Dark Eagles: A History of the Top Secret U.S. Aircraft

modified with a more powerful J75 engine. This restored the altitude lost due to the weight of equipment added to the U-2, which included the midnight blue paint, ejector seat, and reconnaissance equipment. (The paint alone added 80 pounds.) The aircraft was also more demanding to fly; in some flight conditions only four knots separated the maximum and minimum speeds. Article 360 was sent to Detachment C in Japan, but was damaged on September 24, 1959, when it made a belly landing on a glider strip after running out of fuel. The plane was repaired, but it had a reputation for sporadic problems. Article 360 was not to have made the overflight, but the delays caused the U-2 originally picked to be grounded for maintenance.

95

Powers and Gentry, Operation Overflight, 81–84.

96

Kelly and Smith, Kelly, 128.

97

'Soviets Downed MiG along with U-2 in '60,' San Diego Tribune, April 30, 1990, sec. A.

The Soviets did not admit the loss of the MiG and its pilot, or the mass SA-2 firings, until 1990. Up to this point, they claimed only one SAM […] through the 1980s continued to claim the U-2 had suffered a flameout, long after the true events were known. This was combined with claims the overflight was a plot by the CIA to sabotage the Paris Summit and prolong the Cold War.

One of the author's professors said it was a possibility that both the U-2 and the shooting down of Korean Air Lines flight 007 were both due to this plot.

It was not until 1992 that the Russian government admitted the Soviets had systematically lied about the shooting down of the airliner.

98

Pocock, Dragon Lady, 48–58.

99

Orin Humphries, 'High Flight' Wings (June 1983): 10–31, 50–55.

100

Pocock, Dragon Lady, 68.

101

Robert Hotz, 'Editorial Laurels for 1962,' Aviation Week and Space Technology (December 24, 1962): 11.

102

Ben Guenther and Jay Miller, Bell X-l Variants (Arlington, Tex.: Aerofax, 1988), 25, 32.

103

John L. Sloop, Liquid Hydrogen as a Propulsion Fuel 1945–1959 (Washington, D.C.: NASA SP-4404, 1980), 141-45.

104

Ibid., 147-49.

105

Ibid., 152-62. There seems to be a connection between Pratt and Whitney's 304 hydrogen-fueled engine and its design of a nuclear-powered jet engine for the WS-125A bomber. In the nuclear engine, a reactor heated water, turning it into pressurized steam. This went through a steam turbine, which powered the compressor fan via a reduction gear. The steam then flowed through a heat exchanger, which heated the compressed air to produce thrust. The water then flowed back to the reactor to begin the cycle all over again. The flow is the reverse of the 304 engine, but many of the technical features, such as the design of the heat exchanger, are identical. The WS- 125A bomber could cruise indefinitely on nuclear power alone. To provide added thrust, such as for takeoff and the Mach 3 dash to the target, boron would be sprayed through an afterburner. The boron fuel also acted as a radiation shield. The air force canceled Pratt and Whitney's nuclear engine in August 1957, the month before the first 304 engine runs started.

106