ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – An iconic war aircraft will soon have a home in Albuquerque at the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History. The museum secured one of the retired ‘U2 Dragon Lady’ planes and received two out of three deliveries on Thursday of the pieces of the plane. The ‘U2 Dragon Lady‘ is a spy aircraft used in all U.S. Wars since the 1950s.
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“This is a spy plane, it carried cameras or other sensors for detecting what people were doing on the ground, or air sampling when they were studying where nuclear tests were being done,” Museum Curator James Stemm said. “The U2 was very prominently used in the Cold War in monitoring other countries’ nuclear programs, watching what they were doing in developing missiles, bombers, and weapons. They’ve been critical, particularly in the Middle East, in Vietnam.”
It flies very high, up to 70,000 feet, making it very hard to detect or intercept, and it’s been on the museum’s radar for a long time. “We were contacted late last year by the Air Force saying some of these airplanes were gonna start retiring this year, asking if we wanted one,” Stemm said. “We’ve actually been on a list with the U.S. Air Force Museum for about 40 years waiting for one.”…