From: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V2 #68 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Precedence: bulk Skunk Works Digest Monday, 1 February 1993 Volume 02 : Number 068 In this issue: Re: drones Re: U-2 Shootdown See the end of the digest for information on subscribing to the skunk-works or skunk-works-digest mailing lists and on how to retrieve back issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: dnadams@nyx.cs.du.edu (Dean Adams) Date: Sun, 31 Jan 93 02:34:05 MST Subject: Re: drones beagle!chandler@PacBell.COM (Jim Chandler) writes: >> HC-130, Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Service birds. >Actually, the JC-130 was used for such recoveries. They were >based in Hawaii. OK... I just checked Jane's: HC-130H. Extended range for USAF Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Service for aerial recovery of personnel or equipment and other duties. Total of 43 delivered. Update program announced in 1987 for 31 HC-130Hs, 21 equipped with in-flight refueling. Four modified as JC-130H with added equipment for aerial recovery of re-entering space capsules. Two modified to DC-130H for drone control duties. >The unit was disbanded around 1985-86. Hmmm... interesting. The last KH-9 was launched about the same time. That must have put them out of the space business. I suppose they could have used either the JC or HC versions for D-21 missions. The MC's belong to the Special Operations folks, so chances are they didn't get involved with these more "mundane" missions. :-> - -dean ------------------------------ From: rbarton@who.cc.trincoll.edu (Ran Barton, III) Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1993 14:40:08 -0500 Subject: Re: U-2 Shootdown Hello Skunkers, After being home and away from my email for a month over Christmas Break, I returned to my account to find a backlog of over 200 messages. Wow! I forgot how prolific the group can be. I did not forget how interesting the group's discussions are though; I will really miss this mailing list and its contibutors after graduation in May. I have another longer message in the works, but I could not resist sending the following now, because it involves Kelly Johnson, whose work is so familiar to many of this group's readers. Michael David Knight wrote: >Just out of curiousity, does anyone out there happen to have the resources >available to find out what type of SAM was fired at and brought down Francis >Gary Powers' U-2 over the Soviet Union? I haven't been able to find out >anywhere! An aspect of my thesis this year is the Mayday shootdown of Powers in 1960, so I've read a lot of what there is to read about the incident - publicly at least. Kelly Johnson spoke in his book of the downing and I thought his words might eb informative to those wondering about the affair. "It appeared that an SA-2 [Guideline] missile had knocked off the right-hand stabiliser while [Powers] was at cruising altitude. The airplane then, predictably, immediately went over on its back at high speed and the wings broke off in downbending. Gary was left sitting in the fuselage with a part of a tail and nothing else. He did not use the ejection seat, but opened the canopy to get out." Johnson, C. L. & Smith, M. _Kelly_. Washington, D.C., London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985 Another book for those who really want to see as many aspects as possible without burying themselves in too many documents is Michael Beschloss's _Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev,and the U-2 Affair_ Harper & Row, 1986. more soon, cheers, Ran ________________________________________________________ | | | | Ran Barton, III '93 | A year passes apace | | rbarton@who.trincoll.edu | and proves ever new; | | Trinity College | First things and final | | 300 Summit Street - Box 955 | conform but seldom. | | Hartford, CT 06106-3100 | -The Gawain Poet | | | | |_____________________________|________________________| ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V2 #68 ******************************** To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "listserv@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu". 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