U-2 Dragon Lady: Landings

Umm...U-2s were never retired as far as I know. When are you talking about?

You miss the point sir.

Learn to work the volume knob your computer.

Use the volume knob.

too funny, I was thinking that....

Actually, you've pretty much described a high-performance sailplane. And the engineering on those is pretty impressive there, Stearman...

The falling object is a "pogo." It's one of the outrigger wheels used to balance the wings during ground operations. They normally fall away during takeoff. Sometimes, one will not release, and the pilot then has a "hung pogo." The normal procedure is to fly a landing and dislodge the pogo on touchdown. The one in the video fell off on early, on final approach.

At 2:42 what is that falling off of the wing? Looks a bit risky to try and land... I certainly wouldn't want to try it!

BTW, the "she" they're talking about in the song is the U-2 Dragon Lady. Sometimes she's a lady. Some times she's..well, something else.

Most of these awful landings were on interview or training flights. The pilots were not U-2 pilots yet. The purpose of the interview flights is to see if the candidate might be able to (someday) land the U-2. Only a small percentage of volunteers are selected to continue training. Many have un-volunteered during training. It's a tough airplane to fly, and the toughest to land. None the less, U-2 pilots regularly make good landings in bad weather after very long, stressful missions.