Kelly Johnson named Robert J. “Bob” Gilliland chief test pilot when he began designing the advanced SR-71 Blackbird for the US Air Force Lockheed test pilot Robert J. “Bob” Gilliland…
‘Airspeed indicators were on one side, attitude indicators were on the other, altimeter gauges were in the middle, and we couldn’t even tell what time it was. It was a…
The US Air Force (USAF) retired its fleet of SR-71s on January 26, 1990, although the U-2 is still in use today Before Gary Power’s U-2 was shot down, development…
‘The NTSB lists Triethylborane [TEB] as the following most dangerous material, one step below fissionable nuclear material,’ Former SR-71 Blackbird pilot David Peters The amazing photo in this post, taken…
The XB-70 Valkyrie had an extremely large airframe; the YF-12 was not small, being 107 feet long. But if you compared the two, the Blackbird looked small The Mach 3…
‘Usually, the SR-71 Blackbird pilots weren’t a chatty bunch, but I could hear the anxiety in the voice of this one,’ Jody Liliedah, Airman The Vietnam War was still raging…
‘When we went on a combat mission, we carried a sealed letter in our pocket. We were told the letters and who signed them changed from time to time and…
Darkstar is one of several Lockheed Martin aircraft, satellites, and helicopters that do background work for popular movies In the most recent Top Gun: Maverick movie, Maverick flew a hypothetical…
When one of the unit’s administrative sergeants called the Soviet embassy in San Francisco, he proposed they offer him $100,000 in exchange for some important SR-71 documents What aviation geek…
Nobody ever shot down a Blackbird. Nonetheless, 12 of them crashed out of combat The SR-71 Blackbird acquired intelligence during its service in some of the most difficult environments on…