Assigned to take photos of an island he had never heard of before, Dad did some important work in the skies over Grenada.

Though he spent the least of his U-2 time at Mildenhall in the U.K., on one trip, he provided support for a Navy carrier group in the North Atlantic.

Following a military coup, the U-2s out of Osan, South Korea began 12 hour missions, keeping a U-2 in the air 24 hours a day to monitor the situation.

When flying, you occasionally encounter all kinds of strange occurrences in your environment, here are just a few of those incidents.

Regularly flying over 70,000, training for the U-2 resembled that for astronauts, often using the same equipment.

Not really knowing what he might be getting into, the chance to apply to fly the U-2, following his time in the B-52, seemed intriguing. It would change his life.

When navigation is not as you expect, you make do with what you know.

If you have seen the Air Force recruiting film, The Year of 53 Weeks, this story will be familiar. Not much had changed later in the 1960s when my Dad was going through pilot training.

If you have seen the Air Force recruiting film, The Year of 53 Weeks, this story will be familiar. Not much had changed later in the 1960s when my Dad was going through pilot training.

Born and raised in Ohio, and never having even flown in a plane, Dad heads to pilot training in Laredo, Texas.

At the tail end of the Vietnam War, and sure to be drafted by the Army, my Dad chose to go down to the Air Force recruiter. Here is that story.