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“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 A-12 and YF-12A aircraft were used to create the long-range, cutting-edge strategic reconnaissance aircraft known as the SR-71, also known as the Blackbird. The first SR-71 to enter service was delivered to the 4200th (later 9th) Strategic Reconnaissance Wing at Beale Air Force Base, California, in January 1966. The SR-71’s first flight took place on December 22, 1964.

No SR-71 has ever been lost or damaged as a result of hostile action because of its remarkable speed, which allowed it to acquire intelligence while slicing through hostile skies in a matter of seconds. It could survey 100,000 square miles of the Earth’s surface per hour from an altitude of 80,000 feet.

The U.S. Air Force (USAF) retired its fleet of SR-71s on January 26, 1990, despite the aircraft’s remarkable flight characteristics, due to a decreasing defense budget, high operating costs, and the availability of advanced spy satellites.

“General Larry Welch, the Air Force chief of staff, staged a one-man campaign on Capitol  Hill to kill the program entirely,” Ben Rich wrote in his book Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed. “General Welch thought sophisticated spy satellites made the SR-71 a disposable luxury. Welch had headed the Strategic Air Command and was partial to its priorities. He wanted to use SR-71 refurbishment funding for the development of the B-2 bomber. He was quoted by columnist Rowland Evans as saying, ‘The Blackbird can’t fire a gun and doesn’t carry a bomb, and I don’t want it.’ Then the general went on the Hill and claimed to certain powerful committee chairmen that he could operate a wing of fifteen to twenty [F-15E] fighter-bombers for what it cost him to fly a single SR-71. That claim was bogus. So it was claimed by SAC generals that the SR-71 cost $400 million annually to run. The actual cost was about $260 million.”

The SR-71 was retired as a result of testimony before Congress from both Welch and SAC commander General John Chain.

As Rich so aptly reflected, “A general would always prefer commanding a large fleet of conventional fighters or bombers that provides high visibility and glory. By contrast, buying into Blackbird would mean deep secrecy, small numbers, and no limelight.”

With the exception of training flights, Blackbird operations were officially discontinued in November 1989 after being cut from the Defense Department’s FY1990 budget.

One Blackbird is famous for breaking several speed records during its “retirement flight” on March 6, 1990. The Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum (NASM) Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles Airport received the SR-71 with the tail number 64-17972 after it was flown from California. In the process, it achieved a coast-to-coast speed record for the National Aeronautic Association of 2,086 miles in one hour and seven minutes, or an average speed of 2,124.5 mph. With an average speed of 2,176.08 mph, it completed the 311-mile St. Louis-to-Cincinnati leg in under nine minutes.

Within a few months of this widely publicized flight, Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army had occupied Kuwait, and the United States was taking part in the Desert Shield buildup, which culminated in Operation Desert Storm in January and February 1991. This information is provided by Bill Yenne in his book Area 51 Black Jets. Many military commanders, including General Norman Schwarzkopf, lamented the lack of quick reconnaissance that the SR-71 might have provided during that combat.

The Middle East and North Korea are among the global spots, and growing worries about these scenarios prompted Congress to reevaluate the SR-71’s activation. Admiral Richard Macke, the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s director of joint staff, informed Congress in 1993 that “from the operator’s perspective, what I need is something that will not give me just a spot in time but will give me a track of what is happening. When we are trying to find out if the Serbs are taking arms, moving tanks, or artillery into Bosnia, we can get a picture of them stacked up on the Serbian side of the bridge. We do not know whether they then went on to move across that bridge. We need the [reconnaissance information] that a tactical, an SR-71, a U-2, or an unmanned vehicle of some sort will give us, in addition to, not in replacement of, the ability of the satellites to go around and check not only that spot but a lot of other spots around the world for us. It is the integration of strategic and tactical.”

Congress approved a resumption of money in its FY1994 appropriations to allow for the reactivation of a portion of the SR-71 fleet. Many of the twenty SR-71s that were still flying at the time were being prepared for museum exhibits, but at least a dozen were being stored at Palmdale or participating in NASA research missions.

Because the USAF moved too slowly toward reactivating the SR-71, President Bill Clinton vetoed the money in October 1997. Only two Blackbirds remained at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards AFB when the US Air Force ordered the aircraft permanently grounded in 1998.

The Linear Aerospike SR-71 Experiment (LASRE) series, carried out in 1997 and 1998, was one of the final NASA missions for the SR-71. The goal was to investigate how lifting bodies and aerospike engines performed in terms of aerodynamics. This was done using the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works X-33, a prototype for the VentureStar single-stage-to-orbit reusable spaceplane. After NASA ended the latter program in 2001, Lockheed Martin continued to work on it.

The last words that Americans heard when discussing the Blackbird’s fate are those that Senator John Glenn said on the Senate floor the day following the 1990 “retirement flight.”

Said the former astronaut, “The termination of the SR-71 was a grave mistake and could place our nation at a serious disadvantage in the event of a future crisis. Yesterday’s historic transcontinental flight was a sad memorial to our shortsighted policy in strategic aerial reconnaissance.”

Photo by Lockheed Martin, U.S. Air Force, and NASA

All was calm halfway over the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), but Graham suddenly observed a big object over North Korea that was astonishingly higher than his SR-71 Blackbird actually was

Performances from the SR-71 Blackbird were astounding.

The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird Mach 3 strategic reconnaissance aircraft maintained that title for the majority of its nearly 24-year service. It could survey 100,000 square miles of the Earth’s surface per hour from an altitude of 80,000 feet.

However, despite these distinctive qualities, the Blackbird was an extremely short-range aircraft; in fact, depending on the mission plan, the majority of sorties required at least one and occasionally as many as six aeuelings.

However, a reconnaissance mission that didn’t require aerial refueling was occasionally flown from Okinawa to gather intelligence on North Korea. Col. Richard H. Graham, a former Blackbird pilot, piloted one of these missions and detailed it in his book SR-71 The Complete Illustrated History of THE BLACKBIRD The World’s Highest, Fastest Plane: “From takeoff to landing the total mission time was fifty-seven minutes and we named it the ‘Rocket Ride.’ This mission was very demanding because everything happened so quickly: departure, acceleration and climb, cruise, and descent for landing. Mentally you had to stay well ahead of the plane on this mission compared to others.”

Graham says that the 160-mile-long and 2.5-mile-wide demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating North and South Korea is the most highly militarized region on earth. The purpose of the Rocket Ride missions was to keep an eye on military installations and tunnels that North Korea had developed on the north side of the DMZ over a long period of time in anticipation of future confrontations with South Korea.

Graham was the Reconnaissance System Officer on the first Rocket Ride with Don Emmons (RSO, the Blackbird backseater). According to Graham “Our mission was planned to fly down the middle of the DMZ, imaging directly under the SR-71 and North Korea about fifty-seven miles.” They flew directly from Okinawa north over the Korean Straits into the Sea of Japan, past the DMZ from northeast to southwest, out into the Yellow Sea, and back to Okinawa.

The SR-71’s takeoff roll was longer than typical because it was loaded with 65,000 pounds of fuel. They conducted a 400-knot rising left turn to the north after liftoff while still in AB and fled Okinawa. They reached 33,000 feet in four to five minutes, where they started accelerating and climbing at supersonic speeds.

They immediately reached Mach 3.0 and leveled off at about 73,000 feet. From Okinawa’s brake release to Mach 3.0 and 73,000 feet, the total time was slightly under seventeen minutes.

Graham concentrated on the Blackbird’s performance when they crossed the DMZ, and Emmons was busy keeping an eye on the sensor systems. As North Korean surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites were looking for or monitoring them, he also maintained a close check on the radar warning equipment informing him of this. Over the DMZ, we spent around seven minutes in total.

All was quiet around halfway through the DMZ when Graham abruptly observed a big object over North Korea that was astonishingly higher than they actually were. As Graham recalls “whatever it was, we were closing on it fast! I barely had time to tell Don when it rapidly passed directly over and behind us. It turned out to be a high-altitude weather balloon that could have been launched from USSR, China, North Korea, or South Korea. Don and I agreed later this was probably coincidental, rather than a nefarious plot of some sort.”

As soon as the SR-71 left the DMZ and entered international airspace, its onboard sensors began recording electronic signal intelligence. If China’s military radar network had detected the SR-71 and responded, the recorders would have gathered a wealth of information about Chinese capabilities to respond to the Blackbird’s presence. Instead, shortly after leaving the DMZ, Graham and Emmons heard a very peculiar HF radio call. The RSO decrypted the message, which instructed them to confirm the correctness of their navigation system. They continued on course after confirming their navigation system, started a left-hand descent, and landed at Kadena Air Base in less than an hour.

As Graham explains “we found out later that the other assets didn’t know our programmed flight path and when they were aware the SR-71 was heading directly for China it raised a red flag. The sheer excitement of this Rocket Ride made us look forward to future ones!”

Photo by Lockheed Martin, Ken Hackman, and Brian Shul / U.S. Air Force

“… The cadets now had 107 feet of fire-breathing titanium in their faces as the SR-71 leveled 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…”

The stunning cover photo of this article shows the well-known image of an SR-71 Blackbird making a very low flyover. Brian Shul explains the intriguing backstory behind this incident in his book Sled Driver.

“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 refueling over the North Sea, we proceeded to find the small airfield.”

“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 the 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 into a slight bank. Just at the moment that both afterburners were 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 leveled 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 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.”

“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.'”

Top image: courtesy of Robin Harbour

Photo by U.S. Air Force

The plane was given the nickname “Blackbird” after being painted all black.

Before Gary Powers’ U-2 was shot down, work on a ground-breaking espionage plane had already started at Lockheed’s advanced development unit in Burbank by the storied Skunk Works. This ground-breaking aircraft had to fly farther and faster than any other aircraft before or since, while also having a smaller radar cross-section (RCS).

The strategic advantages of the U-2’s aerial reconnaissance during these stressful Cold War times were highly prized by President Eisenhower. Then Lockheed’s customer in Washington asked them to construct an airplane that cannot be shot down and to do it quickly.

According to the explanation provided in the article Creating The Blackbird which was published on the Lockheed Martin website, Kelly Johnson, one of the greatest aircraft designers of the 20th century, and his Skunk Works team had a history of producing “impossible” technologies on incredibly short, strategically crucial deadlines.

Johnson, though, insisted that this new aircraft belonged in a different class than anything that had come before. “Everything had to be invented. Everything,” he said. He vowed that Skunk Works would complete its most difficult task to date—getting the cutting-edge, difficult, boundary-pushing aircraft into flight in under twenty months.

The new aircraft was designed to fly at more than 2,000 mph and was required to maintain a record-breaking speed for hours at a time, even though other aircraft of the time could do something similar but only in brief bursts powered by afterburners. Friction with the atmosphere at such a speed produces temperatures that would melt a traditional airframe.

Dealing with the heat posed a number of problems that seemed intractable in terms of material selection and design, with expected temperatures on the aircraft’s leading edges surpassing 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Using titanium alloy, which offered the strength of stainless steel, a relatively low weight, and resistance to extreme temperatures, was the only way to solve these issues.

However, it turned out that titanium was a very delicate material from which to construct an airplane. A lot of anger on the Skunk Works assembly line and new training sessions for Lockheed’s machinists resulted from the brittle alloy’s tendency to shatter when mishandled.

Furthermore, the temperature outside the cockpit window would be -60 degrees Fahrenheit, despite the fact that friction would cause great heat to be produced at the aircraft’s leading edges. Ben Rich of Skunk Works spent countless hours trying to figure out how heat could be dispersed across the entire aircraft. Then he remembered a straightforward lesson from one of his college courses: Heat is produced and absorbed by black paint. The plane was given the nickname “Blackbird” after being painted all black.

The first flight of the original Blackbird, known as the A-12, occurred on April 30, 1962. The SR-71, which had more fuel capacity than the A-12 and a second seat for a reconnaissance systems officer, quickly replaced the smaller, single-seat A-12. The SR-71 made its debut on December 22, 1964.

The possibility that the Blackbird would be detected and shot down decreased even further as the size of the radar image was shrunk. Despite the positive initial test results, the U.S. government requested an even lower radar profile because of concerns about Soviet radar advancements.

In order to prevent radar signals from bouncing off surfaces, the engines had to be shifted to a more covert mid-wing location, and a radar-absorbing component had to be incorporated into the paint. The Blackbird’s full-scale replica was then raised on a pylon for radar testing at a hidden Skunk Works facility in the Nevada desert. The tests were carefully timed to avoid being observed by Soviet satellites, and the outcomes were impressive: On Soviet radar, the more than 100-foot-long Blackbird model would be seen as larger than a bird but smaller than a person. The team had achieved a 90% reduction in radar cross-section.

When Air Force Major Rudolph Anderson was killed while flying a U-2 reconnaissance mission over Cuba on October 27, 1962, during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, there was increased pressure to put the Blackbird into service.

In response, Skunk Works persevered through the numerous issues that sprang up as flight testing pushed the envelope. They did so carefully and creatively. The Blackbird broke records almost every time it flew and on July 20, 1963, at an incredible height of 78,000 feet, it sustained a speed exceeding Mach 3. The difficulties persisted: in order to navigate while zipping through the air at 3,000 feet per second, the rules of navigation had to be revised. Highways, rivers, and urban areas as visual references for traditional flying were replaced with mountain ranges, coasts, and vast bodies of water.

The Blackbird’s piloting was a punishing job that required complete focus. “At 85,000 feet and Mach 3, it was almost a religious experience,” said Air Force Colonel Jim Wadkins. “Nothing had prepared me to fly that fast… My God, even now, I get goosebumps remembering. ”

Even the finest air defense systems were hopeless against the Blackbird at that speed and altitude. The control panel’s warning light turned red when anti-aircraft weapons were fired. But because surface-to-air missiles frequently miss wildly and explode miles away from their intended target, that would typically be the last the pilot would see of the attempted strike.

Photo by Jim Ross / NASA, U.S. Air Force, Lockheed Martin

The Lockheed SR-71A Blackbird, USAF serial number 61-7972, set four National Aeronautic Association and three Fédération Aéronautique Internationale speed records on its final flight on March 6, 1990

The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird Mach 3 strategic reconnaissance aircraft maintained its position as the world’s fastest and highest-flying operational aircraft for approximately 24 years. It could survey 100,000 square miles of the Earth’s surface per hour from an altitude of 80,000 feet.

It is therefore not surprising that the aircraft has consistently broken records for both speed and altitude due to its astounding flight qualities.

The Lockheed SR-71A Blackbird, USAF serial number 61-7972, flew from Air Force Plant 42 (PMD) in Palmdale, California to Washington Dulles International Airport where it was handed over to the Smithsonian Institution National Air and Space Museum on March 6, 1990, setting four National Aeronautic Association and three Fédération Aéronautique Internationale speed records, according to This Day in Aviation.

The missions began with the SR-71 being launched from Air Force Plant 42 (PMD) in Palmdale by Lieutenant Colonels Raymond E. (“Ed”) Yeilding and Joseph T. (“J.T.”) Vida. Before starting their speed run, the Blackbird refueled from a Boeing KC-135Q Stratotanker so that its fuel tanks would be full.

The plane flew past Oxnard on the southern California coast as it approached the so-called “west gate,” a radar reference point, and then turned east to Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD) in Washington, D.C.

The transcontinental flight took 1 hour, 7 minutes, 53.69 seconds, or an average speed of 2,124.51 miles per hour, to cover the distance of 2,404.05 statute miles (3,868.94 kilometers) (3,419.07 kilometers per hour).

The following intermediate closed-course records were also set: Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., 2,299.67 miles (3,700.96 kilometers), 1:04:19.89, averaging 2,144.83 m.p.h (3,451.77 km/h); Kansas City to Washington, D.C., 942.08 miles (1,516.13 kilometers), 25:58.53, 2,176.08 m.p.h (3,502.06 km/h); and St. Louis to Cincinnati, 311.44 miles (501.21 km), 8:31.97, 2,189.94 m.p.h. (3,524.37 km/h).

The SR-71 61-7972 did not only set these records, though. According to This Day In Aviation, this Blackbird had already set a record for the fastest time between New York and London (1:54:56.4), averaging 1,806.957 m.p.h. (2,908.015 km/h). But it had to slow down to refuel in flight. The airplane then broke a record by traveling 5,446.87 miles (8765.89 kilometers) from London to Los Angeles in 3 hours, 47 minutes, and 39 seconds, while averaging 1,435.49 m.p.h. (2,310.19 km/h). It also set an 85,069-foot altitude record (25,929 meters).

This was 61-7972’s last flight. 2,801.1 hours were spent on its airframe in total. The Smithsonian Institution National Air and Space Museum’s Steven V. Udvar-Hazy Center currently has this Blackbird on exhibit.

As we’ve already mentioned, the Lockheed A-12 and YF-12A aircraft served as the basis for the long-range, sophisticated, strategic reconnaissance aircraft known as the SR-71 Blackbird. The first SR-71 to enter service was delivered to the 4200th (later 9th) Strategic Reconnaissance Wing at Beale Air Force Base (AFB), California, in January 1966. The SR-71’s first flight took place on December 22, 1964. On January 26, 1990, the U.S. Air Force deactivated its fleet of SR-71 aircraft due to a shrinking defense budget and high operating expenses.

Photo by Edwards History Office file photo and U.S. Air Force

Additional source: U.S. Air Force