Minot Air Force Base was the site of one of the Operation Crowflight detachments of the 4080th Strategic Reconnaisance Wing out of Laughlin AFB, Texas. Three Lockheed U-2 spy planes were with the detachment at the Minot base.

Retired Air Force Tech. Sgt. Glenn Chapman, who lives in Tucson, Ariz., is no stranger to the U-2 “Dragon Lady.” He arrived at Minot AFB on Jan. 3, 1960, for temporary duty as a nephographics technician with the 4080th’s Detachment 9.

At the time the U-2s were shrouded with secretiveness and mystery. Those assigned to the detachments could not talk about the planes or their mission. Military orders for those assigned to the Minot AFB detachment were marked “Top Secret.”

The U-2s were at the Minot base from September 1958 to May 1960 and were working out of the Minot base before any other aircraft were permanently assigned there, according to the Minot Daily News files.

Chapman, who wrote a book, “Me and U-2. My Affair With Dragon Lady,” published in 1999, said the first time he saw Dragon Lady was his first day at Laughlin AFB, Texas, in summer 1958. He said in his book he asked a friend of his in the Photo Lab what was that “strange looking bird” on the flight line. His friend replied, “Don’t ask” and quickly changed the subject.

Chapman had volunteered for the 4080th based at Laughlin AFB near Del Rio, Texas.

Their highly secretive mission, the High Altitude Sampling Program (HASP) known as Operation HASP and better known as Operation Crowflight, was to sample for upper air radioactivity. Samples were collected to determine how much radioactive fallout was in the atmosphere.

“These were the days of all the A-bomb testing in the open air,” Chapman said in a 2002 interview with The Minot Daily News. “By analyzing these particles, they could estimate how much fallout would end up where and how it would affect worldwide population.” The air samples were sent to a company in New Jersey to analyze.

“The U-2 at the time was the only object on Earth that had the capability to be fully controllable in gathering these extremely microscopic bits of plutonium fallout that was gradually dropping to Earth and needed to be evaluated and to measure the amount of waste that had actually reached the face of the Earth,” said Chapman in a recent email to the Minot Daily News.

Submitted Photo This is a page from Glenn Chapman’s book about the U-2 “Dragon Lady.” At top is Chapman, a nephographics technician, taken with the Operation Crowflight mascot. The photo, of Chapman, was taken when Chapman was on temporary duty with Crowflight at Minot Air Force Base.

“As the U-2 flew in that raggedly line from North Pole to South Pole, it was flying ‘as the crow flies,” Chapman explained in his book.

“At this time, at the United States Air Force’s base at Minot was one of the sites where this was performed,” he said.

Operation Crowflight operated, although not always at the same time, from locations, besides Minot AFB, including Puerto Rico, Fairbanks in Alaska, Buenos Aires in Argentina, the Canal Zone in Panama, East Sale and Laverton in Australia, Hawaii and other points around the globe, Chapman said.

Top secret

“When Crowflight began, Dragon Lady and all her missions, including Crowflight, were classified as top secret. At that time it was very highly classified where Crowflight locations were located or what the duration of the TDY (temporary duty) would be,” Chapman wrote in his book.

Submitted Photo A stencil that Chapman was asked to make by Fred Kiewert, Skunk Works technical representative. The stencil was painted on Grain Belt beer napkins while the operaton was at Minot AFB and to be presented with complimentary drinks to the rival 5th Fighter Interceptor Squadron pilots at the Minot base. The photos are from Chapman’s collection.

“Because of this secrecy, the first Crowflight missions required that the pilots maintain radio silence as much as possible,” he added.

He said that by 1959 about one-third to one-half of their Dragon Lady aircraft were on temporary duty somewhere and personnel to support them was beginning to dwindle.

“When Detachment 9 at Minot was formed that year it meant that thirty-nine more Dragon Lady pilots and technicians needed to be assigned to fly and support the three Crowflight birds,” Chapman wrote.

Chapman was selected to be the technician to be trained to replace the technician finishing his 90-day stint at Minot AFB. He had to learn how to use the small 16mm camera located upside down on the underside of the top hatch.

He arrived at Minot AFB on Jan. 3, 1960, with 38 other technicians and pilots for his first Crowflight detachment. Chapman was a neographics technician.

“This was during the time before Francis Gary Powers and his Dragon Lady went from totally unknown to one of the biggest stars of all times. Especially with Nikita (Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev),” Chapman wrote.

The U-2 attained much public attention when CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down over Soviet territory on May 1, 1960, causing the U-2 incident. Later, in 1962, the 4080th pilots played a major role in the Cuban Missile Crisis. On Oct. 14, 1962, a U-2 from the 4080th based at Laughlin AFB and piloted by Maj. Richard S. Heyser, photographed the Soviet military installing nuclear warhead missiles in Cuba, precipitating the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Chapman said everything about Dragon Lady in the early 1960s was classified as top secret.

“We didn’t even talk about the aircraft outside the detachment’s areas except to tell our little lies to permanent party people. But, shortly after the first detachment arrived in Minot in early 1959, the natives on base pressed enough and sooner or later learned that ‘that thing out there, that funny plane with those real long wings, that’s a U-2 they say.’ So, although we didn’t mention her, we couldn’t stop all those permanent party people from talking about her,” Chapman wrote in his book.

Three Dragon Ladys were with the detachment at Minot AFB – 66714, 66715 and 66716, Chapman said. He said these were three of only six Dragon Lady’s that had been especially modified for Crowflight operations.

Arctic routes

He said the northern Arctic routes were the most dangerous for the Dragons to fly over because there wasn’t much on the ground “except dense timber woods, near-absolute desolation, and lots and lots of snow and ice. This was definitely not an area that any of our Dragons relished having problems pop up while they were flying so high over it,” Chapman wrote.

He said Capt. Roger Cooper was one of the Dragons with Detachment 9 at Minot AFB who faced a major issue while on an Arctic route. On March 15, 1960, during Cooper’s temporary duty with Detachment 9, he was scheduled for a Crowflight mission toward the North Pole and back to the Minot base.

But everything did not go right that day. While Cooper and Dragon Lady were in flight all of a sudden Avionics back at Minot AFB heard “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday” along with Cooper’s call sign and then silence, Chapman wrote in his book.

Chapman said anytime a Dragon Lady flew out of Minot, a search-and-rescue team was ready in case of an emergency. They had not been needed until now. When the search-and-rescue team got the call about Cooper and his plane, they went into action immediately and found Cooper and 66716. Cooper had landed the plane without an engine on a frozen lake in Canada “in the middle of nowhere,” Chapman said. Cooper was OK and returned to Minot to be checked out at the hospital.

A few days later, Chapman said a team of engine, hydraulics, electrical and other specialists arrived at Minot AFB from Laughlin AFB to go to the Canadian lake, repair the plane, fly it off the lake and return it to the Minot base.

“A few days went by and one morning when we went in, there was 716 sitting there just as pretty as you please,” Chapman related in his book.

But, he said, something new had been added to the plane. He said each Crowflight detachment generally flew a painted picture of their Crowflight mascot, El Loco Oscar. Detachment 9’s Oscar wore a pair of skis, a red-and-white scarf, a set of earmuffs and held a ski pole.

When 66716 went down on the Canadian lake, Chapman said some help was needed for snow removal equipment from the Royal Canadian Air Force so a runway could be made for the plane. In return, the RCAF painted their national symbol, a big maple leaf, over the top of Oscar. No cost was charged for the RCAF to help the Minot AFB unit except to allow them to paint their national symbol over Oscar.

As a result of the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the HASP program was terminated. The U-2 aircraft’s HASP air sampling equipment was removed and the planes were refitted with photo and electronic collection gear, according to 4028th Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron, a unit of the 4080th history.

Chapman worked as a neographics technician on the U-2 from 1958-1966.

Today, two of the planes that were at Minot AFB with Operation Crowflight are on static display. Dragon Lady 66716 is on display at Davis-Monthan AFB, Ariz., and Dragon Lady 66714 is on display at Beale AFB, Calif. Dragon Lady 66715 is gone now, Chapman said.