The Dragon Lady

[Music] How'd I get here? I asked for it. I volunteered. I wanted to fly this airplane because almost every mission you fly is operational and because this is a pilot's airplane. It's a real challenge every time. 2026 Southern Sento speaking. May I help you? Stand by one headquarter stack, sir. Lieutenant Colonel Brown. Yes, sir. Right away, sir. Captain Peterson. Right. Right. Your mission, a high priority sorty to collect vital information. It's all planned for you the day before you fly. Squadron operations 2 and 1/2 hours before takeoff. You and your backup ready to go to work. Hello, Tim. Hey, morning. How are you? Fine. How you doing? Okay. A last minute intelligence briefing. And that concludes the items you'll be prohibited from carrying. Can I answer any questions about these? Don't have anything. Do you? No. Okay. A final check on the weather in the forecasted thunderstorms will end in the first third of Utah. 344 heading for a little over 13 minutes. You're flying the mission. You check all the flight plans made the day before in route charts, the green card and map boards, two hours before takeoff. You eat a standard high protein, low residue meal needed for the demands of the long mission at high altitude. The backup pilot pre-flights the plane. Tomorrow, somebody will be doing the same for him. 48 hours later, you'll be the backup. Day after that, you'll fly again. That's the cycle. Okay. Uh, what time did you go to bed? 10:00. Okay. What time did you get up? About 6. Okay. It's serious business. Doing pretty good this morning. No problem. You'll be up there alone at 70,000 ft for an appreciable length of time. You don't need any problems. You've got enough on your hands. All that time you'll be living in a space suit, sucking your meals and sipping Gatorade through a tube. An hour and 15 minutes before takeoff, suiting up for the flight. [Music] 9 hours at altitude you could get the bends. That's why an hour before takeoff you go on oxygen. Everything okay then sir? Yeah. Thanks, Woody. It's okay. You're all set. Okay. It's a close-knit group. We have to be. We depend on one another for our lives. [Music] The dragon lady asks a lot. Heat is your enemy in that suit. You lie there. You go over the mission in your mind. What track you'll go in on. What sensor settings over the target? What are the divert emergency bases? How will the weather affect the mission? The backup pilot is there. He's called the mobile at this stage. He's on wheels and he'll stick with you right up to takeoff. You are going to ride a bicycle. Now you're sitting on top of two narrowly spaced wheels and there's all that wing spread. It's a real balancing act, but there's plenty of help. Ground pinion 67 taxi pins and canopy mobile 5. Clear to be via the boomerang route. Maintain mobile. Departure frequency 327.5 squawk 4232. [Music] A graceful looking machine, but awkward on the ground. A glider with the same engine that powered the F106, loaded with fuel, packed with electronics, updated version of the original U2 that rolled out of Kelly Johnson's Skunk Works at Lockheed back in the 1950s. The sleek black bird, hand flown, seated the pants, but with state-of-the-art equipment. You know what the limits are. It's all your responsibility. All yours to fly alone. 25 departure when conflict take off. no crew, limited radio contact. In each of us who flies these missions, there's the conviction that this is not just a job. Deep down inside, you can see yourself as the hero, the central figure in a group of 60 people who've prepared this mission, readied you for flight. People who briefed you, fed you, attended you, dressed you, got you out to the aircraft, put you into the seat, hooked you up, and launched you. We say launch, not takeoff, because so many people and procedures are involved in the launch and the recovery of just one pilot in a single aircraft. You you volunteered, but you were selected, too. And the selection process is a cautious one. They want to be sure you're the right guy to live and work with under stress. steady, reliable, friendly. Okay, sir. Just how many TDY are the crews pulling now? The crews are pulling about 140 days a year TDY. Let's say a young but experienced captain, a totally professional and dedicated Air Force officer who can handle problems on his own, except a challenge. A man in good physical shape who can fly a plane that demands precision and is tough to land. The selection process is a serious business. Your records are reviewed. Then you're interviewed at Beal and you also fly the U2 trainer. You two and TR1 pilots make up a small and elite group. Fewer than 300 of us since the program began back in the 1950s. A ranking Allied military commander has said, "If all the U2 TR1 aircraft could be airborne 3 hours before a war, we'd have all the information essential to the conduct of that war. We fly other missions surveying the damage caused by natural disasters, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, forest fires. We sometimes fly search and rescue missions. There are two units flying the U2 and TR1. Both aircraft are virtually the same. However, they fly different missions. TR1 pilots in the 95th Recon Squadron fly out of RAF Elenberry, England. It's a three-year overseas tour. Their missions support the tactical commanders in Europe collecting battlefield information for NATO planning and defense. TR1 pilots do not pull TDY. The U2s support the folks in Washington by collecting strategic intelligence. to do that. You two pilots go TDY about 130 days a year. He was honest. He told me about the TDY and it was hard to get used to. But then when we had the chance to come here, I just couldn't say no to him. It was like I caught his excitement. It would be all right, but we have to leave by 10. Okay. Come on, fellas. He was like a little kid at Christmas. And you have to realize he's not going to get over that. The dragon lady is number one. You have to learn to accept that and then to share him. Then it's okay. The TDY is okay because he's happy and you're happy because he's happy. And if he's not always there for you and the kids, well, you learn to live with that. They are catching. It's really not much different anywhere else. All right. Hi, Debbie. How are you? Okay. Hanging in there. How you doing? We're okay. Is he coming back soon? No, not for another month. Our husbands have to depend on one another for their lives and it's almost the same with us. We learn to lean on one another. That closeness and that support is always there and that helps. And then of course the missions, the TDY, they really don't last forever. He does come home. [Music] Home can be anywhere in the world on TDY, but coming back home, that's back to where your heart is. You come in tired and you're recovered the same way you were launched with a lot of help. [Music] The airplane is designed to be stalled one or two feet above ground. It's very critical that it be stalled no higher than that. Your backup, the mobile controller, gives you your altitude calls in feet and inches above the runway. Okay, there's 10 at the T down to eight. Six 5T four 3T tail still up at 3 ft. [Music] There's two one and a half. One foot holding at 1 ft down to 6 in. Nice. I got couple of vehicles on the runway south to north south. Finally, you're safely on the ground. Mission successfully completed. Your backup is there to meet you. He takes the checklist and the green card. Your written log of everything you were supposed to do on this mission. It all goes back to the people in NAV planning. Hey, welcome back. All right. Heck of a fine job. Have a good one. Okay. Yeah. Super your checklist and get some of the stuff out of your way here. Okay. See you on the ground. All right. Tired, hot, and sweaty in your pressure suit, but you feel pretty good. There's a lot of job satisfaction in this line of work. Tomorrow you're off, but there's one more post mission procedure you don't want to miss. It's in the heritage room of the squadron that each mission really comes to an end. This is where you begin to unwind and listen and learn from older and wiser heads. How things go today? What's wrong with that autopilot thing? I don't Well, we had some problems the other day. It was uh we're getting a little pitch. Oh, thing again. Yeah. What? Did you try turn? [Music] Hey fellas, how are you? [Music] Yourself today, huh? Yeah. Yeah. You were okay. And right now it's somebody else's turn to fly the dragon lady. square. They're going to go approach [Music]