“Like every other crew, we wanted this mission. It was special, it was a first, it would cover territory that the jet had never been in, and it would provide the test of skill and “stuff” that every aviator/adventurer requires from time to time,” former SR-71 pilot Lt. Col. Mike Smith
In the following post, which appears in Col. Richard H. Graham’s book The Complete Book of the SR-71 Blackbird, former SR-71 pilot Lt. Col. Mike Smith (Ret) tells the story of a very special Blackbird mission.
A Very Tiring Mission
Major Doug Soifer and I were still pretty new at the game when the first oil tanker convoys were to be escorted into the Persian Gulf past the Iranian threats of a blockade. We were at Kadena as a younger senior crew when tasking came down for an SR-71 mission into the Persian Gulf to locate “Silkworm” anti-ship missiles.
In higher headquarters, there had been a lot of debate over which Det should fly the mission. Plans were made and remade, maps drawn and redrawn, problems studied and restudied until the powers that be finally decided that an SR-71 would fly from Kadena to the Persian Gulf and back, one of the longest missions ever flown in the SR-71. It would be a real test for both individuals and technology. We desired this mission, just like every other team. It was unique, it was a first, it would travel over unknown terrain for this jet, and it would offer the occasional test of ability and “stuff” that every aviator and adventurer needs.
Det 1 was led by Colonel Tom Alison, who spent what felt like weeks planning, thinking about, and studying the mission. There were occasions when it appeared that the slow-moving convoys might enter the gulf before the SR-71 due to minor changes in targets or routing. Of course, the 975 was the best jet and should be used as the primary jet, with the 967 (our preference) serving as the airborne spare. Tankers and aircrews were completely overrun in Kadena.
The intended mission required a flight period of more than eleven hours, five refuelings, thousands of miles between viable emergency runways, and a target area so narrow that we would need to reduce our speed just to maintain course due to the SR-71’s huge turn radius at high speeds. The staff was well prepared. On the morning of our mission, on July 22, 1987, a beautiful day on a tropical island, twenty-seven tankers would depart in order to transport our lone black jet to the Persian Gulf and back.
We began the routine: normal crew brief, suit-up, and then [we] got the word of a slight delay. The ANS wasn’t quite right. We elected to go out to the jet and wait for the fix, and in a few minutes, we were told that they were finishing up. No sooner had we stood up than Colonel Alison rushed up to tell us that maintenance had dropped apart under the ejection seat and we would be taking the spare-967, our jet.
Takeoff was a heavyweight [sixty-five thousand pounds of fuel] right to supersonic cruise—we were exhilarated. Our only shortage was our oxygen—which we used at a very high rate for the first hour—but after tightening up our helmet face seals a little, our oxygen use slowed to normal. We would laugh later that it had been our heavy breathing that was using up the oxygen. After the first refueling, the jet settled into its rhythm and flew perfectly for the entire flight. The crew in the airborne spare was right behind us, ready to take over if we developed problems.
We flew over places that were new to us. I saw inlet temperatures climb seventy degrees in less than a minute in level flight above seventy thousand feet and clouds so high and so white they seemed to glow over the Indian Ocean. Finally, we arrived in the target area and flew through the Strait of Hormuz, right over the convoys. We had to slow to about Mach 2.5 to make the turn inside the Gulf and were listening to the E-3 airborne warning and control system make threat calls in addition to watching our own equipment. Fortunately, we were busy and finished so quickly that the threats didn’t have time to become dangerous.
We had both been confident that we would get to the target. Now came the tough part. We had to get home. Unfortunately, the weather moved into our last refueling area. When we finally found the tankers, one had a bad refueling boom and the other had no director lights. The refueling was OK. After one last supersonic leg, 11.2 hours after we left Kadena, we landed in the dark with no liquid nitrogen remaining. The maintenance and operations support guys were ecstatic; 967 had run flawlessly—no writeups for the entire mission. It was the greatest feeling of my life!
Photo by NASA and U.S. Air Force
