What kind of reconnaissance plane is U-2? How is the equipment? How many masterpieces have been produced in actual combat?

After World War II, the relationship between the West and the Soviet Union, especially the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, dropped sharply. At that time, the Soviet Union kept its rapid development in the military field extremely secret. The U.S. government is very nervous about this, and takes the collection of Soviet armament information as an important task and tries to find it at all costs. In a vast country like the Soviet Union, it is almost impossible to collect information in the original way. To this end, within the US Air Force, many people proposed to use the ultra-high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft driven by advanced jet engines at that time to collect intelligence.

1954 in April, the report No.9732 submitted by Lockheed was sent to the US Department of Defense. The reconnaissance plane proposed in this report consists of XF- 104 fuselage and tail, plus a wing with a wingspan of 2 1.54m and an aspect ratio of 10. The engine is J57 (thrust 4,200kg) made by General Electric Company, with flying height of 22,250m, operational radius of 3,200km and task load of 270kg.

Just then, the US Department of Defense set up a secret advisory committee. The Committee gathered famous scientists and engineers from all over the United States, and invited the president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology as the chairman of the Committee. Its purpose is to discuss the latest national defense technology.

In June 1954,165438+1October 19, the Secret Advisory Committee asked Lockheed to explain their plans in detail. Soon, William Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (the younger brother of Secretary of State Dulles) accepted the plan, and President Eisenhower made up his mind. The CIA's top secret reconnaissance plane is to be named "ProjectAquatone". 1954, 1954 On February 9, 1954, the CIA and Lockheed signed a contract for 20 aircraft, namely the U-2 aircraft. Finally, the CIA ordered 50 planes (not including the later U-2R), and the R&D expenditure was $54 million from the secret reserve fund.

The L machine of U-2 was completed as scheduled on July 1955, and was secretly transported to the "Ranch" test base by C- 124. 1955 made its first test flight on July 29th and its official test flight on August 4th. 1in April 1965, several pilots and two U-2 planes secretly recruited by the CIA were sent to the laikenheath base in Britain, which was the result of cooperation and consultation between the CIA and the British foreign intelligence agency M 16. WRS(P)- 1 Force was established in the British base, that is, the first temporary meteorological observation force. It's called for camouflage. The captain is an air force field officer, and most of the team members are important civilian personnel of the Central Intelligence Agency. They internally call the team the first task force.

However, because U-2 has not been made public at this time, its appearance immediately caused a lot of discussion all over the world. 1On May 7th, 956, the Americans announced that U-2 was a high-altitude research machine to collect data for the future development of jet planes. This is an open lie by the American government to hide people's eyes and ears.

On June 1956, U-2 conducted its first reconnaissance activity. On this day, due to the bad weather in the western part of the Soviet Union, there was no invasion of Soviet airspace. It only conducted aerial reconnaissance on East Germany and Poland, and returned after obtaining information. The first spy reconnaissance flight was successful. The earliest invasion of Soviet airspace was on July 4, the independence day of the United States. The U-2 plane flew over East Berlin and northern Poland, left Tani, Leningrad and the Baltic Sea, and finally returned to the West German Air Force Base, which lasted more than 8 hours.

On July 5, U-2 boldly conducted spy reconnaissance in Kiev, Minsk, Moscow and other places in the Soviet Union, and also achieved success. On July 10, the Soviet ambassador to the United States lodged a serious protest with the US government over the violation of Soviet airspace by the US air force. In this regard, the United States argues that "no military aircraft can fly like that." But since then, the president of the United States has become cautious about such spy flights, stipulating that every flight must be approved by him. For example,/kloc-0 invaded the Soviet Union in May, 1960, and 1962/kloc-0 invaded Cuba on October 27th.

In the nearly four years since U-2 began to spy, Soviet missiles and fighter planes did not pose a threat to U-2, but from the beginning of the activity, it was known that the Soviet Union had been capturing U-2 with radar, so Lockheed began to take some countermeasures against radar.

Aerial reconnaissance camera plays an important role in reconnaissance tools on U-2 aircraft. It uses a B-type camera. The camera lens is ground by the famous Lycra Company (the company that manufactures Hubble Space Telescope). This is an ultra-high performance lens with an image resolution of about1mm. The B-type camera is placed in a narrow cabin and made very light (only 230 kg including film). Film is a high-resolution film based on ultra-thin polyester resin (a kind of reinforced polyester film) specially developed by Kodak Company. The camera size is 45.7 × 45.7 cm, and two films are used for stereo photography.

In the decades of development, U-2 has appeared many variants according to different tasks:

(l) U-2/U-2A is a prototype with J57 engine, and 55 engines have been produced. At first it was called U-2, and later it was called U-2A to distinguish it from other improvements. The only one is kept in the Air Force Museum in Leto Pacuso, USA.

(2)U-2B is actually a project of Lockheed, which has not been adopted.

(3)U-2C is a model with the engine changed to J75-P- 13/ 13A (thrust 7 170kg). 1958 started testing, and the upper limit was raised to 22860m m. U-2C captured by Bowles when he invaded the Soviet Union.

(4) The U-2CT is a two-seat model improved from two C models.

(5) The U-2D is a two-seater modified from two U-2A, but it is not the rear seat of the U-2CT.

(6)U-2E is an aerial refueling test alum modified from U-2A, with only three modified ones.

(7)U-2F is an additional model of aerial refueling device improved from U-2C. There are ***5 aircraft, there are several kinds of refueling telescopic pipes, one of which can extend to the bottom of the vertical tail. There is a jack in front of it.

(8)U-2G is an airplane that can land on an aircraft carrier by transforming U-2C. In addition to the universal joint, a bumper and an auxiliary landing gear are added under the nose, and a spoiler is added in front of the flap.

(9)U-2H is a U-2G reconnaissance plane with an aerial refueling plug hole. Due to the increased weight of U-2G and U-2H, the flying height performance is greatly reduced.

(10)U-2b/RT, TR- 1A/B and ER-3 are the development types of U-2. 1965 proposed that the wingspan was extended by 4.9 meters and the fuselage was extended by 2.4 meters. The plan attracted the interest of the Air Force and the Central Intelligence Agency. It was first named U-2N, then WU-2C, and finally named U-2R. U-2R has a wingspan of 3 1.5m, a wing area of 92.9m2, a NACA64A series airfoil, a fuselage length of 19. 13m, an enlarged cross-sectional area, an enlarged nose, a sensor and an enlarged horizontal tail. In addition, an angle conversion system is added to the elevator to try to make the pitch trim simple and easy.

The biggest goal of U-2R is to improve the endurance, enlarge the wing, increase the cross-sectional area of the fuselage, and ensure the fuel 1 1034 liters. The fuel is JP-7 aviation fuel with low volatility, and the engine is J75-P-65438+3B. Its takeoff thrust reaches 77 10 kg. When the flying altitude reaches. The thrust can still reach 90% of the thrust at takeoff. When cruising at the speed of m = 0.56 (700 km/h), the fuel consumption is only 160 gallon /h, so the cruising time of U-2R is much longer than that of U-2, reaching 18 hours.

In the 1970s of the Cold War between the East and the West in this century, what the West was most afraid of was the blitzkrieg of the troops of the Warsaw Pact countries with strong armored forces. To this end, the west has taken all means to try to find out the military dynamics in the East, so that once the war starts, it can grasp the situation of land warfare. Therefore, battlefield surveillance has become an important issue. As early as the early 1970s, the US Air Force put forward the plan of unmanned reconnaissance aircraft. The scheme was opposed by Lockheed as soon as it was introduced, and a new scheme of U-2R battlefield monitor was put forward. This scheme is superior to unmanned reconnaissance aircraft in carrying sensors and cruising altitude, and also superior to F-11in holding air. Lockheed's plan was approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In order to wash away the image of U-2 as a spy plane in the past, the Air Force requested that it be renamed TR, TR-lA for single-seat type and TR-lB for two-seat type.

The delivery ceremony of the first TR-lA (No.80- 1066) was held in Bamdale on July 198 15, and it made its first flight on August 10. Tr-1b1(80-1064) was completed in 1983 65438+ 10, and made its first flight on February 23rd. It's not a modification, it's the earliest model of U-2 series, as a dual landline.

TR-l*** produced 37 aircraft, including 32 A-type aircraft, 3 B-type aircraft and 2 ER-2 aircraft. The name of 199 1 TR-IA/B is cancelled, and it is collectively called u-2r/rt.

(11) U-2S/St. This is a modified U-2R/RT engine into FL18-GF-1model (thrust is 500kg), which is higher than J75/kloc-. The engine is equipped with a restart device, and the sensors and avionics have also been updated. ASARS-2 advanced synthetic aperture radar system adds the function of moving target display. The first three aircraft of this type were delivered to the US Air Force on1October 28th, 1994, 10, and the remaining two U-2R3 1 and U-2RT will be changed to S/ST by 1998 at the latest.

U-2 has been developed since the early 1950s and has formed ll model. With a history of nearly 50 years, it can be seen that it will enter the 2 1 century, continue to develop and apply, and go down in history as a cross-century reconnaissance plane.