On December 22, 1964, Bob Gilliland performed the illustrious SR-71 maiden flight Robert J. “Bob” Gilliland passed away on Thursday, July 4, 2019, at the Rancho Mirage, California retirement facility…
In addition to receiving two Distinguished Flying Crosses and the Air Medal, Lieutenant Colonel Ben Bowles gained one of them for rescuing SR-71 #960 Lieutenant Colonel Ben Bowles, a former…
“I assumed the Soviet MiG-31 fighter pilot would like nothing better than an opportunity to fire his missiles at an SR-71 Blackbird. Certainly, the SR-71 Blackbird would be a prized…
“Suddenly the wife began sliding her wedding ring off and handed it to me. She said, ‘I would love to have my ring flown at Mach 3,’” Richard H. Graham,…
“We had no viable emergency airfields, and I did not want to be a no-notice, no–flight plan, single-engine emergency arrival at David Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, especially since the…
“I came away with one observation—the more recommendations an applicant had from general officers, the less likely were his chances of getting into the SR-71 program. Flying skills rather than…
“Everything seemed to unfold in slow motion. I learned later the time from event onset to catastrophic departure from controlled flight was only 2-3 sec. Still trying to communicate with…
“You haven’t been lost till you’ve been lost at Mach 3 because for every minute that you don’t know where you are, you’re 35 miles further away from where you…
“My call sign was ‘Belmont 86’ and my transmissions to approach control were something like this: ‘Bodø Approach, Belmont 86, six-zero miles west, declaring an in-flight emergency, request straight-in approach…
“The termination of the SR-71 Blackbird was a grave mistake and could place our nation at a serious disadvantage in the event of a future crisis,” Senator John Glenn The Lockheed…