A., as interviewed and photographed by Josh Robinson
A 1954 memo from the head of central intelligence to President Eisenhower calling for development of an ultra high altitude spy plane to conduct secret overflights of the Soviet Union. The result was the U-2.
You figure out just how much you can get away with, just how much control you have, and you try to stay within those parameters. You might get near the edge; you’re exploring the edge, but you don’t go beyond a certain point until you’re ready. And then, sometimes you go beyond it, and you miraculously save it. It doesn’t turn into a disaster.
A U-2 model from A.’s workshop.
A.: My friend Tom and I were fifteen. Tom’s older brother Mike said if we could get his Honda running, he’d let us try it out. But we knew Mike was tight. He might let us ride it, but it’d be a real short distance and then never again. So Tom and I got the Honda running, but we didn’t tell Mike for about a month. After school, we’d move it out into the middle of the street and figure out how to ride it: how the clutch worked, how to shift the gears. And we were going up and down the block over, and over, and over again. And we kept doing that on a quiet street before we ever told Mike.
I was facing the draft at eighteen. You had to go sign up. So I figured, well, I’m just gonna go and look into it and maybe join up. I don’t want the suspense. The Air Force interested me the most, and I tested real high with mechanical things. So the recruiter said, “Hey, we would take you.” I decided, what the hell. I’m gonna do it.
A declassified report showing U-2 spy plane flight plans over the Soviet Union.
They wouldn’t tell me where I was going. They just said, “You’re reassigned.” The chief of maintenance was a very gruff and short-with-words kind of guy. For some reason, he had to tell me directly.
I thought, “Well I’m a nobody, so why does he want to see me?” That’s why I thought I was in trouble. Usually higher-ups don’t talk to you unless you’re in trouble.
We walked quite a distance and knocked on the side of a hanger door entrance, and this guy let me in, and the rest is history.
J.R.: And what was in there?
There were three U-2s in there.
A U-2 model from A.’s workshop. To maximize altitude, the aircraft’s designers reduced weight however possible. Stabilizing wheels drop off each wing as it takes off, and it lands balanced on the center gear.
We would take instrumentation in and out of the plane — it was modular — and we had these special carts to receive the item, whether it was a camera or who knows what. It would get lowered onto a cart and brought to a room that you never entered. The guys in the room never talked about what they did. And they were usually lifers.
The government recently declassified the earliest U-2 film reels from the 1950s and 1960s. Here, a section of U-2 film with its original timestamp overlays a modern satellite image of Aleppo, Syria.
A. maintains a binder for each motorcycle he restores, a meticulously detailed record of every experiment or modification. Here, he has painted non-original parts red.
On the flight line, we would be under the scrutiny of all these inspectors who roamed anywhere and everywhere. They’d see where you’re working, and come up to you, and ask you what you’re doing. What have you done, and what tech order are you working under? So, it’s like my binders: that book had better be open to the section that you’re working on.
They don’t tell you directly, but you’re being watched. You’re being evaluated. They generally try to put you in circumstances where you can succeed. Because who wants to fly on an airplane where the guy working on it was maybe over his head?
One technician who got kicked off the flight line, his crew chief had said he couldn’t trust him on the checklist. Like, did he really check the oil level in the gearbox? When the chief said, “I don’t want him on my crew,” the administration, without questioning — boom — that guy was gone. They have to take the word of the troops.
U-2 pilots pose on the tarmac in this cropped image from a photograph in A.’s workshop.
Pilots should all ride motorcycles in their training. Especially dirt bikes. On trails and hills. Get airborne. Land. Instead of putting them into a multi-million dollar plane, put ‘em on a cheap motorcycle, and you can get some idea of the individual’s capabilities to adapt. You’re always adapting to whatever conditions you’re in. And if you’re not capable of adapting, you probably have no business flying an airplane.
J.R.: Is it a good thing or a bad thing to live in a world where it’s impossible to hide?
It is what it is. You can’t change it. It’s our reality. When I worked in Jordan, inspecting Jordanian airplanes, we talked about the Middle East situation, a very touchy thing, and the East-West divide. As I got to know them, I was very candid.
I said, “Well, the way I see it — and I’m not an expert in any way, shape, or form — but it’s like a chess game, and you’re caught in the middle. There are all these interests on either side, mainly money, mainly oil, but Jordan doesn’t have much oil. You’re a pawn. You get pushed around. You’re powerless.”
And that is to this day, I think, the reality of their existence.
The tail of A.’s primary U-2. To save weight, the tail attaches to the rest of the airframe by only three tension bolts. Here, the maintenance crew swapped one plane’s tail for another after a crash landing.
A paper template for a metal part A. fabricated for Vincent #8811.
You and I don’t have to live every day on a subsistence level to live, to exist. We don’t have to go hunting. We don’t have to raise our food. We don’t have to worry about some animal attacking us. We’re free to pursue things: journalism, mechanics. Design. You can invent. My friend Richard, he loves to play Chopin. He just practices, practices Chopin and Mozart. That’s what he does. That’s the result, I think, of Western civilization.
Somebody wrote, “10,000 hours and then you’re an expert” if you’re a brain surgeon, or a pilot, or some kind of a craftsman. You start seeing things on a functional basis. You see the object, but you can see beyond it, and you start thinking systematically. And it requires a kind of discipline. There’s gotta be skepticism. There’s gotta be thinking. You can come up with your hypothesis, and then you find facts that support your hypothesis, and that’s all you go with.
A. fabricates a new shifter for one of his bikes.
You’ve got to make these kinds of leaps of faith. And sometimes things are so muddled that you have to make your best guess, invest the time, repair it as best you can, but then you need to look honestly at what you did and is it working or not. And just because you want it to work, doesn’t mean it is. You can’t change the laws of physics.
More projects
The U.S.-Mexico border stretches nearly 2,000 miles through some of the most dangerous, inhospitable, and heavily-monitored spaces in the world. (View Project)
Charting the surveillance infrastructure in my own neighborhood. (View Project)
