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The afore mentioned story about the ATC ground speed check is from a book called “Sled Driver” by Brian Shul. Walter was his recon officer.

Anyway, in the book, or the parts I’ve read, he mentions going into Lybia, I’m assuming during the Regan years, and getting painted by radar. Then Walt calls out multiple launch warnings. Well, being the pilot of the fastest air breather ever, he did what any pilot would do in an otherwise totally defenseless bird: he pushed the throttles all the way up to their stops and hauled ass outta there. He mentions seeing “scary MACH numbers”, faster than his bird has ever flown. And no, he didn’t mention the exact numbers.

He also mentioned he left them there until the adrenaline wash subsided, and his training took over and eased her back, explaining that The Bird would literally go as fat as she could until she tore herself apart.

So yea, I wonder if that record was as fast as she could do it, or if they made it just fast enough for the record books, and to impress certain governments, but still had plenty left in the tank, so to speak.

From the History.net link:

fter the Farnborough show came to a close, 972 was transferred to RAF Mildenhall, where the ground crews made final preparations for its flight back to the States. On the morning of September 13, the weather over Britain was perfect, and takeoff was right on time. As was routine for any Blackbird mission, the crew took off with a light load of fuel and then met up with the first tanker off the northeast tip of the country.

"Once we left Mildenhall we flew southeast, turned and came across London going northeast at the timing gate [the beginning of the official time recorded for the speed record]," recalled Adams. "The first 53 minutes of the mission were all subsonic because we flew up off the coast and refueled with three tankers, and then accelerated to altitude. We could not go supersonic over England.

"If we had taken off from Mildenhall, picked up a tanker and then moved up to altitude and hit our max speed immediately and gone across the timing gate at Mach 3-plus over London, we could have cut our flight time by 48 minutes," Adams said. "We crossed the Atlantic Ocean at Mach 3.2, which equates to about 2,200 mph. We did the Great Circle route from the UK, crossed the North American coast over Newfoundland and descended from 80,000 feet to 25,000 feet to meet up with three more tankers, one of which was a spare. We filled our tank and then began accelerating back up to our optimum altitude. We began to encounter some very strong headwinds—100 knots—in the refueling track, which chewed up some valuable time, so I started the acceleration sooner than planned to reduce the effect of the headwind."

The streaking Blackbird entered the United States just south of the Great Lakes. Adams said he and Machorek had agreed to radio General Russell Dougherty, commander of the Strategic Air Command, as they passed over the Midwest. When they were near SAC's command post in Omaha, Neb., they gave him a call and updated him on their expected arrival time in Los Angeles.

"At that time, we had every intention of setting a world speed record," Adams explained. "As we approached California, we started to decelerate so we would be subsonic by the time we got to the mountain range on the east side of Los Angeles. We then went all the way to the coast, which was several minutes of flight to LAX because they had a radar timing gate there. We flew through it, and then we knew we had completed the mission successfully and they had confirmed the time."

The total time for the record flight was 3 hours, 47 minutes and 39 seconds. Adams and Machorek had covered nearly 5,447 miles at an average speed of 1,435.59 mph.

"We turned around and headed back over the mountains out to the desert," continued Adams, "and met up with the tanker, where we picked up 30,000 pounds of fuel. Then we flew up to Beale AFB, where we did a couple of flyovers and landed. Needless to say, the press was there, along with a sizable crowd."