Sup Jow Forums I'm going to dump a bunch of stories about the SR71 and there's nothing you can do about it. Starting with stuff from Sled Driver. Book links in next post.
To more fully understand the concept of Mach 3, imagine the speed of a bullet coming from a high powered hunting rifle. It is travelling at 3 100 feet per second as it leaves the muzzle. The Sled would cruise easily at 3200 feet per second, with power to spare. There was a lot we couldn't do in the airplane, but we were the fastest guys on the block and frequently mentioned this fact to fellow aviators. I'll always remember a certain radio exchange that occurred one day as Walt and I were screaming across southern California 13 miles high. We were monitoring various radio transmissions from other aircraft as we entered Los Angeles Center's 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 one proud of our speed that day as almost instantly an F-18 smugly transmitted, "Ah, Center, Dusty 52 requests groundspeed readout." There was a slight pause. "525 knots on the ground, Dusty." Another silent pause. As I was thinking to myself how ripe a situation this was, I heard the familiar click of a radio transmission coming from my back-seater. 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 ground speed readout for us?" There was a longer than normal pause. "Aspen, I show one thousand seven hundred and forty-two knots." No further inquiries were heard on that frequency.
Feel free to post shit, bump the thread, etc. Sorry for the format on these they're copied from the pdf. Pic related is some stuff from a different book, kinda interesting facts/stories.
(on flying at night) Desire to see the stars overruled my caution and I began to turn the lights down one at a time, carefully leaving a few critical gauges well lit. My eyes adjusted to the lower level of light and I gradually saw more stars through the remaining reflections on the windows. On impulse, I flicked the remaining lights off, then quickly back on. An image flashed through my head of a teenager driving down a dark country road who flicks his headlights off for a seconds is enveloped by darkness, then flicks them back on. I chuckled at the comparison. The jet reassured me as it purred rock solid, so I turned the remaining lights off. I was immediately startled; were those the lights of another aircraft out to my right? My disbelief soon turned to awe as I realized in the calm darkness, that what I saw was not the bright lights of any man-made vehicle, but the brilliant expanse of the Milky Way Unlike the view from the ground, at 78,000 feet there were few spaces unlit in the sky. Shooting stars appeared and faded every few seconds. The spectacle was mesmerizing, but I knew I must bring my eyes back to the flight instruments. When I did, I discovered my entire cockpit bathed in starlight bright enough to illuminate all the gauges. I needed no cockpit lighting and revelled in the ghostly sight of my space suit dimly lit in the starlight.
Feeling I was stealing precious moments from a jealous jet, I glanced once more outside. With all those clusters of light, it seemed as if there should be sounds. My experience told me sounds went with great displays of light. City lights coexist with the sounds of traffic, and rockets firing and exploding coincide with the display of fireworks. Even a planetarium has music and narration accompanying the sequence of stars. In contrast, this sight was a symphony of silence. I became very aware of the sound of my own breathing. For a brief moment I was more than an Air Force pilot on a training flight. Our incredible speed became insignificant as the jet seemed to stand still before the heavens. I was part of something larger and more profound. I felt a joy to be at this place, at this time, looking at these stars. Walt's voice crackled over the intercom, jolting me back to the tasks at hand with a reminder of our upcoming descent. I turned the lights back up and left that peaceful yet powerful scene. As we started down, I didn't know that this was the last time I would experience this concert of stars. Although I flew on dark and moonless nights again, they were never routine enough to turn off the lights and cruise by starlight.
(on the suit) The only serious problem I encountered with my space suit was when I lost suit heat in the middle of a sortie. The cockpit did not have vents to provide warm air like other airplanes. With the suit heat inoperative, the overall cold wasn't too bad on my body, because the space suit offered some protection. But my hands began to feel the numbing cold and I was starting to lose the feel of my fingers through the gloves. I remembered from training that the windows in the cockpit heated to about 550 degrees Fahrenheit when cruising at Mach 3. We were going faster than that so I knew the windows must be warm even on the inside. I placed my gloved hand against the window. In seconds, my hand was not just warm, it was hot. With care, I was able to complete the mission by intermittently warming my hands by gently placing them against the windows.
(bro tier juice man) Flying operational missions out of Beale usually meant keeping strange hours. My neighbors wondered about me when I left for the base at two o'clock in the morning. The people in the Marysville-Yuba City area, though, seemed to take pride in knowing that the world's fastest jet resided at 'their' Air Force base. They appreciated knowing I couldn't tell them details of where I was flying or what I was doing. They enjoyed the intrigue. On several occasions I stopped at the local 711 for an orange juice on my way to work, sometimes after midnight. The same man worked the graveyard shift, and he'd look up and smile. I'd say 'Good morning' as I walked to the refrigerated case. In the beginning, he was eager to tell me that he had a good idea what I was doing, and he wished me good luck. Above all, he did not want me to reveal anything to him. I never could say much, because he did most of the talking. Sometimes, his assessment of my mission routing was surprisingly accurate. Later on, I'd come in and he'd say, "So, just going to work?" On these mornings we had an unspoken camaraderie; the two of us shared a few moments of the early morning hours. It gave him pleasure to insist I not pay for the juice.
And no I have no idea what the fuck pic related is all about. But hey even astronauts get weird. These all come from Flying the SR-71 Blackbird_ In the Cockpit on a Secret Operational Mission - Richard H. Graham
One day, a simple problem made me realize the tenuous position Walt had, sitting in back with no stick. We were proceeding on a straight section of our route over Europe. This particular route had many turns, and the Mach had to be maintained precisely to prevent overshooting them. I decided to indulge in a quick drink from my water bottle before an upcoming turn. I put the long plastic straw to my helmet, located the opening and pushed, but nothing happened. Mildly frustrated, I pushed harder without success. I glanced in the mirror and found the straw in the right spot so with one final shove, I pushed for the last time. The straw instantly slipped into my helmet, overshooting my mouth and poking my eye slightly. My eye began to tear profusely and at the same moment, Walt commanded a reduction in Mach to keep the turn radius under control. I forgot the water bottle and, seeing out of only one eye, concentrated on maintaining precise speed through the turn. My eye continued to tear as the airplane completed the turn remaining on course and on speed. As I contemplated the possibility of finishing the mission and landing with one eye, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I saw a space helmet with a water bottle dangling out the lower section. I laughed out loud. Considering the seriousness of the business at hand, it was a ludicrous sight. Walt expressed his ignorance of what could be so funny at this particular moment. He added that he didn't want to know. I flew on one eye for a few hundred miles, then dried it out by using the Face Heat Switch. From then on, I was careful when I performed even the simplest tasks. Later, when I achieved advanced proficiency with the water bottle, I found the straw was an excellent device for scratching my face slowly, very slowly. I never did tell Walt what happened that day over Europe. His confidence in me would probably not increase if he learned I had flown him through the stratosphere with a water bottle m my eye.
(airshows) Some of the best airshows we attended were in England; the British really knew how to put on a show. Plenty of airplanes flew throughout the day, and at the larger airshows it was common for 150,000 people to attend each day of the event. When we displayed the Blackbird in England, it seemed as if every one of the 150,000 people wanted to see the jet up close. They wanted to talk to the crew members and have them sign their programs. We got writer's cramp, but we didn't complain; the people were such a joy. Accurate data about the airplane was unavailable to the public for so long, many people filled in the blanks themselves. This made for some entertaining sessions while standing in front of the jet. Many times people were eager to show us how much they knew about our jet. We were interested in their estimates of the SR-71's performance; often they exceeded what the airplane was capable of doing. I'm not sure that we convinced some of them the SR-71 did not go into orbit during its missions. People knew we couldn't answer many of their questions, yet when their questions concerned classified information, they enjoyed hearing our answer, "I'm sorry, we can't talk about that." We noticed this response often generated more speculation on the topic. Even as the merits of different outrageous theories were discussed, people quickly assured us they understood we couldn't talk about some things, and they didn't want us to divulge any secrets to them. Sometimes crews became tired after five or six hours of questions. I had to restrain a laugh one day as I heard a woman ask a simple question concerning the tires, only to get the can't-ta lk-about-it response from a weary crew member. U nfortunately for him, this started more fires than it put out. A small crowd with new theories on the classified nature of rubber, gathered around the woman and asked even more questions.
this is a longer one (on having to divert) Normally, we landed the Sled at the same field from which we took off. We landed away only when the airplane had a serious problem or if the weather at the home base were bad enough to prevent a safe landing. When the jet got sick, our task became getting the plane down safely as soon as possible. Landing away was a big deal to everyone, from the people who used the film we brought back, to the people who maintained the airplane. We, in turn, depended on our support people to help us taxi in and shut down, to push the stands to the airplane, and help us unstrap and climb out. We needed help getting out of the space suit, and even the clothes we changed into hung in lockers at the PSD building back at Beale. Nearly every crew had at least one experience landing away and each one was an adventure. Walt and I landed away only one time, but the events of those few days were typical of what other crews encountered. We had been up since one in the morning to prepare for an early takeoff from Beale to a target area in the Caribbean. We had flown nearly halfway across the United States when I realized we were losing oil pressure on the right engine. We were still climbing at 1500 knots and had not finished our accel to altitude. Walt quickly listed the fields suitable for landing along our route. These were not fields below us; instead they were 150 to 200 miles in front of us. This distance was needed to slow the jet and descend before we could fly our final approach to a landing at the chosen divert base. Peterson Field in Colorado was our destination. It was a joint use field, meaning that in addition to being an Air Force Base, it also served as municipal airport for Colorado Springs.
Most people had never seen an SR-71 unless they had attended an airshow with one on display. By the excited response we received from the air traffic controllers and airport personnel, we felt as if we were at an airshow instead of having an emergency. The tower gave us priority to land. The controller told a U nited flight its takeoff clearance was cancelled and it must hold for us. In my entire military flying career, this was the first time this had ever happened. The Sled performed bravely and we landed without incident.
A flurry of excitement greeted us on the ground. Every agency with a radio wanted to issue Instructions or request our intentions for a moment I felt like I was in complete control of the airport. If I had asked to taxi to the United terminal and have the Marine Band playing for us, someone would have made it happen. I finally told everyone to clear the frequency and informed them we would park on the military ramp. I inquired if there were any empty hangars, or ones that could be emptied immediately. There weren't. We ended up parking on the far end of the ramp, much like a normal military transient aircraft. As I tied to our parking area, I noticed a crowd gathering along the road near the ramp.
During training, we had been thoroughly briefed on what actions to take if we had to shut down the engines without the assistance of ground personnel. Now that time was here, and we felt a little naked without the normal assistance of PSD and maintenance specialists. The landing away procedure required the RSO to unstrap himself, and with the engines still running, climb out of the aircraft. He would slide down the side of the plane and locate the landing gear safety pins, which were stored in an outer compartment of the airplane. The procedure of inserting them into the landing gear prevented inadvertent retraction ofthe wheels on the ground. After completing this step, the RSO signaled the pilot to shut down the engines, and monitored fuel venting as the engines spooled down. During this series of events performed by the RSO, the pilot sat in the cockpit with his feet on the brakes. I was glad I was the pilot.
Walt did a masterful job of locating and disconnecting all the straps and hoses holding him in the airplane. While he carefully stowed secret materials in the backseat, I noticed the crowd standing a few hundred feet away, had grown in size. The same look of wonder I had seen at airshows appeared on their faces. Walt told me he was ready to climb out of the airplane, and I thought how this maneuver was going to dazzle the crowd. Sure enough, the people stared in wonder as a space man popped out of the backseat, slid down the curved fuselage, and walked around underneath the jet. Many had the distinct look of people witnessing an alien landing.
Once I had shut down the plane and extracted myself I noticed a blue staff car approaching. The base personnel helped us with our unusual requests. Security police were dispatched to guard the jet around the clock. We stored our classified materials in an appropriate facility. An airman was sent to Supply to pick up flight suits for us to wear. With instructions from us, base operations people helped us remove our space suits. Before we could even put on our new clothes, a Sergeant wanted to know when he could take his people in the weather facility out to the jet for a tour. The requests continued for two days. An entire maintenance team arrived from Beale to repair our plane. We were glad to see them arrive; their appearance was the first break we had from walking base officials around the jet. We enjoyed giving tours though, and were only sorry we had to show them a broken plane. This didn't seem to bother them at all.
Walt and I didn't know our takeoff time until maintenance gave us the word, but somehow everyone on base knew. They were there along the road, on the grass, and on the tops of buildings. I think half the people at the United terminal were watching too. The people at Peterson Field and Colorado Springs had treated us royally, and I knew they would enjoy seeing a flyby, but our standard departure procedure was simply taking off and climbing away quickly. Walt and I talked it over before suiting up. We thought it might be a good idea to check that darn oil system with a couple passes across the field, in case it went bad again. Heck, just to make sure, the smart thing would be lighting the afterburners while still at low altitude, and going to maximum thrust during a steep climb. With this plan, we'd know for sure the system was fixed.
On that beautiful afternoon in Colorado, so many people were thrilled with a simple oil system checkout pass.
On March 6, 1990, the SR-71 officially left the Air Force inventory with a final flight that would take the airplane to the National Air and Space Museum. Flying from Palmdale, California, to Washington D.C., the SR-71 left active duty with all the pride, performance, and dignity that marked every aspect of its 25 years of service. The SR-71 was retired with all of its speed and altitude records still unchallenged. En route to the museum, the jet set four new continental speed records. Total flight time from Los Angeles to Washington D.C. was 64 minutes. On its final day the Sled had averaged 2145 miles per hour.
RIP great plane Although NASA did(does?) have sr-71s still
Next up is random stories from Skunk Works from guys who contributed. They should be formatted nicely.
(pic related, what did LBJ actually call the fuckin thing in his speech?)
w-what
Other Voices Colonel Jim Wadkins (Pilot) I had 600 hours piloting Blackbird, and my last flight was just as big a thrill as my first. At 85,000 feet and Mach 3, it was almost a religious experience. My first flight out of Beale in ’67, I took off late on a winter afternoon, heading east where it was already dark, and it was one of the most amazing and frightening moments going from daylight into a dark curtain of night that seemed to be hung across half of the continent. There was nothing in between—you streaked from bright day and flew into utter black, like being swallowed up into an abyss. My God, even now, I get goosebumps remembering. We flew to the east coast then turned around and headed back to California and saw the sun rising in the west as we reentered daylight. We were actually outspeeding the earth’s rotation!
Nothing had prepared me to fly that fast. A typical training flight, we’d take off from Beale, then head east. I’d look out and see the Great Salt Lake—hell of a landmark. Then look back in the cockpit to be sure everything was okay. Then look out again and the Great Salt Lake had vanished. In its place, the Rockies. Then you scribbled on your flight plan and looked out again—this time at the Mississippi River. You were gobbling up huge hunks of geography by the minute. Hell, you’re flying three thousand feet a second! We flew coast to coast and border to border in three hours fifty-nine minutes with two air-to-air refuelings. One day I heard another SR-71 pilot calling Albuquerque Center. I recognized his voice and knew he was flying lower than me but in the vicinity, so I called and said, “Tony, dump some fuel so I can see you.” In only a couple of blinks of an eye, fuel streaked by underneath my airplane. He was like one hundred and fifty miles ahead of me.
One day our automatic navigation system failed. Ordinarily that’s an automatic abort situation, but I decided to try to fly without the automatic navigation. I advised the FAA I was going to try this and to monitor us and let us know where we were if we got lost. I quickly learned that if we started a turn one second late, we were already off course, and if my bank angle wasn’t exact, I was off by a long shot. I started a turn just below L.A. and wound up over Mexico! I realized right then that we couldn’t navigate by the seat of our pants. Not at those incredible speeds.
I remember when a new pilot flying the SR-71 for the first time out of Beale began shouting “Mayday, Mayday” over Salt Lake City. “My nose is coming off!” My God, we all panicked and cranked out all the emergency vehicles. The guy aborted, staggered back to Beale. All that really happened was that the airplane’s nose wrinkled from the heat. The skin always did that. The crew smoothed it out using a blowtorch. It was just like ironing a shirt.
Elijah Williams
My favorite route was to refuel over the Pacific right after takeoff, then come in over Northern California going supersonic, flying just north of Grand Forks, North Dakota, then turn to avoid Chicago, swing over Georgia, then coast out over the Atlantic, then refuel over Florida, west of Miami, then head straight back to Beale. Total elapsed time: three hours twenty-two minutes. Take off at nine or ten in the morning and land before two in the afternoon, in time to play tennis before cocktail hour.
As time went on we were being routed over least-populated areas because of growing complaints about sonic booms. One of them came straight from Nixon. One of our airplanes boomed him while he was reading on the patio of his estate at San Clemente. He got on the horn to the chief of staff and said, “Goddam it, you’re disturbing people.” One little community named Susanville, in California, sat right in a valley and was in the path of our return route to Beale. The sonic boom would echo off the hills and crack windows and plaster. We had the townspeople in, showed them the airplane, appealed to their patriotism, and told them the boom was “the sound of freedom.” They lapped it up.
the brice of freedum :DDD
Jordan Hill
Other Voices Keith Beswick
I began working for the Skunk Works in flight-test operations on the U-2 out at Edwards Air Force Base in October 1958. By the 1960s I was put in charge of flight testing for the Blackbirds. We were working on the cutting edge, forced to improvise a dozen times a day. We would rig up some of the damndest tests ever seen. I remember when Ben Rich and his cohorts decided to test their cockpit air-conditioning system, they put one of our test pilots inside a broiler big enough to roast an ox medium rare, to see if their cooling system really worked well enough. The guy sat inside a cylinder cooled to 75 degrees by Ben’s air-conditioning system while the outer skin of the cylinder cooked to about 600 degrees. I asked Ben, “What would you do if the system failed?” He laughed. “Get out of town in a hurry.”
During the test phase of the Blackbird, we pumped air pressure into the fuel tanks up to one and a half times greater than the design limits. We did this late at night, inside Building 82, when there were very few people around, because if you’re pumping up that much titanium and if there should be a major failure and the thing blows—that’s an awful lot of energy bursting like a balloon. It would blow out windows in downtown Burbank, so we filled the fuselage with several million Ping-Pong balls to dampen any explosive impact and hid behind a thick steel shield with a heavy glass window, watching the airplane getting all this high-pressure air pumped into its tanks. We were pumping up to twelve inches of mercury and got to about ten when suddenly, Kaboom! The drag chute compartment in the rear blew out. Henry Combs, our structural engineer, took a look at the damage and went back to the drawing board and made the fixes. A few nights later we were back behind the protective shield in Building 82. This time we got up to ten and a half inches of mercury when the drag chute forward bulkhead ruptured with a loud bang. Henry took notes and went back to the drawing board. Three nights later we were all back for more testing. The pumping began and we heard the airplane crickling and crackling as the pressure mounted. It was really tense behind that shield as the mercury rose. We got up to eleven and a half inches of mercury and heard the airplane go crick, crack, crick. And Henry shouted, “Okay, stop. That’s close enough.”
In January 1962 we were ready to cart the Blackbird out to the test site. The airplane was disassembled into large pieces and would be trucked out in a heavily guarded wideload trailer, 105 feet long and 35 feet wide. Dorsey Kammerer, head of the flight-test shop at that time, came up with the idea of driving the entire route ahead of time using a pickup truck with two bamboo poles up on top. One pole was as wide as the load would be going along the edge of the series of freeways and underpasses. The second pole was exactly as high as the load. They drove the entire route, and any traffic or speed signs that hit against the pole, they pulled over and used a hacksaw to cut the sign off. Then they fit the pieces back with a brace and bolt and marked the sign. On the day we moved the airplane under wraps the lead security car stopped at all the marked signs, undid the bolts to take down the sign while the truck passed, then the rear security car bolted the signs back in place and the convoy moved on. But not even that kind of efficiency could overcome the unexpected disaster. Midway into the trip, a Greyhound bus passed us too closely and was scraped. Our security guys flagged him over, haggled for a while with the driver, and paid him $3,500 cash in damages right on the spot—to keep any official insurance or accident report from being filed involving the most top secret truck caravan in America. see: roadrunnersinternationale.com/transporting_the_a-12.html
We were scheduled to fly the airplane for the first time only thirteen days after we got it out to the test site. The J-58 engines weren’t ready, however, but Kelly didn’t want to wait, so in typical Skunk Works fashion, we reengineered the insides of the engine mounts to put in lesser-powered J-75s. The fuel, JP-7, has a kerosene base and such an extremely high flash point that the only way to ignite it was by using a chemical additive called tetraethyl borane, injected during the start procedure.
Leo Perez
The first time we tried to test the engines, nothing happened. They wouldn’t start. So we rigged up two big 425-cubic-inch Buick Wildcat race car engines, an estimated 500 horse-power each, to turn the massive starter shafts and those suckers did the trick. The hangar sounded like the damned stock car races, but starting those huge engines was tough. The engine oil, formulated for high temperatures, was practically a solid at temperatures below 86 degrees. Before each flight, the oil had to be heated and it took an hour to heat it 10 degrees. But once those engines roared to life, it was a sight to behold. Twenty seconds into takeoff, the Blackbird achieved 200 mph in forward speed.
Every time I saw that Blackbird on a runway I got goosebumps. It was the epitome of grace and power, the most beautiful flying machine I’ve ever seen. I was up in the control tower for the April 25th high-speed taxi test. Our test pilot, Lou Schalk, headed down the runway and over-rotated the engines slightly so that the airplane became airborne for a few seconds, wobbling back and forth. I thought Lou would stay airborne and circle around and land, but instead he put it back down right then and there in a big cloud of dust on the lake bed. For a moment, my heart stopped. I couldn’t tell whether or not he crashed. And it seemed an eternity before the nose of the airplane appeared out of a cloud of dust and dirt, and I heard Kelly’s angry voice over the radio, “What in hell, Lou?”
Brayden Diaz
Other Voices Norman Nelson
I was the CIA’s engineer inside the Skunk Works, the only government guy there, and Kelly gave me the run of the place. Kelly ran the Skunk Works as if it was his own aircraft company. He took no crap and did things his own way. None of this pyramid bullshit. He built up the best engineering organization in the world. Kelly’s rule was never put an engineer more than fifty feet from the assembly area. But the payoff came watching that Blackbird take off on sixty-four thousand pounds of thrust blasting out from those two giant engines. We all knew it was the greatest airplane ever built and it carried the world’s greatest cameras. From ninety thousand feet—sixteen miles up—you could clearly see the stripes on a parking lot. Baby, that’s resolution! The main camera was five feet high. The strip camera was continuous, and the framing camera took one picture at a time. Both took perfect pictures while zipping past at Mach 3. An unbelievable technical achievement. The window shielding the cameras was double quartz and one of the hardest problems confronting us. We also had awful reflection problems and heat problems, you name it.
Because of the tremendous speed and sonic boom, we were very limited to where we could overfly the United States during training missions. We had to pick the least-populated routes. After President Johnson’s public announcement about the airplane in the fall of 1964, Kelly began receiving all kinds of complaints and threats of lawsuits from communities claiming the Blackbird had shattered windows for miles around. A few times we announced a bogus flight plan and then sat back and watched the phony complaints pour in. But some complaints were for real. One of the guys boomed Kelly’s ranch in Santa Barbara as a joke that backfired because he knocked out Kelly’s picture window. Another of our pilots got in engine trouble over Utah and flamed out. The Blackbird had as much gliding capacity as a manhole cover, and it came barreling in over Salt Lake, just as our pilot got a restart and hit those afterburners right above the Mormon Tabernacle. There was hell to pay.
We had to clear FAA controllers along the flight paths, otherwise they’d think they were seeing flying saucers at Mach 3 plus on their radar screens. In the amount of time it took to sneeze, a pilot flew the length of ten football fields.
We couldn’t overfly dams, bridges, Indian ruins, or big cities. We had to clear and train the tanker crews of the KC-135s that carried our special fuel. Air-to-air refuelings were very tricky because the tanker had to go as fast as it could while the Blackbird was throttled way back, practically stalling out while it filled its tanks. During a typical three-to-five-hour training exercise, our pilot might witness two or three sunrises, depending on the time of day.
Tyler Allen
Another weird thing was that after a flight the windshields often were pitted with tiny black dots, like burn specks. We couldn’t figure out what in hell it was. We had the specks lab tested, and they turned out to be organic material—insects that had been injected into the stratosphere and were circling in orbit around the earth with dust and debris at seventy-five thousand feet in the jet stream. How in hell did they get lifted up there? We finally figured it out: they were hoisted aloft from the atomic test explosions in Russia and China.
That airplane pushed all of us to our limits in dealing with it. A pilot had to have tremendous self-confidence just to set foot inside the cockpit knowing he was about to fly two and a half times faster than he ever had before. I know that Kelly was determined to spread the Blackbird technology onto the blue-suiters and make the whole damned Air Force sit up and pay attention to what he had produced. But I never gave him much chance to sell a lot of these airplanes because they were so far ahead of anything else flying that few commanders would feel comfortable leading a Blackbird wing or squadron. I mean this was a twenty-first-century performer delivered in the early 1960s. No one in the Pentagon would know what to do with it. That made it a damned tough sell even for Kelly.
Owen Walker
Major Butch Sheffield (Air Force RSO)
Just before I deployed to Kadena in the fall of ’69, we were tasked to fly up to the Arctic Circle and check on some suspicious activity on a tiny Russian island. I was then stationed at Beale, living at home with my wife. We took off after breakfast, refueled over Alaska, headed north for fifteen hundred miles. It was scary being over the most forbidding area of the world. If you had to eject, you were finished. Anyway, we reached this island, turned on the recorders and the cameras, then turned around, hit another tanker, and flew back into Beale. I was home in time for dinner and my wife never knew where I’d been that day. She assumed it was just another day at the office. At dinner, I almost burst out laughing thinking of her reaction if she had known I’d spent the day flying up and back to the Arctic Circle!
I had another very odd mission, like that one, in the early 1970s, while stationed at Kadena. We were tasked to fly against the very formidable and new Soviet SA-5 missile site that had been constructed at Vladivostok, their big naval base in the Sea of Japan, at a time when the Russians were conducting a huge naval exercise right off the coast. We were to fly to this dangerous site late Sunday night, hoping that we would find their most junior officers on duty, who would snap at the bait and turn on their radar and we could measure the frequency, the pulse repetition intervals, and a lot of other vital technical details that could be used to develop counter-electronics against this monster. A more experienced officer might figure out what we were really up to and stay dark.
After turning, we headed toward Japan. During that big turn, the oil pressure on the left engine began falling and rapidly dropped to zero. We stayed on a southern heading but shut down that engine and flew on one engine against awful head-winds at fifteen thousand feet as we approached the North Korean coastline. We were just struggling to maintain altitude and didn’t realize it until later that the North Koreans had scrambled fighters against us, and that the South Koreans had scrambled their fighters to get between us and the North Koreans and defend us. We had no choice but to put in to a South Korean air base at Taegu. I called the field, but they refused permission to land. Field closed, they said. I said, “I’ve got to land. Turn on your lights.” We came in and just sat there, surrounded by dozens of people in black pajamas with machine guns. My pilot said to me, “Butch, you sure we landed in South Korea?”
On November 22, 1969, I flew my first North Korea mission. I was uptight because North Korea was very heavily defended, and on this particular mission we went to every known SAM site in North Korea, all twenty-one of them, and we crisscrossed them, made a big 180-degree turn that took us right across the Chinese border, then came back right down the center of North Korea, then made another 180-degree turn across the demilitarized zone. We crossed North Korea eight to ten times on that mission, covered the entire country. As we finished up and were turning to go home, a right-generator fail light came on. I tried to reset it, but it was no go, so we ended up making an emergency landing in the south and caused a big stir and fuss.
Landon Price
In ’71, we were tasked to fly three Blackbirds over North Vietnam, which was highly unusual. All other missions used only one airplane at a time. We took off first, refueled over Thailand, and headed north, with the other two planes following. The plan was for us to crisscross over Hanoi in thirty-second intervals at 78, 76, and 74 thousand feet respectively, at a certain point, which we later learned was over the Hanoi Hilton, the infamous POW prison, and deliver sonic booms, one after another. Later on, the vice commander of our squadron hinted that the purpose of the mission was to send a signal to the POWs, a fact I’ve never been able to confirm. Many years later, I talked to POWs who were in that prison at the time and they heard the sonic booms thirty seconds apart but insisted that they didn’t know what in hell it meant.
Last one's up next so you can stop putting up with my """autism"""
Jordan Hughes
Lt. Colonel William Burk Jr. (Air Force pilot)
In the fall of ’82, I flew from Mildenhall on a mission over Lebanon in response to the Marine barracks bombing. President Reagan ordered photo coverage of all the terrorist bases in the region. The French refused to allow us to overfly, so our mission profile was to refuel off the south coast of England, a Mach 3 cruise leg down the coast of Portugal and Spain, left turn through the Straits of Gibraltar, refuel in the western Mediterranean, pull a supersonic leg along the coast of Greece and Turkey, right turn into Lebanon and fly right down main street Beirut, exit along the southern Mediterranean with another refueling over Malta, supersonic back out the straits, and return to England.
Because Syria had a Soviet SA-5 missile system just west of Damascus that we would be penetrating (we were unsure of Syria’s intentions in this conflict), we programmed to fly above eighty thousand feet and at Mach 3 plus to be on the safe side, knowing that this advanced missile had the range and speed to nail us. And as we entered Lebanon’s airspace my Recon Systems Officer in the rear cockpit informed me that our defensive systems display showed we were being tracked by that SA-5. About fifteen seconds later we got a warning of active guidance signals from the SA-5 site. We couldn’t tell whether there was an actual launch or the missile was still on the rails, but they were actively tracking us. We didn’t waste any time wondering, but climbed and pushed that throttle, and said a couple of “Hail Kellys.”
We completed our pass over Beirut and turned toward Malta, when I got a warning low-oil-pressure light on my right engine. Even though the engine was running fine I slowed down and lowered our altitude and made a direct line for England. We decided to cross France without clearance instead of going the roundabout way. We made it almost across, when I looked out the left window and saw a French Mirage III sitting ten feet off my left wing. He came up on our frequency and asked us for our Diplomatic Clearance Number. I had no idea what he was talking about, so I told him to stand by. I asked my backseater, who said, “Don’t worry about it. I just gave it to him.” What he had given him was “the bird” with his middle finger. I lit the afterburners and left that Mirage standing still. Two minutes later, we were crossing the Channel.
fug france and fug the wc
OK hope you all enjoyed it all when you finally read all them words.
>flipped a frog pilot off and then made him eat jetwash apex kek
Jaxon Sanders
Have another short one from Sled Driver.
Our route took us far north. During our first aerial refueling, two Norwegian F-16 fighters joined on our wing as we slowed to rendezvous with our tanker. They provided a friendly escort and seemed to enjoy having our aircraft become part of their formation. This kind of meeting was unplanned and rarely occurred. I knew they couldn't stay long, as our course was taking them further away from their base. Soon they would have their own low fuel status to contend with. Nevertheless, like teenagers in hot rods, these young Allied pilots seemed interested in a bit of a drag race. As I came off the tanker and cleared to the right, the fighters positioned themselves abeam me, waved, and lit their afterburners. I gave them a head start. The F-16 is a nice little jet and we enjoyed their visit. We left them in the dust.
grandfather did work with skonk works. Loved the dump user
Landon Martin
Gonna give this one last bump then I'm done here.
Asher Reed
OP, great thread. Quick question for anons. How does it travel so fast and not burn up? I know the hull is made of titanium. I also recall some special coating for anti-radar? Takes some serious skills to fly one.
Bentley Moore
The way they were constructed allows the metal to expand naturally when it hits high speeds.
Thomas Ward
The outside of it was extremely hot. Along with Ti's properties, there was cooling involved and also the huge panel gaps and expansion joints.
“As a former SR-71 pilot, and a professional keynote speaker, the question I’m most often asked is ‘How fast would that SR-71 fly?’ I can be assured of hearing that question several times at any event I attend. It’s an interesting question, given the aircraft’s proclivity for speed, but there really isn’t one number to give, as the jet would always give you a little more speed if you wanted it to. It was common to see 35 miles a minute.
Because we flew a programmed Mach number on most missions, and never wanted to harm the plane in any way, we never let it run out to any limits of temperature or speed.. Thus, each SR-71 pilot had his own individual ‘high’ speed that he saw at some point on some mission. I saw mine over Libya when Khadafy fired two missiles my way, and max power was in order. Let’s just say that the plane truly loved speed and effortlessly took us to Mach numbers we hadn’t previously seen.
So it was with great surprise, when at the end of one of my presentations, someone asked, ‘What was the slowest you ever flew the Blackbird?’ This was a first. After giving it some thought, I was reminded of a story that I had never shared before, and I relayed the following.
I was flying the SR-71 out of RAF Mildenhall, England, with my back-seater, Walt Watson; we were returning from a mission over Europe and the Iron Curtain when we received a radio transmission from home base. As we scooted across Denmark in three minutes, we learned that a small RAF base in the English countryside had requested an SR-71 fly-past. The air cadet commander there was a former Blackbird pilot, and thought it would be a motivating moment for the young lads to see the mighty SR-71 perform a low approach. No problem, we were happy to do it. After a quick aerial refuelling over the North Sea, we proceeded to find the small airfield.
Luis Wright
2/4 now, sorry
Walter had a myriad of sophisticated navigation equipment in the back seat, and began to vector me toward the field. Descending to subsonic speeds, we found ourselves over a densely wooded area in a slight haze. Like most former WWII British airfields, the one we were looking for had a small tower and little surrounding infrastructure. Walter told me we were close and that I should be able to see the field, but I saw nothing. Nothing but trees as far as I could see in the haze. We got a little lower, and I pulled the throttles back from 325 knots we were at. With the gear up, anything under 275 was just uncomfortable. Walt said we were practically over the field-yet; there was nothing in my windscreen. I banked the jet and started a gentle circling maneuver in hopes of picking up anything that looked like a field. Meanwhile, below, the cadet commander had taken the cadets up on the catwalk of the tower in order to get a prime view of the fly-past. It was a quiet, still day with no wind and partial gray overcast. Walter continued to give me indications that the field should be below us but in the overcast and haze, I couldn’t see it. The longer we continued to peer out the window and circle, the slower we got. With our power back, the awaiting cadets heard nothing. I must have had good instructors in my flying career, as something told me I better cross-check the gauges. As I noticed the airspeed indicator slide below 160 knots, my heart stopped and my adrenalin-filled left hand pushed two throttles full forward. At this point we weren’t really flying, but were falling in a slight bank.
Colton Parker
3/4
Just at the moment that both afterburners lit with a thunderous roar of flame (and what a joyous feeling that was) the aircraft fell into full view of the shocked observers on the tower. Shattering the still quiet of that morning, they now had 107 feet of fire-breathing titanium in their face as the plane levelled and accelerated, in full burner, on the tower side of the infield, closer than expected, maintaining what could only be described as some sort of ultimate knife-edge pass.
Quickly reaching the field boundary, we proceeded back to Mildenhall without incident. We didn’t say a word for those next 14 minutes. After landing, our commander greeted us, and we were both certain he was reaching for our wings. Instead, he heartily shook our hands and said the commander had told him it was the greatest SR-71 fly-past he had ever seen, especially how we had surprised them with such a precise maneuver that could only be described as breathtaking. He said that some of the cadet’s hats were blown off and the sight of the plan form of the plane in full afterburner dropping right in front of them was unbelievable. Walt and I both understood the concept of ‘breathtaking’ very well that morning and sheepishly replied that they were just excited to see our low approach.
As we retired to the equipment room to change from space suits to flight suits, we just sat there-we hadn’t spoken a word since ‘the pass.’ Finally, Walter looked at me and said, ‘One hundred fifty-six knots. What did you see?’ Trying to find my voice, I stammered, ‘One hundred fifty-two.’ We sat in silence for a moment. Then Walt said, ‘Don’t ever do that to me again!’ And I never did.
Nathan Miller
4/4
A year later, Walter and I were having lunch in the Mildenhall Officer’s club, and overheard an officer talking to some cadets about an SR-71 fly-past that he had seen one day. Of course, by now the story included kids falling off the tower and screaming as the heat of the jet singed their eyebrows. Noticing our HABU patches, as we stood there with lunch trays in our hands, he asked us to verify to the cadets that such a thing had occurred. Walt just shook his head and said, ‘It was probably just a routine low approach; they’re pretty impressive in that plane.’
Impressive indeed.”
This story gets my dick hard just imagining a blackbird dropping out of the fog and throwing the afterburners on that close to me
Justin White
bump
Christopher Bailey
Goes by fast, doesn't it.
Kevin Hughes
is that a pun or something?
Thomas Hill
woooosh~~~~~~
Luis Russell
it's a great story but what you posted is heavily edited
Jeremiah Fisher
that's what is in the book, the longer version is probably from one of his lectures
Jonathan Mitchell
hmm, let me see if I can find it. the words that are there are all the same, I think, it's just been cut down. I believe the posts I read were from a print version not a lecture transcript but not sure. checking archive…
Benjamin Hill
yeah i could have found the longer version, but i was just copying stuff from the book verbatim. unless there are multiple versions of sled driver out there i'm pretty sure it's at least an amalgam of lecture stories that someone wrote up
Jacob Torres
Thanks OP, at work atm, but sure will enjoy reading it when coming home.
Andrew Gutierrez
my source is pasta from /n/ but the poster claimed it was indeed sourced form Sled Driver, so I dunno.
But anyway, the details in the longer version make it funnier IMO. I found a thread and a screencap but the cap appears to be from a thread not found, so maybe from Jow Forums or there's holes in the /n/archive or something.
Could be primped up, he made the mistake of having Aspen say one thousand seven hundred instead of one thousand eight
Brandon Thomas
>be shit hot mirage pilot >the best and brightest of your country and generation >Get scrambled to intercept a bogey >catch up to it, it's the fucking burgers >"Hey guys, you aren't on a plan, what's your clearance code?" >receive bird and 2nd degree burns from the chaddiest of aircrews I would have paid good money to see that guy mope from the hangar to the debriefing room
Juan Wood
My grandfather did 35 years with Lockheed in Atlanta as an aircraft engineer before retiring. He told me about when they had the SR71 there once.
Goddamn I miss his stories.
Charles Morgan
> Wedding ring is made from discarded Blackbird titanium
