My Daughter in front of one at Eglin. The engines were huge.
the most amazing thing about this is, its 60 tech!! imagine what they could do now if they still made this kind of stuff...
Saw one in upstate NY during the time of the Egypt/Israeli thing, as I recall.
Small and low footprint but massive purple flames taking off.
I read that the plane changes shape a little as it heats up from the friction of flying so fast. As a result the pilots never determined how fast it could actually go.
Nice!
Posted here before I’m sure, but worth reading again.
http://oppositelock.kinja.com/favorite-sr-71-story-1079127041
Cannot build it now. The PEOPLE who hand-crafted them in the 50’s and 60’s no longer exist.
It goes a bit faster than that. I had a teacher, who is a retired air traffic controller, that clocked the thing doing 3500 knots. That’s about Mach 5.2.
We have high resolution, LEO satellites that are preferable.
I knew somebody who was a security policeman in the air force. When the plane was still secret, one of them had to make an emergency landing at his air base. The air controllers were at first confused by the aircraft’s location and ETA to land, as it didn’t make sense....implied speeds they thought weren’t possible. Then the futuristic bird landed and the pilot handed them instructions about dragging it into a hanger to hide it.
To him the whole experience was surreal. He’d spent a career in the Air Force, and all of the sudden he’s looking at a plane he didn’t know existed.
Try as they did, and they did and still try, not the Russkies, the ChiCOMS, the NKs nor anyone else been able to replicate the SR-71
In his book, Sled Driver, SR-71 Blackbird pilot Brian Shul writes: “I’ll always remember a certain radio exchange that occurred one day as Walt (my backseater)
and I were screaming across Southern California, 13 miles high. We were monitoring various radio transmissions from other aircraft as we entered Los Angeles airspace. Though they didn’t really control us, they did monitor our movement across their scope. I heard a Cessna ask for a readout of its groundspeed.”
“90 knots” Center replied.
“Moments later, a Twin Beech required the same.”
“120 knots,” Center answered.
“We weren’t the only ones proud of our groundspeed that day as almost instantly an F-18 smugly transmitted, ‘Ah, Center, Dusty 52 requests groundspeed readout.’
“There was a slight pause, then the response, 525 knots on the ground, Dusty”.
“Another silent pause. As I was thinking to myself how ripe a situation this was, I heard a familiar click of a radio transmission coming from my backseater. It was at that precise moment I realized Walt and I had become a real crew, for we were both thinking in unison.” “Center, Aspen 20, you got a groundspeed readout for us?”
There was a longer than normal pause.... “Aspen, I show 1,742 knots”
“No further inquiries were heard on that frequency”
____________________________________________
In another famous SR-71 story, Los Angeles Center reported receiving a request for clearance to FL 60 (60,000ft).
The incredulous controller, with some disdain in his voice, asked, “How do you plan to get up to 60,000 feet?”
“The pilot (obviously a sled driver), responded, “We don’t plan to go up to it, we plan to go down to it.”
He was cleared...
If I recall one Blackbird pilot hinted that they pushed the throttles into uncharted deflection when they thought the Soviets had a lock on them during a late mission.
I’ve seen it up close at Dayton Museum and what’s amazing is it looks like it was glued together and it isn’t as big as you think. But what an amazing plane!
The 1960’s technology was indeed cool to see.
Mrs. JimRed’s cousin used to drive one. He doesn’t talk about it, but when the topic comes up he grins a lot!
When we were a proud culture before the collapse.....
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My Daughter in front of one at Eglin. The engines were huge.
