Читать книгу The Bravest Hunter - Michael Newell - Страница 11

Russian defensive forces managed to shoot down the U-2 spy plane aloft over Russia and flown by Francis Gary Powers in 1960. They shot down another U-2 on a mission over Cuba in 1963. Both were flying at about 70,000 feet. The US Air Force came to Teledyne for a solution. What they had in mind was a navigation system that would operate at 100,000 feet, or 30,000 feet higher than where the U-2s previously flew.

The U-2 used a Doppler Radar to determine speed. A Doppler Radar bounces radar signals off the ground to determine speed. According to Graves, it works kind of like throwing tennis balls against a wall. If you throw them at once every second, they will come back at once a second. But if you are running toward the wall as you throw, the balls will come back at a higher frequency. That difference in frequency tells you how fast you are moving.

Graves helped design a system that mixed inertial with Doppler Radar, air-data sensors, and a star tracker in a configuration that took advantage of the strengths and ignored the weaknesses of each type of sensor. This led to some pioneering work in the use of Kalman filters, which has become a classic technique used in the navigation industry. Graves designed the computer for the inertial trial-guidance system, a digital differential analyzer using microcircuits.

Edwards Air Force Base in southern California did the flight testing for U-2s, and the new equipment got its shakedown at that base. The Air Force, however, called Art’s boss, Joe Smead, and told him the system was not working. Joe called Graves and said, “You go out to Edwards and don’t come back until it’s working.”

When Graves arrived at Edwards and got an escort to a hangar, Graves saw an airplane with an enormous wingspan. The test pilot was standing beside it, and Graves asked, “What is that?” The pilot said, “That’s the U-2, son.”

Although every Teledyne employee working on the system had top-secret clearance, they didn’t have a “need to know” what the system was for, so the people Graves was working for weren’t aware it was a U-2 project.

On the first flight, the inertial system platform began to wander off from pointing north when it got to approximately 40,000 feet in altitude. Graves called Art Cencel and told him what had happened. Cencel said, “Oh, I bet we have a leak in one of the gyroscopes. When we get to high altitude, the seal around the platform is not keeping the pressure where it should be.” He instructed Graves to call the group that had made the platform enclosure and put in a better seal. They did, and the problem disappeared. Graves said he received praise for solving the problem, but it was Cencel who did it. He let Graves have all the credit. When telling this story, Graves remarked, “Art was that kind of guy.”

Art Cencel has this to say about Graves: “Gordon was a joy to work with. He was more focused on inertial guidance systems, and I was a mechanical engineer, but I knew gyroscopes. There were two qualities I appreciated about Gordon: one was his capacity to put up with nonsense. It made him a great salesman when he needed to be, and he always kept his cool. The other was his approach to work. His work ethic was more a discipline, a technique as pure as the science itself, and it made him a good problem-solver. He is a keeper, that’s for sure. It’s not at all surprising to see what he has accomplished since Litton and Teledyne. We still communicate, mostly over the Net. I can truly say that Gordon Graves enriched my life.”