Posted on 09/13/2022 9:58:35 AM PDT by whyilovetexas111
ttiuwop
That plane flew over my HS (Quartz Hill, CA) one day at low altitude and slow speed.
I thought it was gonna shake the buildings apart.
The MIG31s were able to get lockons on the SR71s. The USAF stopped the USSR overflights as a result. With the Phoenix equivalent missile the USSR developed bringing down a Blackbird was just a matter of time.
As a young Marine stationed on the ‘Rock’ for a year in the early ‘70s, I used to go over to Kadena on the weekends to watch the Habu take off and land. It never ceased to impress me watching those afterburners light off on takeoff and the slick profile of that bird was candy to the eyes. It truly is aviation artistry at its finest - a masterful piece of design.
Unofficially over mach 4. But it was more than speed that assisted the problem. It was also that it was the first of the stealth aircraft for radar (radar-absorbent iron-ferrite paint and cross section configeration) and that it could fly at incredible altitudes, as high as 85K feet. These assistance were also used by the U2’s and TR’s.
A lot of the time they also deployed electronic countermeasures to jam SAM systems. But to give the folks an idea of how fast and high this aircraft could fly, if an SR took off from our left coast, like when they were stationed at Beale, if they wanted to drop a device on Moscow, which is well into the western part of Russia, they would have to turn it loose over the Bering Sea.
As things got a lot more expensive like JP7, the use of the SR became a burden as they ate a lot of gas to feed those ponies. After take off, it took three KC135’s to refuel it to continue its sortie. And parts became limited. So it was replaced with satellites and drones along with more use of the TR and U2. Cost effectiveness.
wy69
Unofficially over mach 4. But it was more than speed that assisted the problem. It was also that it was the first of the stealth aircraft for radar (radar-absorbent iron-ferrite paint and cross section configeration) and that it could fly at incredible altitudes, as high as 85K feet. These assistance were also used by the U2’s and TR’s.
A lot of the time they also deployed electronic countermeasures to jam SAM systems. But to give the folks an idea of how fast and high this aircraft could fly, if an SR took off from our left coast, like when they were stationed at Beale, if they wanted to drop a device on Moscow, which is well into the western part of Russia, they would have to turn it loose over the Bering Sea.
As things got a lot more expensive like JP7, the use of the SR became a burden as they ate a lot of gas to feed those ponies. After take off, it took three KC135’s to refuel it to continue its sortie. And parts became limited. So it was replaced with satellites and drones along with more use of the TR and U2. Cost effectiveness.
wy69
I grew up & live in Dayton (suburbs now) and, except for a 5 year excursion to Hollywood, I’m quite cognizant of Wright-Patt AFB Air Museum - truly amazing!
As an aside, WPAFB was the home for “Operation Bluebook” and rumors include housing aliens including the Roswell “visitor” at least for a short time.
Finally, the Wright brothers first test flights was in Dayton on the Huffman Hills.
They’re pretty in the air. Sitting in a Sacramento office in 1985, I was looking out the window when one came in for a landing. Like a skinny black pencil gliding along.
When I was there you could walk under it and it was low enough that I could reach up and touch one of the wings. I adored those planes since I was a kid so that was a moment for me.
Like the moon landing.
Designed with slide rules
Drawn on vellum with pencil
Fabricated by high school graduates with manually controlled machine tools
++++++++++++++++++++
Which our current NASA “rocket scientists” seem not able to replicate. Computers don’t make people smarter, in fact, in my 35 years of designing heavy industrial equipment, I believe computers have made people “less smart”. I’m being kind.
There is an SR-71 at the Hill AFB Aerospace Museum in Ogden, UT. The museum has free admission.
They are also prepping an F-117 in the display. It was supplied with NO skin panels (as that is where much of the magic is) and a company is making an aluminum skin to fit. I was there two years ago when a guy was 3D scanning the wing leading edge which was bare, so they could model and then build the skin for this area. A year later I went there and much of the leading edge skin was installed.
https://www.aerospaceutah.org/
Something like that. It leaked like a sieve on the ground but the friction from the atmosphere expanded the fuselage parts and they all tightened up niceley. So the key was to get up to speed as quickly as possible.
Do you mean F-104?
Yes. My bad. The F104 Starfighter.
“UAPs”
Kelly Johnson was chief engineer. His biography has a lot of detail about what they had to do just to build the thing. His own one-line summary was “we had to invent EVERYTHING”.
Johnson started his career at Lockheed before WW2, straightening out stability problems with original Electra. Next he ran the development of the P-38, which was incredibly advance for its’ day. Somebody once said about him:”that damned Swede can SEE air!”
Kelly Johnson was chief engineer. His biography has a lot of detail about what they had to do just to build the thing. His own one-line summary was “we had to invent EVERYTHING”.
Johnson started his career at Lockheed before WW2, straightening out stability problems with original Electra. Next he ran the development of the P-38, which was incredibly advance for its’ day. Somebody once said about him:”that damned Swede can SEE air!”
Most of it did. Acquired through CIA front companies scattered around the globe.That was back when the CIA was an American institution and not a subsidiary of the DNC.
Udvar Hazy Air & Space Museum has SR-71 pilots give talks in front of their example. One I heard talked about avoiding a SAM over NK. Rather interesting.
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