Spent 3 years in the early 80s servicing the SR-71 in the air on the KC-135Q model tankers all over the planet. We would be going placard airspeed during aerial refueling and they were going as slow as they could to maintain flight. When they would start to get heavy the pilot would always let you know he was lighting an afterburner (especially at night) so he could maintain flight. Really cool to see that purple cone of fire shooting out the back of the engine. Since the aircraft didn’t have fuel bladders you could tell he was getting full when fuel was running down the back of the aircraft. Once refueling was complete the tankers would make an immediate left-hand turn to get out of the SR-71s way as they were cleared to 60,000 ft to go on their supersonic portion of the mission.
I have heard a few stories of over pressuring an airplane fuel system from the central fueling point and rupturing components. Ever see or hear of that?
Of course the 71 was a leaker but worse so on the ground supposedly until it got hot and sort of sealed up. Burning at the rate it did and leaking didn’t do much much for range so kept the tankers busy. How many did it take for a mission?
They used triethylborane in the JP7 as an oxidizer to get it to burn. It was injected from a separate tank into the fuel stream.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JP-7
I just learned from this article that there was a Shell insecticide called Flit that was used in the fuel and it became in short supply because of that.
Everything in the airplane was special from the gas in the tires to the lubricants.
If I believed in such things I would think that the SR-71 design was delivered to Lockheed by space aliens or on stone tablets to Kelly Johnson when he went up into the mountains for inspiration.
The mid-50s were an unbelievable time for aviation advancements and all done with slide rules, Friden calculators, drafting tables and wind tunnels and brilliant engineers.
KC-10A BOOMER...thank you for your service.
I always liked refueling behind the KC-10A. Every time I asked for extra gas they always had some to give.
On my first ocean crossing with KC-10s, I was lead of a 6 ship of F-4Es. We rendezvoused with the tanker over Boston. The tanker refueled all 6 of us from Boston to Lands End, England. From there, we flew to Ramstein AB, Germany. The KC-10 returned to the U.S.
Regards,
FtrPilot