SIR Bidwell Branch 110 Luncheon May 18, 2026
Corey Bartholomew
U-2 Dragon Lady
Our Luncheon speaker for May will be Cory Bartholomew who will talk about his
experiences piloting the U-2 spy plane.
On the evening of July 31, 2025, Cory Bartholomew climbed into the cockpit of a U-2
Dragon Lady spy plane at Beale Air Force Base. Some 14 hours and 6,000 miles later,
he and the mission’s chief pilot, an Air Force lieutenant colonel who goes by the call
sign “Jethro,” returned from what would be a record-setting flight. It was planned to
honor the 70th anniversary of the iconic jet’s maiden voyage, which took off Aug. 1,
1955, from Groom Lake, Nevada.
Before climbing into the cockpit of a U-2, and eventually flying the historic 70th
anniversary record breaking flight, Bartholomew, who is 64 and has been flying in the
USAF since 1988, was a B-52 pilot. He left the Air Force in 2014 to fly commercial
airliners and later for NASA before returning to the Air Force in 2020 as a civilian
instructor pilot with the 9th Reconnaissance Wing.