360° U-2 Spy Plane Flight | Full Cockpit Ride to 70,000 Feet HO

 

– [Sam] This is what it looks like inside the U-2 spy plane 70,000 feet above Earth’s surface. It’s one of the most extreme flights a human can take and one that I was given incredibly rare access to experience and bring you along with me. From takeoff to touchdown, this is a fully-immersive, 360-degree flight, featuring raw in-cockpit conversations with my pilot Mongo, and views that are truly breathtaking.

I hope you enjoy the legendary U-2 in a flight to the edge of space.   – [Mongo] Ground, Pinon 09 taxi with Whiskey. – [Air Traffic Controller] Pinon 09, runway 15, taxi at Kilo Foxtrot Charlie. – [Mongo] Kilo Fox Charlie, Pinon 09.     – [Crew] Pinon 09, ground crew clear.         – [Mongo] Pinon 09, check.

– [Crew] Mobile. – [Mongo] Tower, Pinon 09, number one Charlie, ready. – [Crew] Pinon 09, Build Tower Romeo 15 Charlie, line up and wait, departure on request. – [Mongo] Climb, Pinon 09. (systems humming and beeping) – [Crew] (indistinct), this is backup.     – [Crew] Pinon 09, tactical departure approved. Maintain flight level 190, Romeo 15 Charlie, wind 2007.

Cleared for takeoff, safe departure, have a safe flight. – [Mongo] Departure up to 190, Pinon 09, cleared for takeoff. (systems humming and beeping) All right, Sam, go ahead and pull your pins.     Here we go. – [Crew] Raise your right, pogo free, pogo free. (U-2 roaring) – Here we go. Whoa! That is fast. (Sam laughing) Woo.

Wow. That is incredible. – [Mongo] We ain’t done yet. So right now, we’re about 0.3 miles from the field in the spiral climb. – [Sam] That was literally a rocket ship. Makes sense you wear the spacesuits. – [Mongo] Oh yeah. If you look under your left wing there, there’s the runway. – (laughs) Geez. (wind whistling) (wind continues whistling) – [Sam] Just like that.

(wind whistling) (wind continues whistling) – [Mongo] Departure, Pinon 09, passing 10 tactical departure. (systems humming and beeping) – [Air Traffic Controller] Pinon 09, NorCal departure radio check.       Pinon 09, radio check. How do you hear me? – [Mongo] Pinon 09 has you loud and clear, passing 1400 for 190.

– [Air Traffic Controller] Pinon 09, thank you. Radar contact, clear direct, Pinon. – [Mongo] Direct, Pinon 09. – [Air Traffic Controller] Our high’s been 2135, cleared ILS runway 17, right approach. Contact Capital Tower 125.7. Number 2 (indistinct). – Okay. – [Air Traffic Controller] Alright, send 2135. Contact Capital Tower 125.7.

– So is that 18,000 feet right there? – [Mongo] That’s 18,000. – It’s funny, I was gonna ask, is it normal, like, right after you put your suit on, you just get like an itch on your nose. – [Air Traffic Controller] (indistinct) 134 Foxtrot NorCal approach. Clear (indistinct). – You can. – [Air Traffic Controller] Zulu Runway17 left approach.

– And it’s like can’t do much for the next couple hours. – [Mongo] Yep. And Pinon 09 requesting higher. – [Air Traffic Controller] Pinon 09, contact Oakland Center 350.3. – [Mongo] 350.3, Pinon 09. Oakland, Pinon 09, level 190, requesting higher. – [Air Traffic Controller] Pinon 09, Maintain Flight Level 230.

– [Mongo] 230, Pinon 09. – [Air Traffic Controller] 09, Contact Oakland Center 296.7 – [Mongo] 296.7, Pinon 09. NorCal, Pinon 09 passing 200 for 230, request higher. – [Air Traffic Controller] Pinon 09, Oakland Center, climb and maintain at or above flight level 600. Report reaching. – [Mongo] At or above 600, Pinon 09, Wilco.

So now on your right side of your suit, your suit controller there, if you press the press button, just check to make sure the inflation works. As soon as it starts inflating you can release it. – [Dash] Pinon 09, Dash, 53 on airboss – [Mongo] Dash, go for Pinon. – [Dash] Hey bro, I just wanna give you a heads up.

I’m at 64 and I’m on a north south track just south of Lake Tahoe, between Tahoe and the Castle. – [Mongo] Copy, we’ll be heading out to the coast here shortly. Your suit inflation work fine? – [Sam] It did, yes. – [Mongo] Good, good. So most of your airliners hang out in the thirties. As you can see we’re crossing 300 right now.

– So already as high as an airliner in, like, not even 10 minutes, – [Mongo] Six minutes. – Yeah, if you’ve got time, if you want to kind of just hit the overall kind of flight plan max climb to 70, whatever you wanna just say to set the scene would be helpful. – [Mongo] Yep, so as we briefed on the ground, we’re gonna take off here as we’re heading north at the point Pinon.

That’s a deconfliction point with Oakland for our climb. Then we’re gonna head out to the coast of California, head down south towards San Francisco, past Monterey Bay and then we’ll hook east towards Yosemite before turning north to descend by Lake Tahoe on our way back to Beale. – So how long would it take to get to 70,000 if you just went straight up? – [Mongo] Well, we’re gonna see that pretty much right here.

It’s mission altitude’s anywhere in the 20 to 30 minutes. – Wow. – [Mongo] For lightweight birds. Well, there’s 45,000, Sam. What’s the highest you’ve ever been? – So I did hit 50,000 once in an F-15, which was incredible, but we only did it for a few seconds, so this is gonna be a lot more legit, I’d say. – [Mongo] Yeah, we won’t have any problem shattering that one today.

Well, Sam, there goes 50. Your old altitude is now old. – It’s all new territory from here. – [Mongo] And you can see, she still wants to climb. So if you notice here, if you kinda look slightly above the horizon, you can see a gradation of blue into a dark blue. – Yeah. – If you could look directly above you, it would go even darker.

(Sam laughs) So as we continue to climb here, if you kind of maybe out the right side versus towards the sun there, but even looking in the direction of the sun, if you kind of like pick out the tops of the clouds and everything and you can kind of define a horizon line and you can start to make out the gentle, gentle curve.

So obviously hydration and nutrition are important on long duration sorties, right? – Yep. – [Mongo] So for the two-seaters for the trainers, the rule of thumb is one of the water bottles per hour based on the higher cockpit altitude and you living in a 100% O2 environment, right? So you’re gonna dry out a little quicker as your body’s trying to find equilibrium with its atmosphere.

– [Sam] That reminds me, I’m gonna drink a little more water now. (laughs) – [Mongo] There you go. Slow, methodical movements are good to help decrease the probability of decompression sickness. Nobody is ever 100%… Nobody ever has 100% protection from decompression sickness. But the denitrification that we do and fizzy before we leave helps.

Gets excess nitrogen out of the blood. Nitrogen bubbles, like large joints, so if I’m doing large muscle movements at altitude, then I can induce problems. So there you go, if you look out your right side as we’re in the turn here, you can see it gets even darker the higher you go there. – [Sam] Yeah, that’s unbelievable.

– [Mongo] Well, Sam, there’s 65,000 and climbing. – [Sam] Yeah, I feel like I know the answer to this question, but does the view ever get old? – [Mongo] I don’t think it ever will. All the different places we go, all the changing weather patterns, it’s always fun. It’s always new. – Really are on top of the world here, huh? – [Mongo] Well, you more than me right now.

The only people higher in altitude than you right now are the people on the International Space Station. – Yeah, that is true. And I guess I’m what, two feet higher than you? (laughs) – [Mongo] Yeah, a couple feet higher. Notice the rapid roll rate on that one. So if you look out your left window, I’ll demonstrate again.

But when the yoke goes over 38 degrees, the roll spoiler pops out and increases that roll rate. Really helps get the nose around if I need to. – [Sam] Okay. – [Mongo] So here we go, watch your left wing. – Wow. – [Mongo] So Sam, the normal commercial airliners love to hang out in the 30s, 35-ish, right? So, you right now are twice as high as everyone else flying around the world other than our fellow U-2 drivers doing the mission down range.

– Yeah, we’re literally looking down on them from the same altitude. They’re looking down at the ground. – [Mongo] It’s crazy to think about. – [Sam] Beautiful. – [Mongo] One of the most surreal experiences I had was on my first high sortie in the U-2 and we get up to altitude and the IP asks, “What’s that long white line on the ground down there?” And I puzzled and puzzled and I’m sitting there thinking, “Well, nature doesn’t make straight lines.

What the heck could that be?” About a minute and a half later, the IP goes, “That’s an airliner. And that’s a contrail.” – (laughing) Oh, my gosh. All right, well, I think now’s a good time as any to pop open my lunch. Never thought I’d be eating an apple pie at 70,000 feet, but here we go. – [Mongo] First time for everything.

Enjoy. – Will do. Okay, now I gotta figure out how to actually grab it. Oh. – [Mongo] Yeah, so the straw won’t be attached to… So when you open the case, I just kinda set it in my lap. Make sure you got a good handhold on the straw and then grab the tube that you want. – Okay, – Screw the straw into the top.

I’ll usually point the straw at the sunshade as I’m screwing it on just in case. You don’t wanna squeeze the tube either when you’re opening it, you can jet food all over the place. – Honestly this apple pie actually tastes pretty good.

Can actually taste the crust. – [Mongo] Oh yeah. There’s not many bad ones. – What are your favorites? – [Mongo] I really liked the chicken tortilla soup for the longest time. They changed the straw structure and now it’s hard to get the chicken through the straw. – Oh no. – [Mongo] Most of the fruits are okay.

Chicken a la king’s not bad. They’ve got like beef stroganoff, pepperoni pizza, spaghetti and meat sauce. Hash browns and bacon’s a pretty good staple. Nice little breakfast on your way to go do a mission. – And not everyone knows, they actually have heaters in the single seat variants of these, so you can heat up your food.

– [Mongo] Yeah, it’s a little induction heater kind of down by your left hip. So electric conduction, heat it up for about 10 to 15 minutes and get a nice warm meal. – I love how the food pack says Dragon Food. – [Mongo] Oh yeah, there’s all different ones that say things. I got some that say Meze. (Sam laughs) – So you ever see any UFOs up here? – [Mongo] None.

(Sam laughing) At least that’s what we’ll go with, right? – Yeah, I’ll believe it or not. So it’s only been a little over, you know, an hour, hour and a half for me, but what’s the longest flight you’ve ever had? – [Mongo] So my longest one in the U-2 was 12.8 hours, moving iron between here and down range.

– So what are you doing to pass the time on, you know, something that long? – [Mongo] A lot of folks will read or, you know, keep themselves busy, do puzzles, that kind of thing. Keep themselves mentally alert. – Was the rear end a little sore once you finally got out? – [Mongo] Surprisingly, no. I mean, I keep my lap belt so I have enough space to kind of lift my butt off the seat and kind of flex my legs so I don’t, you know, get too sedentary.

– That’s smart. – [Mongo] We have some room, not a ton of room, so it’s, you know, we work with our sports therapist to kinda come up with the little things we can do in the sky to kind of prevent, you know blood clots and things like that. Right, Sam, so coming up will be our descent check and first thing we do is we lower our gear, get drag out there and help the jet start descending.

– So gears then down from 70,000 all the way till we land? – [Mongo] Yep. And there’s no speed limit for the gear, unlike other airplanes. You’d overspeed the jet before you oversped the gear. – Does that change much of how it feels to fly with the gear down this high and all the way in? – [Mongo] No, I mean, you’ll just notice an immediate drag as the drag kind of picks up and you’ll see the VVI drop.

– Gotcha. – [Mongo] So we go gear down, we bring the throttle down, speed breaks out, spoilers up, gusts up, and that gets the drag out there to help us descend. With no hydraulics, it can take over an hour to descend. – And I was curious, is there much difference between flying the single-seater and the two-seater in terms of pilot performance or flight performance? – [Mongo] No, they feel pretty much the same.

– You just can look out your rear view mirror and see my face. – [Mongo] Yep. – Ah, there it goes. – [Mongo] Oakland, Pinon 09, complete above 60, requesting flight 10 route descent. – [Air Traffic Controller] Pinon 09, roger maintain flight level 450. – [Mongo] 450, Pinon 09. – [Air Traffic Controller] Pinon 09, on my flight plan I’m showing you making a right turn here to go to the north.

Is that what you wanna do? Is just fly straight north, straight on your current route? – [Mongo] Yeah, it’ll be a quick right turn near Tahoe and then straight line from there towards Holly. – [Air Traffic Controller] Okay, no problem, maintain 450. – [Mongo] 450, Pinion 09. Something else to notice is all that flight and we only burned 400 gallons.

– [Sam] Wow. – [Mongo] She sips fuel up high – So is 12 hours about the longest you can fly with one tank here. – [Mongo] I’d say you’re more person limited than range limited. – They ever consider doing air to air refueling capability? (alarms beeping) – [Crew] (indistinct), heavy San Francisco, change to my frequency 120.5.

– [Mongo] Yeah they’d actually played around with that, with a version of the C model back in the ’60s. And granted, the C model could not fly as long as we can but I would say no, thank you. – (laughing) 12 hours is enough. – [Mongo] Especially if I don’t get to change out the pee bucket either. – That’s true.

– [Mongo] You notice as we get into the thicker air here, the slower the roll rate was? More air loads over the wing. – So I’m curious, when pilots are applying for the U-2 program, like what sort of qualifications do they need to have? What do you guys look for? – [Mongo] So we’ll take from any background and any service, but they’re based on what they…

What aircraft they came from kind of dictates the minimum required hours that we’re looking for. Like, we require less hours from a fighter or a trainer aircraft than we do from a heavy aircraft. We actually have had some Helo folks come through but we require them to have a certain amount of fixed wing time and kind of recency in that as well.

– Yeah, and while I was doing my training, I heard that every now and then someone comes, applies, kind of puts on the helmet, gets a little claustrophobic, they like, “Hey, this isn’t for me.” – [Mongo] Yeah, so actually, part of the interview is a claustrophobia check. So like you were explaining, we’ll put him in a suit, put him in a ejection seat mockup and sit him in a corner for an hour or so and see how they do.

It is a little weird at first when you’re sitting there in the helmet, in the spacesuit, hearing yourself breathe. – Yeah, for sure. – [Mongo] Yeah, back below 50 for you. – Back to familiar territory. – [Air Traffic Controller] Pinon 09, try and maintain flight level 380 now. – [Mongo] 380, Pinon 09. – [Chase Car] Airboss, Radio Check – [Chase Car] Loud and Clear, 15.

– [Chase Car] Loud and clear. So the first one that we will simulate is we’re simulating we had some kind of engine problem and had to glide home. So we call it a practice precautionary pattern. – Okay. [Air Traffic Control] Pinon 09, whenever able, say flight conditions over the field – [Mongo] Pinon 09 is in the clear below 6000.

– [Air Traffic Controller] Pinon 09, roger. – [Mongo] Really good glide profile but we want still keep it close to the runway, right So we still do a spiral decent. No more than 30 degrees of bank in the pattern. That way we don’t get ourselves close to a stall. – [Sam] Got it. – [Mongo] Still have an engine, so we still have hydraulics if we want it, if we need it.

But the goal is to not mess with it. Pinon 09, low key, gear down, touch and go. – [Air Traffic Controller] Pinon 09, Runway 15 wind 190 at 5, cleared for the option. – [Mongo] Clear for the option 15, Pinon 09. – [Air Traffic Controller] 09. mobile automatics approved. – [Mongo] Mobile. Looking outside, picking out my aim point, trying to freeze it in the windscreen.

Center line with our feet. Get around to control the drift. At 10 feet, we pop our lift spoilers. [Chase Car] – 10. – 8. – Six. – Four, three, two. Two. Two. Little left rudder, two. (alarm beeping) Two. One. Back to two. Two, little left rudder, left rudder, one. Inches. (alarm beeping) (alarm droning) Still gotta fly the wing on the ground.

Still producing lift as soon as we touchdown. All cleaned up and away we go. Pinon 09, request closed, extended base. – [Air Traffic Controller] Pinon 09, extended left close track approved – [Mongo] So for this one we’re simulating we…

– [Air Traffic Controller] For your multiple approaches, there are minute equipment left the runway at the 1000 foot doing a photo op mission. – [Mongo] 09 is aware, thank you. – [Chase Car] Pinon 09, mobile off of 15. – [Air Traffic Control] 09, mobile, roger, thanks. [Mongo] And so for this one we’re simulating we had some kind of hydraulic problem so no hydraulics available.

-[Sam] Okay. – [Mongo] Fly a slightly wider downwind and it’s a much flatter approach. – Got it. – [Mongo] Since there’s no drag available, we’ve gotta fly a longer ground track to give ourselves time to bleed off the airspeed with just induced dragging. So close to idle, if not idle, we got a little bit of a headwind so that’ll help us.

High 60s gives me some throttle authority so I don’t have to worry about as much of the throttle spin up time in case a sink happens. – And the chase car’s just watching you and then knows right when to launch out or? – [Mongo] Yeah, so based on my distance to him and line of sight, gives him the cues that he needs on when to go for the rejoin.

– Got it. – [Air Traffic Controller] (Indistinct) report initial Runway 15. – [Mongo] Pinon 09, left base, gear down, full stop. – [Air Traffic Controller] Pinon 09, runway 15, wind 180 at 5, clear to land. – [Mongo] Clear to land, Pinon 09. In point I’m using to cross about 10 feet is the numbers on the runway.

– [Crew] 07, check. – [Mongo] Mobile. – [Chase Car] Tower, getting in, Pinon 07’s come out. Final localizer, 15, full stop. [Air Traffic Control] Pinon 07, build Tower,  (indistinct) – [Chase Car] Pinon 07, Wilco. – [Chase Car] 10, 8, 6, 4, 3, 2. Two, little left rudder. (alarm beeping) – [Air Traffic Controller] Welcome back, nice job.

– [Mongo] Thank you. – Back on Mother Earth. – [Mongo] Made it back safely. We’re up through one, Roger. So once we pull to a stop here, go ahead and get your pins in and let me know when they’re in. – Okay. – [Air Traffic Control] We’re up through one, Roger. Break over the numbers, traffic right side U-2 eight mile final.

– [Air Traffic Controller] Pinon 07, tracking you’re following T-38. Right approaching end brake. – [Air Traffic Control] Pinon. Target in Sight  That’s good right there, break break. Pinon 09, article mobile off of runway 15 Charlie – [Air Traffic Controller] 09, mobile, Roger, contact ground, have a good one.