Posted on 12/25/2014 2:55:39 PM PST by rktman
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the first flight of the SR-71 Blackbird, the Air Force’s sleek, high-flying Cold War reconnaissance workhorse that still holds several world air-speed records. Here’s a look back at the amazing aircraft.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Designed with slide rule calculations and drawn with pencil on vellum.
I read that Kelly Johnson said no engineer could have his desk located > 50 yards from the airframe build bay.
Designed with slide rule calculations and drawn with pencil on vellum.
Astonishing, with no computers his team could kick out a major design with working prototypes in a year. It took every company I worked for that long to do a design study. Of course, he kicked the military out until he was done. Nobody can do that today. Every time a colonel shows up we spent two weeks prepping, three days presenting and another two weeks cleaning up the mess and answering incredibly stupid questions in microscopic detail. The military is its own worst enemy.
One of my favorite airplanes. I got to work on it for awhile in ‘72.
Good for you. The father of a fellow co-worker did also. Never heard a peep about inside business either. Wouldn’t want it any other way.
I still feel the coast to coast speed record they set was probably low-balled.
Realize that the first incarnation of the SR-71 was the A-12, as conceived in the late 1950s. What an awesome imagination led to the construction and manufacture of that plane!
Very funny Blackbird story here:
http://oppositelock.jalopnik.com/favorite-sr-71-story-1079127041
I flew in the KC_135Q that refueled these black birds. Saw lots take off and landings at Beale AFB.
It would start the roll, hit the afterburners then go straight up till out of sight.
THis story will make any SR 71 fan smile:
http://oppositelock.jalopnik.com/favorite-sr-71-story-1079127041
The United States could produce aircraft and weapon system like this when we didn't blow over 2/3rds of our budget on entitlements and welfare.
My Dad said that innovation slowed down significantly in the mid 60s when Congress took closer control of the DOD. Fortunately, he was already well on his way to inventing GPS. See my website www.gpsdeclassified.com
Nothing more fun then having one come up and park behind/slightly under you.
And about 80% of that goes to bureaucRATic salaries and benefits. Real efficient huh.
It's pretty safe to say that the biggest and worst welfare frauds of all, are those getting a government paycheck.
we need some change bud—Merry Christmas!
Arguably the most lovely aircraft ever made.
n the late 1950s the United States Air Force (USAF) sought a replacement for its F-106 Delta Dart interceptor. As part of the Long Range Interceptor Experimental (LRI,X) program, the North American XF-108 Rapier, an interceptor with Mach 3 speed, was selected. However, the F-108 program was canceled by the Department of Defense in September 1959.[3] During this time, Lockheed's Skunk Works was developing the A-12 reconnaissance aircraft for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) under the Oxcart program. Kelly Johnson, the head of Skunk Works, proposed to build a version of the A-12 named AF-12 by the company; the USAF ordered three AF-12s in mid-1960.[4]
The AF-12s took the seventh through ninth slots on the A-12 assembly line; these were designated as YF-12A interceptors.[5]
IOW, the A-12 predated the YF-12A.
BTW, I had already consulted that page before posting.
Had a neighbor at Seymour-Johnson AFB, NC in mid-80s who came from Beale and a tour with the Blackbird as a maintenance guy. Loved the SR-71; hated the F-4s he worked on at Shady J (a sentiment that was not uncommon in the Phantom maintenance community). After a couple of years, he got a chance to go back to Beale and the Blackbird. Said it took him about two seconds to make that decision.
After my tour at S-J, I went to OTS and wound up at Moody AFB, GA as an intel officer, at the end of the F-4 era at that base. During my stint at Moody, one of our fighter squadrons got a new commander; we looked at the guy’s bio and discovered he had done a couple of tours in the Blackbird and had more hours in the SR-71 than the F-4. He needed to be a squadron commander to make O-6, and the timing at Beale wasn’t going to work, so he would up at Moody.
That Lt Col (who later became the wing king at Beale) gave one of the greatest presentations I ever saw. One Friday, when flying ended early and beer call was on, he set up a screen and a movie projector in the squadron auditorium and showed some “home movies” taken from the cockpit of a Blackbird. You could see the curvature of the earth at the bottom of the screen and the darkness of space at the top of the frame. When someone asked his altitude at the time, he said 85,000 plus. Don’t know how much the “plus” was, but I’ve always heard the published capabilities of the Blackbird were very much on the conservative side.
That same Lt Col also had photo that was one of his prized possessions. It was a media shot of the Soviet leader Breznehv getting off the plane in Havana and being greeted by Fidel Castro. In the photograph, both Breznehv and Castro are staring straight up. What caught their attention was the distinctive double sonic boom of an SR-71, passing over Havana at 80,000+ and somewhere around Mach 3. The pilot of the SR-71 was the Lt Col I knew at Moody. After the “boom-boom,” Fidel had to tell Breznehv that the Yanquis were passing overhead, and there was nothing their Soviet-made air defense hardware could do about it.
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