Posted on 07/25/2021 12:39:31 PM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
The SR-71 Blackbird remains to this day the only aircraft rated to run in full continuous afterburner.
Designed to sustain Mach 3 speeds at over 80,000 ft, the Pratt & Whitney J58 turbojet engine powered the whole Blackbird family: the Lockheed A-12, YF-12 and SR-71. An engineering marvel, the J58 had a single-shaft rotor design with a novel compressor bleed bypass when in extreme high-speed operation. What made this engine so unique is the six bypass tubes, which directed airflow from the compressor stage directly into the afterburner. This allowed the Blackbird to operate at a much higher fuel efficiency than other afterburning jet engines when in full afterburner (AB).
Sheffield Miller recalls about how another SR-71 Blackbird pilot reacted after a long flight; ‘I interviewed Colonel Shelton about his 13 hour flight during the Yom Kippur war. And he said that after a long flight like this his adrenaline was hyped up so high that he was unable to sleep even though he was exhausted. ‘To help with his adrenaline being on overdrive he would go for a long walk to settle down.’
(Excerpt) Read more at theaviationgeekclub.com ...
And human brains.
For the B-52 they were using E-size stone tablets! Try hanging a few of them on the rack?
I suspect it should be collapse not cavitate? Cavitation will decrease with an increase of pressure, I know nothing of the fuel system.
Apparently all would-be journalists are required to take a literacy test, only those who fail are hired.
—”only those who fail are hired.”
Perhaps an audio transcription.
Also, anyone who writes should have an editor, but a good editor does not work cheap.
Guessing that a blanket of nitrogen is needed to avoid the lower explosive limit?
Cavitation would need to exceed the vapor pressure ...
Pressurizing a large surface, and not much pressure is needed to distort it. Something to avoid.
Maybe the ‘journalist’ thinks it’s a submarine.
What I want to know is how did they refuel an SR-71 on full afterburner?
That must be one very quick tanker!
—”That must be one very quick tanker!”
JATO?
And a lot of them?
TR-3B tanker version?
I got a chance to view the SR-71 Blackbird at the Abbottsford BC (Canada) airshow years ago. I talked to the pilot, an Air Force major. He said the plane had no internal engine starter. They wheeled out a trailer to fire it up. It contained a Buick V-8 with a vertical spline to insert into the engines from below. The V-8 spun up the engines on the ramp.
The airplane was made out of titanium as standard aircraft aluminum would melt from its high-speed friction. When the plane was first built, the Soviet Union was the only source of titanium. The U.S. government secretly created fake civilian corporations to buy the material from the Soviets without divulging its purpose.
Over its entire service life, more than 4,000 missiles were launched to shoot down the Blackbird but none were successful. At full speed, the plane was faster than the muzzle velocity of a 30.06 bullet. At high speed, the aircraft could not do a U-turn within the borders of the state of Ohio.
Because of friction, the plane would literally swell in size in high-speed flight. Fuel would leak like crazy from its fuel tanks until the speed-produced friction expanded the fuel tanks which then sealed themselves.
The airplane was way too hot to touch upon landing. Ground crewmen had to wear gloves.
The aircraft still holds many speed records to this day.
FWIW I had a chance to work on an SR-71 while a DOD contractor at Otis AFB on Cape Cod, MA in 1972.
They had landed there due to an avionics problem and I was the only one with a high enough clearance in the AV shop. And even I didn’t know what they needed me for until I got out to the far end of a remote strip and there it sat. A big, black, hulking plane bathed in light from the portable light towers and reeking of fuel. And I knew instantly what it was.
Turns out that the piece of gear that was having the problem was fairly standard and I was able to repair it after a trip back to the shop.
When the AF Colonel and the two armed MP’s dropped me off back at the shop, the Colonel looked at me and said very seriously, “We were never here and you didn’t see anything.”
I said, “See what?” He just smiled, nodded, and drove off.
Fast Forward to 2010, and my wife and I were in San Francisco getting ready to take a Duck boat tour and the driver noticed the SR-71 T-shirt I was wearing, and asked why I was wearing it.
When I said I had had a chance to work on one way back when, he asked me a few questions about it, and I could tell he was kind of testing me to see if I was telling the truth.
Having answered to his satisfaction, I guess, he told me he had been a crew chief on one, so we started swapping stories.
But the most interesting thing he told me was that the SR-71 didn’t really have a known top speed. Every time the Russians would set a new record, they would just go out and open the throttles a little bit more, just enough to set a new record.
But the word was the engines would just run faster and faster until they came apart. But I guess that was never tested.
—”TR-3B tanker version?”
Does that fit into the timeline?
Or does the ASTRA warp space-time?
And if so, the tanker version would require more energy than in the known universe. I think???
“It uses highly pressured mercury accelerated by nuclear energy to produce a plasma that creates a field of anti-gravity around the ship. Conventional thrusters located at the tips of the craft allow it to perform all manner of rapid high speed maneuvers along all three axes.”
Actually the one I saw had two Buick Wildcat V-8 running in tandem driving the shaft.
They’d have to drop afterburner and descend to meet a KC-135Q tanker.
—”I said, “See what?”
A friend stationed at Okinawa took some photos of one at a distance.
He sent the film for processing and those photos and negatives did not return?
Guessing he used the Kodak mailers???
There are three Blackbirds on display in Alabama. The Space Museum in Huntsville has a single-seat A-12. Both the Southern Museum of Flight in Birmingham and the Battleship Park museum in Mobile have SR-71s, but the Mobile display also includes the twin Buick start cart...
Cool info. It probably wouldn’t need dogfight maneuverability. The part of mussel velocity of a 30.06 is amazing.
I became acquainted with a couple of SR-71 pilots; one of them gave me a tour of the facility at Beale AFB where pilots are prepared for a mission. Ordinary looking pilots with extraordinary skills.
But, but, but the headline says continuous AB!
You don’t have to be going all that fast to outpace a sessile organism...
Amazing story!
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