What U-2 Dragon Lady Pilots Had To Do Before Missions That Most Other Pilots In History Have Never Done

Simple Flying has already written about how the next-generation successor to the Lockheed U-2 Dragon Lady spy plane, the SR-71 Blackbird, was extreme. To operate the SR-71, pilots had to perform a number of preparations typically reserved for astronauts, like having special diets, breathing oxygen, donning space suits, and more. But the pilots operating the Dragon Lady trailblazed some of those procedures in the 1950s before the Blackbird came to be.