Lockheed U-2 U-2CT

The U-2 was designed as a single-seater and went almost two decades without a dual-control version: converting a pilot meant ground school, sessions in a static aircraft and then a first take-off already flown solo, in one of the most demanding aeroplanes ever built. The official USAF designation system records the variant simply as the training version of the U-2C — basic role utility, modified mission trainer.

The trainer configuration was approved on 2 August 1972 and design work began a week later, using an airframe that had been damaged by fire following a ground loop. The first aircraft was delivered to the Air Force in November of that year. A second cockpit was fitted in tandem ahead of the original and noticeably higher, so that the instructor could see past the U-2's very long nose; the resulting hump transformed the aircraft's silhouette.

When the USAF concentrated all its high-altitude strategic reconnaissance at Beale AFB, California in the summer of 1976 — U-2 and SR-71 together under the 9th SRW — the first aircraft to land there, on 12 July, was a U-2CT flown in from Davis-Monthan.

The aircraft preserved at the American Air Museum in Duxford carries the whole programme in its logbook. It first flew at Burbank in October 1956 as a CIA U-2A known internally as Article 359, operating from Germany and then Japan. In December 1960 it passed to the Air Force as 56-6692; in mid-1962 it returned to the Agency, was re-engined into a U-2C and a year later was fitted for in-flight refuelling, becoming a U-2F. In that guise it made one of the longest flights ever recorded by a first-generation U-2: 13 hours 20 minutes. During the mid-1960s it overflew mainland China nine times in the CIA's joint operation with the Republic of China Air Force.

Returned to the Air Force in 1968 and stripped of Agency-specific equipment, it reverted to U-2C standard and spent several years on test work at Edwards. In December 1974 it rejoined the operational squadron for trials of the ALSS system, and in August 1976 it entered Lockheed's depot for conversion to the tandem-cockpit U-2CT configuration. In that role it served at Beale until retirement in December 1987, having flown 7,900 hours and made 11,330 landings.

In February 1988 the aircraft was airfreighted to RAF Alconbury, home of the 17th Reconnaissance Wing, to serve as a battle damage repair trainer: it was to be deliberately dented so that maintenance crews could practise. The end of the Cold War interrupted the process after only a few holes had been made. Facing possible scrapping, in 1991 a transfer to the Imperial War Museum at Duxford was arranged — the main obstacle being a hangar large enough for its 80-foot wingspan.

Restoration began at Alconbury in mid-1991 and took almost a year, involving some fifty people and more than 2,000 man hours: the rear cockpit was removed and a new upper-fuselage fairing fabricated, the damage holes were repaired, slipper tanks and cockpit instruments were replaced, and the aircraft was repainted matt black. The only U-2CT preserved in Europe is therefore displayed, deliberately, in the single-seat guise it wore before it became a trainer.