Sublime

quarter. It was a rare win. So Kelly approved my idea of painting the airplane black, and by the time our first prototype rolled out the airplane became known as the Blackbird. Our supplier, Titanium Metals Corporation, had only limited reserves of the precious alloy, so the CIA conducted a worldwide search and, using third parties and dummy compan

The resulting U-2 surveillance aircraft, designed by America’s most talented airplane designer, Kelly Johnson, was built in a supersecret area (the Skunk Works) at Lockheed’s sprawling Burbank, California, facility in 1955–56. Based originally on the Air Force’s F-104 but longer, lower, and lighter, with a wingspan of eighty feet, the U-2 was more

Wescam ball – A gyro-stabilized camera in a spherical mounting fixed to the underside of an aircraft, the Wescam ball tracked targets and sent live video back to the JOC. Used primarily by Delta’s Echo Squadron