The contract for the first six U-2s the CIA bought is the subject of an urban legend
David Peters, an SR 71 pilot, was accepted into the program in 1976 and continued flying until his retirement in 1986. His hometown is Tacoma, Washington. It was 1967 when he first saw the SR 71. He was flying F-4s when they ran out of fuel and had to land at Navy Fallon in Nevada. He witnessed something there that he had never seen before. It just so happened that John Storie and George Bull, two SR-71 pilots, were flying the “B” type at the time and had to land due to a fuel issue. Dave said to his backseater, “Someday I’m going to fly that plane.”
In Lockheed’s “Skunk Works” in Burbank, California, a group led by Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson developed and produced the U-2 to carry out surveillance missions in perfect secrecy. The first flight of this single-engine aircraft, which had sailplane-like wings suitable for the thin atmosphere over 55,000 feet (over 70,000 feet for subsequent models), took place in August 1955. After going into operation in 1956, its employment was kept a secret until a surface-to-air missile shot down a U-2 aircraft being flown by a civilian over Soviet territory on May 1, 1960.
The deal for the first six U-2s that the CIA bought is the subject of an urban legend. Kelly Johnson received a call from the CIA while he was in his office. He received instructions to meet a man at a specific Georgetown restaurant. He would be in the back, they claimed, and wear a pink carnation as a lapel. He received a time and date. Johnson arrived, and sure enough, a sketchy-looking figure was seated in a booth near the back.
The man was wearing a trench coat with a pink carnation pinned to the lapel, along with a fedora. Johnson claims that after approaching the man and sitting down, the man simply stared at him for a short while. “We will take six for 30 million,” he continued. Johnson felt something on his leg and looked down after they continued to stare at each other for a moment. When he looked up, the man had left and there was a sizable brown paper bag under the table. He searched the bag and founds bundles of $100,000 dollars. “Kelly you’re a*s is dead.” Johnson reportedly thought as his first thought. Brown bag in Georgetown, downtown Washington, DC, contains $30,000,000 in cash.
The only federal employee with spending authority over unvouchered government funds is the director of the CIA.
Peters recalls; ‘I obviously can’t prove the story but Kelly told it to me when I was just starting the program. He and Bill Parks were there for a ceremony dedicating Kelly Johnson Street at Beale. My backseater Ed Bethart and I were assigned to escort them. The only time he was under control was the actual ceremony. So, Ed and I had the unbelievable pleasure of escorting them anywhere Kelly wanted to go for about nine hours. The majority of that time the four of us alone.’
Check out Linda Sheffield Miller’s, (Col Richard (Butch) Sheffield’s daughter, Col. Sheffield was an SR-71 Reconnaissance Systems Officer) Facebook Page Habubrats for amazing Blackbird photos and stories.
Photo by U.S. Air Force and David Peters