‘Within seconds, the F-14 Tomcat rotation rate shot up to 180deg/sec and g forces reached 7.8g eyeballs-out! My head was slammed against the instrument panel and my mask and eyes…
“I looked at our rapidly increasing airspeed as we neared the end of the runway, and Crush yanked back on the stick to launch us into a steep nose-high climb,”…
One of the most unique air-to-air kills in aviation history is ascribed to “Chiefs” from 335th Tactical Fighter Squadron (TFS, now known as 335th Fighter Squadron, FS) during Operation Desert…
‘At some point in the evening, the F-111 guys began to press me, in a good-natured way, for classified information about the SR-71. Probably the most frequently asked Blackbird question…
‘This one pilot had made the Yuma run in a TA-4J on Friday and was returning to Jacksonville on Sunday. Due to the time zone shift it’s likely that he…
Their placement was for the sophisticated ECM systems the SR-71 Blackbird got in the 1970s and 1980s but they are not dents The SR-71 Blackbird collected intelligence in some of…
‘Fearing what two engines departing the plane might do to my aerodynamics, to say nothing of what would happen if they hit the tail on the way by, I shouted…
‘I immediately selected AB, rolled the aircraft inverted, and pulled. All this while keeping the SA-2s on the beam. I was at 25,000 [feet] when I started for the deck…
“The SR-71 Blackbird knew when your eyes started to wander to the spectacle of earth from 85,000 feet; that’s when something would go wrong,” Curt Mason, owner of Project Habu…
‘When he later returned to the ship after his mission, he spent a long time cleaning his cockpit seat after he had abandoned his flight suit and showered, of course,’…