And it's just cost me a nights sleep too! I'm only about 1/3rd into it, but what an absolutely fabulous read! Thanks for the heads up. Suspect there's a few chores that will get delayed until I finish it..... Cheers, Ian
Eventually got it finished. What an astonishing aircraft! And the crews that flew it. I can't help thinking such a thing couldn't/wouldn't happen today. According to the appendix, 50 were built & 19 were "lost"..... Probably not what's PC today. Thanks again for the pointer. Cheers, Ian
Why do you think that? Couldn't there be a 'secret' plane or ??? being worked on right now, that the public doesn't know about? Yes, an incredible aircraft. We have not made any real performance progress since.
RQ-180, LRS-B. We've made plenty of progress. F-22 supercruise/stealth, x-37b, sr-72/htv-2 Think about that stealth blackhawk that we had not heard about nor have we heard anything new about.
But anything so daring that nearly 40% were lost? Manned aircraft? I don't think we will see anything that pushes the limits quite that much anytime soon.
Having read the book, it was almost insanely ahead of its time. The guys flying it, & the crews supporting it wouldn't be funded today IMESHO. Sure, there's some very impressive stuff being done with drones these days, but 50+ years back the technology simply wasn't there. The mere idea that 'we'll build a plane that can outrun anything' would, I suspect, get you fired these days! Cheers, Ian
I went to two of the SR-71 Blackbird reunions in March AFB (I think they have them at many museums who have the planes). and talked to a few pilots, one is still young enough to be working as a lawyer in Orange County. One thing I can't remember is, of the ones that crashed, did one crash in Vietnam during the Vietnam war? Or am I getting it confused with a U2? I remember Bo Gritz led the team to recover the black box and/or whatever else was still secret. I did talk to a pilot who bailed out at 2000 mph but he said it wasn't so bad as the earth revolves at 1400 mph so he really only bailed out at 700 mph (did I get that right?) The drone they have at March displayed outside is like a mini-SR71. They stopped flying that when they released one and it pitched up and caused the SR71 that released it to crash. I would like to see it brought back as a Mach 3 drone now that we are heavy into drones. PS they used to allow you to sit in the one at Riverside and have your picture taken in it, but don't allow it now. I wish I would have...be fun to show people the pic and say "Did I ever tell ya I was a pilot." funny story: at the conference one short (5' or so) pilot said he was once at a party of AF veterans and they were going around the room and asking each guy what plane he used to fly and they said stuff like "F4 Phantom" etc. and when they came to him he said "Blackbird" and they all looked surprised and one tall handsome pilot said "No way--you're too short and too ugly to have flown a Blackbird."
Photos today from the FCA-SW Exotic Car Show. If you are interested in the SR-71, see my post regarding needing Gear Head Volunteers. You will get to see these baby's up real close. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
I know a black recon plane crashed and "Bo" Gritz led the team of green berets who had to find the plane and retrieve the black box or cameras or whatever, but I think it was most likely a U2. The best Vietnam story I heard from a SR71 pilot at one of the Blackbird days at march AFB (they have these show-and-tell events periodically at museums that have Blackbirds)was that three pilots agreed to fly over the same point in Hanoi at the same time, can't remember how far apart vertically. The combined sonic boom have broken every window for a 100 miles. ..wonder if they got disciplined for that later...
3:40 Amazing Tales of SR-71 Blackbird Plane Regular practice. Heads of States were "boomed" when they shook hands with US conflicts of interest, to remind them....
(I forget which pilot told me this but he also said because the earth rotates at 1400 mph, "it was really a bailout at only 600 mph" if I heard him right. I also talked to the pilot who aborted a take off and went through the cornfield at 700 mph plus. His back seater (early ones had two seats) ejected at ground level rather than go for the ride through the field, came down fine due to the ejection seat shooting him up to a sufficient height to deploy the chute.
Depends on your latitude. It decreases as you increase distance from the equater. At the poles, for instance, earth 'rotates' at effectively zero mph. And, it's not the ground speed, but the air speed that affects bailout speed. But it's a great quote.
SR-71 Blackbird spy plane reunited with it's crew 40 years after record-setting flight | Daily Mail Online That museum at Warner Robins is pretty nice, the rest of the area not so much
Same subject - slightly different commentary and video World's fastest jet crew reunites on SR-71 anniversary - CNN.com I had the privilege of talking to Bob Gililand (pilot of inaugural SR-71 flight) and Richard Graham (Det Commander and author) at Duxford a couple of years ago. It would appear that in test flights, a sustained max of Mach 3.4 was achieved vs the official record above of Mach 3.31. That would discount some of the wilder claims of M3.5+.
Most of those reports of mach 3.5+ were cases where they unintentionally went over that velocity on operational runs. Easy to forget the throttles when someone is trying to shoot you down with a SAM or intercept you with a Mig-25.
I wonder how bad all the inspections were when they went too fast / got too hot? Nowadays every damn parameter is stored and tattles to maintenance. For a period a few months ago they wouldn't allow you to log the takeoff and land times. Turns out there was an audit and some folks elsewhere in the USAF were padding the times to the extent it was having a real impact on isochronal inspections.
It had nothing to do with the rotation of the earth... The normal climb profile for the SR71 was 450 KEAS to Mach 2.6, then a reduction of 83 KEAS per Mach to Mach 3.2. You would hit M3.2 at FL740 on a standard day. Ejecting at FL850 would be the same as ejecting at 310 Knots at sea level. High Mach, but reasonable dynamic pressure. As for max Mach Number, the classified number was always 3.2, but the data goes to 3.5 in all of the engineering and flight test docs. Engine temp was the limiting factor.
