sixteen feet about four point eight meters, and only way is sixteen thousand pounds, which when you think about it is pretty light. That's pretty remarkable. Yeah.

It's got one General Electric F one eighteen Dash one oh one engine. Yeah, although there were other engines used in the YouTube during its entire history. Uh. There Uh, there's a J fifty seven turbojet engine, the J seventy five turbojet engine, and then the General Electric F one eighteen turbo fan engine. Uh. They have all been used in you two's throughout its history of its service in the United States. Before we get too much further into

the technical details, one of their interesting element. Originally this was pitched to the Air Force. The Air Force decided it did not The Air Force decided not to fund it. The funding came from the c I. A. Yeah, so the Central Intelligence Agency is actually responsible for the development

of the you tube and uh. In fact, the pilots of those early youtubs were all CIA pilots because the idea was that if you had a a plane go down and the pilot of that plane was a member of the United States military, it could look like a military action against another country. Because you were a pilot for the CIA, you had to be a civilian, So you actually would go through and and quit a branch of the military service. You would no longer be a

part of the Air Force. You would become a civilian and be employed by the CIA, and that would give you the deniability that it was a military action against another country. Well, of course, um also sneaky. If you're wondering how much these aircraft cost, they won't tell you that information is classified. There's actually a lot of information classified about the YouTube, Like we can't tell you specifically all the different sensors that are on board a YouTube.

We can tell you that it does have a camera, actually has multiple cameras in order to get a visual representation of what's what it's flying over. It also has sensors that can detect the quality of the air and and perhaps even sniff out things like, uh, chemicals that would be indicative of a nuclear facility in the area. Um, it's got Supposedly it has sensors that can allow it

to even eavesdrop on cell phone conversations. Interesting, and there's also a data link that allows it to upload information in real time to a remote location. Yes, it's got a it has infrared cameras and an optical bar camera. Um. And uh it does have you know, advanced radar capabilities as well. UM. So it's it's certainly able to pay a lot of attention to what's going on in the world around it. Um, even from the altitudes that they can reach. Does have a crew of one we know

that much. Yeah, it's it's designed to be a one person aircraft. I have heard that there are a few examples of two men you twos, but they are specifically built for training purposes. They are not They're not actually used in service. Uh, it does. It can reach a speed of about four miles per hour. It's not you know, we're not talking about breaking the speed of sound. Um,

which is unlike the SR seventy one. Yes, which that was one of the reasons why the SR seventy one was developed was they wanted the government wanted something that was even faster and could fly even higher than the U two And the s R seventy one could do both those things. It could fly at an altitude around ninety thou feet and it could fly very fast. Indeed, yes, which works for the X men. Yes, sort of um and often than not. And if you're wondering, there are

about thirty three of them. They are still active. Um and Yeah. Despite as as Jonathan said earlier, just Bite attempts to phase them out as older, outmoded technology, they're just too good at what they do well. It turns out the other stuff that was built to replace them wasn't good enough and was more expensive. So while you had aircraft that could fly faster and higher. Uh. The one of the big drawbacks of the Blackbird was that

it did not have a data link. So when you sent a Blackbird out on a mission in the dead of night. You had to wait for it to come back and dump all that information for you to be able to look at it. You couldn't get updates as the mission was going on, at least not of all the data that it was collecting. You know. The pilot could communicate presumably, but smartphone, Yeah, there's anap for that. But flying over foreign power l O L nice R TfL uh the uh the only uh. There's some other

interesting things about the YouTube. It's landing gear it has. You know, most most aircraft that we think of today has have the landing gear. Where's the one set of ehels up front and then the two set of wheels in the backs. It's almost like a tricycle, you know. YouTube does not have that. It has more like a bicycle set up. It's got one the front set of wheels and back set of wheels are in line with

one another. Now, it does have wheels called pogos that are attached to the wings for takeoff, so to give it stability when you're taking off with a you two. But then once you take off, you jettison those wheels. They're gone and you only when you're coming into land. You only have those two sets of wheels, so you're thinking, how can you maintain balance? Well, the wings have skids

on them to protect the wings. It's apparently really really hard to fly a YouTube and and more so not just because of the landing thing, although landing apparently is one of the most difficult maneuvers you can do with the YouTube because the wings are so wide, the a little cross wind can very much affect the you to it can start gliding off track and uh, it's it's really hard to correct for that. Another issue is that it's designed to fly at a very high altitude. We'll

at that altitude, the atmosphere is not as thick. Yeah, it's the thinner atmosphere. Well, in order to give precise controls at that altitude, the controls are extremely responsive when you are flying through a very thin atmosphere. So just a tiny little adjustment by the pilot is going to result in a pretty dramatic change in the plane's behavior. All right, when you start going down, you start descending

in the atmosphere is starting to get thicker. Suddenly those controls aren't as responsive and you have to do more to get the plane to do what you wanted to do. So as you're descending from that height where you're actually spying and everything and you're coming down, UH, the plane becomes less responsive and the pilot has to use a lot more force to get the plane to do what

he wants it or she wants it to do. And UM, and so it is supposed to be are supposedly one of the most difficult aircraft master because the two sets of flying UH scenarios are so different. As if that weren't enough, because of the way the plane is configured, it's kind of hard to see out of um that the nose is very long, and it's difficult to see

out the back because of the tail. So as a matter of fact, Uh, Jonathan I, I've actually seen information that suggests that many pilots call it the most difficult plane in the world to fly, and and it actually requires in some instances, actually requires a second set of eyes. Somebody else will go up after the U two to UH to help it get down, somebody who's sort of if you will, it's sort of a visual spot and

they go, you know, there's sometimes lined up. Sometimes it's a person in a souped up cars, a second, a second YouTube pilot who is being driven on in a souped up car, going alongside the plane as it's coming down and giving verbal directions to the pilot. So the pilot hasn't indication of how far they are from the surface and whether they need to make any adjustments. So they'll be in a car traveling at a pretty good

clip of speed. Okay, see that was my That was my assumption because it said my notes say high performance vehicle, and it didn't say what kind of vehicle. Yeah, it was a high performance car, the Blues Mobile. Actually they just chat. They have that that megaphone on top, and they all right, is what you gotta do? You gotta go down two ft two ft anyway? Um, So yeah, there's that, and then there's also uh, some other interesting

things about the YouTube. Another reason why it's so hard to fly is that it has to almost always be flying near the maximum speed to the vehicle. And the reason for that is because if it starts to get down below about nineteen kilometers per hour below maximum speed, which is ten knots. When it starts to drop below ten knots from its maximum speed at whatever altitude it's at, it starts to stall. So in other words, there's a really narrow window of performance that the plane can operate

at where it's not falling out of the sky. It has to be going almost full speed or else it's dropping like a rock. And uh, the pilots have a a special name for that, that little window you were, that little narrow window of of speed. Can you do you have you did you come across that? It's it's a charming name. It is the coffin corner. Nice. So yeah, it's um, yeah, pilots. Pilots have a interesting set of um of of terms for they have. They have a

very dry and uh, realistic view of the world. So yeah, interesting designs. So why sorry, go ahead, I was gonna say, well, the design has changed over the years somewhat. I mean they've they've made some adaptations for it. It It was originally based on the F one oh four UH fighter jet, but um, you know it has they they actually the version that they fly now is somewhat longer and has they've they've upgraded the the avionics systems. In the past.

They didn't originally use digital uh systems. They were using UM analog gauges, but they've they've updated all those things now and so it's a it's a much more um I mean, of course, the plane itself is based on the original design. It's just it's been adapted and updated as as necessary over the years have have gone by. So and for the first several years of you tube's existence, the government of course did not admit that it had

this biplane. They said that the U two. That people knew that the you two existed, they just didn't know what it was for. And the reason given mostly was that it was a vehicle used to examine the weather patterns and weather conditions. It was all about gathering information about the environment. That there wasn't anything about spy plane. Well, that all changed on May one, nineteen sixty, that is when a pilot, a CIA pilot named Gary Powers, was

operating a YouTube and crashed in Soviet territory. Now, the cause of the crash is has always been disputed. Right there. There's some reports that say that what happened was he was shot down, that it was hit the plane was was hit by a Soviet missile and it caused the plane to crash. There were other reports that said that the YouTube passed through the slip stream of another vehicle, another plane, and that it caused the YOU two to go out of control and a wing ripped off of

it and it crashed because of that. There's another report that said missiles were fired at the U two, but uh, it exploded behind the plane, and the that the explosion was enough to send it off control. What is known is that there was unfortunately, there was another pilot, a Soviet pilot who is flying a MiG who actually did get hit by the missiles that were meant for the YouTube plane and died as a result. Well, Gary Powers

was shot down, but he survived. However, he was he was used in a little bit of subterfuge on top of the subterfuge he was already a part of, because the premier of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev, didn't let the United States know that Powers survived the crash. Instead, what Kris Jeff did was he said, uh, the United States had a spy plane over my country and we shut

it down, and you got some splaning to do. Chris is banging the table with his shoe, So if you don't know what that's about, look up Chris Jeff and shoe. But yes, so Christeff. Christcheff was a little perturbed, said there was a spy plane over well here was an aggressive act. Yes, yeah, and how can you disagree with that? I mean it was a spy plane. Yeah. So did

the United States say? Yeah? Okay? Now, because again the US, not aware that Powers was alive, went into the cover story that they had created for this sort of scenario, assuming that Powers had died. The Eisenhower administration said that the plane was just a weather research aircraft. It had accidentally moved into Soviet airspace. It was not meant to be there. The pilot had actually radio that there was

some problem with the equipment aboard the plane. That was specifically the oxygen equipment, because when you're flying at that height you need to have special equipment to pressurize the cabin. And in fact, the pilots of the YouTube where something that's almost like a space suit because of the otherwise you could have some real pressurization problems. So they said, no, no, no, it's just a weather aircraft. It was there were some problems that we heard about. They were supposed to be

over Turkey. Uh, it was completely just a misunderstanding, and that that the plane that was shot down is probably the weather plane. It's it's definitely not a spy plane. And then Chris Jeff said, the pilots alive and we recovered all the information aboard the plane. It was actually in in good conditions. So we know exactly what you were looking for, and we know exactly what the purpose of this this vehicle was. And you are a big

fibbing fibber. Yes, they they that he was okay in Moscow, um and he had said he They said that he told them that he had taken off from Peshawar in Pakistan, UM and he was told to fly over the Soviet Union um basically over the Errold Sea. Were Sverdlovsk, Kirov, our King I can't pronounce that word, our King Glisk and Murmansk to the Bodo Military Airfield in Norway, and so they he he told them he they said, he told them the exact route he was supposed to fly um.

And of course you know that the United States after that was still saying, well that that really wasn't wasn't

what was going on there. It was just very hard to deny when they had so much and there was and there was a supposed to be a summit that was going to be going on, like I think a week or two after this happened, and it caused quite a stir and international polity picks that this and it was it was considered to be a very huge humiliating embarrassment for the United States and demanded that the United States stopped flying over the Soviet Union or you know,

they'd leave. Do I need to take my shoe off again? Put it back on? And uh. Ultimately the international community ended up sighting more with the United States than with the Soviet Union. But other outcomes of this Powers was was tried and convicted in the Soviet Union in August that year. He was sentenced to several years of prison, followed by I think seven years of hard labor. But he ended up getting released as part of an exchange, a prisoner exchange for Rudolph Able. Yeah, and that that

took place. All right, kids, you might not know this, but when I was a kid, there were two Germany's. There's an East Germany and there was a West Germany. And the exchange actually took place on a bridge between the borders of East Berlin and West Berlin. And it

was a very famous event. So now there's no longer in East Germany and West Germany, but back when I was a kid, there was and that this is what you know, this took place at that location because the there was a Soviet controlled part and there was the German controlled part. All that is in the past. Now ask your parents about the Berlin Wall kids, Well, there there were no Really, I don't recall any other major

famous incidents in which a YouTube was involved. There was the Zaropa Tour, yes, and I was wondering how long I could go without making a YouTube joke, and then the answer was twenty seven minutes. Um. But ironically enough, I find um uh. NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, has used the e R two, which is basically a model fied YouTube, to collect information on um the on

space phenomena, and on the Earth itself. So yes, in fact, it does make it pretty good, uh you know, weather in and observation plane for other purposes than just spying, but still being used as a as a spy plane. According to I just thought it was kind of funny. Then yeah, you know, then Niles and then well, as it turns out, you can use it for that. So I found out some more information about and I was gonna say talk about the blackbird and about how it

was supposed to be. That was also developed an Area fifty one. It was originally called the A twelve that was its designation, then eventually was known as the s R seventy one Blackbird. UM. It was the successor to the YouTube but was retired and it had a useful life of between nineteen sixty four and when it was retired for the second time. So it's kind of like a professional wrestler, you know, it retires and then comes back and then retires again, but in this case only

retired the two times. And and there's no real way of making more of them because they destroyed the tooling machinery back in the sixties when they built a blackbird, the idea being that they didn't want it to fall into any other hands, and so this was a way of maintaining secrecy. The downside of that is that once you run out of blackbirds, you don't have any more of them. Uh, there's no way to make more UM.

And so they actually had a lot of issues with that, and there were several blackbirds that were involved in various accidents, and the incidence that made them either they either were destroyed as a result or they were inoperable. Uh So they now all exist pretty much in museums. I think there might be one or two that um belonged to NASA, actually, but there aren't any that are being used in military service.

So the Air Force has stopped using the Blackbird. Well, you know, that was supposed to be the successor to the You two, but they again stopped being used in

ninety eight. The You two kept going since. According to the Air Force, a well one point seven billion with a B dollars have been poured into the YouTube program to keep it up to date, to modernize it, make sure that it's you know, operating at at a level that that modern warfare and modern politics demands, because you know, we've got a lot more sophisticated with the ways that we detect stuff. So in order to stay ahead, it had a lot more money to be poured into it.

And according to one source I saw, since two thousand and three, the Air Force has flown more than nine five thousand hours using the YouTube. Keep in mind there only thirty three of these things. That's pretty impressive. Yeah, yeah, well the uh, in case you're wondering, the r Q four may not be off the table. Um. It is presumed that North Grumman, the company that makes Well, the primary company that makes it, will try to get it

put back into the into the budget. And it may just be that it's a delay more than anything else. In fact, most of those sources I saw was that it's it's it's that the date keeps getting pushed back, like originally the the YouTube was supposed to be retired by the most recent date I saw it was, yeah, And then I saw one that said it may be flying as late as twenty fifty, which means it would be a hundred years old. Almost. Yeah, yeah, well, you know, and uh, it takes three people to fly in r

Q four. You know, you have to have an l R E pilot, an m C E pilot, and a sensor operator. And it only flies up to sixty thousand feet which is about eighteen thousand, two eight meters um. It uh has a maximum speed of three seven miles per hour about three D ten knots um. So you know, it's it's comparable in some ways, but in others, you know, the you two still out does it. So, um, it's

it's impressive stuff. But it's kind of funny to me that that tried and true YOU two is still hanging in there despite all these other things that that could replace it. Yeah. Part of that is the the qualities of the U two, and part of that is is purely economical. She said, you know, there's just not the money to replace it, and that you know, we do have a need for reconnaissance vehicles. And you might ask, well, why do we need that, because we've got satellites now right,

We've got satellites that can spy on stuff. And that's true, we do have satellites, but satellites are not yeah stuff the beeps. Satellites are not capable of of focusing in on a very specific region at a reasonable amount of time in many cases, So it may be that you've got a great view of this one region, but the problem is that the issue that you need to look at is just outside of that that view, and in order to change the view on the satellite is going

to take hours. Whereas you could send a YouTube plane stationed in a nearby country to fly over and get a look right then and there, and the way the world works, we need information instantly. We can't wait anymore.

So Yeah, for for instance, they might have intelligence that a specific operation is going on right now, and they're going to hide whatever it is that they're moving, you know, some some kind of weapons technology or some you know, uh, something like that, or or a caravan of people or something. You know, it could be a variety of things that you want to see. Um And by the time the Earth rotates back to where the satellite could take a

good picture of it, it'll be too late. Um. So that kind of thing, yep, yep, spy stuff is cool, and yes it is, but um oh, but and it did play a major part in the the Cuban missile crisis in the nineteen six Pieces was able to get a good picture of what was going on there between the Soviets and the Cubans. Um do you and you know we didn't mention it, But do you know what the nickname is for the YouTube? Oh? I did see it a moment ago, and then I scrolled past it

in my notes. I'm surprised I didn't mention it already. It is the Dragon Lady. Yes you don't. You don't hear it? Mentioned the you two is well known enough by it by its normal designation that you don't really hear the nickname very often like you do the SR seventy one Blackbird for example. But yeah, that's a cool name, cool name. All right. Well, this wraps up this discussion about the YouTube. Like I said, we'll try and do

one about Area fifty one specifically. At some point we can talk about the other vehicles and technologies that came out of that research facility, uh, and also talk about why it was so secret and uh, you know, the whole craziness that surrounds Area fifty one and and how it plays a part in conspiracy theories because you know it does, you might not have heard about it. Um, you need to watch this documentary series called The X

Files goes all into it, all right. And that was our classic tech stuff episode on the YouTube spy Plane. We've talked about several other times, obviously when we talked about Area fifty one and some of the other surveillance and spy technology podcasts. But I really enjoyed that original episode. I hope you guys did too. If you have any

suggestions for future episodes, you can write to me. My email address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop me a line on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumbler to handle it. All three of those is text stuff h SW and I'll talk to you again really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how staff works dot com