The U-2 spy plane flies above 70,000 feet, and the Air Force fact sheet says it holds the widely accepted title of the most difficult aircraft in the world to fly. Watch a U-2 land and you will usually see a strange sight: a high-performance car racing right behind the jet as it touches down. The driver is another U-2 pilot, the “mobile,” and the Air Force counts that officer as part of the U-2’s aircrew.
Why it needs help: the U-2’s long, straight wings (105 feet across) give it glider-like handling, so near the ground it doesn’t want to stop flying. The pilot sits in a full pressure suit behind a long nose, and the Air Force fact sheet notes the limited forward view of this “taildragger.” The final feet are hard to judge from the cockpit. So the chase pilot closes in and calls the height over the radio. Air Force procedures have the mobile officer making altitude calls whenever the jet is below 10 feet; the throttle comes back to idle at about 10 feet, and pilots stall the plane about two feet off the runway.
Why the strange landing gear: when Kelly Johnson’s Lockheed team designed the U-2 in 1954-55, weight was one of the two big problems. The answer was a lightweight bicycle gear: one pair of wheels under the forward fuselage and two small wheels under the tail, all on the centerline. Nothing holds up the wings. As the U-2 slows after landing, one wing settles onto a skid at its tip.
That is where the pogos come in. Pogos are removable wheeled struts, about four feet long, one under each wing. The pogo crew plugs them in after landing so the U-2 can taxi with its wings level. Before takeoff the crew pulls the pins, and the pogos drop off during the takeoff roll; the pogo crew follows the jet down the runway to pick them up. (At light fuel loads the crew can also hold a wingtip by hand instead of fitting pogos.)
What you’re seeing
– Archive video: U.S. Air Force footage from DVIDS (public domain): U-2 Dragon Lady B-roll, Beale AFB, 2023 (SSgt Frederick Brown, 9th Reconnaissance Wing); U-2 Dragon Lady landing, 2018 (CENTCOM/SAF PA); U-2 takeoff/landing, 2016 (SSgt Aaron Richardson, AFCENT); U2 take off and landing, Al Dhafra AB, 2019 (SrA Franklin Harris, AFCENT); U-2 Dragon Ladies landing at RAF Fairford, 2015 (TSgt Joseph Vigil, 501st CSW). Cropped to vertical; no AI upscaling or interpolation.
– Our 3D: the gear, the wingtip skid and the pogo falling off are our own simplified Blender model of a U-2S (span, length and gear layout from the sources below; the pogo position is placed from photos). The pogo drop is shown as gravity only, which is all the sources describe.
– AI use: the narration voice is AI-generated (Google Gemini TTS) and the background music is AI-generated (Stable Audio). No AI-generated video or images.
Sources
– U.S. Air Force fact sheet, U-2S/TU-2S (af.mil).
– AFMAN 11-2U-2 Volume 3, U-2 Operations Procedures (Department of the Air Force, 9 March 2026): pogo glossary entry; altitude calls below 10 feet (3.10.3); throttle to idle at 10 feet (3.9.1).
– Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach, The CIA and the U-2 Program, 1954-1974 (CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1998), pp. 47-48.
– DVIDS photo captions: RAF Fairford, 9 June 2015 (stall about two feet up); Osan AB, 12 March 2021 (pogos, pogo team); Beale AFB, 28 March 2024 (chase car).
– Airman Magazine, “Airframe: The U-2 Dragon Lady” (2017).
– NASA, Notes from the Field: NASA Dryden’s ER-2 (2011), the NASA version of the U-2.
#U2 #DragonLady #Aviation #Engineering #Shorts
source
Sources, with pages:
– USAF fact sheet U-2S/TU-2S (af.mil): span 105 ft, length 63 ft, flown above 70,000 ft in a full pressure suit; "bicycle-type landing gear"; forward visibility "limited due to the extended aircraft nose and 'taildragger' configuration"; "A second U-2 pilot normally 'chases' each landing in a high-performance vehicle, assisting the pilot by providing radio inputs for altitude and runway alignment."
– AFMAN 11-2U-2 Vol. 3 (9 Mar 2026): para. 1.2.3, the Mobile Officer is "considered part of the U-2's aircrew"; para. 3.10.3, "Mobile Officers should make altitude calls anytime the aircraft is below 10 feet"; para. 3.9.1, the throttle goes to idle at 10 feet; Attachment 1 glossary: "Pogos are removable wheeled struts for support of the wings … manually unpinned by ground crews on the runway prior to take off and drop off on take-off roll," then "manually re-inserted by ground crews after landing."
– DVIDS photo 1992539 (RAF Fairford, 9 Jun 2015): "During a landing, pilots stall the plane two feet off the ground."
– Pedlow and Welzenbach, The CIA and the U-2 Program, 1954-1974 (CIA CSI, 1998), p. 47: weight was one of Kelly Johnson's "two major problems"; the original gear (two wheels forward, two small wheels under the tail) weighed only 208 pounds on a 7-ton aircraft. p. 48: after landing it "gradually tilted over onto one of the wingtips, which were equipped with landing skids."
– DVIDS photos 6559374 and 6559372 (Osan AB, 12 Mar 2021): pogos are "approximately four-foot long, spring aluminum devices"; the pogo team follows every launch and landing to clean up and install them.
The pogo falling off is our own 3D, because no public archive clip shows it clearly.
Genius! Skunkworks was amazing!
I saw a U2 take off at Osan Air Base in 1984. It was amazing.
There is a reason the pilots ca it the dragon lady