Word: pilots
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Eighty days after he began, Johnson had built his first U2; it was an efficient machine that could cruise at 90,000 ft. In August 1955, a test pilot flew the ship successfully-in a rainstorm...
...Died. Still the plane was not perfect. At least one pilot was killed during flight tests. "We had eliminated extra weight, however we could," says Johnson. "We'd have sold our grandmothers for ten pounds, and the whole family for 25 pounds, but finally the ship was ready." Lockheed asked Air Force Hero Jimmy Doolittle, who was then a vice president at the Shell Oil Co., to have his company's experts concoct a fuel that would not evaporate at high altitude. Shell did. The results speak for themselves. Says Johnson: "We have an airplane getting four miles...
...first flights overseas, the U-2 performed impressively. From the spring of 1956 until May 1960, when U-2 Pilot Gary Powers was shot down, the U-2 flew at will over the Soviet Union, brought back miles of film showing target areas, defenses, terrain, mountains, lakes, forests. In all that time, Soviet MIG pilots swarmed helplessly below. On at least one occasion, a Soviet pilot, straining to climb to within U-2 range, radioed, "We kill, Yank!" And the U-2 pilot replied: "Okay, try it!" The pilot was safe in his dare...
Twenty minutes from Niamey, Niger, approaching for a night landing, the pilot of the chartered South African Constellation received an unsettling message from the control tower: turn away or have the plane seized on the ground. With his fuel tanks almost empty, the pilot had to set down anyway, and the Connie, its crew and 79 passengers-most of them white South Africans returning from European holiday-were surrounded by black guards armed with rusty rifles. Not until 24 hours later was the flight allowed to resume, and local authorities warned that in the future intruding South African planes would...
Cries in the Ruins. Despite the disorder, Pilot Blagojevic's plane took off for Belgrade on schedule, with the stewardess wearing a bed sheet because she had lost all her clothes. Below him Blagojevic could see the red eyes of kindling fires shining through the dust cloud hanging over the city, but at least he could no longer hear the cries of the injured trapped in the ruins...