{"id":1200685,"date":"2026-05-28T15:21:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T13:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/?p=1200685"},"modified":"2026-05-28T20:01:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T18:01:09","slug":"project-whale-tale-u-2-carrier-operations-cia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/project-whale-tale-u-2-carrier-operations-cia\/","title":{"rendered":"Project Whale Tale: When the CIA Landed a U-2 on a Carrier"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style>\n\n<p>The Lockheed U-2 was designed by Kelly Johnson at Skunk Works in 1955 to fly at 70,000 feet, photograph Soviet missile silos in colour, and never \u2014 under any circumstances \u2014 go anywhere near a body of water. The U-2 had bicycle landing gear. The U-2 had a 31-metre wingspan that flexed visibly in cruise. The U-2 had to be flown onto the runway with someone in a Pontiac driving alongside calling out the altitude over the radio because the pilot could not see the ground. The U-2 was, in short, the worst possible candidate for carrier operations ever proposed by a serious aerospace engineer.<\/p>\n\n<p>In 1963 the CIA proposed exactly that. Kelly Johnson agreed. The project was given the codename <strong>Project Whale Tale<\/strong>, and on 3 August 1963, a U-2 was lowered by crane onto the deck of USS <em>Kitty Hawk<\/em> in San Diego. What happened next is one of the most improbable carrier-aviation programmes in history.<\/p>\n\n\n<div style=\"background:#f5f7fa;padding:18px 22px;margin:24px 0;border-radius:8px;border:1px solid #e0e6ed\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:700;color:#333;font-size:15px;letter-spacing:0.5px;text-transform:uppercase\">Quick Facts<\/p><table style=\"width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;font-size:15px;margin:0\"><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;font-weight:600;color:#5C91FF;white-space:nowrap\">Programme codename<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0\">Project Whale Tale (1963\u20131969)<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;font-weight:600;color:#5C91FF;white-space:nowrap\">Aircraft<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0\">Modified Lockheed U-2A \u2192 U-2G \u2192 U-2R<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;font-weight:600;color:#5C91FF;white-space:nowrap\">First carrier landing attempt<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0\">3 August 1963, USS Kitty Hawk, off San Diego (damaged wingtip on landing)<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;font-weight:600;color:#5C91FF;white-space:nowrap\">First successful U-2G carrier landing<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0\">2 March 1964, USS Ranger, Lockheed test pilot Bob Schumacher<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;font-weight:600;color:#5C91FF;white-space:nowrap\">Operational mission<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0\">Operation Fish Hawk \u2014 May 1964 from USS Ranger, photographing a French nuclear test in the Pacific<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;font-weight:600;color:#5C91FF;white-space:nowrap\">Modifications<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0\">Strengthened landing gear, arrestor hook, wing spoilers for lift-dump on touchdown<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;font-weight:600;color:#5C91FF;white-space:nowrap\">Final tests<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0\">1969, USS America (CVA-66), the U-2R successfully landed but never operationally deployed<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/div>\n\n\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Why the CIA wanted a carrier-launched spy plane<\/h2>\n\n<p>The 1960 shoot-down of Francis Gary Powers over Sverdlovsk had ended overflights of the Soviet Union. But the world was full of other places the CIA wanted to photograph \u2014 many of them across oceans, in the territory of allies who would not grant overflight rights, or against targets like atmospheric nuclear tests that took place in the middle of the Pacific. A U-2 could only fly from a runway, and runways were political. A carrier was American sovereign territory wherever it sailed.<\/p>\n\n<p>The CIA approached Kelly Johnson at Lockheed Skunk Works in May 1963 with the idea. Johnson was famously skeptical of foolish proposals. He agreed to consider this one because the Agency was paying. His engineers concluded that the modifications would not be trivial \u2014 the U-2 was a glider that had been retrofitted with a jet engine, and its airframe was built like a glider \u2014 but the modifications were achievable.<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px\"><img data-opt-id=1373688603  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/05\/u-2-landing-uss-america-cva-66-project-whale-tale-2.jpg\" alt=\"U-2 landing on USS America 1969\" style=\"max-width:100%;height:auto;border-radius:6px\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">A modified Lockheed U-2 actually landing on USS America (CVA-66) in 1969 \u2014 the carrier-qualified U-2R, descended directly from Project Whale Tale. <em>US Navy photo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The first test: a bounce, a wingtip, and an open mouth<\/h2>\n\n<p>On 3 August 1963, a Navy crane lifted U-2 article 349 onto the flight deck of USS <em>Kitty Hawk<\/em>. The carrier sailed off the coast of San Diego. On the morning of 5 August, Lockheed test pilot Bob Schumacher accelerated the U-2 down the deck, lifted off in just 321 feet without using the catapult, climbed away, and came back to land. The landing did not go well. The U-2 bounced, one wingtip struck the deck, and the aircraft staggered back into the air just before reaching the end of the deck.<\/p>\n\n<p>Schumacher returned to North Island Naval Air Station with a broken wingtip and a list of necessary modifications. The U-2 needed an arrestor hook. The U-2 needed strengthened landing gear. The U-2 needed lift-dump spoilers on the wing \u2014 because the U-2&#8217;s gigantic span meant it kept flying for several seconds after touchdown, exactly what you cannot do on a 250-metre deck. The carrier-qualified variant, designated U-2G, was assembled and ready by late 1963.<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px\"><img data-opt-id=139833530  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/05\/uss-america-cv-66-u-2-deck-2.jpg\" alt=\"USS America with U-2 on deck\" style=\"max-width:100%;height:auto;border-radius:6px\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">The U-2 on the deck of USS America. The 31-metre wingspan overhung the deck on both sides, and there was no margin for error in the approach. <em>US Navy photo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Operation Fish Hawk \u2014 May 1964<\/h2>\n\n<p>On 2 March 1964, Schumacher made the first true successful carrier landing of a U-2G aboard USS <em>Ranger<\/em> off the California coast. Touch-and-go runs followed. Three CIA pilots were qualified during the same deployment. They were ready in time for the real mission.<\/p>\n\n<p>The first operational mission, codenamed Operation Fish Hawk, was a photographic reconnaissance of French nuclear-test preparations at the Mururoa Atoll in the South Pacific. The U.S. wanted to know what kind of device the French were testing, how big it would be, and how their delivery infrastructure was developing. France was not going to allow American overflights from any of its territories. USS <em>Ranger<\/em> sailed close, the U-2G launched on 19 May 1964 \u2014 and immediately ran into cloud cover that obscured the targets.<\/p>\n\n<p>A second sortie went up on 23 May. This one delivered. Every target was photographed at high resolution. The CIA had its data. The first ever operational U-2 mission from an aircraft carrier was a complete success \u2014 and it would be the only such mission in the entire programme.<\/p>\n\n\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #1565c0;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;border-radius:0 8px 8px 0;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;You don&#8217;t fly a U-2 onto a carrier. You sort of plant it on the deck and hope the spoilers kill the lift before the wingtips kill the carrier. The thing was built like an enormous paper airplane. Carriers were not designed for paper airplanes.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Bob Schumacher<\/strong> &mdash; Lockheed Skunk Works test pilot, first to land a U-2 on a carrier<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Why it ended<\/h2>\n\n<p>The 1969 trials of the larger U-2R from USS <em>America<\/em> were technically successful \u2014 Bob Birkett made multiple successful landings \u2014 but by then the entire premise of carrier-launched strategic reconnaissance had been undermined by another piece of American technology: the CORONA reconnaissance satellite. Photographs from orbit, with no risk to any pilot, no diplomatic incident, no carrier deployment, were now possible. The U-2R never flew an operational mission from a ship. The whole programme was quietly retired.<\/p>\n\n<p>Today the U-2 still flies. The latest variants, the U-2S, operate from runways at Beale Air Force Base in California and from forward operating locations around the world. None of them have arrestor hooks. None of them have wing spoilers for lift-dump. The carrier configuration died with Project Whale Tale, a footnote of Cold War aviation that nearly nobody outside Lockheed Skunk Works ever fully believed had really happened.<\/p>\n\n\n<div style=\"margin:24px 0\"><div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;border-radius:8px\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Os7cdumIPzo\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div><p style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">Footage and analysis of how the impossible \u2014 landing a U-2 on an aircraft carrier \u2014 was actually achieved by Project Whale Tale.<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n<p><em>Sources: CIA historical archives; Wikipedia; The Aviationist; Air &#038; Space Forces Magazine; National Interest; Coffee or Die; Naval History Magazine (USNI); Aerospaceweb.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n<div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px;border-radius:0 8px 8px 0\">\n<p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">Related Posts<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/36-metres-no-second-chance-eugene-ely-invented-the-carrier-landing\/\">36 Metres, No Second Chance: Eugene Ely Invented the Carrier Landing<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The U-2 was the worst possible carrier aircraft ever designed. The CIA put one on USS Kitty Hawk anyway. The strangest carrier programme in Cold War history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":1200621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[666,664],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1200685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history-and-legends","category-military-aviation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Project Whale Tale: The U-2 That Flew Off Aircraft Carriers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In 1963 the CIA modified a U-2 spy plane to fly off aircraft carriers. The first carrier landing nearly destroyed the aircraft. 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