anti-ship missile armed U-2's

video says it all, obviously this never happened.

but they were trying to get this long winged birds on to aircraft carriers and arm them with various missiles including air to ship missile



lot of cool little chunks of history in the video as well


ETA:




just one of the coolest jets ever to exist, I'm glad japan aggress

a reply to: noscopebacon

IMO i find this pure fiction that even rod sterling would not use for twilight zone as being too ridiculous

the U-2 was made as light as possible to enable it to fly as high as it could go.

every thing IN IT was weight to the ounce and a max due to the thin fragile airframe capability/durability.

hell it didnt even have ejection seats due to it being too heavy.

the tail alone was held on with THREE 5/8 bolts.

the reason gary powers was shot down was not by direct hit, but they KNEW the flight path (due to the president DEMANDING THEY FLY THE SAME ONE AS LAST MISSION) , they fired a group of missiles where he would be , and the shock wave (they didnt hit direct or get that close) SHATTERED parts of the aircraft.

but they wanted to put missiles on it?

someone needed to get off the sauce that suggested this and the ones that actually wanted (maybe tried) to make it a reality.

scrounger

a reply to: scrounger

well you should get you BS meter checked


that video and the stories are right from the US military themselves.



they were clearly working on it but it never came to fruition

and do you have any idea how much the camera and film weighs is in at? and you think it couldnt hold two missiles near its body.....

who said they were going to put them on the wings? other than the clickbait picture?

the person who suggested it was Kelly Johnson the inventor of the U2

a reply to: noscopebacon

The YF-23 is not a total loss yet. Japan is supposedly building them now.
nationalinterest.org...

youtu.be...

I really wanted the U.S. to at least keep a small fleet of them for further testing.
In the end it was about the cost. But I was under the impression the YF-23 was better.

a reply to: Bigburgh

oh i know.


i could see the bloodline in their fighter and the 23 mixed from the start.

super cruising at M1.8, more ToT, better stealth, the only down side is no thrust vector control....but the 23 can make up for most of that. the better jet lost for sure.

funny how politics play into what gets paid for and what we sell to our friends.

i still think there is a little fleet of F23's flying around doing all sorts of spooky stuff.

a reply to: noscopebacon

to be frank, my BS meter is working quite fine .
hence why i called this one out

lets look at your quote

quote

they were clearly working on it but it never came to fruition

end quote.


they WANTED to do this but when they tried IT WAS NOT POSSIBLE.

not it was possible but they just didnt do it, but was IMPOSSIBLE.

the military funds LOTS OF PROJECTS that if one looks at it logically WERE DOOMED TO FAILURE from the get go.

but because some upper level pentagon pucktard officer thought it was a good idea or some "expert" did they TRY IT ANYWAY. wasting tons of money, supplies and manpower in the effort.

if you are gonna throw around your "expertise" and "the military said its possible" your posting as a fool

the specs of the U 2 are easily available today to ANYONE be internet or books (the skunk works by ben richards is a great one and i read it).

even when "secret" would be available to those "in the military" that suggested this and/or would try to make it work.

you dont need to be aeronautical engineer to see the very idea is impossible to moronic.

AGAIN the plane could be severely dented by just a workman carelessly bumping into it with his toolbox (as stated in the book i presented) .. but its gonna support and launch an anti ship missile?

i think you need to take off your blinders and engage common sense

scrounger

BTW kelly johnson was an aeronautical engineer god...
he would NEVER suggest putting an ANTI SHIP MISSILE on a HIGH ALTITUDE SPY PLANE.
the only spy plane he built that he DID have a missile and bomb system on was the SR 71
me thinks you need to do more research

a reply to: scrounger

so the air force is lying?

they landed many a U2 on a carrier deck

you know they replaced alot of things on the U2 from cameras to no cameras and just sensors, to making it look like a guitar trying to hide from Russians radars

you don't think the company that needed some cash flow due to current(at the time) image issues with congress would use a highly effective and persistent aircraft as a platform for weapons/???

just like the SR-71 carried phoenix(might be the one before it) missiles ???

but yeah the af is totally making up all the documents and history ......why?

originally posted by: noscopebacon
a reply to: scrounger

so the air force is lying?

they landed many a U2 on a carrier deck

No they didn't. The Air Force didn't want anything to do with landing the U-2 on the carrier. That was entirely a CIA program, and they performed exactly one operational mission. There were three variants for naval operations, the U-2G, the U-2R, and the U-2EPX. The U-2G was the only one to fly any operational missions. They flew over the South Pacific to monitor French preparations for nuclear testing.

The R was larger, and incorporated a six foot section of wing that folded. They trialed aboard the USS America, successfully, but at that point the CIA realized that they could hide a single U-2, deployed remotely, far better than a carrier and her escorts.

The EPX was an R that had a modified forward looking radar to detect ships and periscopes, with a downlink to a ship. They flew in an exercise with Kitty Hawk, but the U-2s flew out of California, while Kitty Hawk operated out of Hawaii. That program died due to costs, and satellite coverage.

originally posted by: noscopebacon
a reply to: scrounger

so the air force is lying?

they landed many a U2 on a carrier deck

you know they replaced alot of things on the U2 from cameras to no cameras and just sensors, to making it look like a guitar trying to hide from Russians radars

you don't think the company that needed some cash flow due to current(at the time) image issues with congress would use a highly effective and persistent aircraft as a platform for weapons/???

just like the SR-71 carried phoenix(might be the one before it) missiles ???

but yeah the af is totally making up all the documents and history ......why?

sigh...

first all those examples you just posted as proof DID NOT INVOLVE firing missiles (much less carrying one in an operational way) .

apples to bowling balls.

second..
the U 2 was as similar to the sr 71 as a sub compact is to a TANK.

again apples to bowling balls

three..

the sr 71 WAS BEING DESIGNED to also serve as a interceptor and bomber .

the U 2 was pure high altitude surveillance plane .

Look all the previous things you listed about the U 2 WERE STATED in the book i listed.
it was done TO INCREASE THE ABLILTY , SURVIVABLITY AND UNDETECTABILITY as a SURVEILLANCE PLANE.

at no time did kelly ever look at it any other way..

the plane even to someone with no aeronautical engineering experience can read the specs (again the tail is held on with THREE 5/8 INCH BOLTS alone) IT WAS NEVER STRONG ENOUGH to be a missile carrier.

at best maybe, MAYBE a gravity bomb.. but that is inefficient as hell and take up valuable fuel.


look just because some upper level pecker waving officer or expert THINKS its a good idea does not mean it is or should be "attempted"

the specs alone show it isnt.

hate to break it to you.
but the military is full of people who propose ideas that at first and second glance should never see the light of day, much less waste time on.

scrounger

a reply to: Zaphod58

of course.

i was going for simplicity and the assumption of the video being fully watched.

and i was using the fact that the U2 can land and fly fruitful missions off said carrier.

secret flights happen all over the place and honestly places like Kadena AFB or any other base that can be seen surly has its own security issues and yet bases like that exist all over the world.

is any location that is totally secure? i don't think that place exists on earth.



and I'm pretty sure that it was all contractor developed not asked for directly.


if the missile that they wanted to used wasn't damned from the start it might have gone somewhere. the way i took it is they had an early HALE platform and were messing with arming it and maybe selling more U2's



i think that

a reply to: scrounger

Kelly Johnson frequently attempted to market new, more versatile variants of his existing U-2 and A-12 airframes. Not all of these ideas resulted in flight hardware. Lockheed performed studies and wind-tunnel model tests for an armed U-2, but it never reached the flight-test stage.

Here is a picture of the model:

cdn.discordapp.com...

a reply to: Shadowhawk

what book is that?

a reply to: noscopebacon

I don't know. That picture has appeared in several books and magazines. I think both Jay Miller and Chris Pocock have included it in their works. I have an 8x10-inch print in my own collection that I got years ago from someone at Lockheed.

a reply to: scrounger

Lockheed was having money issues at the time. There were a lot of ideas tossed out there to try to get funding. I suggest you read "Skunk Works A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed" by Ben Rich to get a better idea.

As far as anti-shipping missiles on a U-2 goes, somebody must have been on good drugs to come up with that.

The U-2 that was "shot down" resulting in Powers being captured was never hit by the missiles. The shockwave from the missiles caused the aircraft to break up. If you were to hang a missile on each wing of a U-2 it could probably carry them, but, you would have to launch them simultaneously, pray that they both separate cleanly and that the ignition of their motors doesn't tear the wing off the U-2.

a reply to: JIMC5499

On page 282 of "50 Years of the U-2" (Schiffer, 2005), author Chris Pocock included a Lockheed photo (image no. PR-1024) of a U-2R in Navy markings, with armament on the wings. The caption notes that Kelly Johnson proposed equipping the Navy U-2 with long-range AGM-53 Condor anti-ship missiles. The model has two missiles on each wing, mounted on either side of the slipper tanks. As described on page 283 of the same book, Johnson also proposed arming the U-2C with laser-guided bombs. Apparently, nothing ever came of either of these proposals.

a reply to: Shadowhawk

ohh i thought you snapped that out of your own book.


i love it when people call me crazy and it ends up being true.


now i just have to find that BS meter oil, for a friend of course.

thanks for posting that picture.

i assumed they would have attacked it to the sides of the U2's body to lessen the strain on the wings

a reply to: scrounger

i will take this opportunity to say in the most friendly way 'told ya so'

lol

i understand why it seems crazy but this was before drones had real-time video feeds(as far as i know)

(i was just kidding with the i told ya so, it was in the spirt of humor and not an insult, hard to tell the difference via text)

a reply to: scrounger


I heard even the uniform was a custom (extremely expensive) lightweight to save a small amount of weight from someone years back, can you confirm or debunk?

But yeah, for a plane that can't afford the weight of a paint job or ejection seat, and really only operates at 50k++, this sure doesn't seem like a very useful 'idea'.

a reply to: Ghostsdogood

i think one of the older high speed bomber even ejected the whole cabin and even cocoon the people in the seats with a metal shutter system that comes down over you and you seat.

so even if you had to punch out at very high altitude and speed you would have a better chance.


i want to say the super hustler or maybe oven the XB-70


but i could very well be wrong

originally posted by: Shadowhawk
a reply to: JIMC5499

On page 282 of "50 Years of the U-2" (Schiffer, 2005), author Chris Pocock included a Lockheed photo (image no. PR-1024) of a U-2R in Navy markings, with armament on the wings. The caption notes that Kelly Johnson proposed equipping the Navy U-2 with long-range AGM-53 Condor anti-ship missiles. The model has two missiles on each wing, mounted on either side of the slipper tanks. As described on page 283 of the same book, Johnson also proposed arming the U-2C with laser-guided bombs. Apparently, nothing ever came of either of these proposals.

That's at least 2200 lbs on each wing!

On a U2!

Incredible that they could even get the wings to support something like that.

Could it actually take off with an extra 4400 lbs plus at least that much in additional fuel?

Does a U2 even have enough thrust to taxi an extra 8000+ lbs?

Real questions, I don't know.