Ferrari Mailing List: Re: Cruise Night On Van Nuys Blvd: 1970's

(continued)

U-2—“Utility 2”—was the innocuous and noncommittal tag for the plane. But 
another story circulated about the source of the name. 

The plane’s long wings gave it so much lift that it was hard to land. The first 
flight happened by accident: LeVier took it out for a taxi test, but the airplane 
took off. “It went up like a homesick angel,” LeVier said later, more for quotation 
than anything else. “It flies like a baby buggy.” The only problem was it didn’t 
want to come down. In the C-47 chase plane, Johnson kept after LeVier to land 
nose down, but the plane kept porpoising—it would get down into ground effect, 
the area where the proximity of the ground added to its lift, and begin a forward 
and aft wiggle, the “porpoise.” After five or six tries, and mounting tempers on 
both sides, LeVier came in and did it the way he wanted to in the first place—he 
stalled the plane to get it on the ground. 

Once they were both down, Johnson and LeVier continued to argue. “What the 
hell were you trying to do, kill me?” LeVier said. He gave Johnson the finger. 
“Well, fuck you.” 

“And fuck you, too,” Johnson replied. 

The “you, too” attached itself to the airplane. Or so the tale goes. 

Re: Cruise Night On Van Nuys Blvd: 1970's	<– Date –> <– Thread –>
From: Douglas Anderson (dntdock.net)
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2021 22:57:45 -0800 (PST)