Tuesday, September 20, 2016

U-2 Spy Plane Crashes In Northern California, Both Pilots Ejected

I had no idea any of those things were still operational, I saw one in an Air Museum last year over in Oregon where the Spruce Goose is being displayed.


U-2 spy plane crashes in Northern California, ejecting 2 pilots


Updated 12:10 pm, Tuesday, September 20, 2016

A U-2 military spy plane crashed Tuesday morning in Sutter County after two pilots ejected from the cockpit, U.S. Air Force officials said.
Officials at Beale Air Force Base east of Marysville — where the two-seat training plane was from — didn’t immediately have further information, saying only that the plane went down about 9 a.m. shortly after takeoff.


The plane was in the middle of a training exercise, said Brooke Brzozowske, a spokeswoman for the Air Force.
The crash happened in the area of West Butte and Pass roads, according to KCRA, in the Sutter Buttes, a remote area of volcanic domes formed about 1.5 million years ago. The crash site is about 50 miles north of Sacramento.

The Air Combat Command tweeted that the area isn’t populated and that initial reports indicated the pilots landed safely, but later said there wasn’t confirmation on the pilots’ conditions.
The last U-2 plane that crashed out of Beale was in 1996, when the aircraft landed in a busy commercial area of Oroville, killing the pilot and a person on the ground.
U-2s can reach speeds in excess of 400 mph and fly as high as 70,000 feet, or more than 13 miles.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

When I lived in Merritt Island, FL there was an Air Force across the Banana River, Patrick AFB. They fly the U-2's out of there, or at least one. They were doing mapping of Florida and probably drug interdiction. They are majestic taking off and landing. They just seem to float real slow. There is a lot of gold in the U2.

Anonymous said...

guessing the 400 mph should be at least 1400... its not as fast a a blackbird, but 400 can be outrun by a helicopter...

Anonymous said...

It means that the USAF is so asset poor that they are pulling airframes out of museums and trying to teach pilots to fly them. My guess is that the Y-12 and SR-71 "trainers" are getting the same treatment. --Ray

Spud said...

Yup they are using them to spy on us....

Spud said...
This comment has been removed by the author.

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