Posted on 01/14/2021 8:53:20 AM PST by Onthebrink
No other U.S. Air Force aircraft could fly faster or higher than the Lockheed SR-71 “Blackbird,” and on its final flight, it set a truly impressive record.
The reconnaissance aircraft flew from the west coast of the United States to the east coast – some 2,404 miles – in just 68:17 minutes. During that flight, it traveled from St. Louis, Missouri, and Cincinnati, Ohio, a distance of 311 miles in about eight and a half minutes.
(Excerpt) Read more at 19fortyfive.com ...
Thanks for posting it.
I bet pre-Biden may have something to do with the grounding - climate change or something as stupid.
Wow thanks for the post. I recall a flyby of the sr71 when I was an air traffic controller on the Enterprise. This was during work-ups for a west-pac cruise so we were in the Pacific at the time. Guys in the flight deck said they heard the sonic booms but never saw the plane. Do t know if true or not but it was also said that a couple of the windows of the superstructure cracked.
We were all watching the radar screen in the CATCC at 500 Mile distance, it was only three skips from screen passes before it was off our radar. Impressive.
Habu pilots were fitted out almost as astronauts. Not much oxygen at that altitude.
OK, I did the uneducated estimate. I had previously heard it was capable of Mach 3+ (heard significantly higher)
But the basic math I found did not indicate that.
Thank you for the explanation.
I thank the Air Force was trying to get rid of it many years before it got decommissioned. I thank some high up Senator or Congressman was able to keep getting it back into the budget every time it got cut out of the Defense budget for many years to bring the pork back home to his district, I may be wrong about that though, but I won't surprised me though.
So a formable aircraft is grounded over politics?
It is gone because it has been replaced with better stuff, most of which we can’t talk about.
Satellites are better than they were then.
Drones do many of the same things better.
We have “aircraft” that far surpass the SR-71 in capability that we do not acknowledge.
Two more points...much of what we use to observe is now no longer visible from above and the exorbitant cost of a program is never a reason for cancellation, it is an excuse. If the DoD wants it, they get it.
You have that right. Congress being dominated by Democrats, may of them great believers in the UN and a "world police force" to protect us from the Russkies' aggression, it would have been a tough sell to promote the SR-71 as successor to the U-2. It needed a cover story.
Sane Americans had misgivings about basing A-12 squadrons in New Mexico presumably to intercept Soviet bombers over Alaska and northern Canada.
Of course, it was still anyone's guess just how fast the aircraft could fly in those days. After LBJ let the cat out of the bag in 1964, I would guess a lot of jaws dropped.
“Yesterday, at a press conference in Moscow, Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation spokesperson Alexei Obmanov shared images and documents that conclusively prove a US SR-71 Blackbird spyplane was downed close to a remote Siberian village in 1983. According to Obmanov, the aircraft was intercepted by a pair of Soviet Air Defence Forces (PVO) MiG-31 interceptors. The intruding US aircraft was tracked for 93 miles (150 km), and five radio warnings issued, before the Soviet aircraft opened fire. Three missiles were fired, with the second two hitting and destroying the American aircraft. The two aircrew successfully ejected from the aircraft. The wreckage, which was recovered from the Siberian village of Durakovo, was sent to the Gromov Flight Research Institute 25 miles (40 km) south-east of Moscow for analysis.”
This is likely Russian disinformation. The clues are (1) the name of the purported RF spokesman Alexei Obmanov. Obman in Russian means “hoax” or “deception.” (2) The wreckage was alleged to have been recovered from the Siberian village of Durakovo. Durak in Russian means “fool.” There is a real Durakovo (”Village of Fools”) but it is in the Kaluga oblast, nowhere near Siberia.
Built from technology gleaned from a UFO crash at area 51. ;)
for later
It was but it had uses where satellites were not available, capable, or obscured by weather.
Not to mention there is a history of every SR tailnumber ever produced and the crews that flew them.
I was privileged to work on the SR-71 for awhile in 1972 (avionics). It was an awesome aircraft and is still my favorite. I still have a tiny bearing from it on my keychain. The purpose of it was so if an officer took issue with your attitude and said, “Where’s your military bearing, airman?”, you could whip your keychain out and say, “Sir, right here, sir!” No, I never heard of anyone who had the guts to do that...
“Not to mention there is a history of every SR tailnumber ever produced and the crews that flew them.”
Yes; I have read that 32 SR-71s were produced, 20 are in museums, and 12 were destroyed in accidents. Two of the accidents were outside the U.S.
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