Speed Is Life: The "question I'm most often asked is 'How fast would that SR-71 fly?'"

Plane & Pilot Magazine ^ | Brian Shul, former U.S. Air Force SR-71 "Blackbird" pilot

[EnjoyingLife]

So it was with great surprise, when at the end of one of my presentations, someone asked, "What was the slowest you ever flew in the Blackbird?" This was a first. After giving it some thought, I was reminded of a story that I had never shared before, and relayed the following.

[puppypusher]

Mach 3 plus.The exact speed was classified.

[AussieJoe]

That was a great read!
Thanks for posting.

[PLMerite]

Cool. Nowadays someone would have had a cellphone video and put it on Youtube.

[Vendome]

Cool Story.

[Celerity]

Compare: This is like getting your sleeve brushed by a Bugatti Veyron’s side mirror, who has given up trying to brush your sleeve with it’s mirror and return to 200+mph.

I could only imagine how exciting that flyby was.

[GreyFriar]

Blackbird ping

[left that other site]

My Favorite Airplane!

[2nd Bn, 11th Mar]

A great story.

The best flyboy tales start with “this is no sh!t”.

[MHGinTN]

Thread needs plane porn ... BTW, have you ever seen the blackbird sitting on the runway before takeoff, dripping fuel?

[isthisnickcool]

Great story.

[Gaffer]

I used to be stationed at Kadena in the late 60s early 1970. I used to watch them to take off/land for missions over NK and China/Russia.

We called them "Habus" after the local poisonous snakes...My experience in watching them pretty much can be summed up in one sentence : It drops like a rock when going slow. You could watch them miles out at very high altitude, they'd make what amounted to a once circle altitude drop down to land...it was amazing to watch....

[El Gato]

An SR flew into our base one day when one of my fellow R&D engineering officers had the "Ops duty officer" duty. This was before there weer pictures of the bird in maganzines and such. It's existance was out of the black, but it was still considered extremely sensitive.

The AC had declared an inflight emergency and we were the closest base with an appropriate runway and services. Apparently the big black bird came screaming in, maybe his problem caused him to land faster than usual, and the brakes on one of the main wheel boggies caught fire. They still hustled it into a hanger (we had hangers big enough for BUFFS and KC-135s) and the firemen put out the fire in there, while the hanger was surrounded by the sky cops. Exciting day. And for that engineer, way cool.

[Fred Hayek]

And it still is classified. That’s a plane that is no longer in service.

[smokingfrog]

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.

Yikes!

[Recon Dad]

“Mankind has a perfect record in aviation. We never left one up there.”

“Airspeed, altitude and brains: Two out of three are needed to successfully complete the flight.”

[stefanbatory]

just. wow.

[mowowie]

Great story!

[Ro_Thunder]

Yup - and says so on the patch.

I got one from an AF buddy WAAAAYYY back in the day.

Awesome bird - and I wonder what we have that replaced the capabilities of the SR71?

[zot]

Thanks for the ping. That is a great story.